7 ms·

I went to All Things Open and asked booth staff (of corporate booths) “do you contribute to open source at your day job?” All were a little surprised by the qu

I went to All Things Open and asked booth staff (of corporate booths) “do you contribute to open source at your day job?” All were a little surprised by the question. Most interpreted it as “do you release and maintain your own open source software under the banner of your company.” When I clarified that I would count spending time to make a quality issue reproduction or fixing a bug and sending a PR, I got one person who said they had. They sent a patch to fix a bug, when I dug in why: they told me there were zero workarounds and the bug blocked a critical feature, if they didn’t upstream a fix successfully they would have to fork and take on maintenance (of that fork). I share this, because I feel that the many developers don’t quite realize that they are able to do these actions (bystander effect). And many don’t know how to speak up and advocate for that work in a professional setting. It’s true that corporate ties to open source are pervasive. I also feel that there’s a huge untapped potential of people who are willing to contribute but aren’t ready or aren’t able. My talk (on teaching developers how to contribute to open source) wasn’t recorded, but a longer, earlier version was at PhillyETE https://chariotsolutions.com/screencast/philly-ete-2023-how-to-steal-from-maintainers-richard-schneeman/ https://chariotsolutions.com/screencast/philly-ete-2023-how-.... I also maintain a free service for contributors getting started https://www.codetriage.com/ https://www.codetriage.com/ and wrote a paid book on the topic https://howtoopensource.dev/ https://howtoopensource.dev/.

ajb 2y ago
In a lot of cases, ordinary employees who want to make a drive-by contribution to open source face two hurdles: 1/ Their employment contract specifies that all IP they generate during their employment is owned by their employer. Contributing to open source, as well as being a technical action, is a legal action (that of licensing your contribution under the project license) which they don't have the authority to do as individuals, and therefore must obtain authorisation from their employer. 2/ given the former, some legally conservative projects require a signed contribution agreement from contributors employers. This usually requires the employers legal dept to approve it, since the legal dept reviews all such contracts. It would be nice if there was some blanket scheme that employers could sign up to to authorise all de-minimis contributions to open source projects, or contributions that are actually useful for the work people are employed to do. But I'm not aware of any such scheme.
- schneems 2y ago
  I consider any companies that would blanket prohibit open source contribution out of scope of my statement. With those that won’t even allow employees to open a bug report or post on a forum to be an extreme outlier. Especially in the context of a company that bought a booth at an open source conference. Legal hurdles exist, but IMHO are the subject of endless hand wringing and awareness campaigns already. Most in that community are seemingly unaware that devs need much more support: socially, mentally, and tactically. In order to become successful open source contributors. So really what I’m saying is that making things legally easier isn’t enough. Advocating that people should contribute isn’t enough. We should be actively training and helping to prepare the next generation of contributors. And doing it in a way that doesn’t overly burden existing maintainers.
- SR2Z 2y ago
  Contributing code to OSS should not fall under "IP" unless the code was written on company time. IP refers to concrete things like patents and in almost every case cannot apply to stuff created outside of and unrelated to work.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    Depends on what your work is.
  - ajb 2y ago
    This is true under California law (or was last I heard - I'm neither a lawyer nor in California). Unfortunately California is something of an exception. Many other jurisdictions allow employers to claim all IP, or broadly IP related to company work. I agree with it as a 'should', though.

ajb 2y ago

In a lot of cases, ordinary employees who want to make a drive-by contribution to open source face two hurdles: 1/ Their employment contract specifies that all IP they generate during their employment is owned by their employer. Contributing to open source, as well as being a technical action, is a legal action (that of licensing your contribution under the project license) which they don't have the authority to do as individuals, and therefore must obtain authorisation from their employer. 2/ given the former, some legally conservative projects require a signed contribution agreement from contributors employers. This usually requires the employers legal dept to approve it, since the legal dept reviews all such contracts. It would be nice if there was some blanket scheme that employers could sign up to to authorise all de-minimis contributions to open source projects, or contributions that are actually useful for the work people are employed to do. But I'm not aware of any such scheme.

schneems 2y ago
I consider any companies that would blanket prohibit open source contribution out of scope of my statement. With those that won’t even allow employees to open a bug report or post on a forum to be an extreme outlier. Especially in the context of a company that bought a booth at an open source conference. Legal hurdles exist, but IMHO are the subject of endless hand wringing and awareness campaigns already. Most in that community are seemingly unaware that devs need much more support: socially, mentally, and tactically. In order to become successful open source contributors. So really what I’m saying is that making things legally easier isn’t enough. Advocating that people should contribute isn’t enough. We should be actively training and helping to prepare the next generation of contributors. And doing it in a way that doesn’t overly burden existing maintainers.
SR2Z 2y ago
Contributing code to OSS should not fall under "IP" unless the code was written on company time. IP refers to concrete things like patents and in almost every case cannot apply to stuff created outside of and unrelated to work.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  Depends on what your work is.
- ajb 2y ago
  This is true under California law (or was last I heard - I'm neither a lawyer nor in California). Unfortunately California is something of an exception. Many other jurisdictions allow employers to claim all IP, or broadly IP related to company work. I agree with it as a 'should', though.