If an employee want permission from their employer to spend work hours on contributing code to other projects and companies it make some sense that the employer

If an employee want permission from their employer to spend work hours on contributing code to other projects and companies it make some sense that the employer will have an opinion on what that work is. They employer is after all paying for it, even if its given as a "perk". Personally however I would not spend to much energy and time worrying about that. I don't expect google to pay programmers to support my side projects, and I would be actually a bit worry if they contributed to anything critical at the place where i work. Google might find coexistence acceptable today, but if they have paid employees to work on code for a competing company (even if its just for one of their commercial products) then I would see a risk that one day they would prefer to own what they are today giving out for free.