5 ms·

But why is this not legal, moral or fair?

falcolas 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
      - BossingAround 6y ago
        Even though my contract states yearly salary, that salary is calculated by $hourly_rate * 8 * $number_of_work_days_in_year. That's specifically stated. My contract also specifically states that I agree to work 40 hours a week. Maybe this is not the case in a typical US employment contract?
        grumple 6y ago
        US contracts usually don't explicitly list policies like this. From my perspective, this means they can't hold you to anything, although the average person seems to think it means the company can do whatever they want. Either way, I'm pretty clear about my relationship with my employer - if you start asking me to do things, and I don't want to do them, I won't. They can decide if they want to live with that arrangement or not. Some of us outside CA do sign non-compete agreements, though, which is another matter entirely.
    - jfim 6y ago
      > No reason why I couldn't work for multiple companies though. Many the employment contracts have a "no moonlighting" clause, which basically says that one won't be working for another employer during the employment period.
    - nostrademons 6y 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? I've heard of someone that did this. Held two full-time jobs at different software companies. It wasn't Apple and Google, IIRC it was something like Oracle and Nvidia or Oracle and Salesforce. He was fired from both when they found out and presumably blacklisted from being rehired, but other than that there weren't repercussions. It's not worth it to sue an individual engineer, and for many of the clauses in your employment agreement, their remedy is limited to firing you. He did it for a few years, too, and banked up a bunch of money doing so. One thing that surprises a lot of people who were raised to follow the rules: you have a lot of freedom if you're willing to deal with the consequences. Some people are afraid to question their boss because they're worried about losing their job; others will steal all of their employers' self-driving car plans for $680M, risking $180M in fines and possible jail time in the process. You get to decide where on the risk/reward continuum you want to sit.
- egypturnash 6y ago
  Most big animation studios have contracts that say “we own everything you draw while you work for us”. Or at least they did when I was in the industry around the turn of the century.
  - bigiain 6y ago
    A friend of mine had to put his PhD on hold when his company was acquired by Oracle, who tried to force him into signing "their standard employment contract" which effectively granted them ownership to everything he thought while employed by them. It took 3 or 4 months and 5 or 6 levels of management above his new boss before getting "an extraordinary one-off exemption" to allow him to finish thinking/writing his thesis and allow the university to publish it (as required by the terms of completing the PhD...) Everyone was _pretty_ sure that would have been unenforceable here in Australia - but that there's a serious practical difference between what is and isn't enforceable in contracts, and going up against Oracle's legal team even when they're on the wrong side of the law. So he just "stopped thinking" for several months until he (temporarily) had written permission to think non-Oracle thoughts...
- jariel 6y ago
  It's definitely not an unreasonable restriction for most, and those who don't like the policy don't have to work there. Your examples aren't helpful because the don't address the issue, which is risk. In the examples provided there's really nothing about the 'personal work' that puts the employers position at risk. Which is why, by the way, schools don't generally defy teachers from teaching on the side. Or proofreaders etc.. In fact such limitations are rare outside industries with IP issues. Apple is a $1T company and all of that valuation is up for grabs by litigious people of various kinds who can use any kind of side-show tactic interpretation of the law to make money. So imagine someone 'working from home' on the 'same computer' that they use for work. What counts as 'work time' vs. 'personal time' when flipping back and forth between activities? How will a judge view this? Then you have competitive problems: you work on 'iMovie' for 1 hour, then you work on 'MyMovie' (personal) the hour. This creates ugly conflicts of interest. Then you have liability issues if Apple is seen to be contributing to an OSS without the right legal bits in place. It doesn't matter that it 'shouldn't' be a problem, what matters is that a bad actor + a lawyer can possibly make enough of a fuss to convince a judge that there's a problem 'Apple's contribution to this OSS code materially affected my business and it was no clear in the liscencing' etc.. As we've seen with Google/Uber, this stuff is very expensive, very strategic, can be very ambiguous, which is bad. There's so much grey in the equation, and so much at risk, it's simply not worth it for Apple and Amazon. So if you want to work there, that's it, you can't make games. It'd be nice if there were some kind of regulatory issues around it, but it'd have to be clear. I also think they should be nice enough to 'wave' people's rights to do certain things, like work on specific OSS projects.
- nemothekid 6y ago
  I feel like everyone is focusing on the wrong part of the Invention Assignment Agreement. The problem isn't that employers want to force you to not work on anything else (Apple might). The problem is, if you go home, and work on a work related problem, who owns that work. The obtuse case is I work for your company as the lead engineer making TVs. All the TVs can't display blue. I then go home have an epiphany, and develop a method for making TVs blue. We fix the problem and call it day. Later still, I leave the company and sue you for infringement because I technically came up with the solution outside of work and therefore I own that code. This is the situation most companies are trying to avoid. If you solve this problem without having the company own everything the programmer does in and out of work, then you can have stricter walls between work and home projects.
- jedberg 6y ago
  > Writers are not prohibited from writing. Most are actually. If you're employed as a writer, you can't just go and write what you want without permission from your employer. They usually get the right of first refusal, meaning that you have to show it to them first and if they want to publish it then they get to do so.

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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
    - BossingAround 6y ago
      Even though my contract states yearly salary, that salary is calculated by $hourly_rate * 8 * $number_of_work_days_in_year. That's specifically stated. My contract also specifically states that I agree to work 40 hours a week. Maybe this is not the case in a typical US employment contract?
      - grumple 6y ago
        US contracts usually don't explicitly list policies like this. From my perspective, this means they can't hold you to anything, although the average person seems to think it means the company can do whatever they want. Either way, I'm pretty clear about my relationship with my employer - if you start asking me to do things, and I don't want to do them, I won't. They can decide if they want to live with that arrangement or not. Some of us outside CA do sign non-compete agreements, though, which is another matter entirely.
  - jfim 6y ago
    > No reason why I couldn't work for multiple companies though. Many the employment contracts have a "no moonlighting" clause, which basically says that one won't be working for another employer during the employment period.
  - nostrademons 6y 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? I've heard of someone that did this. Held two full-time jobs at different software companies. It wasn't Apple and Google, IIRC it was something like Oracle and Nvidia or Oracle and Salesforce. He was fired from both when they found out and presumably blacklisted from being rehired, but other than that there weren't repercussions. It's not worth it to sue an individual engineer, and for many of the clauses in your employment agreement, their remedy is limited to firing you. He did it for a few years, too, and banked up a bunch of money doing so. One thing that surprises a lot of people who were raised to follow the rules: you have a lot of freedom if you're willing to deal with the consequences. Some people are afraid to question their boss because they're worried about losing their job; others will steal all of their employers' self-driving car plans for $680M, risking $180M in fines and possible jail time in the process. You get to decide where on the risk/reward continuum you want to sit.
egypturnash 6y ago
Most big animation studios have contracts that say “we own everything you draw while you work for us”. Or at least they did when I was in the industry around the turn of the century.
- bigiain 6y ago
  A friend of mine had to put his PhD on hold when his company was acquired by Oracle, who tried to force him into signing "their standard employment contract" which effectively granted them ownership to everything he thought while employed by them. It took 3 or 4 months and 5 or 6 levels of management above his new boss before getting "an extraordinary one-off exemption" to allow him to finish thinking/writing his thesis and allow the university to publish it (as required by the terms of completing the PhD...) Everyone was _pretty_ sure that would have been unenforceable here in Australia - but that there's a serious practical difference between what is and isn't enforceable in contracts, and going up against Oracle's legal team even when they're on the wrong side of the law. So he just "stopped thinking" for several months until he (temporarily) had written permission to think non-Oracle thoughts...
jariel 6y ago
It's definitely not an unreasonable restriction for most, and those who don't like the policy don't have to work there. Your examples aren't helpful because the don't address the issue, which is risk. In the examples provided there's really nothing about the 'personal work' that puts the employers position at risk. Which is why, by the way, schools don't generally defy teachers from teaching on the side. Or proofreaders etc.. In fact such limitations are rare outside industries with IP issues. Apple is a $1T company and all of that valuation is up for grabs by litigious people of various kinds who can use any kind of side-show tactic interpretation of the law to make money. So imagine someone 'working from home' on the 'same computer' that they use for work. What counts as 'work time' vs. 'personal time' when flipping back and forth between activities? How will a judge view this? Then you have competitive problems: you work on 'iMovie' for 1 hour, then you work on 'MyMovie' (personal) the hour. This creates ugly conflicts of interest. Then you have liability issues if Apple is seen to be contributing to an OSS without the right legal bits in place. It doesn't matter that it 'shouldn't' be a problem, what matters is that a bad actor + a lawyer can possibly make enough of a fuss to convince a judge that there's a problem 'Apple's contribution to this OSS code materially affected my business and it was no clear in the liscencing' etc.. As we've seen with Google/Uber, this stuff is very expensive, very strategic, can be very ambiguous, which is bad. There's so much grey in the equation, and so much at risk, it's simply not worth it for Apple and Amazon. So if you want to work there, that's it, you can't make games. It'd be nice if there were some kind of regulatory issues around it, but it'd have to be clear. I also think they should be nice enough to 'wave' people's rights to do certain things, like work on specific OSS projects.
nemothekid 6y ago
I feel like everyone is focusing on the wrong part of the Invention Assignment Agreement. The problem isn't that employers want to force you to not work on anything else (Apple might). The problem is, if you go home, and work on a work related problem, who owns that work. The obtuse case is I work for your company as the lead engineer making TVs. All the TVs can't display blue. I then go home have an epiphany, and develop a method for making TVs blue. We fix the problem and call it day. Later still, I leave the company and sue you for infringement because I technically came up with the solution outside of work and therefore I own that code. This is the situation most companies are trying to avoid. If you solve this problem without having the company own everything the programmer does in and out of work, then you can have stricter walls between work and home projects.
jedberg 6y ago
> Writers are not prohibited from writing. Most are actually. If you're employed as a writer, you can't just go and write what you want without permission from your employer. They usually get the right of first refusal, meaning that you have to show it to them first and if they want to publish it then they get to do so.