9 ms·

To quote the quote given in the commit: "As an IBM employee, you are not allowed to use your gmail account to work in any way on VNIC. You are not allowed to us

To quote the quote given in the commit: "As an IBM employee, you are not allowed to use your gmail account to work in any way on VNIC. You are not allowed to use your personal email account as a "hobby". You are an IBM employee 100% of the time. Please remove yourself completely from the maintainers file. I grant you a 1 time exception on contributions to VNIC to make this change." Your interpretation is not obvious to me at all. To me that reads that the person was using is private address to work on the kernel as a hobby and IBM objected because he is considered to 100% at IBM. My interpretation of this is of the typical corporate overreach were they claim everything you do is theirs.

gkoberger 6y ago
You and the person you responded to interpreted it exactly the same way, I think. This IBM employee isn't allowed to contribute to VNIC. Why? I dunno. But the problem isn't if a personal address is used or not, but rather this specific IBM employee can't contribute to VNIC. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the fairness of that, but rather that the OP was saying "it wouldn't have been any better if they had used their IBM address." To your last point... I doubt that's what's happening here. I don't think IBM wants ownership, but rather is protecting themselves from any sort of litigation or undermining an agreement.
- technion 6y ago
  That's how I read the text initially - but the diff still notes multiple @linux.ibm.com email addresses as maintainers.
- cycomanic 6y ago
  You're correct, I actually misread the original poster (or he/she edited their post?). Anyway, after reading a bit more through the thread, I did not realise that VNIC is a IBM driver. It seems like the real situation is a bit more complex. I would say though, the "You are an IBM employee 100% of the time" is really bad management IMO.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
papaf 6y ago
You are an IBM employee 100% of the time I hope their pay reflects that and is 3x the average.
- anonytrary 6y ago
  It's not, I interviewed with them and had an offer. Although it was for a completely different team probably.
- kbenson 6y ago
  If you signed an employment contract with a company, you are employed by them until the time either of you terminates it. Whether you are actively doing work for them at the moment is irrelevant to that. Either side can stipulate anything they want in that contract, other than what is disallowed by contract and labor laws (and of course your rights). You can, at any time, decide to terminate that contract yourself though (usually?). IBM probably doesn't want what they might consider proprietary code leaking out, and they probably don't want to have to vet every employee contribution considered "personal" to external projects, so their solution is simple, don't allow employees to do so. The solution for employees is equally as simple. Don't work for companies that go this route if you care about that. The market will sort it out (and has, to a large degree. Many companies specifically don't care about this).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gspr 6y ago
    I for one would prefer to have a society where certain things can't be signed over by contract. Like your free time. Or your organs or life.
    - kbenson 6y ago
      Signing away your free time is literally what work is. Bit even if we take that you mean the rest of your free time, how do you enforce that without making a hash of it? Am I allowed to work for my company's biggest competitor in my free time? What if I donate that time? I agree some things should be private, but if I'm paid to program, it makes sense in some instances to say I can't sell or give away that skill they are paying for. Enforcing the details is hard, which is also why I don't want the government doing a shit job of it, and the market can sort that out. Let the government define my rights (which is much more encompassing and harder to circumvent anyway), and the market define the details. If I don't like what is being offered, I'll go elsewhere.
nandhinianand 6y ago
To me the worst part is the `100% of the time` interpretation.. Seriously I thought my employment agreement mentioned only 40 hrs a week??.. Unless it has explicit clauses to mention to contributing to VNIC without IBM ID, this is just some one interpreting legal rule for their convenience or what they wanto make a stand of.
- mike_d 6y ago
  You might be an hourly employee or a contractor. Most don't. Your "employee handbook" likely mentions not causing damage to the company brand or taking any action detrimental to the company even in your personal time.
  - gspr 6y ago
    Should be easy enough to fix with a statement along the lines of "this code is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by my employer".
    - mike_d 6y ago
      Definitely ask your HR department if they think that is sufficient.
      - gspr 6y ago
        Stupid jurisdiction if writing code on your free time with an explicit disclaimer that it has nothing to do with Company can be construed as hurting Company's image.
- virgilp 6y ago
  While working for the previous employer (multinational corporation), my contract had a clause that any work/personal projects that I do outside work must be approved, in writing. Doesn't matter if I only work on them outside working hours. Their justification was that the rest of the time is for me to rest/ I was employed full-time, so they were not comfortable with me e.g. working a second job & being tired at work. It does sound like a bit of an overreach, and I'm not sure how enforceable their contract really was, but the language was unambiguous and unsanctioned contributions to open source projects were definitely out of the question. (I'm currently working at a startup, they don't have this problem/ contributions to OSS are encouraged, I just have too much work to do already :D )
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
thyrsus 6y ago
All intellectual property I create is owned by my employer, per terms of employment. My employer doesn't care about my musical performances, since no one else would, either ;-) North Carolina is friendlier to employers than California in thus regard.
eloff 6y ago
I had a job offer from an IBM company once. The offer negotiation part happened directly with IBM. The salary went to hell because I live in Canada, and although the position was fully remote, they took away the juicy US salary and offered me a sucky Canadian one. The main reason I work remote is to not get stuck with a Canadian salary. In addition they stated that everything I do at any time is owned by them. I had a side project, so I applied for an exemption. It went through legal for a couple weeks. It was denied. I turned the job down. The whole process wasted tons of my time and theirs and could have been avoided if they had just been upfront about their policies instead of writing useless crap about how great their culture is in the job ad.
- xyst 6y ago
  Not surprised. IBM is a shitty workplace. I am still kind of sad that they acquired Red Hat ~2 years ago.

gkoberger 6y ago

You and the person you responded to interpreted it exactly the same way, I think. This IBM employee isn't allowed to contribute to VNIC. Why? I dunno. But the problem isn't if a personal address is used or not, but rather this specific IBM employee can't contribute to VNIC. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the fairness of that, but rather that the OP was saying "it wouldn't have been any better if they had used their IBM address." To your last point... I doubt that's what's happening here. I don't think IBM wants ownership, but rather is protecting themselves from any sort of litigation or undermining an agreement.

technion 6y ago
That's how I read the text initially - but the diff still notes multiple @linux.ibm.com email addresses as maintainers.
cycomanic 6y ago
You're correct, I actually misread the original poster (or he/she edited their post?). Anyway, after reading a bit more through the thread, I did not realise that VNIC is a IBM driver. It seems like the real situation is a bit more complex. I would say though, the "You are an IBM employee 100% of the time" is really bad management IMO.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

papaf 6y ago

You are an IBM employee 100% of the time I hope their pay reflects that and is 3x the average.

anonytrary 6y ago
It's not, I interviewed with them and had an offer. Although it was for a completely different team probably.
kbenson 6y ago
If you signed an employment contract with a company, you are employed by them until the time either of you terminates it. Whether you are actively doing work for them at the moment is irrelevant to that. Either side can stipulate anything they want in that contract, other than what is disallowed by contract and labor laws (and of course your rights). You can, at any time, decide to terminate that contract yourself though (usually?). IBM probably doesn't want what they might consider proprietary code leaking out, and they probably don't want to have to vet every employee contribution considered "personal" to external projects, so their solution is simple, don't allow employees to do so. The solution for employees is equally as simple. Don't work for companies that go this route if you care about that. The market will sort it out (and has, to a large degree. Many companies specifically don't care about this).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gspr 6y ago
  I for one would prefer to have a society where certain things can't be signed over by contract. Like your free time. Or your organs or life.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Signing away your free time is literally what work is. Bit even if we take that you mean the rest of your free time, how do you enforce that without making a hash of it? Am I allowed to work for my company's biggest competitor in my free time? What if I donate that time? I agree some things should be private, but if I'm paid to program, it makes sense in some instances to say I can't sell or give away that skill they are paying for. Enforcing the details is hard, which is also why I don't want the government doing a shit job of it, and the market can sort that out. Let the government define my rights (which is much more encompassing and harder to circumvent anyway), and the market define the details. If I don't like what is being offered, I'll go elsewhere.

nandhinianand 6y ago

To me the worst part is the `100% of the time` interpretation.. Seriously I thought my employment agreement mentioned only 40 hrs a week??.. Unless it has explicit clauses to mention to contributing to VNIC without IBM ID, this is just some one interpreting legal rule for their convenience or what they wanto make a stand of.

mike_d 6y ago
You might be an hourly employee or a contractor. Most don't. Your "employee handbook" likely mentions not causing damage to the company brand or taking any action detrimental to the company even in your personal time.
- gspr 6y ago
  Should be easy enough to fix with a statement along the lines of "this code is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by my employer".
  - mike_d 6y ago
    Definitely ask your HR department if they think that is sufficient.
    - gspr 6y ago
      Stupid jurisdiction if writing code on your free time with an explicit disclaimer that it has nothing to do with Company can be construed as hurting Company's image.
virgilp 6y ago
While working for the previous employer (multinational corporation), my contract had a clause that any work/personal projects that I do outside work must be approved, in writing. Doesn't matter if I only work on them outside working hours. Their justification was that the rest of the time is for me to rest/ I was employed full-time, so they were not comfortable with me e.g. working a second job & being tired at work. It does sound like a bit of an overreach, and I'm not sure how enforceable their contract really was, but the language was unambiguous and unsanctioned contributions to open source projects were definitely out of the question. (I'm currently working at a startup, they don't have this problem/ contributions to OSS are encouraged, I just have too much work to do already :D )

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

thyrsus 6y ago

All intellectual property I create is owned by my employer, per terms of employment. My employer doesn't care about my musical performances, since no one else would, either ;-) North Carolina is friendlier to employers than California in thus regard.

eloff 6y ago

I had a job offer from an IBM company once. The offer negotiation part happened directly with IBM. The salary went to hell because I live in Canada, and although the position was fully remote, they took away the juicy US salary and offered me a sucky Canadian one. The main reason I work remote is to not get stuck with a Canadian salary. In addition they stated that everything I do at any time is owned by them. I had a side project, so I applied for an exemption. It went through legal for a couple weeks. It was denied. I turned the job down. The whole process wasted tons of my time and theirs and could have been avoided if they had just been upfront about their policies instead of writing useless crap about how great their culture is in the job ad.

xyst 6y ago
Not surprised. IBM is a shitty workplace. I am still kind of sad that they acquired Red Hat ~2 years ago.