5 ms·

If true, the only question I have is "why?". Assuming the OSS projects aren't a conflict of interest, there is zero reason to block people in their own free tim

by mroche 5y ago

If true, the only question I have is "why?". Assuming the OSS projects aren't a conflict of interest, there is zero reason to block people in their own free time from working on other projects. Blocking any form of participation, even non-code contributions is extreme. This sounds similar to Amazon policies I'd read on HN, but I can't remember if they were barring OSS activity or claiming ownership of. As a Red Hatter I find this mindset mind-boggling, but I'm heavily biased and on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. There's always a balance to be struck around policy depending on the org/industry/etc, but a blanket "no" is ridiculous.

aaplthrow11 5y ago
k
- wonnage 5y ago
  Not a great look for someone who’s “18 years and a director” at Apple to openly acknowledge this policy as well as being extremely defensive/borderline threatening about it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - whatyouwonnage 5y ago
    I’m honestly just surprised you accepted those claims at least enough to comment and remark on them in this way, without even stopping to consider that nobody would make it 18 years there being that inept and foolish. And that such a fantastically moronic person would take your “good look” tut tutting in any possible way you could intend. Like, is that meant to be a warning? What’s the call to action telling someone they’re not presenting a good look? What if none of it were true at all? What’s the message that tells us? How does one scream when all they have is a Hacker News comment box? IS THIS REAL? Happy Holidays, friend.
- rektide 5y ago
  > It’s not true. That policy has a reason Lol, what? I have a hard time understanding the rest of this post. It's certainly been my impression that Apple indeed has pretty draconian policies regarding who you can be whence you join Apple. > That’s an aggressive and frankly stupid misinterpretation of the policy which has pretty good reasons to exist when contextualized. 100% matches with what I've heard & seen in the world. Maybe coincidentally zero people who've been swallowed into the Apple mothership still have interest in the work they used to be up to, maybe they're all so much happier suddenly working quietly. But to me the Occam's Razor here is pretty fucking bliss fucking obvious son: these people working on good interesting projects & being vocal all shut the fuck up & stop contributing because they have to. Because that's the corporate policy. Because that's fucking Apple. That's the biggest most enormous computing empire on the planet doing what it does. Edit: oh look at the edits on this post!!! Yeahhhhhh Edit2: see my other comment. It's even more to the heart of things. "I'm glad there's the bare minimum of sticks to try to rub together to give the impression Apple gives the faintest most minimal flying fuck about any compute other than Apple computing, that they see any value in a bigger computing ecosystem. Apple is not at all a company that gives any impressions that they care about anyone but those that fall within the light of their empire." This is such a sad fucking age for computing in general. "Create more value than you capture" is now a bunch of torn apart body parts on the floor, savaged, by massive ultra-industrialized super-powers. Apple is one of the leading forces promoting happiness in slavery, insisting that only by domination can we consumers ever find freedom & happiness. To pretend that such a company relates to open source in any positive way is repulsive in extreme.
  - blissobviousson 5y ago
    > pretty fucking bliss fucking obvious son look at this hard hacker news commenting bruh spittin fire while dunking on an obvious troll fammmm screenshot this victory, you earned it, wew
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    All of this sounds pretty on brand for Federighi. I really wonder though how much influence he's had on apples culture. There have been a lot of changes in OSX(at the time) that seemingly coincide with his timeline at Apple.
sparrc 5y ago
That's not an Amazon policy. We have to take a 1 hour or so training course to participate in amazon-owned things on github and that's pretty much it. Basically zero rules around participating in our free time afaik.
- ketralnis 5y ago
  That's a recent change then https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-12/amazon-drops-company-policies-on-game-development-after-backlash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-12/amazon-dr...
  - sparrc 5y ago
    Looks like that was only within the Amazon Game Studios org. I've never heard of any policy like that within AWS or the retail side of things.
    - rented_mule 5y ago
      There were certainly issues like this when I joined Amazon in 2005 until I left in 2010. For years before I joined, I was the primary maintainer of an open source tool that almost everyone in the Python community had heard of at the time (python.org linked to it). Amazon really wanted me to abandon it (to my knowledge, they did not use it). It alarmed me so much that I had it written into the offer letter that I could continue to be the maintainer for the project. They added into the letter that I could not contribute to any other project. I was also lined up to speak about the project at PyCon (lined up before taking the job, PyCon was after starting). I didn't think to mention that until after I started. When I did, my manager dug into the process required to get approval... spend a month going through Amazon PR training full time (i.e., not doing the job I was hired for) and, at the end of the month, the PR folks would determine if I would be allowed to speak. At my manager's suggestion, I just went to PyCon and talked "with" folks about the tool. It just happened that it was easier to talk "with" folks using a mic and some slides that didn't mention Amazon anywhere. The general attitude I encountered inside the company was either feeling defeated about it or feeling that Amazon had a competitive advantage because they were one of the few companies shrewd enough to take without giving back. S3 and EC2 were released while I was there, and that started to change things. Suddenly motives to interoperate with open source were appearing. Sometimes that even meant giving back improvements that made projects fit the AWS ecosystem better. Their customers were also now software developers, many of whom would not welcome their explicitly greedy posture. That opening up was just starting when I left so I don't have a very deep view of it. A funny thing happened after I left. I was working on an open source project created by my new employer that ended up being popular for a while in teaching distributed systems to undergrads. It was a great "gateway drug" for a new-ish AWS service. The GM of that service asked me to come to their very first AWS conference to talk about the project. I asked if I should mention that I worked at Amazon previously. The GM didn't just say yes, they introduced me as a previous Amazon employee - they very much wanted to be seen as aligned with and supporting open source. They also gave me AWS credits to hand out when I spoke about the project at PyCon and elsewhere.
kaba0 5y ago
Is that even legal? I’m not sure it would stand a leg in the EU.
- moooo99 5y ago
  But most Apple employees, especially engineers, are not in the EU
  - seba_dos1 5y ago
    High time for them to work on changing their laws then.
friseurtermin 5y ago
I remember this coming up in a blog post by the creator of Shellcheck a while back [0] and being discussed here [1]. One reason given is this: > Assuming the OSS projects aren't a conflict of interest Apple is so secretive even internally that you can never guarantee whatever you're working on in your free time does not conflict what someone at Apple is working on secretly. [0]: https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=859 https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=859 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22279585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22279585
usrusr 5y ago
Sorry for the low-effort reply, but I think "because they can" is all the explanation that is needed. It's easy to demonstrate diligence and commitment by forbidding, much easier than showing how good you are at your job by allowing instead. Which would demonstrate what? Wisdom and balanced judgement perhaps? Great qualities, but difficult to show off. Forbidding is the low-hanging fruit of appearing strong.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Presumably though, this policy makes it at least somewhat harder to acquire engineering talent? There have to be engineers who don’t want to work at Apple because of these restrictions.
  - scns 5y ago
    It works the other way around too. No one knows which Apple employees to poach.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    I, anyway, have never been tempted to work there.
varispeed 5y ago
> there is zero reason to block people in their own free time That's the thing - people don't have "free time". Most employment contracts are actually enslavement when it comes to IP. That's why corporations lobby governments to stop workers going B2B.
- bigbizisverywyz 5y ago
  >Most employment contracts are actually enslavement when it comes to IP Note this is a mostly US perspective, e.g. AFAIK in Switzerland what you do in your own time, and with your own equipment is entirely your own under Federal law. And that seems totally fair. Of course if you steal code or ideas from your employer, then things get a bit more grey.
  - denysvitali 5y ago
    Do you have relevant sources for this? AFAIK some Google Switzerland employees are still bound by this stupid rule (what you do in your free time, with your personal device, is still Google's property), but I would love to be proven wrong.
- yongjik 5y ago
  > Most employment contracts are actually enslavement when it comes to IP. That's a very one-sided take. (Not commenting on Apple's policy, just commenting generally.) This great article explains why IP contracts are the way they are: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
- ncmncm 5y ago
  US employment contracts. The US is deliberately hell for rank and file. For "non-exempt" (hourly) workers it is worse than most of us can imagine.

by mroche 5y ago

aaplthrow11 5y ago

wonnage 5y ago
Not a great look for someone who’s “18 years and a director” at Apple to openly acknowledge this policy as well as being extremely defensive/borderline threatening about it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- whatyouwonnage 5y ago
  I’m honestly just surprised you accepted those claims at least enough to comment and remark on them in this way, without even stopping to consider that nobody would make it 18 years there being that inept and foolish. And that such a fantastically moronic person would take your “good look” tut tutting in any possible way you could intend. Like, is that meant to be a warning? What’s the call to action telling someone they’re not presenting a good look? What if none of it were true at all? What’s the message that tells us? How does one scream when all they have is a Hacker News comment box? IS THIS REAL? Happy Holidays, friend.
rektide 5y ago
> It’s not true. That policy has a reason Lol, what? I have a hard time understanding the rest of this post. It's certainly been my impression that Apple indeed has pretty draconian policies regarding who you can be whence you join Apple. > That’s an aggressive and frankly stupid misinterpretation of the policy which has pretty good reasons to exist when contextualized. 100% matches with what I've heard & seen in the world. Maybe coincidentally zero people who've been swallowed into the Apple mothership still have interest in the work they used to be up to, maybe they're all so much happier suddenly working quietly. But to me the Occam's Razor here is pretty fucking bliss fucking obvious son: these people working on good interesting projects & being vocal all shut the fuck up & stop contributing because they have to. Because that's the corporate policy. Because that's fucking Apple. That's the biggest most enormous computing empire on the planet doing what it does. Edit: oh look at the edits on this post!!! Yeahhhhhh Edit2: see my other comment. It's even more to the heart of things. "I'm glad there's the bare minimum of sticks to try to rub together to give the impression Apple gives the faintest most minimal flying fuck about any compute other than Apple computing, that they see any value in a bigger computing ecosystem. Apple is not at all a company that gives any impressions that they care about anyone but those that fall within the light of their empire." This is such a sad fucking age for computing in general. "Create more value than you capture" is now a bunch of torn apart body parts on the floor, savaged, by massive ultra-industrialized super-powers. Apple is one of the leading forces promoting happiness in slavery, insisting that only by domination can we consumers ever find freedom & happiness. To pretend that such a company relates to open source in any positive way is repulsive in extreme.
- blissobviousson 5y ago
  > pretty fucking bliss fucking obvious son look at this hard hacker news commenting bruh spittin fire while dunking on an obvious troll fammmm screenshot this victory, you earned it, wew
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  All of this sounds pretty on brand for Federighi. I really wonder though how much influence he's had on apples culture. There have been a lot of changes in OSX(at the time) that seemingly coincide with his timeline at Apple.

sparrc 5y ago

That's not an Amazon policy. We have to take a 1 hour or so training course to participate in amazon-owned things on github and that's pretty much it. Basically zero rules around participating in our free time afaik.

ketralnis 5y ago
That's a recent change then https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-12/amazon-drops-company-policies-on-game-development-after-backlash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-12/amazon-dr...
- sparrc 5y ago
  Looks like that was only within the Amazon Game Studios org. I've never heard of any policy like that within AWS or the retail side of things.
  - rented_mule 5y ago
    There were certainly issues like this when I joined Amazon in 2005 until I left in 2010. For years before I joined, I was the primary maintainer of an open source tool that almost everyone in the Python community had heard of at the time (python.org linked to it). Amazon really wanted me to abandon it (to my knowledge, they did not use it). It alarmed me so much that I had it written into the offer letter that I could continue to be the maintainer for the project. They added into the letter that I could not contribute to any other project. I was also lined up to speak about the project at PyCon (lined up before taking the job, PyCon was after starting). I didn't think to mention that until after I started. When I did, my manager dug into the process required to get approval... spend a month going through Amazon PR training full time (i.e., not doing the job I was hired for) and, at the end of the month, the PR folks would determine if I would be allowed to speak. At my manager's suggestion, I just went to PyCon and talked "with" folks about the tool. It just happened that it was easier to talk "with" folks using a mic and some slides that didn't mention Amazon anywhere. The general attitude I encountered inside the company was either feeling defeated about it or feeling that Amazon had a competitive advantage because they were one of the few companies shrewd enough to take without giving back. S3 and EC2 were released while I was there, and that started to change things. Suddenly motives to interoperate with open source were appearing. Sometimes that even meant giving back improvements that made projects fit the AWS ecosystem better. Their customers were also now software developers, many of whom would not welcome their explicitly greedy posture. That opening up was just starting when I left so I don't have a very deep view of it. A funny thing happened after I left. I was working on an open source project created by my new employer that ended up being popular for a while in teaching distributed systems to undergrads. It was a great "gateway drug" for a new-ish AWS service. The GM of that service asked me to come to their very first AWS conference to talk about the project. I asked if I should mention that I worked at Amazon previously. The GM didn't just say yes, they introduced me as a previous Amazon employee - they very much wanted to be seen as aligned with and supporting open source. They also gave me AWS credits to hand out when I spoke about the project at PyCon and elsewhere.

kaba0 5y ago

Is that even legal? I’m not sure it would stand a leg in the EU.

moooo99 5y ago
But most Apple employees, especially engineers, are not in the EU
- seba_dos1 5y ago
  High time for them to work on changing their laws then.

friseurtermin 5y ago

I remember this coming up in a blog post by the creator of Shellcheck a while back [0] and being discussed here [1]. One reason given is this: > Assuming the OSS projects aren't a conflict of interest Apple is so secretive even internally that you can never guarantee whatever you're working on in your free time does not conflict what someone at Apple is working on secretly. [0]: https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=859 https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=859 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22279585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22279585

usrusr 5y ago

Sorry for the low-effort reply, but I think "because they can" is all the explanation that is needed. It's easy to demonstrate diligence and commitment by forbidding, much easier than showing how good you are at your job by allowing instead. Which would demonstrate what? Wisdom and balanced judgement perhaps? Great qualities, but difficult to show off. Forbidding is the low-hanging fruit of appearing strong.

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Presumably though, this policy makes it at least somewhat harder to acquire engineering talent? There have to be engineers who don’t want to work at Apple because of these restrictions.
- scns 5y ago
  It works the other way around too. No one knows which Apple employees to poach.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  I, anyway, have never been tempted to work there.

varispeed 5y ago

> there is zero reason to block people in their own free time That's the thing - people don't have "free time". Most employment contracts are actually enslavement when it comes to IP. That's why corporations lobby governments to stop workers going B2B.

bigbizisverywyz 5y ago
>Most employment contracts are actually enslavement when it comes to IP Note this is a mostly US perspective, e.g. AFAIK in Switzerland what you do in your own time, and with your own equipment is entirely your own under Federal law. And that seems totally fair. Of course if you steal code or ideas from your employer, then things get a bit more grey.
- denysvitali 5y ago
  Do you have relevant sources for this? AFAIK some Google Switzerland employees are still bound by this stupid rule (what you do in your free time, with your personal device, is still Google's property), but I would love to be proven wrong.
yongjik 5y ago
> Most employment contracts are actually enslavement when it comes to IP. That's a very one-sided take. (Not commenting on Apple's policy, just commenting generally.) This great article explains why IP contracts are the way they are: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr...
ncmncm 5y ago
US employment contracts. The US is deliberately hell for rank and file. For "non-exempt" (hourly) workers it is worse than most of us can imagine.