3 ms·

This is a bit hyperbole. The employee intellectual property agreement is pretty much 'we own everything you do[1]', same as every other company. So you're at th

This is a bit hyperbole. The employee intellectual property agreement is pretty much 'we own everything you do[1]', same as every other company. So you're at the whim of legal and director approval for CLAs. There are numerous teams contributing to OSS projects, a small smattering of which can be found under Apple's own Github: https://github.com/apple https://github.com/apple However, folks undergoing software engineer training could be forgiven for this impression, as the training is very OSS hostile. Some of this is understandable, as the two major concerns are corporate engineers plagiarizing OSS, and accidentally giving away patents, both of which are massive liabilities to be avoided. And yes, the company is very allergic to GPLv3, for a variety of reasons. My recollection is that all the tech companies don't like it or its companion, AGPL. You'll note that many of the GNU tools shipped predate GPLv3. [1]: Unless you live in California and comply with all the gotchas of that one loophole.

mistrial9 7y ago
"we own everything you do" -- is not the same as "every other company" .. flatly false "You are at the whim of legal (dept)" -- true numerous teams contributing to OSS -- true, like LLVM ; how many software engineers work at Apple? "training is very OSS hostile" -- true software patents -- lets talk about that later plagiarizing OSS -- certainly a serious concern on both sides of this chat very allergic to GPLv3, .. AGPL -- why is that? surely the rules of GPL, by the third version, are pretty well understood.. Apple Inc benefits quite a bit from say, the Internet .. Thank you for this reply -- I believe that this factual parent response does address each point, but in a voice that makes it sound like it is all ok and expected. But you see, its not all ok and not all expected. How much money is enough money, Apple Inc ? What is the world we are creating here?
- jldugger 7y ago
  > "we own everything you do" -- is not the same as "every other company" .. flatly false This is not a commonly held position, but maybe we can use a third party to mediate the dispute. Joel Spolsky has written on the subject not that long ago[1]: > So before you hire this developer, you agree, “hey listen, I know that inventing happens all the time, and it’s impossible to prove whether you invented something while you were sitting in the chair I supplied in the cubicle I supplied or not. I don’t just want to buy your 9:00-5:00 inventions. I want them all, and I’m going to pay you a nice salary to get them all,” and she agrees to that, so now you want to sign something that says that all her inventions belong to the company for as long as she is employed by the company. > This is where we are by default. This is the standard employment contract for developers, inventors, and researchers. So let's meet in the middle: it is an uphill battle to get an employer to assign IP created 'off the clock' to you. Even when I was working for a public university, for a department dedicated to supporting open source, they had me sign an IP agreement. I don't have the text of the contract to quote you, but as I recall it was the same 24/7/365 overreach. Amusingly, this leads to a substantial conflict; I hear tales of people circumventing the policy by using a personal email account to land things upstream. [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
taywrobel 7y ago
This is one of several reasons I left Apple and went to GitHub. I wanted to have the ability to work on side projects, but Apple makes that very, very, hard. GitHub on the other hand is explicit about allowing this in its balanced employee IP agreement, which is pretty nice - https://github.com/github/balanced-employee-ip-agreement https://github.com/github/balanced-employee-ip-agreement

mistrial9 7y ago

"we own everything you do" -- is not the same as "every other company" .. flatly false "You are at the whim of legal (dept)" -- true numerous teams contributing to OSS -- true, like LLVM ; how many software engineers work at Apple? "training is very OSS hostile" -- true software patents -- lets talk about that later plagiarizing OSS -- certainly a serious concern on both sides of this chat very allergic to GPLv3, .. AGPL -- why is that? surely the rules of GPL, by the third version, are pretty well understood.. Apple Inc benefits quite a bit from say, the Internet .. Thank you for this reply -- I believe that this factual parent response does address each point, but in a voice that makes it sound like it is all ok and expected. But you see, its not all ok and not all expected. How much money is enough money, Apple Inc ? What is the world we are creating here?

jldugger 7y ago
> "we own everything you do" -- is not the same as "every other company" .. flatly false This is not a commonly held position, but maybe we can use a third party to mediate the dispute. Joel Spolsky has written on the subject not that long ago[1]: > So before you hire this developer, you agree, “hey listen, I know that inventing happens all the time, and it’s impossible to prove whether you invented something while you were sitting in the chair I supplied in the cubicle I supplied or not. I don’t just want to buy your 9:00-5:00 inventions. I want them all, and I’m going to pay you a nice salary to get them all,” and she agrees to that, so now you want to sign something that says that all her inventions belong to the company for as long as she is employed by the company. > This is where we are by default. This is the standard employment contract for developers, inventors, and researchers. So let's meet in the middle: it is an uphill battle to get an employer to assign IP created 'off the clock' to you. Even when I was working for a public university, for a department dedicated to supporting open source, they had me sign an IP agreement. I don't have the text of the contract to quote you, but as I recall it was the same 24/7/365 overreach. Amusingly, this leads to a substantial conflict; I hear tales of people circumventing the policy by using a personal email account to land things upstream. [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...

taywrobel 7y ago

This is one of several reasons I left Apple and went to GitHub. I wanted to have the ability to work on side projects, but Apple makes that very, very, hard. GitHub on the other hand is explicit about allowing this in its balanced employee IP agreement, which is pretty nice - https://github.com/github/balanced-employee-ip-agreement https://github.com/github/balanced-employee-ip-agreement