GNU and the General Public Employment Contract?

adubey asks: "We all know and love the GNU General Public Lisence. Some have argued that the availability of a standard lisence such as GPL along with hard lobbying work by Richard Stallman and others are both among the many forces that helped push free software forward. However, there is still a big laundry list of things holding free software back. Included on this list are restrictive employment contracts that forbid many developers from contributing to free software projects, even if some contributions could help them on the job. Rather than simply write off these people as being stupid for signing one-sided contracts, could we do something to pursuade managers to be more open to free software development? What if there was a standard contract available, between employers and employees, that spefically gave employees the right to contribute to free software projects so long as it benefits the company they work for?" An interesting idea and one that I hope will spark some interesting discussion. Would such a thing be the answer to this problem?

"Now, IANAL, but is it possible to have some type contract that says it would override any previous IP agreement? In other words, allow companies to keep current contracts in place, but overrides previous contracts in the one key detail that it will allow developers to release enhancements to free software packages, so long as the enhancements were developed for the benefit of the company (even if the enhancement - say a bug fix in gcc - is never released in itself)"

Comments

Re:Too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, heh.

Yeah, I think if you start from the premise that you are in business to sell compiled code, or extermely carefully controlled source, then it simply does not make sense to release that code under GPL.

But hardware companies, who give away their drivers for free anyway, could certainly disclose their driver code under GPL. Why not? Intel has tons of simple little internal test programs that they could conceivably release, as well.

Also, companies like Adobe have two distinct types of software: that which they distribute for free, and that which they sell. It probably would not hurt Adobe to put their Acrobat Reader code under GPL.

On the other hand, I can't imagine why Adobe would *ever* put *all* of their source code under GPL. Likewise, why would Autodesk ever release the source to AutoCAD?

My $.02.

Programmer's union

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why we need a programmmer's union. Yes most employers will refuse to voluntarily sign such a contract if given the choice, just as most programmers would refuse to voluntarily sign the contracts we all sign if given the choice.

So why is it that employers are able to force most programmers to sign contracts with all sorts of things that are against our own interests? The reason is that employers are organized and they have the power to hire or fire us. They use that power over us to get contracts that they like.

So what we need to do is organize and use our power (we provide the code, of course, and without that, they can do nothing) to get contracts we like. Yes, even with all the dot-coms going down the toilet, the top programmers can pick and choose companies to work for, and make a good contract part of the bargain. But most programmers are not in that position, to individually demand a good contract. On the other hand, together, we can demand a good contract.

And, to answer a question someone had, yes, contracts can be renegotiated at any time -- the trick is how to convince the employer that renegotiating is in there best interests? Well, if you are an individual, you can threaten to quit over it. That works sometimes, but if your company has 500 programmers, they won't miss you much, and don't kid yourself about your importance. Now, if 50 or 100 or 400 of the programmers got together and demanded a good contract covering IP issues, or whatever, then the employer's choices are more limited.

IWW

Re:Programmer's union

[FallLine]

The only protection you have from getting screwed is if you're 1% of the programming population? So then how do you justify that against the fact that the vast majority of the programmers are well paid and have decent working conditions? Don't make me laugh.

The fundamental truth is that the demand for more skilled programmers totally outstrips supply, as long as that is true companies will fight tooth and nail to attract them. This means that you CAN'T make programmers work 16 hours a day all the time and that you can't pay them 5 dollars a day.

I have a fundamental problem with any labor system that encourages the mentality that ALL you have to do is A, B, C, and D to get salary X. It is the best way to kill professionalism, innovation, efficient allocation of resources, hard work, and all other things that make this country thrive.

Re:Programmer's union

[Sloppy]

So why is it that employers are able to force most programmers to sign contracts with all sorts of things that are against our own interests? The reason is that employers are organized and they have the power to hire or fire us.

Employers are organized? You really think there's a conspiracy among employers so that you'll never be able to find one that is willing to negotiate? That's paranoia.

Well, if you are an individual, you can threaten to quit over it. That works sometimes, but if your company has 500 programmers, they won't miss you much, and don't kid yourself about your importance.

If someone quitting has so little effect on the company, then what makes you think that the programmers are worth such special treatment? How are programmers too good to have to live with the realities of supply and demand?

---

Re:Programmer's union

[speek]

Rather than a programmer's union, I'd prefer contract houses run by programmers for programmers, with ideals such as this. A contract house that actually qualified its employees might be influential enough to push the sorts of contract agreements programmers would like to see.

Re:Programmer's union

[mdavids]

How are these employers 'organized'?

The various business councils, industry groups, associations, institues, thinktanks, lobby groups, "independant" public policy research bodies. Check with your employer. If your employer isn't a member or funder of at least half a dozen of these kinds of organisations, along with your company's major "competitors", I'd be very surprised.

My impression is that the employers are cutthroat competetive with one another.

That's the fairy story. It's probably true when you get down to the level of two corner shops a block apart from one another, but major corporations are so riddled with "strategic alliances", that the idea of consumer market competition is ridiculous.

Capital market competition is another story. A while ago there was a front page story in the Australian Financial Review screaming that regulators need to allow more of Australia's banks to merge, for the sake of competitiveness. On the face of it, that may seem absurd. Fewer competitors = more competition. However, when you realise that corporations aren't competing for customers, they are competing for owners, it makes perfect sense. (These same banks, by the way, have just been caught colluding on employment contracts.)

When you're top priority is increasing the value of you're company's stock, in order to secure investment capital, it makes perfect sense to screw your customers, your employees, the general community, and collude with your "competitors" as much as possible. In a consumer market your competitors are people in your industry; your customers will dump you and go to them. In capital markets, industries don't matter. Your owners can dump your stock, and buy oil companies, candy manufacturers, tulip growers, it doesn't matter. So you and your "competitors" have a common interest in keeping your industry attractive to investors that, given the balance of power in today's world economy, far outweighs any consumer or labour market pressures most of the time.

You're right about capital mobility. If you go on strike in the US, your employer is quite willing to move overseas. Or beat you up, intimidate your family, kill you, whatever - it's all happened many times before.

Well, okay then. What's the answer? If, for example, the workers involved and the general community recognise that GPLing your code leads to better software and more of it, how do you get companies to agree to this if it erodes their inefficient (from everybody's perspective but the shareholders') monopoly control of "their" code, and they'll move offshore rather than see that happen? Obviously you need a global union.

The Industrial Workers of the World has been around for nearly a century, and despite extraordinary persecution, is getting stronger year by year. Check it out. I don't think anything about this is unrealistic, and what we might expect of democratically-run industry is just mind-boggling. Helping free software, if that's you're thing (It's mine), is just the tip of the iceberg.

Disclaimer: I'm a delegate with the IWW in Australia, so I know what I'm talking about. Some people might consider that bias. (AC wobbly who posted the parent, please email me).

Re:Programmer's union

[cthugha]

If someone quitting has so little effect on the company, then what makes you think that the programmers are worth such special treatment? How are programmers too good to have to live with the realities of supply and demand?

Because, my son, the employer knows that without collective bargaining, it's very easy to replace that one worker. Say I don't like working sixteen-hour days. I ask my employer to only let me work eight, like a normal human being. But my employer knows there are plenty of obsessed geeks out there willing to put in the sixteen hours, so he can fire me with impunity and just replace me. The only protection I have is if I'm a one-in-a-million shit-hot ninja bastard piss-off-and-die code warrior, and I know I'm probably not, just like (by definition) 99% of my colleagues.

I have a fundamental problem with any labour system that punishes me for wanting to be treated as a normal human being.

Re:Programmer's union

[cthugha]

The fundamental truth is that the demand for more skilled programmers totally outstrips supply, as long as that is true companies will fight tooth and nail to attract them.

Of course! That's why there's such rampant age discrimination in IT! That's why companies are only looking for candidates with commercial experience, and why I (a CS grad of five or so months) still can't find a bloody JOB! I should have realized! That's why so many companies have been laying off staff! It's funny just how picky buyers can be in a "seller's" market. I don't know where you live, but things look a lot different from where I am.

This means that you CAN'T make programmers work 16 hours a day all the time and that you can't pay them 5 dollars a day.

It does provided all programmers refuse to accept lower conditions. If a substantial minority are prepared to accept lower conditions, then there's pressure on the rest to also accept the same conditions. That's the race to the bottom.

I have a fundamental problem with any labor system that encourages the mentality that ALL you have to do is A, B, C, and D to get salary X. It is the best way to kill professionalism, innovation, efficient allocation of resources, hard work, and all other things that make this country thrive.

Not if you set the standards high enough. Not if you provide an environment where people actually like what they're doing, instead of regarding it as pointless and a waste of time. Not if management acts in a way which actually engenders respect from the people under it. Impossible ideals? Well, maybe the last one is, but I'm not so sure about the first two.

Re:Programmer's union

[Tech187]

How are these employers 'organized'?? My impression is that the employers are cutthroat competetive with one another. Thats why good software developers are paid so well, there is fierce competition to hire them.

'Unions' only work in slow moving governmental businesses and where the resources are very geographically based. A company isn't going to move a steel mill or an auto plant overnight to get away from the Union, so they negotigate. A mining company obviously can't move, so the Union takes hold.

Software development can be carried out anywhere. There's nothing tying a business to operate in any specific region. Where operating costs are high, the company will only employ a skeleton staff, and all the real work will be shipped overseas.

Re:Programmer's union

[Wesley Everest]

What this about a "conspiracy"? Employers are organized and that puts them in a better bargaining position when dealing with individual, unorganized programmers. That's all. No, they don't all have secret handshakes and decoder rings.

If this were not true, then whenever you went to apply for a job, you would bring the contract and they would feel compelled to sign it with little or no modification.

As for programmers not being worth special treatment, and the law of supply and demand... Capitalism says you are worth what you can get. If organizing together helps you to get more, then that means organizing together makes you worth more.

If you have some kind of weird self-loathing thing going on where you are afraid of getting more than you "deserve", then you got some problems and I think you need to work them out with your therapist.

It sure is crazy, though, how the anti-union folks are both worried about unions giving us lower salaries and unions giving us more than we deserve.

Finding Open-Source-friendly employers?

[abischof]

On a related note, does anyone have any tips of finding Open-Source-friendly employers? I'm looking for a job in Web Development (or Web Engineering), but most of the job postings that I've seen are very MS-centric :(. And, it's not that I'd refuse to work in an MS-shop, but I'd prefer not to use only MS software.

I know about GNUJobs, but that doesn't seem to be very comprehensive (a search for "html" yields two hits, for example). And of course many OSS projects have their own "Jobs" section, but I was hoping for more of an all-in-one site..

Alex Bischoff
---

SAGE-AU OSDA

[Kostya]

See this site for resources (Open Source Developer's Agreement): http://www.sage-au.org.au/osda/

I used one of their clauses in my contract that I use with my clients--I am a contractor. No one has complained and no one has had a problem with it. If they have questions, I just explain it and that is usually it.

Additionally, I just cross out and initialize the IP section when I sign contracts. If it gets sent back to me, I try to provide them with a better clause (such as one of these).

Re:Incentive?

[stephend]

I don't see what right an employer has to control what I do outside work (unless it affects my ability to do my job).

If I work on Apache while I'm at work, then sure, they own the rights. If I do it in my own time and in such a way that it doesn't affect my performance at work, why should they have any right to my code?

hmm...

[Genom]

My only problem is the fact that the employee is only allowed to contribute to a project that would benefit his/her company in some way -- many of us are bound by contract in such a way that anything we do, regardless of whether it is on our own time, on our own equipment, in an area that our company does not and conceivably will not ever enter, belongs to the company.

For us, this would only partially eliminate the problem. What about those of us who work as webmonkeys but are audiophiles by night? It's inconceivable that a web company would branch into, say, audio compression/encoding software - so a development there wouldn't benefit the company in any conceivable way, even though the development may be of outstanding quality, and would help the project immensely.

I'd say that such a license should give far-reaching overrides on these IP clauses, in such a way that the employee would be able to contribute code done during off-hours on their own equipment to any free software project. That would be MUCH more helpful.

Now...if the code is developed on company time and/or equipment, I'd be one of the first to say that the company would be entitled to some say in what happens with that code, and a licence such as this one would help...unfortunately, I don't see many companies going for this - especially in this day and age of "Intellectual Property" cases springing up like weeds in a garden...

This would be a great way for companies to allow employees to contribute to OSS projects - but it doesn't address the whole problem, only a small part of it.

Note: I'm not bound by an agreement such as I describe - mine expressly allows me to develop whatever I want on my own time and equipment, so long as it doesn't compete with my work - fine by me. I do have several buddies who ARE in an agreement such as the one I described above, so I know second-hand the troubles involved.

Re:hmm...

[smittyoneeach]

A driver (for me, at least) to step out of 'Doze and into OpenSource is experience.

Convince an employer that experience garnered doing open source benefits a company in two ways:

1) smarter workforce (design skill)

2) broader techology base (technical skill)

Perhaps this sort of thinking is why I am not in business.

Re:Change

[Genom]

here here!

If they're going to claim ownership of my thoughts while I'm there, and thus limit what I can do when I'm not, then they had damn well better pay me for the work thoughts when I'm not there!

I'm really glad I'm free to do what I want on my own time and equipment, but I have friends who are bound by rather sickening (IMHO) strictures on what they can do in their off time - one was even told that he had to transfer ownership of his domain to his company, since they considered his webpage a "work" that they could claim ownership of. Needless to say, he quit the following day. Now he's working for 2 years in retail, as his noncompete disallows him from programming for anyone else for 2 years.

Re:Pretty Shaky

[spitzak]

Since it's all about information wanting to be free, maybe RMS should offer his courses free of charge.

Ha ha, you think you are so clever, don't you. But RMS does offer the course free of charge. He allows anybody to record them, transcribe them, etc and send that information to anybody they want.

I think he does charge if you want for some reason to hire him to actually speak the words. But the words are free.

Re:A major problem in your thinking...

[spitzak]

This has nothing to do with that. This is to allow the employee to work on outside projects and put those under the GPL. It has absolutely no effect on what the employee can and can't do to the code they write as part of their employment.

Re:A major problem in your thinking...

[spitzak]

Still has nothing to do with the agreement.

If this were a problem they would have to require that somebody not read GPL code. They would also have a problem if the employee already has read some GPL code. It does not appear the companies are making such requirements, so this is still irrelevant to the argument: whether or not the company forces the employee to sign this agreement, it does not change how much GPL code that employee can look at and potentially steal from.

And seriously: programmers are hired from different companies all the time and they bring with them knowledge of how the older company's software works, and legally they are not supposed to use this. This has not caused very much trouble despite the fact that the source company probably has a lot more legal clout than the GPL would ever have.

Standard Contract: There was one at gnu.org...

[Sheridan]

...but I can't find it any more. It was the GNU GPL Employer Disclaimer and used to be at http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/fsf-forms/disclaim .future

A few searches I've done of the GNU site haven't turned it up yet. :-(
--

Re:gee, let me think

[Nickbot]

I couldn't agree more, I think we're all overdue for an IT, or at least programmer's union.

I'm no longer in programming, but sysadmin, and I know of a number of ways a union might benefit us poor sods.. like for instance when your boss tries to force you to violate sysadmin ethics.. would be nice if you had the force of a union to back you up.

Re:You're asking for too little

[rakjr]

Agreed.BUT... As I understand it. Even if no such contract was ever signed with the corperation. If they have an established history of going after any work, then they have a legal precidence for claiming it regardless of what is or is not in print. Right now, the system is tilted towards the corperation even if you have crossed all your T's and dotted all your I's.Just like the insurance business has the field tipped toward them in most states. If the insurance agent makes a mistake in their favor, they owe you nothing back. If the insurance agent makes a mistake in your favor, you are legally bound to pay the difference.In both cases, it is not right, but that is the way it is.

Another option ....

[LL]

... is to see whether your employor is willing to subsidise (partially) to cost of further education. Many universities, especially distance education, would support Open Source projects as it is in their interests to rely on something non-proprietary. Given that any work undertaken is for non-profit educational use (building up your skills), it would be difficult for the company to claim any IP. Any cutting-edge research is likely to be so complicated that it would be covered in a seaparate contract. Despite arsDigita startup mode of 12x6 hour working weeks, no company can sustain a bunker mentality forever and there are likely to be periods of slack/cash-flow poor where there's just not enough work. Using the university system as a buffer to soak up the dead-time without going through the disruption and expense of head-hunting . Better still choose a place/project that even the most hard-nosed corporate lawyer will admit has zero commercial bearing (e.g. SETI) and they'd be less liable to argue the point. What you are talking about here is a corporate culture change and those take time.

Can people nominate distant-learning unis which are both technically excellent and support OSS development?

LL

Standard contract

[Shotgun]

When you buy something at a store, it is covered by a contract...an implied contract. The purchase is covered by a set of laws that nearly all the states have agreed on (sorry, I'm talking from an American point of view here). Overall, this is a good thing because it sets a base understanding to the transaction that provides a good starting point. Every facet of the negotiation doesn't need to be covered in excruciating detail, because it is understood that anything that isn't covered will be taken care of by the default 'contract'.

Techies as a whole should promote this sort of contract until it becomes the default, maybe even pushing for legislative backing. The alternative is to read contract that are laid out in excruciating detail (ie, legalese) and are construed to take all your rights without you knowing it. A contract that only has one line:

The default, except All your code are belong to us.

is much more likely to set off red flags.

Other way 'round...

[eriks]

...so long as it benefits the company they work for?

Unfortunately, I think many corporations would be more interested in having a contract that binds their employees to NOT doing anything that will benefit their competition... Which is rather sticky, since if an employee works on free software, and then a competitor uses that free software, that employee could get into trouble. Anyone know of a case where that has happened?

I'm sure that there are corps that wouldn't really care, especially those that use free software, but this is a complex issue.

Re:Pretty Shaky

[Butterwaffle Biff]

> Hmmmm.... Since it's all about information wanting to be free,
>maybe RMS should offer his courses free of charge. I digress, however.

MIT just announced free course materials over the web (http://web.mit.edu/ocw/). You could say that attending class was like answering support questions on the material.

Re:gee, let me think

[Mignon]

companies say 'no', 95% of employees say 'oh well, I tried, but its better than being unemployed', and we all keep living this beautiful capitalist dream without a care in the world

It seems to me that this would be a reason to support having a programmer's union. The solidarity of a union would make it easier to try to stand up to such employer behavior.

Re:save everyone a lot of time, money, and lawyers

[gorilla]

You think this is different to any other type of contract? Every company is going to get their lawyers to write every contract so it's in their best interests. Best interests for Microsoft is not going to be the same as best interests for Red Hat, so naturally they will have different contracts.

Would employers sign it?

[gorilla]

It seems to me that the sort of employer who would have a restrictive contract is exactly the sort of employer who would refuse to sign this override.

Re:Would employers sign it?

[leshert]

Not necessarily. Often (as was the case with my current employer), the more restrictive agreement is the default, and is just boilerplate.

Remember that in the Real World, everything is negotiable.

Re:Would employers sign it?

[debaere]

My current boss once told me: "If you program for someone else, your fired". A while later, I talked to him about a project I was working on (a web statistics engine - here) that mirrored what he wanted. I told him that I designed one, and I wanted to keep the rights to it. He didn't care as long as he got to use it.

Another person I interviewed with said I could program anywhere for anyone, as long as I didn't compete with him (it was a web design company). So, as long as I stayed away from coding web stuff for profit, I had free reign... not too restrictive IMHO

DOS is dead, and no one cares...

Re:Would employers sign it?

[aralin]

Well, there is a lot of difference between saying to your employer: "Hey, I don't agree with your contract because of this and that and I will sign it if you will change it somehow so it would fit my needs." and giving them a piece of paper that they already have heard about, they know other employers have signed without much harm and that their lawyers have already actually pre-aproved this document like acceptable, but worth to avoid.

I think that in such case when the employer sees a person they REALLY want, they will definitely consider to sign it. Thats how business goes. When you want something, you have to make it as easy as possible for the other party to accept it.

Re:Would employers sign it?

[G Neric]

GPL'ed code continues to belong to whoever owns it, so just that clause would not stop an employee choosing to incorporate GPL'ed code if that employee sees that it is in the company's best interest to get the head start and benefits of other people fixing the bugs. Ah, the benefits of that happy virus...

Re:Would employers sign it?

[skwirl42]

Not necessarily. I had a contract that stipulated that all the code I produced belonged to the company. They had no issues with assigning the FSF any IP I created for a FSF project.

better to destroy software than lose control?

[esnible]

During the Great Depression farmers would pour milk on the street rather than sell it to starving people for a price perceived as being 'low.'

Pundits talk about how far behind developers are at meeting the software needs of users. Yet every single day companies large and small orphan man-years of software --some of it still in use -- rather than sell it cheaply or open source it.

Until it becomes culturally unacceptable to hoard intellectual property and whole businesses go open-source I don't see employers allowing their employees to volunteer community service on software projects.

Where I work there is a real worry that I'll write a nice piece of code and contribute it to a GPLed projects, then write a very similar piece of code for a proprietary project. Everyone re-uses their own IP! The singer John Fogerty was sued for infringing his own songs and lost! How could I possibly convince my employer I wouldn't accidently leave the barn door open and let the GPL in -- not by borrowing another's code, but by borrowing my own?

Re:better to destroy software than lose control?

[Tech187]

Farmers poured the milk out because there wasn't a transportation infrastructure to get it to market. There weren't spiteful farmers saying 'let them starve', there was just a gridlocked mess where no transportation was available.

Milk in high volumes is a NASTY thing to pour on land, it ruins the soil. Farmers aren't that foolish, believe me.

There's so much Urban Folklore out there... sigh.

Just ask for consent.

[werdna]

I have never seen an employer deny a reasonable request to participate in non-competitive open source development. I had no problem arranging for this in my last transaction, even though I was hired in the capacity of an officer directing the entire R&D operation.

Just ask. Most any reasonable employer will agree.

think again

[dhuff]

we all know.. yes. and love... not hardly. I love freedom, not the GPL. The GPL's idea of "freedom" is right up there with Ralph Nader and the Green party: "freedom is what we tell you it is" The BSD license is more like the Libertarian party's ideals. Freedom means do what you like with it :)

Re:Two choices

[Mr. Slippery]

Downside - no job security.

There's no job security in a "perm" position either - I lost two perm jobs in the course of a year due to corporate restructuring. I've been contracting ever since.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

The agreement should not focus on open source only

[levik]

I think that a licens by the GNU should not stop at allowing the employee to develope open source code. I think that a lot of programmers are in an unfavorable position when it comes to signing an employment contract. Some employees have very strict and prohibitive documents that they make you sign.

If a standardized contract that protects a programmer's rights to produce his own work on his time is introduced and accepted in the industry, it should give programmers leverage they need when negotiating these contracts.

Because GNU is already a recognized authority in the IT world, it would be significantly easier to make an employer agre to a contract coming from them than it would be to make them accept something drawn up by your lawyer.

A good place to start...

[HardLogic]

The Contract Worker's Bill of Rights:
http://www.cehandbook.com/cehandbook/acidtest.ht ml

Ok, so maybe there would be one for FT/Perm and one for contractors, with a shared core or something.

Re:gee, let me think

[SirSlud]

I'd agree if the idea of an organized body of programmers didn't scare me so much ;)

gee, let me think

[SirSlud]

will:

a) enough employees stay out of work to fuel the neccessary employment boycott to get companies to even /consider/ anything less than 'we get first crack at anything you do, and even then you probably cant use it anywhere else'

or

b) companies say 'no', 95% of employees say 'oh well, I tried, but its better than being unemployed', and we all keep living this beautiful capitalist dream without a care in the world

I think b. But, who knows ... =)

Re:gee, let me think

[TheCarp]

I too agree.... but am cautious.

I think Unions are a good thing. However, Uninions nee dto be well run. A poorly run or corrupt union can be worst than no union at all.

In principal though I agree with the "United we negotiate, divided we beg" philosophy (or I would if I worked at the corperate world, motives are different working in Acedemia)

-Steve

Re:gee, let me think

[bapink01]

I think that the answer is:

c) more people ask for (and as a result get) this provision because there is an organized movement. The request is planned and thought out. Planning impresses bosses. Mindless ranting does not impress. Capitalist equilibrium stays dandy.

Re:gee, let me think

[Phillip2]

"One week after the 'union' has started, all software development will be moved to Singapore or India. "

Actually this is unlikely. Ask yourself why the work has not moved to India and Singapore already given that programmers in these countries cost less than yours (I am assuming that you are from the US!).

There are many factors which affect location of a business. Employment laws and unions are not the only thing of importance.

Besides what made you decide that programmers in India and Singapore should not also be part of the programmers union?

Phil

Re:gee, let me think

[Dancin_Santa]

The smell would probably be overwhelming.

Dancin Santa

Re:gee, let me think

[Tech187]

One week after the 'union' has started, all software development will be moved to Singapore or India.

save everyone a lot of time, money, and lawyers...

[eries]

One of my biggest gripes about the job search/accept process today is that every employer has his or her own employment contract. Now, although the effect of most of these contracts is the same, they all are slightly different - to the effect that every employer has to hire lawyers to write the contract and every employee has to hire a lawyer to review it. Keep in mind that many law firms have stock contracts that they just modify for their client - while still billing them full price, of course!

So I heartily endorse this concept. It would really be great if sought-after tech workers could put their preferred employment contract on their resume. As it became more common, more and more people would realize the big time savings and I think it could catch on. And some lawyers would lose some business. Sounds good to me.

more GNU/EFF docs

[rkent]

In other news, the following documents have also been announced by the EFF or GNU:

• The GNU "use of the word hacker" license: under this document, the word "hacker" will be copyrighted by GNU, but the general public will be allowed to continue using it as long as they include the GNU official definition (differentiating it, of course, from the word "cracker") in a footnote and don't make proprietary extensions on the definition.
• The EFF Open Dating Protocol, whereby geeks can register an (s) next to their names with the EFF (for "single") and they will be matched up for free with an available woman, at no cost to either party and ensuring that any pictures taken during the encounter are freely tradable on sites like "pronster" or hell, even IRC.
• the GNU Owns Everything License: Under this contract, the entire world will sign everything over to the EFF, who, it is self-evident, know more about everything and will just generally manage stuff better. When contacted for comment, RMS was quoted as saying "You have no chance to survive make your time!!"

Now back to your regularly scheduled trolls.
Thank you.

---

Not really necessary

[rkent]

Besides being nearly impossible to impliment, I don't know that some kind of standard, EFF-reinforced contract is needed. I mean, contacting the EFF for legal advice is fine, but your contract between you and your employer is just that: between you and your employer.

As such, if it's even moderately sized, you probably have some breathing room to negotiate terms. First off, it really is critical that you *READ YOUR CONTRACT* before you sign. If it is has some rediculous thing like "anything done by employee at any time during employment is IP or employer," then talk to the HR person!

A much more reasonable contract is one that assigns all rights 1) relating to stuff you do on company time or equipment, or 2) relating to the subject matter you work on at work. If you do coding in your spare time, it's your business; your employer should recognize this. It's quite simple.

---

Re:All your spellings are belong to us!

[Guido del Confuso]

Nah... it should read:

"Comrades, we all know and love the GNU General Public License, the premier software license for today's cybercommunist."

Bah, you want real open source? Try a BSD style license. You could even put it in the public domain, and it would be a helluva lot more free than it would be under the politically motivated GPL.

Actually, a BSD license might be more acceptable to the employer anyway, since it could then still use and resell the compiled code without being forced (by this alleged "freedom in software movement" license, no less) to open its entire code base.

People who just care about good code will use a BSD license; people with agendas to push will use the GPL. Personally, I feel a little bit violated every time I install GPLed software... that's why I try not to do it whenever possible.

Wouldn't work....

[blogan]

Look at all the companies that are involved in open source. How many of them use GPL? Usually they come up with their own license and use that, because it's what suits them. The only thing I could see this being used for is smaller companies, but those aren't usually as restrictive as the big ones anyway.

for management?

[Cyno]

Um, this is slashdot. Y'know, like /. Managers don't read slashdot. And even if they did do you honestly think they would listen to a bunch of techs, most of whom are open source fanatics and l33t napster-using script kiddies.
What makes you think slashdot can get a few managers to change their contracts? Those contracts give their company a competitive edge, which is why so many contracts and similar laws get enacted. Its called corporate interests. And it falls in line with the collective goals of the capitalist world. Corner markets (read: resources intellectual and physical) in order to gain a strangehold/monopoly and hord the money for yourself and your shareholders. At the same time, as the bush administration and microsoft have already learned, companies should attempt to block any competition that tries to enter their markets by lobbing for laws and proprietizing everything.
Corporations already know what they are doing and they do it well. I think the public needs to learn how corporations work and how their actions effect society and the world we live in more than we need to education corporations on how to play fair in an open source world. If they cared they would have been playing fair all along instead of lobbying congress for laws to give them an edge such as the DMCA and UCITA. Us techs should just be thankful the GPL is not illegal, yet.

Standardization in everything we do

[BierGuzzl]

On the one hand, I see this idea to have the unifying potential major open source licenses have had on the software community. It can give people something to point to in saying "Hey look, it x,y,and z are using that license.. maybe there's something to it?"... On the other hand, it's important that we not discourage people from coming up with individual creative solutions that fit their particular circumstance.

Re:Standardization in everything we do

[TheCarp]

> why can't you see that the corporate world is
> not about "freedom" it's about $$$$

Exactly. Much like benevolent dictators, sure sometimes a corperation comes by that does care about such things, but they are the exception, not the rule.

However, any company can be made to care about such freedoms when their bottom line is effected by them. Which is why those of us who care about freedom should use whatever influence we may have to make sure that it DOES effect their bottom line.

A corperation that violates the GPL or other free software license is uncatchable, until they piss off an employee who decides to blow the whistle.

if enough of the work force insists on not selling their rights away to their employer, then they will be forced to not make people sign their rights away.

The only way things will change are to make people understand the importance of standing up for their own rights, and that a job is not worth having if it means that you have to sign away that which you hold dear.

-Steve

Re:Standardization in everything we do

[kz45]

actually, if I owned a corporation and thought "since company X,Y,and Z are using it.....", I would only benefit from that fact because I now possess all their source, and can make a better, closed source equivalent.

it is almost like playing a chess game, where the rules require you to tell your opponents all of your moves before you execute them.

Corporations will NEVER use such a license, except to steal from the programmers that use it.

Example: corporation X takes pieces of GPL'd code, changes it enough to make it almost totally different, and plops ot into their closed software, and no-one knows the difference.

On the other hand, linux is also good for corporations...one less expense.

read FREE BEER not FREE SPEECH.

why can't you see that the corporate world is not about "freedom" it's about $$$$

You can change a contract...

[debaere]

IANAL but I play one on the Internet...

According to my law professor, any contract can be changed at any time, for any reason, as long as it follows the basic rules of contract law, which are:
Offer: (Please can we modify my contract to enable me to work on free software, given condition X)
Acceptance: (Why sure, no problem)
Consensus of the minds: (both parties are fully aware of what they are agreeing to)
and Consideration: (there is a benefit to one or both parties - developer gets to work on GPL'd code, and employer benefits from it)

When I interview for positions, its one of the first things I ask about.

DOS is dead, and no one cares...

Disclaimer

[debaere]

This only applies to common law countries (States and my country, Canada, for example).

Civil law countries (France) may have different rules for contract law

DOS is dead, and no one cares...

Practical Solution

[Martin S.]

Come on we're all supposed to be hackers here, so take the hackers approach, keep them seperate, keep them quiet and use a handle/pseudo-name, a practical workable solution.

Well..

[Sc00ter]

I think most contracts say that the company you work for has first grab at whatever you do, if they don't want it, you can do whatever you want with it. If the product is valuable they'll probably either want to keep it, or sell it. Either way isn't very GPL friendly so I don't think any company would go for it.

I think most places if you make a small program that helps you out that is extremely general but doesn't have the potential of being a big moneymaker won't care if you GPL it, as long as you ask.

--

Re:Well..

[d.valued]

.. there's always FreeNetting it or remailing it anonymously or pseudonymously ;)

I'm somewhat fortunate, in that I'm working for a company that Has A Clue(tm) [yes, it's a Linux-centric consultancy.. hey, travel, a four-day workweek, fat pipe, and a six figure salary means good times!] and they have clear distinctions in what is GPLd and what is.. ahem.. not.

The basic rule most companies should use is that of relevancy. If the GPL project is sufficiently close to the company's prop projects, like someone at Intuit working on GnuCash, then there should be some restriction (after all, if our hypothetical hacker knows the details of QuickBooks files inside and out, and the company wants it secret, he would probably be covered under an NDA or trade secret laws and cannot legally do so).

However, if someone who works with spreadsheet code helps out the Gimp, or some vector-graphics coder props up KDE and GNOME (I like both.. the war stops here!), that is completely different and should be reasonably out of bounds.

Relevance should be the criterion, not the fact that the microserf works for you.


Windows.. Good for targeting rocks.

Any contract can be amended ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

... as long as both or all signatories to the original contract sign the new contract. (IANAL, but I am a writer among other things, so I've picked up a fair amount of contract knowledge over the years, especially WRT IP issues.) So, sure, it would be possible to draw a boilerplate contract for employers and employees that says "Previous contractual obligations shall not be construed as prohibiting this employee from participating in Open Source development projects." There could also be a list of standard exceptions: as long as it doesn't involve company trade secrets, as long as it doesn't compete directly with the company's products, etc.

How likely are employers to actually sign such a thing? Hell if I know. I'm also a developer for a small biotech company which is, for good reason, fiercely protective of its IP but is also not paranoid about whatever else its employees do ... _unless_ it presents a threat to the company's IP rights or competition to its products. Odds are if I showed my boss an "open source is okay" contract he'd insist on a lawyer going over it and making amendments until I didn't really have any more rights than I do now. (I'm not complaining, much: I have pretty broad rights, certainly much broader than I'd expect to have at a larger corporation.) It probably depends much more on the corporate culture than on legal formalism, really. If you work for a company with a legal department made up of rabid weasels (Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, et al.) then forget it. If your company is run by rational human beings rather than IP-obsessed suits, you might have a chance.

Re:Too bad...

[cybermage]

I think the submittor is talking about the annoying tendency of comapnies to claim off-hours project as their IP. If I write a program on my own time, I should be able to claim it as my intellectual property, and slap the GPL on it. It's not like I'm taking a second job, I'm giving away my work.

Let me start by saying IANAL, but I've been looking into this quite a bit while working to go independent from my past employer. Current law (i.e., statute + rulings) leans really heavily toward the employer on this issue. For example, if you do a side project without any company resources and not on company time, it's still theirs if it's inspired by any IP of the company or addresses any current or future needs of the company that could be reasonably know by the employee.

But the land-grab mentality about intellectual property causes problems. If I use a company laptop, there might be grounds for them to claim they own my project. Same if I use a company email account on a project mailing list, or if post a quick note about a bug from work.

As I mentioned above, it gets worse than that. Let's say your company is working on an application to do X. You, on your own time, realize that there is a need out there to integrate X with Y and write some middleware to do it. Your employer could claim IP rights to the middleware, without compensation.

I'm not saying these things are right. Infact, I believe the opposite. But, getting an employer to waive their rights to the extent you describe is gonna take more than a simple contract. The contract might work now if employers still perceive a scarcity of employees. When a glut of IT workers comes, and it will, employers will have no incentive to sign it.

If you want to do something legal to protect your rights as an employee, unionize. Once organized, force the agreement on employers.

--

A major problem in your thinking...

[malfunct]

The big problem here that all the posters so far seem to be missing is that if somehow some OpenSource code got into the companies presumably ClosedSource product then there would be grounds to sue that company.

I have to stand on the corporations side on this, until the contract allows that company to incorporate the code into a closed source product without fear of retribution then the company would be stupid to allow its employees to work in the open source world. I'm not saying I want companies to be able to rip off all the open source code in the world and use it for thier own, but just saying that they need some sort of protection or they will never allow this sort of thing to happen.

Unfortunately this fear of having a closed source project contaminated with open source code is furthered by the open source community when they complain that companies might be harboring open source in thier projects. Companies exist to make money and they are under the (maybe misguided) conception that they need to keep code hidden in order to have a leg on competition. They are thrown into a world where they might accidentially (or purposely but we won't cover that) get some code that they don't have rights to so they do everything possible to protect themselves from this.

Bottom line is this, unless the contract provides protection along the lines of if the employee developing the open source code puts some of it in the companies product they are free to release it in a closed source fashion with the caveat that if they find that code in an open sourced product they cannot sue on the grounds of copyright infringement. So basically it is a compromise between the ideals of open source and the praticality of business that has to happen if the two sides are to work together.

Re:A major problem in your thinking...

[malfunct]

Again you miss the point, if you are reading lots of OpenSource code, there is certainly things you are going to learn from it. If you apply that learning to work there is a possibility that the OpenSource people you learned from would come back on the company. That can't be allowed, or there has to be protection against it. Also as someone pointed out the converse is true, if you work with closed source all the time there is a good chance what you learn could leak in to the open source work you do and the company would want compensated.

It doesn't matter that the projects are seemingly unrelated as at the base units what you know applies to all projects. The very real potential exists of things migrating from one place to another and so to prevent this companies put in a clause in contracts that say people cannot work on open source projects (and more likely can't work on external projects or have a clause that says external projects are company property).

The problem comes from the fact that open source people still claim ownership of what they do. If they were truely for the free dispersal of information they would drop thier new knowledge out on the web, promote it, and then not work a wit where it went. In that they want to keep ownership and get recogintion they are no better than the corporations. They say "read my code but don't use it unless I say its ok" where corporations say "don't read my code, buy my product its better really". Argue on either side but the information is still not free.

Re:A major problem in your thinking...

[Tech187]

Of course, if code paid for by a company makes it's way into the 'Open Source' project the converse is true. The company may end up suing the organisation/individuals who put the software out under the GPL. It cuts both ways, and the money is likely on the company.

Maybe I am just crazy...

[ejbst25]

But those who would contribute to free software shouldn't be working for companies that won't let them. I know the company I work for is great about this. :-) And this was something I looked at before signing.

Re:Maybe I am just crazy...

[JSR $FDED]

And the "company you work for" (IBM) is getting creamed on every single commercial product where it is facing competition that is not slowed down by OpenSource clauses (such as BEA, WebLogic being way above WebSphere in both marketshare and technical aspects).

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy you're having fun, but your company is paying a dear price for providing you with the warm and fuzzy feeling of contributing to the Open Source cause.

why just if it would benefit the company.

[ion]

so long as it benefits the company they work for?

Why should they only be allowed to contribute if it helped the company ??

I would say as long as they dont directly hurt the company, any employer should be free to create any IP, art, ... that he or she wishes to do. And keep ownership of that work, or transfer it as he or she wishes.
Naturaly, all work they create while getting paied, and/or is at work belongs to the employer.

ion++

Re:Are you Jonesing for some totalitariajism

[bapink01]

"He who would give up some freedom for a little temporary safety deserve neither." --Benjamin Franklin

So, you want to model it on the GPL.

In other words, you want to model your employment contract on a software license which contains some questionable provisions, vague language, and has not been tested in court.

Ummm. Excuse me. Lots of legislation is written before it is tested in a court of law. Actually that is required. I don't understand how you can restrict your faith in the rules of your government to those that have already had judical review. I mean hello.There are two other branches of government (in the US and several other big democracies).

You want to base your personal intellectual freedom and your ability to earn a living on the ivory-tower utopian principles of one RMS.

Benjamin Franklin didn't live in an ivory tower. He was busy asking the French for some money to kick British Butt. It seems to me that the boilerplate contract stuff (AKA the topic at hand) is all about freedom not CRAZY LOW PRICES.

This isn't about getting a good price on a VCR, Home Stereo, or Washing machine from Crazy Eddie's Home Electronics. These documents can help organize workers. They provide a line in the sand that employers can see. Employers can be invited (cordially) to participate. This is the "Yearning to breath free" kind of freedom.

You do, of course, understand that if RMS had his way, you would be coding for free. You would instead make your money answering support questions for your software or (like him) you would become a tenured professor.

Uhhh. No. That is what Microsoft wants to do. They want to have your monthly subscription automatically deducted from your account.

Hmmmm.... Since it's all about information wanting to be free, maybe RMS should offer his courses free of charge. I digress, however.

Again you confuse you wallet with your vote.

My point is this: Until all provisions of the GPL are upheld by a court in my locale, I would rather not rely on some boilerplate derivative when my ability to provide for my family is at stake.

And your refrigrator warrenty has more ambigous language than the General Public License. You still own a refrigerator. You still expect to get help with faulty workmanship from the manufacturer. Guess what! It is likely that wasn't tested in a court of law either.

This isn't about information at a nice low price. This is about the ability to have a school play that is an adaptation of Shakspere. This is about having a mountain of software with the source code; with the ability to redistribute the code changes you have made.

This is about the Benjamins (no pun intended) that we must find in each of us. We have to recognize when change is at hand. We have to act upon it. We must act before further rights are taken away! We must take back the rights already taken!

I would really rather not find out the hard way that provisions which are perfectly acceptable in, say, Kalifornia, are not binding in my state.

If it isn't binding, then big whoop. It just means that you have to not distribute what you wrote.

In short, I'll trust a local attorney retained on my own dime before I'll turn my career over to some fresh-from-the-bar-exam night law school grad with stars in her eyes and visions of intellectual freedom in her head.

Sounds like you prefer the crack house to the bar. These contract snipets aren't about things that can get you killed or put in jail.

I hope you don't vote.

---

"It hurts when I pee" -- Benjamin Franklin

Re:source/freedom

[bapink01]

That sounds great, talking about 'freedom,' but if you actually read the GPL, in effect, you could sell only one copy of your software, and everyone else could just copy it. I know that's not the intent of the GPL, but that's the net effect.

It sounds great that you are taking about companies, but that isn't what the topic is. It is about having the freedom to do what you want on your own time. If you company has a provision in an employment contract that you can't travel faster than 15mph, how will you get around in a reasonable amount of time? How will you insure that you aren't taken greater than 15mph by an ambulance?

The point is that companies are currently asking for employees to give them stuff. The documents that are being discussed are about organized requests for that freedom to go back to the employees. Sounds alot like trying to organize a four day work week. It doesn't not sound like changing the business model of companies.

Owning something means taking it's responsibility.

[MongooseCN]

If a company takes your software and says they own it, then when they give it to a customer they have to take responsiblity if anything goes wrong with the software. So if they demand your software you wrote, give them a really buggy poorly functioning version of the software. Then when a customer runs it and it trashes their system, it will be the companies fault since they own it, not you. Trashing your own software may sound bad but if a company demands they own it, you won't get any credit for your software and it won't have anything to do with your name anymore.

While this may not be a practical solution it would be a fun one. =)

Think about the possibilities ...

[Aceticon]

... constant internal fighting trying to decide which operating system is best:

• Windows
• Unix
• Mac
• Amiga
• ...

Same thing for Programming Languages; Editors, Coding Styles - "In a function declaration the begin block ( "{" sign ) should be in the same line as the function parameters"; "In the next line"; "Two lines bellow"; "In the living room"; "In my grandma's place"; ...

Total and complete paralysis.

Employers will often override if asked

[EschewObfuscation]

Based on my own experience, employers will very often make changes in default employment contracts, if the potential employee asks them to.

My suggested strategy is this:

1. Tell the guy recruiting you about your open source projects. This can often lead to fruitful discussions about how that type of technology might fit into their current organization (they may never have thought about using neural nets for data analysis, or whatever). This also helps to establish your credibility as a developer.
2. Let the interviewer know that you'd want to keep working on the projects after you've started working there. If he's interested in the technology, tell him that you'd love to integrate the project with your job, but that the project itself would remain under GPL (as it would even if you were integrating someone else's code).
3. Let him know that the outside work wouldn't have any impact on your job performance, other than maybe continuing to make you a better developer.

Remember, a lot of employers use basically boilerplate forms for this sort of thing. Either they copy them from a centralized service or (in the case of larger firms) they have a lawyer draw one up for them. As such, they're usually not written in stone.

All the company offering the form is trying to do is to make sure you don't walk out the door with the technology they're paying you to develop for them. Unless your project directly overlaps their technology, this shouldn't be a problem (if it does, you've got a special case, and either should look somewhere else or else be prepared to put up a much bigger fight).

(email addr is at acm, not mca)
We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.

Re:RTFC

[xiitone]

Although the tone's a bit confrontational, I'd agree about reading the contract and talking to the employer about it. Companies tend to have their standard contract for a position, but when I voiced my concerns, they've been willing to modify them (once about a non-compete I thought was a bit too broad, and once about open-source side work specifically.)

Re:Just do it....

[bobglickstein]

If you sign a contract promising not to do it, then even if you're sure the company wouldn't know and wouldn't understand if they did know, you'd have to break your word in order to "just do it." And breaking your word is just not cool.

Just because it's legalese and in triplicate and the other party is a heartless money-grubbing corporation, that doesn't mean you haven't made a promise.

Cool, but would it fly?

[PatJensen]

This is a great idea to encourage growth and the use of free software as well as the development of free software, but how many large corporations do you think would adopt it? I think the timing matters as well. It took almost 3 years for Linux to see market-inroads into large corporations, even being used as web servers and proxy servers.

3 years in Internet time equated to 500 dot-bombs down the drain. That is a lot of products that could have been open sourced or brought to market. Where could the contract be applied to and at what level?

Too vague.. too many questions to ask and I can imagine it would be hard pushing this to employers - "please give your companies' time and money away so that others can benefit". Don't get me wrong, I love what open source has offered and the great products that it has brought to market. Companies just aren't aware of how it can benefit them yet.

-Pat

RTFC

[broody]

I hate whining about how unfair contracts are from people who don't bother to negotiate. Do your homework, read your contract, and if you don't like it; don't sign it! It's that simple.

Rather than simply write off these people as being stupid for signing one-sided contracts, could we do something to pursuade managers to be more open to free software development?

I have a better idea. Read-the-friendly-contract. If you are all fired up to save people from themselves, convince them not to sign contracts giving away their right to create software!

These people are stupid for signing one sided contracts. It's a workers market out there and giving up your rights on your own time is stupid. Plain and simple. Read up on it and do your homework!

It is not that hard to negotiate a contract that leaves you free to persue your own interests. With it comes the satisfaction of telling those obnoxious bastards who want you to sign your life away to pound sand.

What if there was a standard contract available, between employers and employees, that spefically gave employees the right to contribute to free software projects so long as it benefits the company they work for?"

There are standard contracts available that protect developers rights. Start with Nolo, from there you can give whatever you like to the FSF.

Re:Too bad... for the employer

[G Neric]

all of what you said is true, but if an employee incorporates already GPLed code into a project, that employee has not violated his employment contract: the employer still owns the employee's work output and all copyrights.

Of course, the employer is now distributing GPLed code, but c'est la vie. Any beef they have with that needs to be taken up with their lawyers (who can be identified by the IAAL in their emails) who clearly failed to rule out an industry-standard software licensing practice.

source/freedom

[dalinian]

It's not about them getting the source, it's about everyone having the same freedom. Nobody's asking anyone to give their stuff to public domain here.

Re:source/freedom

[dalinian]

I understand this. But this is still not the point. The point is that there is a new human right made possible by technical development, a right to free software. If a company does not want to respect that right, they will not have too many years to go anyway. Even MS could go down pretty fast, when major PC vendors switch to free software.

Re:source/freedom

[t3mpest]

A right to free software? You are kidding, right?

Which ammendment was that?

Re:source/freedom

[JohnTheFisherman]

It's not about them getting the source, it's about everyone having the same freedom. Nobody's asking anyone to give their stuff to public domain here.

That sounds great, talking about 'freedom,' but if you actually read the GPL, in effect, you could sell only one copy of your software, and everyone else could just copy it. I know that's not the intent of the GPL, but that's the net effect.

Re:source/freedom

[JohnTheFisherman]

It sounds great that you are taking about companies, but that isn't what the topic is.

Really? It explicitly talks about 'benefit to the company.' There isn't even a really clear allusion to 'your own free time,' but this is about the more general subject of contract terms and their relation to free software. This certainly includes free work done on your own time, but this question actually limits it to the right to contribute to free software projects so long as it benefits the company they work for....

I think that work on free software is great, but it's going to be a very, very hard sell to many, if not most employers. Someone brought up hardware drivers - that's a good way to spread your hardware to more OSs. But for software-only/mainly companies that don't want the service-oriented model of Red Hat and others, which is still quite young and unproven, vs. the (at least so far) more profitable and proven closed-source route, it's no contest.

Re:source/freedom

[maskrol]

Why is free software a right? It COSTS companies to make software, why should they then give this software away for free? Software developers need to live, how can you EXPECT them to give products of their time and hard work away for nothing? Freedom of speech is a human right, the right not to be discriminated against, the right not to be torturted and killed, all of these are human rights. Free software on the other hand is NOT a human right. Should McDonalds give their hamburgers away for free? Should Dell give me a free laptop? ONLY IF THEY WANT TO! The world doesn't owe you a living, just as you expect to be paid when you goto work, companies and individuals also have a right to expect fair compensation. If they wish to donate their time and effort to 'society' that is fine, but you are no-one to demand that they do so.

Re:Change

[haplo21112]

I have ben on the other side of the fence as a hiring manager(I don't do that anymore, tired of compromising my morals). The problem at least as far as the company I was working saw it was as follows. They make claim on what you create, because they given that you spend 40+ hours a week at the Job, there is a good chance that at least some of the work/thought process on the project took place while you were on their time. They therefore figure they own some part of the work. I will be first to admit that alot of what I do on and off the job carries over on both sides.

Prob. won't work for contracts already in place

[psyclone]

I'm guessing that any sort of "standard contract" probably would not merge well with an existing contract. The place I can see this being helpful is for programmers getting new jobs. They would first need to get their prospective employer to sign this "loose" contract of terms that both parties agree upon, then sign the more restrictive corporate contract (updating those terms as necessary). Seems like a difficult, but still possible solution, but or course, IANAL.

Re:Governments (Fed, State, Local) are big employe

[Chundra]

I'm a programmer/sysadmin at a large state university in um... the midwest. We use free software to run most of what we do behind the scenes. The reason? To the administration it's cheap, to the techies it works great. It's a wonderful solution to everybody's problems here. However, we cannot release our code under the GPL, BSD license, or Artistic license because some dipshit university vice-chancellor-for-technology-and-weaselness and his team lawyers wants to sell it. Most of this stuff consists of patches and hacks onto pre-existing free software.

We will embrace open source software, but we refuse to contribute to it.

Pretty Shaky

[DunkPonch]

So, you want to model it on the GPL.

In other words, you want to model your employment contract on a software license which contains some questionable provisions, vague language, and has not been tested in court.

You want to base your personal intellectual freedom and your ability to earn a living on the ivory-tower utopian principles of one RMS.

You do, of course, understand that if RMS had his way, you would be coding for free. You would instead make your money answering support questions for your software or (like him) you would become a tenured professor.

Hmmmm.... Since it's all about information wanting to be free, maybe RMS should offer his courses free of charge. I digress, however.

My point is this: Until all provisions of the GPL are upheld by a court in my locale, I would rather not rely on some boilerplate derivative when my ability to provide for my family is at stake. I would really rather not find out the hard way that provisions which are perfectly acceptable in, say, Kalifornia, are not binding in my state.

In short, I'll trust a local attorney retained on my own dime before I'll turn my career over to some fresh-from-the-bar-exam night law school grad with stars in her eyes and visions of intellectual freedom in her head.

Re:Pretty Shaky

[Tech187]

Is RMS really a tenured professor? I knew he was 'tenured' in some form, but I've never heard him referred to as 'Doctor' or heard of any advanced degree that he's earned.

I guess I've always assumed he's just another one of those people who dug in their heels in the 70's and never left campus**. I have a friend like that, who started out a work-study bottle washer in the campus hospital in the early 1970's, and has had jobs in the labs ever since.

(**Avoid letting yourself be 'mentored' by such people, college students. They're mired in place. Don't spend more time than necessary hanging out on campus, it leads to a very warped sense of reality. It isn't the real world!)

proposal goes in the wrong direction

[rlwhite]

I doubt an employer would allow a contract that would open source code that is useful to the company. For one thing it's giving code to competitors, and for another licenses such as the GPL are generally considered too viral for commercial use.

If anything could work here, it'd be a contract allowing the employee to work on open source projects that are NOT useful to the company. Why should my company care if I give away code related to Mozilla if the company doesn't create browsers? It may even help the company. Just look at Microsoft, they paid to have Internet Explorer developed when it wasn't in their business area. Sure, they got name placement and a browser built into Windows, but they never made money off of it and they spent millions defending it in court. So what did they get out of it? They helped the popularity of web browsing. Now people spend tons and tons of time on Windows doing web browsing. And look at their competition at Netscape. It's been said that if Netscape had been successful longer a new platform may have eventually developed to compete with Microsoft.

Web browsers may not be a very good example since so many side issues got tied up in IE, but it's a scenario that's happened repeatedly. Intel, IBM, Sun- they all develop stuff and give it away to create demand for their core businesses. Look at Bell Labs, they develop technology and post it on the web to draw potential licensees to take it to market where it'll create demand for their business, and they freely admit that they can't possibly afford to take all of their technology to market themselves.

As long as code doesn't aid a competitor or hurt the company, draws no resources from the company, and doesn't hurt the quality of the employee's work for the company, open source development should be allowed.

Just do it....

[MetL Hed]

If someone writes code for some dink ass company that prohibits them. Do it anyway, how are they going to find out?

Too bad...

[JohnTheFisherman]

It really is too bad employers don't see the value in GPLing all of their code so that their competitors could obtain the source. Sick twisted world, isn't it?

Re:Too bad...

[RandomPeon]

I think the submittor is talking about the annoying tendency of comapnies to claim off-hours project as their IP. If I write a program on my own time, I should be able to claim it as my intellectual property, and slap the GPL on it. It's not like I'm taking a second job, I'm giving away my work.

But the land-grab mentality about intellectual property causes problems. If I use a company laptop, there might be grounds for them to claim they own my project. Same if I use a company email account on a project mailing list, or if post a quick note about a bug from work.

Something like this makes sense:

"XYZ corp disclaims all rights to Joe Coder's project Foo. Use of corporate assets such as laptops, workstations, or other systems does not grant XYZ corp any rights to Joe Coder's project."

It's pretty reasonable, and assuming Joe is releasing under the GPL there's no chance he'll ever make money off the product himself, so he doesn't have a financial incentive to neglect his real job for the Foo project.

Solution: Don't work on related projects

[RandomPeon]

It's easy. If you work on a project that does x during the day, any freetime work should be reasonably unrelated to x. It's safer for both parties that way, there's no chance the company will end up with GPLed code in its product, and there's no way the GPL project will end up with code that belongs to somebody else. Furthermore, it gives you a broader experience and a chance to do something different.

first sell the code, then open source it

[kipple]

..that's what I've seen doing with a friend of mine. Basically, first you code "something" according to the needs. Then, once the customer has been satisfacted with his needs, you can happily opensource the code.
Benefits? The customer'll have suddenly a whole big bunch of developers/testers/bug fixer for free. The public opinion about your company gets better (in the geek field). The customer is satisfacted. You got money for your job.

..just a thought.

Re:Incentive?

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Incentive? How about "my employer does not OWN me"? Slavery was abolished in the US over 100 years ago, and I don't sign indentured servitude contracts. My time after work hours is MY TIME, to use any way I damn well please that isn't out-and-out illegal. If I wanna work on Apache by night and IIS by day, guess what? I CAN! I am not a slave to XYZ Corp, and neither are you if you have a lick of sense.

Now my employer may take a dislike to my after-hours activities and fire me/lay me off/downsize me/<insert favorite euphemism here>, but then he might do that if he took a dislike to my after-hours politics/religious activities/sexual activities/etc. That's the risk of being a free human being. Should I spend my life worrying about what the boss might think? Do I have to ask my boss's permission for everything I do at home?

Nah, I don't think so.

Re:Change

[Dragoness Eclectic]

I take it your friend does not work in a Right-To-Work state like Louisiana or California? (Insert IANAL disclaimer) Non-compete agreements are unenforceable in RTW states, and not very enforceable in most other states--apparently you are not allowed to take away someone's right to make a living in his profession, no matter how silly the contract he signed.

Chances are, your friend can tell them to FOAD and go to work programming whenever he feels like. Don't let the bastards enslave you with lies.

A representing organization

[truthsearch]

How about this: creating/enhancing organizations for open source developers to join. Not just online communities or expos, but not-for-profit outfit(s) specifically made to bring together free software/open source developers, able to provide these general contracts and legal backing. Meeting with a prospective employer, being a member of a well respected organization with some power can have a positive impact.

You'd show open source support and commitment while having legal backing you could never have as an individual. I think it would look and work better than expecting employers to adopt a generic contract from nowhere.

Just a thought on the subject... haven't really though it through.

---

Re:Change

[Vortran]

The problem is money. This is pie-in-the-sky I know, but we really need to do away with currency-based economy. It's holding us back, and I think that is becoming more apparent. Money always stands between what is and what could be. We need to get on to what could be and stop wallowing in what is because we, as a race, lack the imagination to come up with a viable alternative to money.

There are enough resources, for instance, for everyone on the planet to have a Ferrari. What's keeping that from happening is money. That's just an example, but it exemplifies the fact that we (the human race) are not doing things that are possible for us to do because of our insistance and dependence on the concept of money.

The point (relative to our topic here) is that the whole issue of "this is mine and that's yours" would be moot if it weren't for money. The free software movement is a step toward freeing humanity from the stranglehold of the contrivance we call currency.

Incentive?

[Dancin_Santa]

What incentive does a company have for GPL'ing work that you do that benefits *them*? Obviously, if you work in your spare time on a project like Apache and your company produces children's educational software then a contract that allows (or doesn't disallow) GPL'ing of your software makes sense. But if you work on Apache by night and IIS by day, I think your employer would be very foolish to allow you to do so.

Dancin Santa

Undo IP agreements in the GPL!

[LagerFrenzy]

Most companies these days would use some GPL'd software somewhere, even if its only SAMBA on a HP-UX machine. Write in the GPL that where the software is used by a company, that any work performed on any GPL licensed software by the company's employees is also GPL'd. It wouldn't need to be the same software.

Already done.. kind of

[ryants]

The OSDA has sample contracts and contract addenda that help protect the work you do on the side.

This is what I used as a basis for my contract with my employer and it has worked out great so far.

Ryan T. Sammartino

Untested License

[pretzelman]

You neglect to realize that the GPL is a tough licence for a for-profit software company to work with. It is worded in such ways that it could suddenly render ALL that company's code open to the world simply because that company included a smidgen of GPL code in their codebase. Granted, no legal precedence has been set on this issue but because of that fact, this is not a chance that most companies are willing to take. If I was the owner of a software company, I wouldn't want to trust a court to decide whether or not I am able to control the distribution of my source code simply because the GPL had "invaded" my codebase.

i see the value

[petong]

If the company I am working for is using an open source solution, and I make improvements to the software on company time, should I be able to then contribute my changes?

What about non-dsclosure...

[silent_poop]

Being a youngin' to the industry I don't fully understand all that is covered under non-disclosure pacts but I would assume these would have to have to be altered in some fashion to incorporate this sort of open source work, would they not?

--

Two choices

[Hater's Leaving, The]

1) Become a subcontractor. Noone owns your ideas but you. Downside - no job security.

2) Stand firm, and demand that the clauses you don't like are removed. Downside - they may tell you to take a hike. However, if you are what they want they'll have to take heed. If you're smart enough and have the initiative to do open-source work, you're probably more valuable to the company than someone who isn't. Unless they're employing monkeys, in which case you didn't want the job anyway.

For reference. I'm (1), and I spending 8 hours a day fixing code written by monkeys, earning 6 times what the monkeys were paid. Heed my words - "Don't be a monkey".

THL.


--

Re:Just one question ...

[scorcherer]

What is a lisence?

It has something to do with the verb `pursuade'.

--

No *way* their lawyers would let them sign this ..

[FisherOfMen]

Simply put, the GPL and related licenses work because they don't attempt to modify existing contracts. Any sort of "GNU Employment License" (hereinafter GEL) would modify any in-place employment contracts, potentially interfering or even voiding those contracts.

A far better solution might be to encourage companies to modify any IP or noncompete agreements to exclude open-source. Then again, that opens up a whole 'nother can of worms that less-scrupulous employers (the sort who want to own everything you do in your free time, as well) would prefer to keep sealed up.

Hmmm....

Re:EXACTLY

[haruharaharu]

That's nice, AC. What we're looking for is a contract that doesn't put undue restrictions on what we write outside of work. No mention was made of GPLing all of the employer's code.

Fucking idiot.

Re:Owning something means taking it's responsibili

[haruharaharu]

How abouit, when a company steals from me, I sue for damages. Triple what they made from the code sounds reasonable. Of course, this works best when the code turns out to be profitable and i haven't signed away my rights.

Re:Change

[haruharaharu]

Well, I'm not a Lawyer, but doesn't a non-compete have to be fairly specific as well as offer compensation for the time period? As in, a contract which prohibits me from working tech for 1 year after leaving my current employer had better include pay for that time period in orde to be valid?

Re:Change

[haruharaharu]

If you let that fly, then the employer should also compenstae you for using ideas you had while away from work. I think $25/waking hour should suffice; that's only about $1400/week

Union is not the answer.

[Sylver Dragon]

While the idea of organization is, as an idea, good, I don't think unionizing is really the answer. First, I think that the tech sector as a whole is quickly working its way to becoming saturated with workers, especially after the dot-bomb. With many out of work people, and new, fresh from college, workers, keeping any form of solidarity will be tough when there are more people looking for jobs, and its getting easier for companies to find them. Secondly, I'm not real hot on the idea of handing over a portion of my paycheck to a group and hoping that they can make intelligent decisions, worse yet having them call some sort of strike or action that will make it hard to make my rent, and only as a play for their own megalomaniacal purposes. (e.g. Union control over my pension vs. employer control, its just a power grab.) Thirdly, like most unions this one would probably make it easy for lackluster techs/programmers/etc to get promotions based only on seniority, and as a way of getting them out of the way(after all, you can't fire a union worker, no matter how bad they are, but you can promote them and try to get someone who is more capable.) While I agree that there are some injustices in the field, and I agree that programmers shouldn't be forced to give up their own work(assuming that they are not consuming company resources to make it), I don't see a Union as a good answer. But then, perhaps this would be a different kind of union, though I bet most unions claimed the same thing when they started out. So what is the solution, I don't know. But I'm fairly certain that a union is not it.