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IANAL and this is just my 2c. >yet contracts forbid them? This part is likely exaggerated. Yes I guess there are a few companies really "forbid" them (from w

IANAL and this is just my 2c. >yet contracts forbid them? This part is likely exaggerated. Yes I guess there are a few companies really "forbid" them (from what I saw on HN Apple seems to be an example, but I don't have any first hand experience). But for the majority of the companies, they just claim the copyright of your side projects _by default_, instead of outright forbid them. The why of the copyright claim part is already explained by the essay you linked so I'll not repeat that. Even with that in place, as others pointed out in threads, at least in California (I don't know if other states have similar laws) you can still get the copyright back to yourself, as long as: 1. You did not use your employer's time (do your side projects on weekends, nights, holidays, etc.) 2. You did not use your employer's equipment (use your own computer, network, etc.) 3. Your side project isn't related to your employer's business The first 2 requirements are easy to met, the 3rd one: 1. If your employer is like Google that does almost everything, it's hard to met. But Google does provide a straightforward way for employees to apply to get the copyright of their side projects released to them. 2. If your employer is only on a few fields, as long as your side project is on unrelated fields it shouldn't be _that hard_ even if this has to go to court (but this is not legal advice, obviously). If you really plan to do side projects that puts this muddy, then there are other things to consider (conflict of interest, etc.) that's far beyond the scope of what we discussed here. Also, if by "side projects" you mainly mean open source projects: 1. If it's purely your personal open source project that has nothing to do with your employer, see the discussions above. 2. If it's actually open source project/contribution that's related to your work (for example, your company is using an open source project and you are fixing an issue that affects your use case), _in theory_ you should be using your employer's time and equipment to do that (as that's really part of your job), and your employer should get the credit for this work (e.g. use your employer email in the commit).

tfehring 5y ago
A few states have similar laws to California, but the majority (even weighted by the number of programmers) do not. If I'm the maintainer of an open-source repo, there's no way I'm willing to risk accepting contributions from someone with an IP assignment clause unless their employer disclaims ownership explicitly and in writing. (I'm currently subject to an IP assignment clause but I had the option to "safelist" existing projects when I signed it.) Just not worth the potential headache.
- fishywang 5y ago
  Shouldn't CLA mitigate all/most of your concerns as the maintainer? Can you elaborate on your concerns?
  - tfehring 5y ago
    My concern is that the person who agrees to the CLA (generally the individual programmer) may not actually be authorized to assign ownership of the IP - since if they're subject to an IP assignment provision, they don't own the IP to begin with, their employer does. CLAs generally (if not universally) include clauses addressing this. For example, Google's [0]: > You represent that you are legally entitled to grant the above license. If your employer(s) has rights to intellectual property that you create that includes your Contributions, you represent that you have received permission to make Contributions on behalf of that employer, that your employer has waived such rights for your Contributions to Google, or that your employer has executed a separate Corporate CLA with Google. But I'm not sure I trust engineers to read and adhere to the fine print. And "he told us he had the right to assign the IP" isn't a defense - if it were, you could get out of an IP assignment clause in general just by lying and saying you're not subject to one. [0] https://cla.developers.google.com/about/google-individual https://cla.developers.google.com/about/google-individual
uVacCXNiiJCTnYB 5y ago
So I've worked in the game industry where this happens even more aggressively than the rest of tech, and I've had contracts in at least 2 jobs where I was explicitly forbidden from engaging in any activity outside of work (I don't remember how it was worded, but it was so strict that even doing charity work could have fallen under it). That combined with the frequent contracts of "we own everything you make while you're employed by us" effectively means side projects are either forbidden, or can be stolen by the company at any time, which is similar. Not all companies are that bad but it's still a thing, and a lot of employment contracts make it very hard to work on a side project without your company potentially being able to claim ownership of it.

tfehring 5y ago

A few states have similar laws to California, but the majority (even weighted by the number of programmers) do not. If I'm the maintainer of an open-source repo, there's no way I'm willing to risk accepting contributions from someone with an IP assignment clause unless their employer disclaims ownership explicitly and in writing. (I'm currently subject to an IP assignment clause but I had the option to "safelist" existing projects when I signed it.) Just not worth the potential headache.

fishywang 5y ago
Shouldn't CLA mitigate all/most of your concerns as the maintainer? Can you elaborate on your concerns?
- tfehring 5y ago
  My concern is that the person who agrees to the CLA (generally the individual programmer) may not actually be authorized to assign ownership of the IP - since if they're subject to an IP assignment provision, they don't own the IP to begin with, their employer does. CLAs generally (if not universally) include clauses addressing this. For example, Google's [0]: > You represent that you are legally entitled to grant the above license. If your employer(s) has rights to intellectual property that you create that includes your Contributions, you represent that you have received permission to make Contributions on behalf of that employer, that your employer has waived such rights for your Contributions to Google, or that your employer has executed a separate Corporate CLA with Google. But I'm not sure I trust engineers to read and adhere to the fine print. And "he told us he had the right to assign the IP" isn't a defense - if it were, you could get out of an IP assignment clause in general just by lying and saying you're not subject to one. [0] https://cla.developers.google.com/about/google-individual https://cla.developers.google.com/about/google-individual

uVacCXNiiJCTnYB 5y ago

So I've worked in the game industry where this happens even more aggressively than the rest of tech, and I've had contracts in at least 2 jobs where I was explicitly forbidden from engaging in any activity outside of work (I don't remember how it was worded, but it was so strict that even doing charity work could have fallen under it). That combined with the frequent contracts of "we own everything you make while you're employed by us" effectively means side projects are either forbidden, or can be stolen by the company at any time, which is similar. Not all companies are that bad but it's still a thing, and a lot of employment contracts make it very hard to work on a side project without your company potentially being able to claim ownership of it.