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Apple engineer in need of OSS maintainers

196 points by Austin_Conlon 7y ago

RMPR 7y ago
The tweet seems deleted, any workaround?
umvi 7y ago
> Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in their personal time). Wow, that seems petty. And it enrages me enough that if I worked for Apple I'd immediately start looking elsewhere for a job. I can do whatever I darn well please in my personal time and any employer that says otherwise is being overbearing.
- senderista 7y ago
  It was the same at Amazon when I was there. You couldn't even work on your own game on your own time.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    Being the status quo for technical companies doesn't make it legal, moral, or fair.
    - aeonflux 7y ago
      But why is this not legal, moral or fair?
      - falcolas 7y ago
        Because it creates an unreasonable restriction on your life outside of work. Its somewhat unprecedented in the global market as well. Proofreaders are not prohibited from reading books. Concept Artists are not prohibited from creating art. Writers are not prohibited from writing. Teachers from teaching. Workers from volunteering work.
        aeonflux 7y ago
        As I pointed in other comment - restrictions on life outside work are common and reasonable. Most people can't work competitors after work.
        patcon 7y ago
        It seems odd to consider "the commons" as a competitor... feels petty, like: "If we can't have it, then you can't even gift it to the human collective."
        ac29 7y ago
        > Most people can't work competitors after work. Non-compete clauses "are automatically void as a matter of law in California" [0], where Apple is based (though they have offices in other states and countries). I wonder if a ban on open source contributions would fall afoul of this law (I suspect yes, though Apple can afford pretty good lawyers). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California
        BossingAround 7y ago
        How is that fair? Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I work another 4h a day for Google if I choose to do so? Now, disclosing secrets, that's a different matter. If I go to Google to inform them of amazing killer project Apple wants to do within 5 years, that's called corporate espionage. No reason why I couldn't work for multiple companies though. In fact, I don't even see a reason why I should even tell these companies I work for multiple companies.
        umvi 7y ago
        > Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I work another 4h a day for Google if I choose to do so? You can, if you are being paid by the hour. But you probably aren't being paid by the hour, you are probably collecting an annual salary which means you might be expected to work 8-10 hours per day, not work for other companies, and other restrictions.
  - Twirrim 7y ago
    It changed a bunch when I was there (2013-2016). You were allowed to when I joined, but you had to get permission and the process was a complete pain in the arse and took forever to navigate. By the time I left, you still had to get permission but the process was extremely quick and simple, as long as it wasn't on competing technology. The one hard exception was game dev which remained a firm no-go, for reasons that never really made sense (Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!)
    - onion2k 7y ago
      (Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!) https://amazongames.com/ https://amazongames.com/ make games and a game engine called Lumberyard https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ that's based on CryEngine.
      - solarkraft 7y ago
        Sure. But why does that conflict with Amazon devs making their own games? If anything it seems like the engines could benefit from it.
        abj 7y ago
        Not defending Amazon, I'm an indie game dev who wants to own his off work hours side project. But Amazon Game Studios is releasing a game called "New World" this year. [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game)
    - mabbo 7y ago
      I'm still here. The process now is "don't ask, just read the policy and follow it in however you interpret it, but we'll sue you later if we disagree with your interpretation".
      - vkou 7y ago
        That's how Amazon handles non-competes as well. Are they going to enforce your non-compete? Who knows, just sign on the dotted line, and don't ask any questions.
- wlll 7y ago
  Is that even legal? In my mind, if you want to dictate what I do in my non-work time, you pay me for the time.
  - non-entity 7y ago
    I cant say for sure, but I'd imagine so. As long as what you are doing isn't protected by some law, I imagine a company can discipline / fire you for whatever they please.
  - aeonflux 7y ago
    Almost every company tries to force non-competition clauses in agreements. Even if they let one do side gigs, one can't work for competitor. This does sound reasonable and yet is a limitation on what you can do in your spare time.
  - bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
    By default it's not. However, if you join FAANG, chances are that you'll be required to sign a contract that basically says "I waive my rights of doing side-projects to to the greatest possible extents under the laws of California". When speaking of contributing to open source, Google generally has a more positive image, but there are still occasions that something could only be released after being reviewed by the legal department if it's work-related. On the other hand, Apple is known to have strict restrictions.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Yes, due to certain provisions in California Labor Code which allow for curtailing what you can do in fields that compete with your employer (in a large company, this generally means anything could fall under this).
  - cosmotic 7y ago
    In some states, it is not legal for employers to take ownership of employees work off hours using their own equipment. Most employers still sneak these into their employment agreements even though they can't be enforced.
  - 7y ago
- Rochus 7y ago
  Their secret police will still come after you, even if you change jobs.
- robenkleene 7y ago
  While I agree with you, I also find Joel Spolsky's blog post on the subject to be a thought provoking view of “side projects” from the employers' perspective https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
  - SeanLuke 7y ago
    Right off the bat Joel makes what appears to be a very serious mistake regarding work for hire. His opening logic is as follows: - When you hire a contract photographer to make some pictures, he owns the copyright on those pictures even though you hired him. - The same goes for your programmer employees. They own the copyright on their work. - Therefore you need to require your programmer employees to sign an agreement to sign their work over to you. I am not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's a gross misunderstanding of work for hire. If someone is your employee, they are doing work for hire and you own the copyright on their product. Photographers own their work because they were independent contractors and thus their work was not work for hire. I believe work for hire doesn't apply to patents, thus possibly justifying a patent agreement. But seriously, this (AFAIK) broken explanation is his opening justification?
    - ilamont 7y ago
      > When you hire a contract photographer to make some pictures, he owns the copyright on those pictures even though you hired him. Depends on how the two parties set up the deal. If you want the copyright or to change the license in some way that gives you (the publisher) more rights, the agreement will spell out those details and you could up spending more (maybe a lot more). I sometimes work with professional photographers and for pre-existing work I pay for a non-exclusive license that costs less than a commissioned piece. I also use stock photography extensively which works in a similar manner. For commissioned photography or design work I'll insist on owning the copyright and the agreement will spell out that it's not work-for-hire: To the extent that the Provider’s Work includes any work of authorship entitled to protection under the laws of copyright, the parties acknowledge and agree that (i) the Provider’s Work has been specially ordered and commissioned by Publisher as a contribution to a collective work, a supplementary work, a translation, or such other category of work as may be eligible for treatment as a “commissioned work” and a “work made for hire” under the United States Copyright Act; (ii) the Provider is an independent contractor and not an employee, partner, joint author or joint venturer of Publisher; (iii) the Provider’s ’s Work shall be deemed a “commissioned work” and a “work made for hire” to the greatest extent permitted by law; and (iv) Publisher shall be the sole author of the Provider’s Work and the Work, and the sole owner of original materials embodying Work and the Work, and/or any works derived therefrom. Of course, the photographer or designer can opt to reject these terms, or make additional demands upon the publisher (more money, the right to use images in their own promotional materials, etc.) Not sure how it works with independent contractors doing programming.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Next thing ya know they'll prohibit their employees from playing Factorio, because it's too much like programming.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  What's next? Banning unapproved use of maths? I mean, what if you invent the next million dollar equation without giving it to Apple... can't have that. Also, I guess if you're a hardware engineer... well, I guess you can't use your tools to fix your car anymore. Search engineer? No more regex's for you.
  - m463 7y ago
    MIT math is ok, but GPLv3 math is a no-no.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      Definitely wouldn't want to use viral licenses for maths, would we?
- m463 7y ago
  Apple engineers are prohibited from eating lunch with friends at other companies in the valley (because of the things you have to sign to get a visitor badge for lunch)
  - ghostpepper 7y ago
    As someone who works at a company that provides no free lunch / on site cafeteria, this does not seem so draconian. You can just see your friends at a restaurant?
  - jjtheblunt 7y ago
    Since when, and says who? My grad school friend(s) at Google visited Apple, and I visited elsewhere similarly, when working at Apple HQ. Not scandalous in the least.
    - m463 7y ago
      I have a friend at apple, who cannot eat lunch at companies that require you to sign an NDA to get a visitor badge. There are many companies that have this setup. It could be his level of employment. Or it might be that it doesn't apply to all apple employees, or they don't know, or they don't bother.
      - jjtheblunt 7y ago
        That could be. Eating lunch at Caffe Mac was just print a visitor badge and walk across the quad with visitor. Maybe some campuses require transiting team-specific lockdowns, but Infinite Loop for lunch did not.
  - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    Uh, I've eaten lunch with Apple engineers at One Infinite Loop, and I worked at another company in the valley at the time. I have also eaten lunch with Apple engineers when they came to visit other companies in the Valley, and have even eaten lunch with Apple engineers at restaurants that weren't at other companies. Off-topic: remember eating lunch at restaurants?
- Igelau 7y ago
  > if I worked for Apple I'd immediately start looking elsewhere for a job Ooh that's a good one. I nearly snarfed my Pepsi.
- taywrobel 7y ago
  That’s a major part of why I left Apple for GitHub. Their OSS culture is horrible there. The only OSS projects that get approved to contribute to are ones where they’ve already hired most of the people that work on it. Cassandra, Mesos, and some other infra stuff come to mine. And occasionally they just buy a whole OSS company for their own use (FoundationDB). Submitting a patch to a small library you use? A multi-month process to be told no in the end 90% of the time or more. Have your own OSS projects? Not any more you don’t. In my exit interview I made my reasoning clear, and pointed out that as they move more into services and away from pure hardware as revenue, it’s going to be a bigger issue. Whether they agree or will work to fix it, only time will tell.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Genuine question, what's the value of providing feedback in an exit interview. At best you get nothing from it, and at worst you get put on some secret hiring blacklist. Either way nothing changes, you're just a datapoint in some HR piechart.
    - ukd1 7y ago
      This. I presume it's hoping if enough do it, they'll be forced to change.
    - taywrobel 7y ago
      Genuine answer - I have a metric shit ton of Apple stock after being there for several years. I want to see the company succeed, purely for financial reasons if none other. At least until I hold the stock for a year and only pay capital gains on it. Secret hiring blacklists don’t exist. And if they did, I wouldn’t want to work at a company that uses them anyways.
      - thawaway1837 7y ago
        There’s a lot of confidence there for lack of hiring blacklists when Google, Apple, etc are known to have shared hiring data with each other to underpay new hires.
- outside1234 7y ago
  Especially since, under California law, what you do with your personal time on personal hardware is yours, regardless of employment contract.
  - larkost 7y ago
    Citation needed. That is not Apple's lawyers' opinion. It is also not the interpretation of this San Jose law firm: https://www.sacattorneys.com/san-jose-intellectual-property-firm-explains-assigning-rights.html https://www.sacattorneys.com/san-jose-intellectual-property-... The relevant quote is: "It is legal to require an employee to assign intellectual property created in the employee’s own time if it required any of the employer’s tools, facilities, or intellectual property, or if that intellectual property relates to the employer’s business or research and development." Since Apple operates in a wide swath of the IT world, it is very likely that most OSS developed by Apple employees could reasonably be considered "relate[d] to the employer's business". That is certainly the position that Apple takes in most case (source: I am a former Apple employee).
    - mgomez 7y ago
      I believe the person you're replying to was referring to section 2870 from the California Labor Code: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=2870 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... "(a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for those inventions that either: (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer. (b) To the extent a provision in an employment agreement purports to require an employee to assign an invention otherwise excluded from being required to be assigned under subdivision (a), the provision is against the public policy of this state and is unenforceable."
- winter_blue 7y ago
  This policy is so ludicrous and morally offensive, that I would just willfully break it, and if they find out, throw a party to celebrate them firing me (for contributing to OSS projects). Imagine you use KDE, and find a bug, and make a small PR with a patch for it. I can't even begin to fathom how a company can while being fair/just say that you're not allowed to do so (without "our approval" which could take months). It's ridiculous beyond measure, and we should make it a goal to purposely get fired for doing OSS, and then also make sure to post about it online as much as possible so it draws a lot of attention, and hopefully results in a change in this. After all, it's probably a piece of cake to land a new job (once the COVID crisis is over), if you have a Big N company on your resume, even if you were fired from it (not that you'd want to preemptively disclose that - unless you went public with it - which some folks might even see as a positive).
- pacamara619 7y ago
  Isn't it illegal for Apple to tell employees what to do in their personal time?
jtdev 7y ago
WTF Apple..?! Is this due to some fear of IP leaking via employees contributing to OSS?
- bitwize 7y ago
  Yes, and it is a legitimate fear. Someone with access to Apple's IP may unintentionally or even inadvertently leak that IP in an open-source project. Say you developed a clever new optimization on the job at Apple. You use the same trick in your open source code, thinking it's no big deal, it's just one small piece of code. But that code is now the property of Apple, and they may consider it more valuable than you do. It may enable, for instance, faster encryption with one of their custom chips. That's an edge they have in the marlet that they might lose were it not for exclusive use of that bit of code. They could lose millions -- meaning they could sue you for millions. In a court of law, it is sufficient to prove that the defendant had access to the infringed work and that their work is substantially similar to the infringed work in order to have a case for copyright infringement. Rather than risk that sort of loss, Apple and many other companies include clauses forbidding employees from working on outside software projects even in their spare time as standard boilerplate in their employment contracts. If you don't want to play by those rules, don't work for the company. They can find plenty of top-tier engineers who will gladly play by those rules.
  - gnulinux 7y ago
    Ok ok, you're taking this way over the top. No engineer ever invents a new optimization that will give Apple competitive advantage and they don't know this is important and "accidentally" put it on OSS code. I don't believe this for a minute. Inventions that give companies technical competitive advantage are created via multiple iteration by a team of engineers, by them doing research. It's never the case that someone wakes up one day and writes code that can be considered an "invention". It usually starts with an engineer finding a problem, another engineer doing research on this problem for some time, and then to improve found solutions, a group of engineers discuss viable solutions.
    - phendrenad2 7y ago
nathancahill 7y ago
Wow, glad I passed on an Apple interview.
- xyst 7y ago
  Still a good company to get an offer from. Most companies are willing to budge the compensation packages to meet the competition.
ProAm 7y ago
I dont feel like helping a developer who's employer doesnt respect its customers or its employees.... It sounds like this is the trade off he gets for working there? I wish it werent like this, people should be able to work on whatever they feel like in their own personal time.
- levosmetalo 7y ago
  Of course, people can work on whatever they like on their free time. The developer in case chooses to abandon his open-source projects to work for a company of his choice. Nobody forced him to take this job, it was his choice.
  - bigbob2 7y ago
    So I guess the idea here is that as long as you're an employee of Apple, you have no free time?
  - inetknght 7y ago
    > The developer in case chooses to abandon his open-source projects to work for a company of his choice. Nobody forced him to take this job, it was his choice. This is so reductionist that it's blind to reality.
sdwolfz 7y ago
While not employed at Apple, I too have a clause in my employment contract (UK) that states I "assign copyright and IP rights produced by me in the course of my employment, whether during normal hours of business or otherwise, or at the premises or using company facilities or otherwise". I was told by my manager that I need to notify them if I plan to contribute/create an open source project, and even had one open source project I created get claimed by the company since I used it for one of my work tasks even though I created it for personal use initially, in my personal time, because "I could not prove that I developed it independently of my company work needs" and was told "if you don't like this then why are you still working here". What I want to know is how exactly do you go about getting that part of you contract removed so you own copyright and IP for work you do on your free time without the need to justify it to your employer? I tried speaking with my company's legal department and they slightly re-worded the contract to say the same thing (basically lied to me as later my project's ownership was claimed), all my managers so far did not take me seriously and basically ignored my request to change/remove this clause, or told me they would approve anything and it would be open source anyway (another lie as my project was taken) to the point I gave up, reduced my OSS contributions greatly and only worked on things I confirmed previously were OK for me to do, which added a lot of useless bureaucracy and got me demotivated. The only thing I can come up with was quitting my job after I negotiate with another employer to not have such a clause in my contract. But I have not done any interviewing yet, so I don't know if that is even possible. Any ideas/hints/help would be greatly appreciated!
- d-sc 7y ago
  You’re on the right track. Find a different job where they respect your projects and move on. You don’t really have much leverage right now as your current place doesn’t have much inventive to change their policy and doesn’t seem to respect your requests.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  These policies, when they exist, tend to be very entrenched in the organization. The legal department will push management to keep them so they can avoid the associated risks. I would look for another job. While these clauses are relatively common, it's also relatively easy to find employers with less restricting policies. You'll probably have better luck at tech-led companies, in general. I think I've also heard that California's employment law doesn't allow this sort of thing, FWIW.
aeonflux 7y ago
I am not from US, but isn't that kind of standard practice in US? While working at any company they can hold right to everything you do in the field. While outrageous at the first glance it does make a lot of sense for me. If you wan't to work on your side project you should quit your job. Otherwise there is a big risk you might quickly burn out, be less effective at your main work. People seem to critique overtime and time pressure on software engineers. At they same time they want to be able to code their startups after hours effectively working 15 hour per day. Working on open source projects instead of side gigs doesn't differ much in that regard. You might hook up on your project and spend tons of mental energy on it, making your main job suffer.
- richardwhiuk 7y ago
  That's a theory that develops from "work is the most important thing in your life". It's not the only correct starting assumption. Other things that develop from it are "employees shouldn't be allowed to have kids as it might sap mental energy from your job" - which is clearly a ludicrous position, but not dis-similar.
  - aeonflux 7y ago
    Quite the contrary in my opinion. This kind of limitations does force many to actually rest after hours.
    - mercer 7y ago
      To rest for what? To be more productive at work? I'd argue your point isn't 'quite the contrary' but only emphasizes OP's point: you describe the time outside of work as 'after hours', and argue that 'forcing' people to spend this time in a particular way is a good thing.
    - inetknght 7y ago
      Your method of resting differs from others'.
- mywittyname 7y ago
olalonde 7y ago
Makes you wonder how many GitHub accounts are pseudonyms for people who want to hide their open source contributions from their employer. (cue Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gnulinux 7y ago
  I have a pseudonym account that I write all my software in. Currently my employer does not restrict me working on side-projects; however, I still don't want my professional persona to be associated with my side-projects.
- szhu 7y ago
  A good example is ridiculousfish, the maintainer of Fish shell: https://github.com/ridiculousfish https://github.com/ridiculousfish https://ridiculousfish.com/blog/about.html https://ridiculousfish.com/blog/about.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567053
floatingatoll 7y ago
HN may find this unpalatable, but it’s still legal and permissible. Apple indicates this restriction against personal project work prior to hiring, and employees agree as part of being hired to adhere to it. If they do not, they are not hired. Non-compete bans are generally structured to prohibit restricting an ex-employee’s choice of work after their departure, but only once you are an ex-employee and not before. I am aware of no laws guaranteeing the inalienable right to create and publish software IP while contractually bound not to do so. Apple’s restriction does not prohibit contribution of work to open-source projects, but permits only those contributions approved by Apple as necessary and appropriate by Apple’s decision. The personal projects linked here were either denied that permission or never submitted for it. Personally, I’d have to think quite hard about whether to accept this restriction if I considered working for Apple someday. Silver lining, my tiny projects are all unused abandonware, so it wouldn’t require finding new maintainers. I don’t envy the author of the linked tweet their duty to find others.
- himinlomax 7y ago
  > HN may find this unpalatable, but it’s still legal and permissible. It's obviously legal and for obvious reasons, but it's both hostile to the culture of the profession at large AND counterproductive.
  - floatingatoll 7y ago
    It's not obviously legal. Highlights from today's discussion here indicate some confusion about that point: > Being the status quo for technical companies doesn't make it legal > Is that even legal? > That position, legally enforceable or otherwise
  - woodrowbarlow 7y ago
    it is not obvious. the law in question (for california) is CA labor code 2870. https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/2870-2872/2870 https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/... the law says that employers cannot claim ownership of inventions made without work resources, even if the employee signed such a clause, unless the invention is in competition with the employer.
bitwize 7y ago
Apple's IP, and their zealous guarding thereof, is why most of y'all carry MacBooks to work instead of Dells. So before you open your mouth to criticize, think about how policies like Apple's actually allow them more freedom to innovate.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  It is possible to contribute to open source without infringing on Apple’s IP.
  - bitwize 7y ago
    It's too risky for an Apple employee to do so willy-nilly.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      It's too risky because Apple will go after you even if you're not infringing, not because you're using trade secrets or patents from your job.
- t0astbread 7y ago
  Slavery, is why most of y'all carry cheap clothing. So before you open your mouth to criticize, think about how policies like slavery actually allow clothing manufacturers to lower their prices.
- BossingAround 7y ago
  Leaving zealous guarding of IP behind worked pretty well for Linux, the de-facto standard in server-side and cloud OS. I wonder how far would Apple's design go if other people and outsiders could hack on it freely.
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
Just "transfer" ownership to your girlfriend or your brother and make contributions in their names. Problem solved.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Do you think Apple’s legal team is stupid?
  - layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
    Ok, if you’re that paranoid then use a pseudonym ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
antoncohen 7y ago
California Labor Code section 2870[1] states: > (a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for those inventions that either: > (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or > (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer. > (b) To the extent a provision in an employment agreement purports to require an employee to assign an invention otherwise excluded from being required to be assigned under subdivision (a), the provision is against the public policy of this state and is unenforceable. Large companies like Apple and Google get away with broad rules that effectively ban unapproved open source contributions because nearly every type of software can be said to "Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer". If you work at a small company in California, I suggest pushing back on any rules like that. At my current company the employment contract they initially sent me required me to notify them in writing every time I created any work I felt was protected by section 2870 (any personal open source, any music, any writing, anything that could have a copyright). I had that paragraph removed from the contract. The burden should be on the company to enforce their copyright ownership, and provide evidence of ownership, the burden shouldn't be on me. [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=2870.&lawCode=LAB https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
- phendrenad2 7y ago
  Worth noting that this law is probably one of the driving factors behind the growth of the tech sector in California compared to other states. We're free to dream our dreams and seek funding later, not the other way around.
aeonflux 7y ago
Non of his projects have any activity during last year. Yet this announcement is formed in quite an aggressive and quite frankly unnecessary way. In few days we might get another post here which will blame Apple for firing him.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Why do you think they have no activity?
ryandrake 7y ago
Whenever this topic comes up HN reacts first with disbelief, like you're lying. Nice to see this awful practice getting some exposure from the Twittersphere. As someone who's worked in large companies for most of his career, this has been a major trade-off of accepting the offers: You need to shelf your open source work and any hobby programming you think you might one day release. Period. These companies have armies of lawyers vs. just you. People here will spout off a bunch of simple solutions like "just negotiate, bro." You may be a whiz at negotiating your salary, but you are likely to not get anywhere negotiating legal terms like this with a FAANG company. If you try the cute "strike through the clause in your employment agreement and initial it" trick that HN will advise, I guarantee you will get a stern letter from Legal in 2-7 days telling you to sign it unmodified or GTFO. Ask me how I know.
- dman 7y ago
  How do you know?
wayneftw 7y ago
Given that Apple would be the primary beneficiary of a strong Swift ecosystem and seeing how they treat developers on their platform - maybe they should rethink their stance or at least bring all employee projects in-house. Are there many developers out there that only program for Apple platforms? I suppose if you want to be one of those developers or if you want to work for Apple, it might be not be a bad idea to contribute.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
BossingAround 7y ago
What did the tweet say? It's deleted now.
- founditincache 7y ago
  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fmdiep%2Fstatus%2F1252586799098183682&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fmdiep%2Fstatus%2F1252586799098183682 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Because I don't 100% trust this to stay up (and because it's a bit hard to find the actual content without css): > Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in their personal time). So some of my projects could use a maintainer to manage PRs: - https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle - https://github.com/mdiep/Logician https://github.com/mdiep/Logician - https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2 https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2 … If you’re interested, please let me know! >> I’d love to help out with Tentacle! I’ll take a look at open issues and PRs today > Awesome, thanks! I just gave you access. Tentacle is very low maintenance, but there’s a Swift 5.2 PR open now that looks like it may need a little help. >> Has this ever been enforced that you know of? What are the consequences? > No idea. [shrug emoji]
  - juliansimioni 7y ago
    Because it took me a minute to find the tweet text on that page: > Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in their personal time). So some of my projects could use a maintainer to manage PRs: - https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle - https://github.com/mdiep/Logician https://github.com/mdiep/Logician - https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2 https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2 … If you’re interested, please let me know!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bumblebritches5 7y ago
I'll gladly do it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jeffrallen 7y ago
Here's a possible solution. Do it anyway, knowing that if your company really wants to piss you off by making an issue out of it, you can (and will) tell them to piss off and quit. No job is worth sacrificing your personal life and freedom for. When they make a problem, and you quit, if you've got someone in the company that values your contribution enough to fight for you and find a compromise to get your OSS contributions back-approved or whatever, great. The employer will benefit from the loyalty you will feel towards the person who solved the problem ("the greatest boss evar"). If your boss can't make the problem disappear, then you quit. If you've organised your life correctly, you can afford a few months of job search, and your OSS contributions are a testament to the quality of your work. (Not saying that I ever did this. And you should probably not cross-reference "git log" with my CV either.)
- james-mcelwain 7y ago
  This might be the correct advice in many scenarios but is essentially playing with fire. A company that wants revenge could easily bankrupt you with even the smallest contractual leg to stand on. Your 200k base comp isn't going to look so sweet when you're paying a lawyer $1,500 an hour to defend you from some tech giant.
- toast0 7y ago
  It's one thing if you're at risk of being fired, but you've also put the project you contributed to at risk. If those contributions are potentially your (former) employer's and they were not authorized to be shared, the project is going to have to figure out how to remove them; if the employer is particularly litigous, that could get really nasty.
louwrentius 7y ago
Original tweet: (now gone) Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in their personal time). So some of my projects could use a maintainer to manage PRs: <cut> If you’re interested, please let me know!
- emiliovesprini 7y ago
  Who was the tweet from?
  - fao_ 7y ago
    It's in the link - https://twitter.com/mdiep https://twitter.com/mdiep
- H8crilA 7y ago
  It might be that Apple has a fair and speedy approval process. My employer is like that.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    It doesn't.
- battery_cowboy 7y ago
  I'll never work for a company that tried to limit my personal time in any way.
  - nine_k 7y ago
    Some ways may be reasonable, e.g. running a commercial side project which is a direct competitor of your employer's product. In this case, the moral hazard of using company's internal knowledge which is under an NDA is very high indeed. But the list of such disallowed activities should be short and reasonable.
miker64 7y ago
What did it say, the tweets been deleted.
akling 7y ago
This subject makes me sad. I've recently heard from a bunch of Apple employees who had asked for permission to contribute to my open source project and got denied. Having worked there in the past myself, it's really weird to think back on how normal it seemed (to me) to allow an employer to put such extreme restrictions on my personal time. I hope they change their attitude about this some day.
- musicale 7y ago
  > it's really weird to think back on how normal it seemed (to me) to allow an employer to put such extreme restrictions on my personal time. Yeah, that's really not OK.
jedberg 7y ago
This is another place where Netflix really shines. Their policy is basically: Go ahead and work on open source. Use our computers and our office and our internet if you want. If we use the software inside Netflix, please mention that on the project page if you can, but if we don't or you can't, then whatevs. Also, if the software was created here at Netflix, feel free to open source it if it has to do with operations, but if it has to do with moviemaking, we'd rather keep that to ourselves for now. They understand that open source software is great for the community and great for recruiting. What better way to attract great engineers than to point out that the maintainer of their favorite open source project works for Netflix?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Question: is that the official or unofficial policy? I know a lot of companies that are willing to look the other way–or even encourage contributions–most of the time, but if you end up doing something that they don't like they can and will come after you due the actual employment contract still being the standard verbiage that legal wrote.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    When I was there it was the official policy, as much as anything is “official”.
  - aliceryhl 7y ago
    If you work on open source software, you should probably not accept a contract with such a clause.
JoshuaScript 7y ago
Well, if your company is _not_ like this and you're interested in being featured on a job board for companies with employee-friendly IP policies, drop me a line (email in bio).
strenholme 7y ago
Whenever this comes up, the question I have to ask is this: Has there even been a case in California where a jury decided that an employer owned the open source (or other software) an employee developed in their own free time? Has a company in California successfully litigated to take ownership and taken down an open source project because it was an employee’s side project? To protect myself, I have done the following: • I make sure, before signing an “inventions” clause, to put all of my open source on GitHub a date stamp before the date when I signed the inventions clause. This way, any and all of my own open source I use on the job (usually, a password generator, but I was once at a company with DNS so broken I had to run MaraDNS locally to have a usable Internet) is stuff I did not develop while working for the company. • I list all of my GitHub projects, state that none of them are related to what the company develops, and that any and all development is done on my own time, using my own computer.
rambojazz 7y ago
The tweet was removed. Any mirror?

196 points by Austin_Conlon 7y ago

RMPR 7y ago

The tweet seems deleted, any workaround?

umvi 7y ago

> Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in their personal time). Wow, that seems petty. And it enrages me enough that if I worked for Apple I'd immediately start looking elsewhere for a job. I can do whatever I darn well please in my personal time and any employer that says otherwise is being overbearing.

senderista 7y ago
It was the same at Amazon when I was there. You couldn't even work on your own game on your own time.
- falcolas 7y ago
  Being the status quo for technical companies doesn't make it legal, moral, or fair.
  - aeonflux 7y ago
    But why is this not legal, moral or fair?
    - falcolas 7y ago
      Because it creates an unreasonable restriction on your life outside of work. Its somewhat unprecedented in the global market as well. Proofreaders are not prohibited from reading books. Concept Artists are not prohibited from creating art. Writers are not prohibited from writing. Teachers from teaching. Workers from volunteering work.
      - aeonflux 7y ago
        As I pointed in other comment - restrictions on life outside work are common and reasonable. Most people can't work competitors after work.
        patcon 7y ago
        It seems odd to consider "the commons" as a competitor... feels petty, like: "If we can't have it, then you can't even gift it to the human collective."
        ac29 7y ago
        > Most people can't work competitors after work. Non-compete clauses "are automatically void as a matter of law in California" [0], where Apple is based (though they have offices in other states and countries). I wonder if a ban on open source contributions would fall afoul of this law (I suspect yes, though Apple can afford pretty good lawyers). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California
        BossingAround 7y ago
        How is that fair? Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I work another 4h a day for Google if I choose to do so? Now, disclosing secrets, that's a different matter. If I go to Google to inform them of amazing killer project Apple wants to do within 5 years, that's called corporate espionage. No reason why I couldn't work for multiple companies though. In fact, I don't even see a reason why I should even tell these companies I work for multiple companies.
        umvi 7y ago
        > Apple pays me for 8h a day, why can't I work another 4h a day for Google if I choose to do so? You can, if you are being paid by the hour. But you probably aren't being paid by the hour, you are probably collecting an annual salary which means you might be expected to work 8-10 hours per day, not work for other companies, and other restrictions.
- Twirrim 7y ago
  It changed a bunch when I was there (2013-2016). You were allowed to when I joined, but you had to get permission and the process was a complete pain in the arse and took forever to navigate. By the time I left, you still had to get permission but the process was extremely quick and simple, as long as it wasn't on competing technology. The one hard exception was game dev which remained a firm no-go, for reasons that never really made sense (Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!)
  - onion2k 7y ago
    (Claim at the time was because Amazon had its own game studio?!) https://amazongames.com/ https://amazongames.com/ make games and a game engine called Lumberyard https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/ that's based on CryEngine.
    - solarkraft 7y ago
      Sure. But why does that conflict with Amazon devs making their own games? If anything it seems like the engines could benefit from it.
      - abj 7y ago
        Not defending Amazon, I'm an indie game dev who wants to own his off work hours side project. But Amazon Game Studios is releasing a game called "New World" this year. [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_(video_game)
  - mabbo 7y ago
    I'm still here. The process now is "don't ask, just read the policy and follow it in however you interpret it, but we'll sue you later if we disagree with your interpretation".
    - vkou 7y ago
      That's how Amazon handles non-competes as well. Are they going to enforce your non-compete? Who knows, just sign on the dotted line, and don't ask any questions.
wlll 7y ago
Is that even legal? In my mind, if you want to dictate what I do in my non-work time, you pay me for the time.
- non-entity 7y ago
  I cant say for sure, but I'd imagine so. As long as what you are doing isn't protected by some law, I imagine a company can discipline / fire you for whatever they please.
- aeonflux 7y ago
  Almost every company tries to force non-competition clauses in agreements. Even if they let one do side gigs, one can't work for competitor. This does sound reasonable and yet is a limitation on what you can do in your spare time.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
  By default it's not. However, if you join FAANG, chances are that you'll be required to sign a contract that basically says "I waive my rights of doing side-projects to to the greatest possible extents under the laws of California". When speaking of contributing to open source, Google generally has a more positive image, but there are still occasions that something could only be released after being reviewed by the legal department if it's work-related. On the other hand, Apple is known to have strict restrictions.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Yes, due to certain provisions in California Labor Code which allow for curtailing what you can do in fields that compete with your employer (in a large company, this generally means anything could fall under this).
- cosmotic 7y ago
  In some states, it is not legal for employers to take ownership of employees work off hours using their own equipment. Most employers still sneak these into their employment agreements even though they can't be enforced.
- 7y ago
Rochus 7y ago
Their secret police will still come after you, even if you change jobs.
robenkleene 7y ago
While I agree with you, I also find Joel Spolsky's blog post on the subject to be a thought provoking view of “side projects” from the employers' perspective https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
- SeanLuke 7y ago
  Right off the bat Joel makes what appears to be a very serious mistake regarding work for hire. His opening logic is as follows: - When you hire a contract photographer to make some pictures, he owns the copyright on those pictures even though you hired him. - The same goes for your programmer employees. They own the copyright on their work. - Therefore you need to require your programmer employees to sign an agreement to sign their work over to you. I am not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's a gross misunderstanding of work for hire. If someone is your employee, they are doing work for hire and you own the copyright on their product. Photographers own their work because they were independent contractors and thus their work was not work for hire. I believe work for hire doesn't apply to patents, thus possibly justifying a patent agreement. But seriously, this (AFAIK) broken explanation is his opening justification?
  - ilamont 7y ago
    > When you hire a contract photographer to make some pictures, he owns the copyright on those pictures even though you hired him. Depends on how the two parties set up the deal. If you want the copyright or to change the license in some way that gives you (the publisher) more rights, the agreement will spell out those details and you could up spending more (maybe a lot more). I sometimes work with professional photographers and for pre-existing work I pay for a non-exclusive license that costs less than a commissioned piece. I also use stock photography extensively which works in a similar manner. For commissioned photography or design work I'll insist on owning the copyright and the agreement will spell out that it's not work-for-hire: To the extent that the Provider’s Work includes any work of authorship entitled to protection under the laws of copyright, the parties acknowledge and agree that (i) the Provider’s Work has been specially ordered and commissioned by Publisher as a contribution to a collective work, a supplementary work, a translation, or such other category of work as may be eligible for treatment as a “commissioned work” and a “work made for hire” under the United States Copyright Act; (ii) the Provider is an independent contractor and not an employee, partner, joint author or joint venturer of Publisher; (iii) the Provider’s ’s Work shall be deemed a “commissioned work” and a “work made for hire” to the greatest extent permitted by law; and (iv) Publisher shall be the sole author of the Provider’s Work and the Work, and the sole owner of original materials embodying Work and the Work, and/or any works derived therefrom. Of course, the photographer or designer can opt to reject these terms, or make additional demands upon the publisher (more money, the right to use images in their own promotional materials, etc.) Not sure how it works with independent contractors doing programming.
DonHopkins 7y ago
Next thing ya know they'll prohibit their employees from playing Factorio, because it's too much like programming.
cameronbrown 7y ago
What's next? Banning unapproved use of maths? I mean, what if you invent the next million dollar equation without giving it to Apple... can't have that. Also, I guess if you're a hardware engineer... well, I guess you can't use your tools to fix your car anymore. Search engineer? No more regex's for you.
- m463 7y ago
  MIT math is ok, but GPLv3 math is a no-no.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Definitely wouldn't want to use viral licenses for maths, would we?
m463 7y ago
Apple engineers are prohibited from eating lunch with friends at other companies in the valley (because of the things you have to sign to get a visitor badge for lunch)
- ghostpepper 7y ago
  As someone who works at a company that provides no free lunch / on site cafeteria, this does not seem so draconian. You can just see your friends at a restaurant?
- jjtheblunt 7y ago
  Since when, and says who? My grad school friend(s) at Google visited Apple, and I visited elsewhere similarly, when working at Apple HQ. Not scandalous in the least.
  - m463 7y ago
    I have a friend at apple, who cannot eat lunch at companies that require you to sign an NDA to get a visitor badge. There are many companies that have this setup. It could be his level of employment. Or it might be that it doesn't apply to all apple employees, or they don't know, or they don't bother.
    - jjtheblunt 7y ago
      That could be. Eating lunch at Caffe Mac was just print a visitor badge and walk across the quad with visitor. Maybe some campuses require transiting team-specific lockdowns, but Infinite Loop for lunch did not.
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  Uh, I've eaten lunch with Apple engineers at One Infinite Loop, and I worked at another company in the valley at the time. I have also eaten lunch with Apple engineers when they came to visit other companies in the Valley, and have even eaten lunch with Apple engineers at restaurants that weren't at other companies. Off-topic: remember eating lunch at restaurants?
Igelau 7y ago
> if I worked for Apple I'd immediately start looking elsewhere for a job Ooh that's a good one. I nearly snarfed my Pepsi.
taywrobel 7y ago
That’s a major part of why I left Apple for GitHub. Their OSS culture is horrible there. The only OSS projects that get approved to contribute to are ones where they’ve already hired most of the people that work on it. Cassandra, Mesos, and some other infra stuff come to mine. And occasionally they just buy a whole OSS company for their own use (FoundationDB). Submitting a patch to a small library you use? A multi-month process to be told no in the end 90% of the time or more. Have your own OSS projects? Not any more you don’t. In my exit interview I made my reasoning clear, and pointed out that as they move more into services and away from pure hardware as revenue, it’s going to be a bigger issue. Whether they agree or will work to fix it, only time will tell.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Genuine question, what's the value of providing feedback in an exit interview. At best you get nothing from it, and at worst you get put on some secret hiring blacklist. Either way nothing changes, you're just a datapoint in some HR piechart.
  - ukd1 7y ago
    This. I presume it's hoping if enough do it, they'll be forced to change.
  - taywrobel 7y ago
    Genuine answer - I have a metric shit ton of Apple stock after being there for several years. I want to see the company succeed, purely for financial reasons if none other. At least until I hold the stock for a year and only pay capital gains on it. Secret hiring blacklists don’t exist. And if they did, I wouldn’t want to work at a company that uses them anyways.
    - thawaway1837 7y ago
      There’s a lot of confidence there for lack of hiring blacklists when Google, Apple, etc are known to have shared hiring data with each other to underpay new hires.
outside1234 7y ago
Especially since, under California law, what you do with your personal time on personal hardware is yours, regardless of employment contract.
- larkost 7y ago
  Citation needed. That is not Apple's lawyers' opinion. It is also not the interpretation of this San Jose law firm: https://www.sacattorneys.com/san-jose-intellectual-property-firm-explains-assigning-rights.html https://www.sacattorneys.com/san-jose-intellectual-property-... The relevant quote is: "It is legal to require an employee to assign intellectual property created in the employee’s own time if it required any of the employer’s tools, facilities, or intellectual property, or if that intellectual property relates to the employer’s business or research and development." Since Apple operates in a wide swath of the IT world, it is very likely that most OSS developed by Apple employees could reasonably be considered "relate[d] to the employer's business". That is certainly the position that Apple takes in most case (source: I am a former Apple employee).
  - mgomez 7y ago
    I believe the person you're replying to was referring to section 2870 from the California Labor Code: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=2870 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... "(a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for those inventions that either: (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer. (b) To the extent a provision in an employment agreement purports to require an employee to assign an invention otherwise excluded from being required to be assigned under subdivision (a), the provision is against the public policy of this state and is unenforceable."
winter_blue 7y ago
This policy is so ludicrous and morally offensive, that I would just willfully break it, and if they find out, throw a party to celebrate them firing me (for contributing to OSS projects). Imagine you use KDE, and find a bug, and make a small PR with a patch for it. I can't even begin to fathom how a company can while being fair/just say that you're not allowed to do so (without "our approval" which could take months). It's ridiculous beyond measure, and we should make it a goal to purposely get fired for doing OSS, and then also make sure to post about it online as much as possible so it draws a lot of attention, and hopefully results in a change in this. After all, it's probably a piece of cake to land a new job (once the COVID crisis is over), if you have a Big N company on your resume, even if you were fired from it (not that you'd want to preemptively disclose that - unless you went public with it - which some folks might even see as a positive).
pacamara619 7y ago
Isn't it illegal for Apple to tell employees what to do in their personal time?

jtdev 7y ago

WTF Apple..?! Is this due to some fear of IP leaking via employees contributing to OSS?

bitwize 7y ago
Yes, and it is a legitimate fear. Someone with access to Apple's IP may unintentionally or even inadvertently leak that IP in an open-source project. Say you developed a clever new optimization on the job at Apple. You use the same trick in your open source code, thinking it's no big deal, it's just one small piece of code. But that code is now the property of Apple, and they may consider it more valuable than you do. It may enable, for instance, faster encryption with one of their custom chips. That's an edge they have in the marlet that they might lose were it not for exclusive use of that bit of code. They could lose millions -- meaning they could sue you for millions. In a court of law, it is sufficient to prove that the defendant had access to the infringed work and that their work is substantially similar to the infringed work in order to have a case for copyright infringement. Rather than risk that sort of loss, Apple and many other companies include clauses forbidding employees from working on outside software projects even in their spare time as standard boilerplate in their employment contracts. If you don't want to play by those rules, don't work for the company. They can find plenty of top-tier engineers who will gladly play by those rules.
- gnulinux 7y ago
  Ok ok, you're taking this way over the top. No engineer ever invents a new optimization that will give Apple competitive advantage and they don't know this is important and "accidentally" put it on OSS code. I don't believe this for a minute. Inventions that give companies technical competitive advantage are created via multiple iteration by a team of engineers, by them doing research. It's never the case that someone wakes up one day and writes code that can be considered an "invention". It usually starts with an engineer finding a problem, another engineer doing research on this problem for some time, and then to improve found solutions, a group of engineers discuss viable solutions.
  - phendrenad2 7y ago

nathancahill 7y ago

Wow, glad I passed on an Apple interview.

xyst 7y ago
Still a good company to get an offer from. Most companies are willing to budge the compensation packages to meet the competition.

ProAm 7y ago

I dont feel like helping a developer who's employer doesnt respect its customers or its employees.... It sounds like this is the trade off he gets for working there? I wish it werent like this, people should be able to work on whatever they feel like in their own personal time.

levosmetalo 7y ago
Of course, people can work on whatever they like on their free time. The developer in case chooses to abandon his open-source projects to work for a company of his choice. Nobody forced him to take this job, it was his choice.
- bigbob2 7y ago
  So I guess the idea here is that as long as you're an employee of Apple, you have no free time?
- inetknght 7y ago
  > The developer in case chooses to abandon his open-source projects to work for a company of his choice. Nobody forced him to take this job, it was his choice. This is so reductionist that it's blind to reality.

sdwolfz 7y ago

While not employed at Apple, I too have a clause in my employment contract (UK) that states I "assign copyright and IP rights produced by me in the course of my employment, whether during normal hours of business or otherwise, or at the premises or using company facilities or otherwise". I was told by my manager that I need to notify them if I plan to contribute/create an open source project, and even had one open source project I created get claimed by the company since I used it for one of my work tasks even though I created it for personal use initially, in my personal time, because "I could not prove that I developed it independently of my company work needs" and was told "if you don't like this then why are you still working here". What I want to know is how exactly do you go about getting that part of you contract removed so you own copyright and IP for work you do on your free time without the need to justify it to your employer? I tried speaking with my company's legal department and they slightly re-worded the contract to say the same thing (basically lied to me as later my project's ownership was claimed), all my managers so far did not take me seriously and basically ignored my request to change/remove this clause, or told me they would approve anything and it would be open source anyway (another lie as my project was taken) to the point I gave up, reduced my OSS contributions greatly and only worked on things I confirmed previously were OK for me to do, which added a lot of useless bureaucracy and got me demotivated. The only thing I can come up with was quitting my job after I negotiate with another employer to not have such a clause in my contract. But I have not done any interviewing yet, so I don't know if that is even possible. Any ideas/hints/help would be greatly appreciated!

d-sc 7y ago
You’re on the right track. Find a different job where they respect your projects and move on. You don’t really have much leverage right now as your current place doesn’t have much inventive to change their policy and doesn’t seem to respect your requests.
_bxg1 7y ago
These policies, when they exist, tend to be very entrenched in the organization. The legal department will push management to keep them so they can avoid the associated risks. I would look for another job. While these clauses are relatively common, it's also relatively easy to find employers with less restricting policies. You'll probably have better luck at tech-led companies, in general. I think I've also heard that California's employment law doesn't allow this sort of thing, FWIW.

aeonflux 7y ago

I am not from US, but isn't that kind of standard practice in US? While working at any company they can hold right to everything you do in the field. While outrageous at the first glance it does make a lot of sense for me. If you wan't to work on your side project you should quit your job. Otherwise there is a big risk you might quickly burn out, be less effective at your main work. People seem to critique overtime and time pressure on software engineers. At they same time they want to be able to code their startups after hours effectively working 15 hour per day. Working on open source projects instead of side gigs doesn't differ much in that regard. You might hook up on your project and spend tons of mental energy on it, making your main job suffer.

richardwhiuk 7y ago
That's a theory that develops from "work is the most important thing in your life". It's not the only correct starting assumption. Other things that develop from it are "employees shouldn't be allowed to have kids as it might sap mental energy from your job" - which is clearly a ludicrous position, but not dis-similar.
- aeonflux 7y ago
  Quite the contrary in my opinion. This kind of limitations does force many to actually rest after hours.
  - mercer 7y ago
    To rest for what? To be more productive at work? I'd argue your point isn't 'quite the contrary' but only emphasizes OP's point: you describe the time outside of work as 'after hours', and argue that 'forcing' people to spend this time in a particular way is a good thing.
  - inetknght 7y ago
    Your method of resting differs from others'.
mywittyname 7y ago

olalonde 7y ago

Makes you wonder how many GitHub accounts are pseudonyms for people who want to hide their open source contributions from their employer. (cue Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta)

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gnulinux 7y ago
I have a pseudonym account that I write all my software in. Currently my employer does not restrict me working on side-projects; however, I still don't want my professional persona to be associated with my side-projects.
szhu 7y ago
A good example is ridiculousfish, the maintainer of Fish shell: https://github.com/ridiculousfish https://github.com/ridiculousfish https://ridiculousfish.com/blog/about.html https://ridiculousfish.com/blog/about.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567053

floatingatoll 7y ago

HN may find this unpalatable, but it’s still legal and permissible. Apple indicates this restriction against personal project work prior to hiring, and employees agree as part of being hired to adhere to it. If they do not, they are not hired. Non-compete bans are generally structured to prohibit restricting an ex-employee’s choice of work after their departure, but only once you are an ex-employee and not before. I am aware of no laws guaranteeing the inalienable right to create and publish software IP while contractually bound not to do so. Apple’s restriction does not prohibit contribution of work to open-source projects, but permits only those contributions approved by Apple as necessary and appropriate by Apple’s decision. The personal projects linked here were either denied that permission or never submitted for it. Personally, I’d have to think quite hard about whether to accept this restriction if I considered working for Apple someday. Silver lining, my tiny projects are all unused abandonware, so it wouldn’t require finding new maintainers. I don’t envy the author of the linked tweet their duty to find others.

himinlomax 7y ago
> HN may find this unpalatable, but it’s still legal and permissible. It's obviously legal and for obvious reasons, but it's both hostile to the culture of the profession at large AND counterproductive.
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  It's not obviously legal. Highlights from today's discussion here indicate some confusion about that point: > Being the status quo for technical companies doesn't make it legal > Is that even legal? > That position, legally enforceable or otherwise
- woodrowbarlow 7y ago
  it is not obvious. the law in question (for california) is CA labor code 2870. https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/2870-2872/2870 https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/... the law says that employers cannot claim ownership of inventions made without work resources, even if the employee signed such a clause, unless the invention is in competition with the employer.

bitwize 7y ago

Apple's IP, and their zealous guarding thereof, is why most of y'all carry MacBooks to work instead of Dells. So before you open your mouth to criticize, think about how policies like Apple's actually allow them more freedom to innovate.

saagarjha 7y ago
It is possible to contribute to open source without infringing on Apple’s IP.
- bitwize 7y ago
  It's too risky for an Apple employee to do so willy-nilly.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    It's too risky because Apple will go after you even if you're not infringing, not because you're using trade secrets or patents from your job.
t0astbread 7y ago
Slavery, is why most of y'all carry cheap clothing. So before you open your mouth to criticize, think about how policies like slavery actually allow clothing manufacturers to lower their prices.
BossingAround 7y ago
Leaving zealous guarding of IP behind worked pretty well for Linux, the de-facto standard in server-side and cloud OS. I wonder how far would Apple's design go if other people and outsiders could hack on it freely.

layoutIfNeeded 7y ago

Just "transfer" ownership to your girlfriend or your brother and make contributions in their names. Problem solved.

saagarjha 7y ago
Do you think Apple’s legal team is stupid?
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  Ok, if you’re that paranoid then use a pseudonym ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

antoncohen 7y ago

California Labor Code section 2870[1] states: > (a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for those inventions that either: > (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer; or > (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer. > (b) To the extent a provision in an employment agreement purports to require an employee to assign an invention otherwise excluded from being required to be assigned under subdivision (a), the provision is against the public policy of this state and is unenforceable. Large companies like Apple and Google get away with broad rules that effectively ban unapproved open source contributions because nearly every type of software can be said to "Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer". If you work at a small company in California, I suggest pushing back on any rules like that. At my current company the employment contract they initially sent me required me to notify them in writing every time I created any work I felt was protected by section 2870 (any personal open source, any music, any writing, anything that could have a copyright). I had that paragraph removed from the contract. The burden should be on the company to enforce their copyright ownership, and provide evidence of ownership, the burden shouldn't be on me. [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=2870.&lawCode=LAB https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

phendrenad2 7y ago
Worth noting that this law is probably one of the driving factors behind the growth of the tech sector in California compared to other states. We're free to dream our dreams and seek funding later, not the other way around.

aeonflux 7y ago

Non of his projects have any activity during last year. Yet this announcement is formed in quite an aggressive and quite frankly unnecessary way. In few days we might get another post here which will blame Apple for firing him.

saagarjha 7y ago
Why do you think they have no activity?

ryandrake 7y ago

Whenever this topic comes up HN reacts first with disbelief, like you're lying. Nice to see this awful practice getting some exposure from the Twittersphere. As someone who's worked in large companies for most of his career, this has been a major trade-off of accepting the offers: You need to shelf your open source work and any hobby programming you think you might one day release. Period. These companies have armies of lawyers vs. just you. People here will spout off a bunch of simple solutions like "just negotiate, bro." You may be a whiz at negotiating your salary, but you are likely to not get anywhere negotiating legal terms like this with a FAANG company. If you try the cute "strike through the clause in your employment agreement and initial it" trick that HN will advise, I guarantee you will get a stern letter from Legal in 2-7 days telling you to sign it unmodified or GTFO. Ask me how I know.

dman 7y ago
How do you know?

wayneftw 7y ago

Given that Apple would be the primary beneficiary of a strong Swift ecosystem and seeing how they treat developers on their platform - maybe they should rethink their stance or at least bring all employee projects in-house. Are there many developers out there that only program for Apple platforms? I suppose if you want to be one of those developers or if you want to work for Apple, it might be not be a bad idea to contribute.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

BossingAround 7y ago

What did the tweet say? It's deleted now.

founditincache 7y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fmdiep%2Fstatus%2F1252586799098183682&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fmdiep%2Fstatus%2F1252586799098183682 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Because I don't 100% trust this to stay up (and because it's a bit hard to find the actual content without css): > Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in their personal time). So some of my projects could use a maintainer to manage PRs: - https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle - https://github.com/mdiep/Logician https://github.com/mdiep/Logician - https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2 https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2 … If you’re interested, please let me know! >> I’d love to help out with Tentacle! I’ll take a look at open issues and PRs today > Awesome, thanks! I just gave you access. Tentacle is very low maintenance, but there’s a Swift 5.2 PR open now that looks like it may need a little help. >> Has this ever been enforced that you know of? What are the consequences? > No idea. [shrug emoji]
- juliansimioni 7y ago
  Because it took me a minute to find the tweet text on that page: > Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in their personal time). So some of my projects could use a maintainer to manage PRs: - https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle - https://github.com/mdiep/Logician https://github.com/mdiep/Logician - https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2 https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2 … If you’re interested, please let me know!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bumblebritches5 7y ago

I'll gladly do it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jeffrallen 7y ago

Here's a possible solution. Do it anyway, knowing that if your company really wants to piss you off by making an issue out of it, you can (and will) tell them to piss off and quit. No job is worth sacrificing your personal life and freedom for. When they make a problem, and you quit, if you've got someone in the company that values your contribution enough to fight for you and find a compromise to get your OSS contributions back-approved or whatever, great. The employer will benefit from the loyalty you will feel towards the person who solved the problem ("the greatest boss evar"). If your boss can't make the problem disappear, then you quit. If you've organised your life correctly, you can afford a few months of job search, and your OSS contributions are a testament to the quality of your work. (Not saying that I ever did this. And you should probably not cross-reference "git log" with my CV either.)

james-mcelwain 7y ago
This might be the correct advice in many scenarios but is essentially playing with fire. A company that wants revenge could easily bankrupt you with even the smallest contractual leg to stand on. Your 200k base comp isn't going to look so sweet when you're paying a lawyer $1,500 an hour to defend you from some tech giant.
toast0 7y ago
It's one thing if you're at risk of being fired, but you've also put the project you contributed to at risk. If those contributions are potentially your (former) employer's and they were not authorized to be shared, the project is going to have to figure out how to remove them; if the employer is particularly litigous, that could get really nasty.

louwrentius 7y ago

Original tweet: (now gone) Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in their personal time). So some of my projects could use a maintainer to manage PRs: <cut> If you’re interested, please let me know!

emiliovesprini 7y ago
Who was the tweet from?
- fao_ 7y ago
  It's in the link - https://twitter.com/mdiep https://twitter.com/mdiep
H8crilA 7y ago
It might be that Apple has a fair and speedy approval process. My employer is like that.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- saagarjha 7y ago
  It doesn't.
battery_cowboy 7y ago
I'll never work for a company that tried to limit my personal time in any way.
- nine_k 7y ago
  Some ways may be reasonable, e.g. running a commercial side project which is a direct competitor of your employer's product. In this case, the moral hazard of using company's internal knowledge which is under an NDA is very high indeed. But the list of such disallowed activities should be short and reasonable.

miker64 7y ago

What did it say, the tweets been deleted.

akling 7y ago

This subject makes me sad. I've recently heard from a bunch of Apple employees who had asked for permission to contribute to my open source project and got denied. Having worked there in the past myself, it's really weird to think back on how normal it seemed (to me) to allow an employer to put such extreme restrictions on my personal time. I hope they change their attitude about this some day.

musicale 7y ago
> it's really weird to think back on how normal it seemed (to me) to allow an employer to put such extreme restrictions on my personal time. Yeah, that's really not OK.

jedberg 7y ago

This is another place where Netflix really shines. Their policy is basically: Go ahead and work on open source. Use our computers and our office and our internet if you want. If we use the software inside Netflix, please mention that on the project page if you can, but if we don't or you can't, then whatevs. Also, if the software was created here at Netflix, feel free to open source it if it has to do with operations, but if it has to do with moviemaking, we'd rather keep that to ourselves for now. They understand that open source software is great for the community and great for recruiting. What better way to attract great engineers than to point out that the maintainer of their favorite open source project works for Netflix?

saagarjha 7y ago
Question: is that the official or unofficial policy? I know a lot of companies that are willing to look the other way–or even encourage contributions–most of the time, but if you end up doing something that they don't like they can and will come after you due the actual employment contract still being the standard verbiage that legal wrote.
- jedberg 7y ago
  When I was there it was the official policy, as much as anything is “official”.
- aliceryhl 7y ago
  If you work on open source software, you should probably not accept a contract with such a clause.

JoshuaScript 7y ago

Well, if your company is _not_ like this and you're interested in being featured on a job board for companies with employee-friendly IP policies, drop me a line (email in bio).

strenholme 7y ago

Whenever this comes up, the question I have to ask is this: Has there even been a case in California where a jury decided that an employer owned the open source (or other software) an employee developed in their own free time? Has a company in California successfully litigated to take ownership and taken down an open source project because it was an employee’s side project? To protect myself, I have done the following: • I make sure, before signing an “inventions” clause, to put all of my open source on GitHub a date stamp before the date when I signed the inventions clause. This way, any and all of my own open source I use on the job (usually, a password generator, but I was once at a company with DNS so broken I had to run MaraDNS locally to have a usable Internet) is stuff I did not develop while working for the company. • I list all of my GitHub projects, state that none of them are related to what the company develops, and that any and all development is done on my own time, using my own computer.

rambojazz 7y ago

The tweet was removed. Any mirror?