Slashdot Mirror
Beware Employment Contracts
A lot of people think they have no negotiating ability. You do. When you're thinking of signing on with some company, and they send you a boiler-plate contract to sign, don't just sign it and send it back. Read it carefully. Alter it as you see fit, striking out sections, adding sections, and initialing each change. Then sign it, make a copy for yourself, and send it back.
Where it says:
company owns the rights to all work produced during the term of employment
Just strike it out, and change it to:
company owns the rights to code written during working hours and in direct furtherance of any tasks assigned by the company
See how much nicer that reads? Now, when you do this, there are two possibilities: either the company will ignore it and hire you, or they will object to your alteration of the contract. In the second case, if they stand firm on the boiler-plate contract, I suggest you simply ask for more money - for instance, if you were expecting an 8 hour/day job and their contract asserts that they own what you do 24 hours/day, then you'll need at least three times as much salary to compensate.
And if you and the company cannot reach an agreement, well, maybe you didn't want to work for them anyway. If they're already screwing you before you've even signed on, that's not a good omen.
There's already some good advice in the comments on the perlmonks story, so I'll leave it at that.
Unfortunately, for us Electrical/Computer Engineers, there is no way around that. They simply won't hire you. Sucks, but that's how it works.
Joe Carnes
don't give them the rights to your code. These agreements never stand up in court. But it does mean going to court, which is a pain.
If he was clearly doing these things in public and his superiors _knew_ that he was doing this stuff and doing it with a GPL, then the employer may not be able to retroactively re-claim copyright. If they confronted him (in writing) *as soon as they found out* then his license to us is invalid, and people should refrain from using the code he licensed to us under the GPL. *sighs*
Just strike it out, and change it to: company owns the rights to code written during working hours and in direct furtherance of any tasks assigned by the company
Amen! That's the clause in my employment agreement. When I started doing open source development, I pulled it out and double checked. If I create it at work it's theirs. If I create it at home, it's mine.
Of course, I just have to be careful not to use any of my open source code for anything at work. That would make it very easy for them to claim I worked on it at their expense. If you've written something you want to use at work, right up a separate contract and license it to your employer for one dollar, just to keep everything clean.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
That's scary, and I worry about it all the time. I'm pretty sure my contract did say that only work in the company's field was owned by them. I guess what it boils down to is I'll double check my employment agreement before I ever do a major release of sofware under GPL. Hell, I'll release it anonymously if I have to. Maybe that's the next step, coders forced to release projects under psuedonymns to avoid draconian employment contracts.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
That you need to encrypt, hide, and government level wipe your work or else someone will steal it legally with a big $hit eating grin on his face.
Not exactly new news though. I guess that's what you get for signing 30 pages without reading it over with a lawyer.
It's hard to read previsions, especially when the dollar amounts for your work is in bold, underlined, and italic.
would be to work for a company that supports the GPL and open-source development. Of course, finding a company like that that actually makes enough money to still pay you might be extremely rare. Unless the company went public and has several million sitting in a bank account, it might be easier. *cough* red hat *cough*
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
That means there isn't much the company can do. I suspect it means that they can embed it into their own proprietary products if they want; if they own it, they can add other licences besides GPL to it. They can't stop the existing code from being freely used and further developed.
When I read things like this, it always makes me think of some of the contracts I've signed with employers. I've basically signed away every idea in my head before, but it has always been alright because they were just temporary jobs (internships and whatnot). Fortunately, the job I'm at right now is run by a bunch of even-headed people whose IP contract was all acceptable.
even if you arent working on an open source project.. however i can see where some companies would be coming form when they do something like this.. imagine a person working on code at work then coming home and doing the same thing... /. -- that all code shoud be free...
it is unfair to the company of course..
and we cant just assume -- like ppl do in
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
All your code are belong to us!
That should go a long way towards taking care of the problem.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
No reason. }:>
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
National Geographic has come across the some problems with intellectual property. Photos, except for those actually printed remain the property of the Photographer, whereas on a film/video expedition ALL fottage is NAtional Geo's property. (I know there are different issues with film, clip useage, etc.)Is this type of intellectual property agreement common across all creative fields, even if the company never profits from the employees work?
Such a thing is obscene. No amount of money will convince me to sign over every piece of intellectual property (what ever that may be in this context) I generate during the contract term. We are meant to be hiring out our brains, not selling them into bonded labour. What do they expect people to do, turn off our brains when we aren't at work? Crazy.
However, a sysadmin position is a very broad job. Does the 100-line perl script I wrote to move SNMP data into a database (which I did for my own use) count as something relevant to my job? Yes, it very well can.
Any idea how to navigate these invention clauses when you are a jack of all trades?
to read the fine print? You'd think living in a lawyer-happy world make people do that but it appears not. And it's not like these types of contracts are new either. A physics prof of mine got into a debacle with Northwestern U. since they claimed rights to a "discovery" my prof made while doing research there. NW then tried to silence said prof from publishing the discovery which was well within their contractual right. The prof published anyway and was almost put through a nasty lawsuit but things settled down I guess. The prof still bitches about it even though he admits to signing the contract. Read what you sign!!!
Most of the people on PerlMonks know me as Necos. Personally, I think that most would agree that this sucks for all of us that do open source development. tilly has helped out a lot of us at Perlmonks with suggestions and code snippets (where applicable). To lose tilly's insight is not only a loss for Perlmonks users, but for Perl coders and OSS developers everywhere. My best goes out to tilly. I hope that he can somehow get out of this bind.
[RnK]Tessai
For better or worse, it's your life or your purse...
For example, if you were in Texas, you could go here.
I'm sorry, but this is crazy.
Run, don't walk from such contracts.
That's not what I meant.
So what about if you go back to school part time to work on a Master's or PhD. Especially with respect to software developement for your degree, (in my case, software for my PhD). Do they think they own my software and ideas central to the PhD?
At my school (and many others define a PhD this way), PhD work has to be new, original work that adds to the discipline. Almost certainly anything that you do under the PhD banner would be something a company might claim falls under such a contract. Regardless if the work relates to the company's products/goals/ideals, this does not seem right and fair to me.
I am not in this situation, but know others that are. Just wondering...
And my employer (A fortune five company) had no problem with me owning the code that I write on my own time. I can't imagine that any employer would unless they are planning on screwing you.
.com Linux shop they were very adamant about owning all of my code. Guess who is paying me more?
The funny part is that my current employer is very liberal with the licensing on my code and their environment is not very Linux friendly. My former employer was a
;)
Chances are that you're not going to be able to negotiate your contract too well. I would probably end up submitting the code under a false identity, and not let anyone at work know about all the extra stuff going on. Yeah, i know that I'd like to have my real name attached to my code, but sometimes it's the next best option besides taking chances.
Berto
Dude, I think your employer owns your Perlmonks rant, too. I hope they don't change it.
What company Tilly works for? As soon as I find out I will surely boycott that company. This is where the Open Source community needs to stand together and show companies that they cannot get away with this. If we do not use any of this companies products or services and tell our family/friends/co-workers not to either we can really make life miserable for this company. Do your part, help Tilly and boycott this company.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
One thing I'm glad I was doing (though I never had to use it with my employer) is that I wasn't alone working on my (L)GPL project (see sig). That way, even if my company had tried to claim copyright, they would have had a copyright on only my code, which would make the code useless without the other contributions. It sorts of limits the incentive for a company when it knows that it can't gain much in the (potential) conflict.
Another thing that also helped is that since at one point a part of their software linked to my (LGPL) library, making it "illegal" would also have made their own product illegal.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Boiler plate contracts such as this are limited by state laws. I did some research in this area a year or two ago while reviewing my employment contract.
I found that in California, it had been previously upheld in court that anything an employee creates outside of his work environment, without using company resources can not be considered for ownership by the employing organization.
The only other thing that may bite you in the ass is non-compete agreements you may have with your employer.
Courtney Does the Math
" Over the years record companies have tried to put "work for hire" provisions in their contracts, and Mr. Glazier claims that the "work for hire" only "codified" a standard industry practice. But copyright laws didn't identify sound recordings as being eligible to be called "works for hire," so those contracts didn't mean anything."
after they acquired Andover.net. I didn't like it and filed it in the trashcan even though they offered me a $200 bonus to sign it. Nothing happened because of it.
John Casey
Hmm... So when was the last time you broke the speed limit? Jaywalked?
No punishment? No crime.
This is like being a gourmet chef, and one day your employer shows up and demands all of the food in your fridge!
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
company owns the rights to all work produced during the term of employment
Just strike it out, and change it to:
company owns the rights to code written during working hours and in direct furtherance of any tasks assigned by the company
Don't forget to keep a photocopy of the modified contract!
An even better solution: many such contracts have a space for exceptions (e.g., in case you are already bound by the terms of a previous employer's contract). Just put in something like "excluding work on software distributed under licenses (GPL, etc.) that would otherwise conflict with the terms of this contract."
If they object, just ask (with an innocent face) "do you really want to get the company's IP tangled up with the GPL? I think we should keep them seperate, don't you?" Ten gets you one they will shudder and agree to the exclussion.
If they try to say you can't work on open source projects, put the innocent look back on and say "is it really company policy to prohibit employees from doing community service on their own time? I find that rather...unusual."
-- MarkusQ
The employment contract was even more harsh... at least in theory.
Any intellectual property I developed, such as writing a diary, at home in my own time, was their property. To this day I worry that royalties from my autobography Robert Smithson: My Life at The Coalmine (sales to date: zero) will accrue to GS.
BUT (and this is the point of my post, as you guessed there would be) the contract also stated that any work I did in my own time would be mine, so long as I got their permission. And that such permission 'would not reasonably be refused'.
Maybe GS is uncommonly kind (although that seems a little unlikely), but most emplyers demand more the right to be kept informed, than the right to control your every move. If your line manager says (off-contract) that it is 'no problem' that you work on GNU/Emacs for Dreamcast in your evening time (especially if you mention the important befits to your company, like... errr.. not playing Virtua Tennis instead) ten there is very little the company can do about it.
So, just remeber to ask someone who doesn't care, or know the details, about employment contracts and you'll be fine. Just hope they don't read Slahdot...
*r
--- My dad's political betting
now mod me up
We sold our company in December. It was kind
of a mercy buy-out by another, larger, company
that we had a good relationship with.
But on the day of signing I said "hey, I don't
like this part of the non-compete. Can we
change it to just non-compete within this subsector
of the business", and they did.
Plus I limited the IP to things done for
the company on company time or with company
equipment. So don't use that company laptop
for your next great idea.
So just say no. In the long run they will be
impressed with your um- cajones.
-- ac
That's exactly the reason why the FSF is so adamant about getting copyright assignments for the code they accept in their projects, including a release by the employers of the contributors. Otherwise, you have a non-negligible risk of ending up with this kind of problems...
OG.
Next time, you should ask before you plagiarize.
I've worked for several small companies in California whose agreements tried to grab everything they could from me, and if they could have gotten me to "waive" section 2870(a) they would have. Instead, the employment agreements and IP assignments specifically said stuff under 2870(a) wasn't covered. The paragraph that I typed in came verbatim from where it was quoted on one of my old employment agreements that I pulled out when I saw the /. article. Any employer who fools around with that needs to be reported to the labor board.
It's evident on Perl Monks that Tilly has no practical choice but to: stop contributing Open Source, and, this is worse, not to leave his company or face having his work pulled from CPAN. He's being blackmailed -- and can't afford to leave for the sake of his wife. This is outrageous behavior on behalf of his company. Damn that company!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
What if I develop something neat entirely on my own time, prior to my work with the company, and I use that or portions of that code, and even "give credit" to "borrowing" from *my* own GPL'd code. w00t.
If you want to be producing Open Source on your spare time for a year or so, what about taking a non coding job for a while - , like sysadmin/database admin/web page maintainance, or something; as long as it isnt coding.BR>
You'll get a lot more development done at night after work if you haven't already spent all day coding for someone else, and the contract *should* be less restricting.
I'll think of a funny sig later on
For those of us who work hourly work, there is one think called "overtime" which is usually provided for in state law. This means that if my employer wanted to claim my work via contract, I would claim large quantities of overtime... If they claim that they own the work, then the time I put into it was work for hire, right? ;)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This kind of "we own you and everything you do" approach only hurts the employer in the long run. Here are a few reasons why:
1) It pisses off the company's current staff.
When an employer treats you as a piece of property then there's very little incentive to treat the company as anything other than a source of income. Why devote your life to the job when you get no respect back?
2) It hurts the company when it's recruiting.
A lot of jobs are filled by recommendation, word of mouth, etc. If your friend's constantly telling you how badly his employer's screwing him would you apply for a job there?
Or, if you were offered two similar jobs would you take the one that wants to own you a third of the time or the one that wants to own you all of the time?
3) It discourages staff from furthering their knowledge and experience.
Pop quiz: if you were the boss, which would you rather have?
a) coders who care are in it for only the money, who switch off at 5.00pm sharp and spend their evenings playing on a PS2; or
b) coders who live and breathe code, who actively take part in open source development, learning new tricks and techniques in their own time and come to work with fresh ideas and more experience under their belt everyday.
Tough one, huh?
I'm amazed this company has the balls to treat it staff so badly. Let's face it, treating your most valuable employees as little more than street urchins, turning away potentially brilliant hires because they refused to be shackled 24/7 and discouraging your employees from broadening their programming horizons and skills is incredibly short-sighted.
Ultimately, company's that persue such restrictive terms of employment are only shooting themselves in the foot.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Bad me...punish me. Unfortunately, the story was /.ed. But the comment was insightful... Why does everyone have to be such an ass and try to prove /. wrong? It's a web site, you want to test moderation? How about testing how to get a life?
-sk
I work for a large telecommunications company. I won't mention the name, but I'll just say that it's a 6 letter word which starts with "spr" and ends in "int". Anyway, six months after I got the job, they tried to force one of these employee agreements on me. It was filled with language that basically said that they own everything I do, past, present, or future (it said anything related to this company's current or anticipated future business, but it would be all too easy for them to say some invention of mine was an "anticipated future business idea"). I doubt such a blanket statement would be legally enforceable, but I didn't want to deal with the legal headaches.
When I got the form, I wrote back with all the changes I wanted to see in order to protect my rights without adversly affection theirs (hey, I can understand a company wanting to protect themselves, so long as they understand my desire to protect myself too). A couple weeks later, the company's lawyer came down to talk to me, trying to convince me that I was taking the document too literally and that the company would never really use it against me. Of course, if that were true, he would have had no problem changing the document as I asked, but his excuse is that this was the same document that everybody signs.
I took the document and marked it up with the changes I wanted, and added a disclaimer which basically said "my signature on this document is contingent on me being able to own my own work". Of course, I detailed what I defined as "my own work". After making these changes, I sent the document in. About two months later, I received another copy of the form in the mail with a letter saying I had never signed the document, and they wanted me to sign this one. I never did, and they haven't bothered me with it since. If they were to hassle me with it again in the future, I have no doubts I could find a better job elsewhere.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
There is an interesting article in IEEE Spectrum magazine regarding a similar case.
I've seen many of these work-for-hire contracts and this issue was addressed in the contracts. The companies all had a section or addendum to fill out where you could list personal projects. Unless your project somehow overlaps with the job it's not an issue and the company signs off on your projects instantaneously. Projects related to work merely need a little clarification or negotiation.
I suspect most problems are due to employees not reading, not filling out paperwork, not checking with management ahead of time, etc. I've had some pretty lame PHB's sign off on my stuff just by explaining things to them ahead of time.
imagine a person working on code at work then coming home and doing the same thing.
I guess it matters what your interpretation of "the same thing" is. Do you mean "programming"? Do you mean "programming Web applications"? Do you mean "programming Web applications for the oil sector, communicating with G7527 devices"? If someone spends 9-5 contributing for his employer, and then spends 6-11 of sweat and tears on "his big break", then please realize that that is the spirit of innovation, and that's what all societies needs to encourage more: Every big company was founded when someone broke the chains from a restrictive engagement. In an ironic twist, these employers who try to strong-arm their employee's personal projects should realize that most employees bring skills TO work FROM their personal project (i.e. usually people work on wideranging things that they'd never get a chance to in the daily grind, but once they've perfected it they can leverage those skills in the workplace). I'd like retroactive 24-hour a day pay instituted for any organization that feels that it owns its employees. As a sidenote: Organizations that fairly compensate ingenious contributions, product ideas, etc, never seem to have this problem: They realize that their employees are what brings in the paycheque, and if Bob thinks up a $40,000,000 idea while mowing the lawn, well then it might be in their best interest to offer conditions that reward him for it. Instead, most of these companies with unbelievably overpaid upper management, CEOs with golden parachutes (who often sit on dozens of boards at different companies), want to be able to say : YOINK! There, now get back to doing that COBOL code. FUCK THAT.
However, the crux of the matter is this: We live in a capitalist society. Capitalism is an eat and be eaten atmosphere, and it's one where EVERYONE is ALWAYS a free agent : You are always an entrepreneur - No company EVER owns you. This (at least where I live) is not slavery, and no one can conscript you into bondage (well, unless you're into that sort of thing). The fact that anyone would even CONSIDER signing contracts like that (or that they are legally allowable or at all enforceable, or even morally comprehensible), is disturbing. Employers pay an employee for the known work that they contribute on company projects, and they compensate the employee for the work that they contribute: If someone is spending their mental energy on personal projects and doesn't contribute to their employer, then naturally they won't get raises, and they might even get fired : That's the entrepreneurial spirit of a capitalist society. Never would I justify an employee stealing code from work projects (nor do I think anyone else is), or stealing proprietary technologies, but for anyone to claim that the spirit and upward potential of someone is constrained because they have a 9-5 gig disturbs me, and if that's what the idea behind our society is then bring on the revolution. Did I nap through when we warped into the communist regime of the USSR?
is who knows why this company this. Maybe they think they will be able to sell the modules, maybe teh guy that made the decision doesn't like Tilly, maybe they want him to quit. Maybe they didn't really think about it very well.
.com crazy articles were written about some tech employees blowing into for for four or five hours a day and the managers not being able to do anything about it because they couldn't afford to loss that 4 or 5 hours a work a day. The still paid the employee for 40 hours a week but got 20 to 25 hours of work (at best out of them).
I think a bigger trend is the working world is that the recession has made companies feel like they are back in control in employee issues after five years of not being in control. I find more and more companies are trying to squeeze teh employees for more and more because they can and in today's job climate the employees have to take it.
I remember in '99 during the hight of the
Well times have changed and employers get to be the jerks for a while. But it will swing back, in the end this company will get what it deserves.
Hi again!
just a follow up to my contract snippet. In Australia there is a term called Moral Rights of Authorship that are part of the Copyright act.
Normally you have to sign an waiver of all moral rights on employment because they give you VERY wide control of your work.
They were intended for book or film authors preventing from rip offs and so on, but they DO apply for programmers and engineers and so on as well.
If your contract does not contain a waiver for those rights you are most likekly fine and actually have a lot of control.
Maybe there is something like that in the US as well...
manfred
Perhaps I understand the Labor Code incorrectly, but the exceptions stated provide a lot of room with which the employer can work with. In the case of exception (1), for example, if you write software for a very broad scope the company could claim it useful for its own developmental purposes fairly easily.
So, does this guy work for the devil, err, I mean Bill Gates?
Happy coding.
I often thought that if I really wanted to quit and didn't care about a good reference, I'd take my camera to the local zoo and shoot several rolls of, er..., animal droppings, then lay out a book of photos of these, er... products of nature. And, since the company has all IP rights, put them down as the author.
It'd all be worth it when HR got the pre-press of the glossy coffe table book of Products, by Joe's Software, with the big picture of a turd on the cover.
My boss (a lawyer) gave me a boilerplate employment contract, basically claiming rights to everything I thought during my employment. I asked him to change it to include only work done during paid hours for the company, and to exclude any code covered by the GPL. After a 5-minute explanation of the GPL, he was a little worried.
Then I showed him to source to the CGI and DBI Perl modules, and told him that we'd have to extend our timeframe by 6 months while I rewrote all that funcionality. Then he got it, and I've had no trouble.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
HOWEVER if the work you did on your own time was similar to the work you did at your job (i.e. you designed websites for your job and then you design websites on your own time) then they may have a claim. But typically you just need permission from your manager ahead of time ("Can I go hack websites on my own time?" "Yeah sure") to make your work yours again.
When I worked at Microsoft, they explicitly prohibited people from working on open source (this was not in the contract (or at least the one I signed years before), just in an email). The rationale was not to pollute *Microsoft's* code with GPL code that could then result in someone claiming that Microsoft's code needed to be GPLed (i.e. the opposite of what happened in the situation being discussed here).
- adam
They had the same. However, with pending litigation they will be bankrupt soon and I can reap the rewards of my stolen Knowledge Base(tm).
(/end joke)
Beware also any part-time work you do for chains or other works.
Places like Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Best Buy, etc., have strange clauses as well.
I remember Radio Shack's clearly when I worked there for a short time, something regarding that any patents or intellectual property you file during the course of your employment there, up to one full year after you've left there, becomes property of Tandy/Radio Shack, regardless of what it is, or whether you did it on your own time.
Even if you work there only four hours a week, they'll still claim all your patents if you work for a bigger company, and filed the patents for your other work.
Companies like this really only want to extort their employees, not cover their butts.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
In the interests of helping to spare our beloved Monastery further merciless Slashdotting, here is the whole of tilly's post:
This post is somewhat long, so I would like to start by saying that this is very much relevant to PerlMonks even though it is not about Perl or programming. It is also very relevant to CPAN, perl, and the broader open source community. This is about aspects of being an employee which generally get ignored, and really, really, really shouldn't be.
I will talk about New York State's laws, since that is what I know best. However in discussions with legal types it appears that New York's provisions are not unusual, and therefore what I say is applicable in some way to most of the US, and likely in many other countries as well. I should also disclaim at this point that I am not a lawyer, nor is this legal advice. But the general outline of what I am saying has been verified to me by both lawyers, and people who are merely interested in the legal profession. I have also been told that this is bound to become a huge issue for the open source world.
Enough advertising.
In New York State there are three basic classes of employee:
- Hourly employee: If you show
up at work, punch a clock, and are paid overtime, then
you are an hourly employee. Factory workers are commonly
hourly employees. As an hourly employee the company owns
the hours you are at work, and has no other claim on you.
I believe it is uncommon for programmers to be hourly
employees.
- Contract worker: In this case you are working
per defined contracts. The work you do on that contract
is (barring specific contract provisions saying otherwise)
owned by the company that has hired you. They have no
claim on your time or energy when you are not working on
the contract. Many programmers work this way. But if you
are (for instance) hired by a consulting company to work at
clients, then your employment with that consulting company
is not contract work, see the next option.
- Professional employee: This is the rest of us.
Professional employees have employment that is not defined
by a clock or by a contract. In fact under the law their
productive output belongs to their employer, 24x7, 365 days
a year (366 on leap years). It is customary for these terms
to also be spelled out in employment contracts very clearly,
though truth be told most people read these, sign them, and
have never given the contents of those contracts much in the
way of thought.
This brings me to intellectual property law. Intellectual property law in general assigns the rights to intellectual property to the creator of an idea, work, or implementation. That creator gains delimited control of their creation. In theory the reason for this is to encourage potential creators to create new things, and for them to pass into the public domain. Or at least this was the reasoning that Thomas Jefferson used (and he got it from French thought on copyrights), though the reality in this century has not matched theory very well.But who is the creator?
One would think that the creator of a work is the author, the person who actually produces it. But the realities of life are not so simple. What if one person conceives of an idea, and then gets multiple people to implement it? Is it owned by the implementers, or the person who thought it possible and paid for it to be done?
The legal resolution is the doctrine of a work for hire. A work for hire is a work that you produced for someone else, and they own all rights to any potential intellectual property that might arise from that work. (Including, obviously, both copyrights and patents.)
Now what happens if you combine these two legal areas?
The answer is unambiguous both in theory and practice. All work covered under your employment terms belongs to your employer. In the case of professional employees, this is everything. If you go home and write something on the weekend, you do not own it. You might be unaware of this issue and naively put a copyright notice on it, then distribute it. That was your mistake.
Now let me make this personal.
I am a professional employee. I signed a routine employment contract while I was still pretty much of a novice as both a programmer and an employee. As is common, 6 months later I had completely forgotten about the terms of the contract and was blissfully unaware of the laws I live under.
My bad.
Over the course of this job I have slowly become more and more involved in open source work. I write software for fun and release it. I have put code into posts here, released stuff on CPAN, and even contributed a core perl module. All of which I thought I had the right to do, but as it turns out none of which I did. There isn't even a legal issue to contest, I simply didn't know better.
My very bad.
As of today here is the status. This came up from an incidental issue about a month ago. I have been told that if I wish to continue being employed, I cannot post code. If I continue being employed, then I will be admonished for the code I have released so far. If I leave my employment then the decision about what happens with any and all of the code of mine that people here have seen is not mine. (Stupid comment removed.)
I live in NYC. It seems likely that my wife is going to have no option about moving any significant distance for at least a year. I am carefully considering my employment options. I have a likely job prospect near Philadelphia which would allow me to work on open source stuff. That is farther than I want to commute, and the pay cut would be painful, plus it does not resolve the other issues. I have not seriously searched for any potential jobs which are closer.
Now my food for thought for everyone is this. How many more people are in the same position I am, and are not aware of it? How much open source software has been put out there by authors who thought they owned rights that they do not? If you are an employee, are you one of them?
These are, as I have just learned, extremely non-hypothetical questions.
UPDATE
There is, considering the circumstances, only one choice for me to make which is not abysmally moronic. Do not expect to hear much from me in the future.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
I'm not actually under an employment contract
at all. Maybe it's because I'm an at-will
employee, but I'm salaried, and don't recall
signing anything at all stating conditions of
employment. No nondisclosure, no IP stuff,
etc. I *was* hired in a hurry, but it still
amuses me.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
applies to the GOVERNMENT doing XXX. My fucking company (Pharmacy, etc...) requires random drug testing of employees. Or satellite office only has 8 employees. With random screening every month it's likely I'll be tested 2-3 times a year. For christs sake I'm not anti drug testing but 3 times a year for a "Senior Software Architect/Engineer Analyst" is a bit much.
Surely code is a written expression of human thought and therefor should be protected by theUS Constitution? Or does that only count for academic papers and books (sic crypto)?
Surely we all have the right to free expression?
e4 e5
Absurdly restrictive employment contracts have been struck down in the past. There is a reason many contracts have a clause where they say that part of the contract being invalid does not invalidate the rest. It's a hack to cover overly broad and potentially invalid contracts.
Yeah, but I'm not going to list every project I've worked on, not to mention how does this cover projects you work on in the future.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
from:
Article
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Last November, a Congressional aide named Mitch Glazier, with the support of the RIAA, added a "technical amendment" to a bill that defined recorded music as "works for hire" under the 1978 Copyright Act.
He did this after all the hearings on the bill were over. By the time artists found out about the change, it was too late. The bill was on its way to the White House for the president's signature.
That subtle change in copyright law will add billions of dollars to record company bank accounts over the next few years -- billions of dollars that rightfully should have been paid to artists. A "work for hire" is now owned in perpetuity by the record company.
Under the 1978 Copyright Act, artists could reclaim the copyrights on their work after 35 years. If you wrote and recorded "Everybody Hurts," you at least got it back to as a family legacy after 35 years. But now, because of this corrupt little pisher, "Everybody Hurts" never gets returned to your family, and can now be sold to the highest bidder.
Over the years record companies have tried to put "work for hire" provisions in their contracts, and Mr. Glazier claims that the "work for hire" only "codified" a standard industry practice. But copyright laws didn't identify sound recordings as being eligible to be called "works for hire," so those contracts didn't mean anything. Until now.
Writing and recording "Hey Jude" is now the same thing as writing an English textbook, writing standardized tests, translating a novel from one language to another or making a map. These are the types of things addressed in the "work for hire" act. And writing a standardized test is a work for hire. Not making a record.
So an assistant substantially altered a major law when he only had the authority to make spelling corrections. That's not what I learned about how government works in my high school civics class.
Three months later, the RIAA hired Mr. Glazier to become its top lobbyist at a salary that was obviously much greater than the one he had as the spelling corrector guy.
The RIAA tries to argue that this change was necessary because of a provision in the bill that musicians supported. That provision prevents anyone from registering a famous person's name as a Web address without that person's permission. That's great. I own my name, and should be able to do what I want with my name.
But the bill also created an exception that allows a company to take a person's name for a Web address if they create a work for hire. Which means a record company would be allowed to own your Web site when you record your "work for hire" album. Like I said: Sharecropping.
Although I've never met any one at a record company who "believed in the Internet," they've all been trying to cover their asses by securing everyone's digital rights. Not that they know what to do with them. Go to a major label-owned band site. Give me a dollar for every time you see an annoying "under construction" sign. I used to pester Geffen (when it was a label) to do a better job. I was totally ignored for two years, until I got my band name back. The Goo Goo Dolls are struggling to gain control of their domain name from Warner Bros., who claim they own the name because they set up a shitty promotional Web site for the band.
Orrin Hatch, songwriter and Republican senator from Utah, seems to be the only person in Washington with a progressive view of copyright law. One lobbyist says that there's no one in the House with a similar view and that "this would have never happened if Sonny Bono was still alive."
Are going to be scratch one Tilly as soon as the economy improves a bit. And if the guy is good, which I assume he is or he wouldn't be writing core Perl modules, that's going to be a big loss. This is just really dumb on their part. My employer doesn't claim anything that I don't do at work or related to the area the company works in (Sorry, I don't have the exact language handy). I'm an _employee_, not a slave. Yes, my employment is "for hire", and I'm a professional employee, but works done on my own time are NOT "for hire".
If they weren't enough of an invention, they wouldn't be patentable, right?
Grandparent was referring to code, which is copyrighted far more often than it is patented. Under U.S. law, the term "invention" relates to patents, whereas copyrighted things are called "works."
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sounds to me like the company he works for is getting taken to the woodshed by its legal department and/or legal counsel. If company's said management knew better, they would realize that pursuing this is futile. Like Compuserve GIF futile. Frauhofer MP3 futile.
To say nothing about the untold benefits his company has reaped from open source development. If a single TCP/IP packet has flowed into or out of his company's LAN, if Perl is utilized, or if some other technological goody with roots in open source development is used there, then those fargin' iceholes need to step off.
This is just another example of how far behind the technological curve (especially regarding open source software) our legal system and legislative bodies are.
Develop multiple personality disorder. Then name your alter ego your 1337 H4x0r handle, and credit all your GPL'd work to *that* guy. The guy who earns your paychecks can find his name on his Social Security Card and possibly also his birth certificate.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I saw this article and thought, "Great. Another tirade against common sense." I figured there would be /.ers pretending to be lawayers, and angry mobs, but it was refreshing to see that common sense prevailed.
/. people provided good responses here. College kids take note of them. When you're presented a contract, read it and don't be afraid to negotiate amendments to the contract. I have a friend who has succussfuly negotiated one extra day of vacation a year to be used on his birthday or the last working day of the year. Why? Because he can he says. Why the hell not. You're there to negotiate so work your magic. If a company is strict and does not bend, don't neccessarily rule them out. Code under a pen name :)
The common sense that you have the contract before you sign. RTFC and don't be surprised later. Ask questions if the legalese doesn't make sense.
I am not employed at the moment, but back when I had a job, I got a new SF
UID, when I started to work on an important project. Altough the project iteself
never made it big (other OS projects beat us to it.) I have foreseen this possibility.
The other thing is, I code "ill" software. Things no one would ever admit in public
to doing, let alone put on their CV. So, to feed my addiction, I learnt
to live with multiple names.
It really bothers me when I get some kudoses and compliments under my Mr.Hyde title,
and I could never show this to a potential employer. So the cycle continues, depressed->crack.
--
There's more than one way to do it!!!
So everybody start coding to replace those modules.
When I signed my employment contract I specifically exempted GPL software development, as well as several other things. My employer had no problem with that.
Two basic principals to keep in mind:
#1. It has been my experience that most companies steal; it is very difficult for a company to make money ethically, and very few even try. While they may talk a good ethical game you will discover that the employment contract puts lots of constraints on you, and almost none on them.
#2. The only reason someone wants you to sign anything is to use it against you in a court of law and for no other reason. People might say "Oh its just a formality" but don't you believe them: they want a legal weapon to use against you.
At my old company, just hold out signing the contract, for as long as possible.
...etc.. ...etc...
We just kept on saying, oh yeah I forgot, you'll get it later... sorry been really busy right now with work.
Until they say something to the effect:
- we will send you home without pay until you sign this contract.
- don't come in until you sign this contract.
- we will fire you if you don't.
- you cannot work for us anymore until you sign this contract...
-
Of course there are more subtile ways of them saying something to the above effects.
What the intention of this tactic is, is to make them make you sign under duress. Which makes it null and void.
Besure that they say it with witnesses around (hopefully they are all doing the same thing you are, playing the waiting game). Or have them correspond with you via email. And have these emails printed out.
Money cannot buy happiness, but can buy something soo darn close, that you can't really tell the difference
But he/she said EU member states' laws, not EU Law. And I think the point is that even if your company employment policy does NOT claim your IP, the Country's laws might give your employer rights to everything that isn't covered by contract.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
company owns the rights to code written during working hours and in direct furtherance of any tasks assigned by the company
No company, if they actually pay attention, would accept such an alteration. Nor is it fair to the company, I believe. To make it fair and reasonable, "and in direct furtherance" should be changed to "or in direct furtherance". Else, any work you do for your company which is technically "off hours" but is spent on a company task would be yours. Also, any non-company work you do while you're supposed to be working would be yours (i.e. if you do some personal hacking while on the job). Not sure that's fair either, though that's more defensible than the former issue.
This is a crucial issue, however. I fully agree that clauses like this should be in employee contracts. There's no reason a company should own anything you create that's not job related. If you design widgets for a living, but design wingnuts for fun after hours, there's no reason they should own your wingnuts unless such designs are also something you might reasonably be expected to make for your job. I've been down this road and did the right thing, much like the article here describes, and I'm a very happy camper for it.
The fact that anyone would even CONSIDER signing contracts like that (or that they are legally allowable or at all enforceable, or even morally comprehensible), is disturbing.
Three words: Standard Industry Contract. In some professions, all employers' contracts may all have the same reprehensible and non-negotiable terms (non-compete, all your IP are belong to us, etc). The major record labels are among such employers; indies don't count because unlike the major labels, they don't have the money to buy four minutes of expensive ad time on every Clear Channel station in the USA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
When we could boycott Adobe, we can boycott these morons as well. Right? There are many posts that say how to prevent it or how the company is short-sighted, but what about some direct impact. Who is the employer? And why don't we - programmers - organize a little more. Where is the black list of employers that don't treat us well?
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
IANAL, but I remember reading an article in the WSJ about 10 or 12 years ago about the general unenforceability of many "standard" employment contracts.
For instance, the owner of a hair salon in Sandusky, Ohio required hairdressers to sign a non-compete agreement that forbade them from doing business within a specific distance (I think it was 5 or 6 miles) of the owner's salon if they left. The problem was that Sandusky was smaller than the distance specified, so the non-compete essentially forbade former employees from performing their craft in Sandusky. The contract was deemed overly restrictive and thrown out.
It's apparently common for companies to knowingly put unenforceable clauses into standard contracts in order to scare uninformed employees into behaving as if they were enforceable.
A programmer friend of mine (who lives in AZ) has been told by his attorney on numerous occasions not to worry about signing various overly-restrictive employment contracts because the clauses in question were ridiculously unenforceable.
I was once asked to sign a similar IP clause to the one causing so much trouble for Tilly in order to work in a Radio Shack store. I refused to give Radio Shack ownership of any code I wrote on my own time and using my own computer, especially considering I wasn't employed by Radio Shack as a programmer and teh job I would be working was a part-time job.
Tilly's in a much tougher position. New York isn't a "right to work" state, so lots of crap that would be unenforceable in other states is de rigeur in NY. In addition, he is employed as a programmer by his employer.
Unless his employer can be made to see the extremely bad PR effects their actions will have, he's completely screwed.
Courts have struck down such odious provisions of employment agreements before, and will continue to do so ... if programmers have enough balls to take them to court, instead of wimping out and throwing in the towel every time someone threatens to sue them.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
In the society you dream of, it would have been necessary for the king and priest to also be free. The fact that at least one of them needs to be murdered (the priest may have died of natural causes, although the implication is `not') is a demonstration that Mr Abbey's society (and so a man in it) is not free.
Your next problem is that in a conceptually free society, no individual could have any more authority than any other, except that other grant it to him. So if I decide that ripping people's entrails out is a fine thing, and start with you, you have no more authority to decide that this is wrong, than I have that this is right. In theory an impasse, in practice might-makes-right, the stronger individual or team gets to carry out their will.
The missing ingredient is an incorruptible lawmaker with power to enforce. It's ironic that in order to be free, you must be in someone else's power... of course, most people won't settle for this, reason be damned, because the obvious candidate for the seat is God.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Here is my take:
1. We once were sent to a convention. At the convention we were told that we were on duty 24/7. So I asked for 24/7 compensation. They shut up and left me alone after that.
2. I have always marked out, struck through, and changed any documents which a company has given me when they were considering me for hire. I've always signed them, made copies, and keep the copies with me. No one has ever had a problem with this except one company.
As I do not wish to be sued - I'll leave company names out of this: I did not go to work for one company because they said sign the contract or don't work here. I had gone through a headhunter company and the job looked really great. Lots of money, great benefits, etc.... The only problem was that the contract basically said everything I'd ever done belonged to this company. Even things created prior to joining the company belonged to them. I've helped a lot of people and written a lot of code so I was very concerned and even brought it up to both the headhunter as well as the company. When I had finally decided not to accept the contract I let both parties know and I even went over with both of them why I had decided to turn down the offer. The headhunter company became very nasty. Even going so far as to threaten me with a lawsuit if I didn't take the job. I told them I couldn't. The terms were so terrible that I just could not "Sign Zee Papers" (If there are any C&C fans out there.) So then, curiously, I could no longer get a contract with anyone. No contract or perm for a very long time. Only after a year and a half had gone by was I able to get another contract.
So my thing is - there is a very real threat to contractors (and even people looking for permanent positions). Sometimes they blacklist you if you do not sign and there isn't much you can do about it. So what do you do? I was lucky - I had a friend I could live with. But someone else might not be so lucky. Then what? Do you go ahead and say "Sure - take everything I've ever created" like this guy is having to do? I believe there has to be a limit to what a company can claim as theirs. We aren't slaves but we are being treated as such.
I am willing to pay dues to have lawyers
fight for our rights and to reverse the
defacto industry "standard" contracts.
Is there an IT/IS Union in the US I could
join?
This was a real question from a job interview! Q: What area of programming do you consider yourself not to be good in?
Somebody fork the code before it is to late. You can call it walleye instead of carp.
Say what you want about Disney (ABC) corp, but they have a clause about this in their employment agreement that is probably the most liberal I've seen. Do it on your time, and it's yours - I guess it comes from hiring so many freelancers over the years. Too many script writers, producers etc work on their own time, including the BIGWIGS
Someone must know who the company who did this is. Well, who is it?
does that mean his company owns tilly's posting on /.? damn lawyers
perlgolf: the only place where shorter is better
Netcraft reports that the slashdot crowd has been catching up with its
reading in law, due to a sudden geek interest in the judicial system.
The ubiquitous IANAL acronym has fallen off the pages of +2 or more posts,
and is being replaced by IAALCBBB (I Am A Lawyer, Certified By Brain Bench.)
--
I recently signed on with a particular high profile company I'm sure a few of you are familiar with (it was instrumental in the recent Windows trademark ruling, for example). The contract, of course, had a work-for-hire clause. They also included a section from California state law (other states may have similar restrictions) saying that any inventions can only be claimed by the employer if
A. The invention directly relates at time of conception to the employer's business,
or
B. The invention was created at least partially using company equipment.
The law also states that any contract may not override the law.
Check your state's employment and work-for-hire laws (if you work in a different state than the company, usually the laws of the company's state apply). Hopefully this helps people.
Any opinions or ideas expressed herein are solely my own.
A solution to the problem with music today
Before you sign any contract, read it first, and make sure that you agree with the terms and conditions, including any terms and conditions that may affect you in the future.
Same as any other contract.
I'm sure there's an amazing twist to this story that is different since it relates to employee contracts rather than other types of contracts. But as far as I can tell, when push comes to shove, either party of a contract might possibly use (or exploit) the contract to serve their best interests, whatever that may be.
Read carefully. And know what you're signing.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
This sort of thing falls under the area of noncompete clauses, I believe. Should have noted in my previous message that noncompetes are largely unenforcible in many if not most US states. The theory is that your employer is not allowed to restrict your livelihood by keeping you from applying your expertise to make a living. If you designed widgets for company A, then went to company B to also design widgets, they can't stop you. The only time company A can put the screws to you is if you try to make use of trade secrets or patents owned by them while you're working for company B. The main point is, employee contracts cannot be used to restrict your right to apply your work skills freely, but intellectual property laws can. Of course, those generally apply to anybody, regardless of employment history.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but preceding message based on my lawyer's opinion.
They didn't hire Zapdos. He only comes out on nights and weekends.
They will never find out who I am without violation of several privacy laws.
Get a free ipod.
You can only do so if you are independently wealthy. - Billie Holiday
Damn depressing.
I am in this situation. To date I have done little regarding GPL code (some though), but do work on projects that further my own interests. Some of these have potential, others are just for fun.
The only paperwork related to my employment was the standard proof of eligibility documents that are part of any basic employment process. So there are no contracts at all.
Until I read this, I assumed that there was nothing to worry about. Since the whole issue is undefined, can that be twisted around to my disadvantage? Should I worry or am I lucky?
Blogging because I can...
For example, the Bern convention states:
Article 6 (bis)
(1) Independently of the author's copyright, and even after
transfer of the said copyright, the author shall have the right
to claim authorship of the work, as well as the right to object
to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of the said
work which would be prejudicial to his honour or reputation.
So, they can take away your copyright, but they can't do with it as they please. And if these grim goons follow through with their threath, leave them this paragraph as a parting gift. Maybe they find out that the easiest way out is to give the code back to the community.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
Nobody in the Perl community is going to pay *money* for regular expression gizmos. They would rather roll their own or hunt around in a code library.
There is almost no chance in heck that the company is gonna make money off of such.
So, *why* are they being so hard-ess about it?
Table-ized A.I.
IANAL, but...
Why not conceive of some weird scheme - I am sure
those that are lawyers here would refine it -
that would legally screw them back? Like this:
No agreement I've seen prohibits you from
owning a corporation or a part of it (duh!).
Sign up your grandmother to work for the corp,
giving full rights to her work to the corp,
make yourself the sole shareholder, bingo!
Considered harmful.
This has nothing to do with the doctrine of promissory estoppel. As the name implies, promissory estoppel requires a _promise_. Silence is not the same as a promise. Only under limited circumanstances will a court hold that failure to enforce a right amounts to a total waiver of that right. The scenario you pose is not such a circumstance.
Sorry for not being clear. Many times a direct manager will make remarks indicating that outside work (especially open source work) is perfectly OK. They do this to keep up morale and they know that professional involvment like this is a good thing. Thus, the manager will make an unwritten policy (via private talks in person) that is directly against the work-for-hire agreement. Then, when things go sour, and upper management finds out, or the lawyers/venture capitalist get into the picture the story changes. The middle manager lies about their promise...
I am not a lawyer, but this is *exactly* what promisorry estoppel is all about. The employer (through middle manger) makes a un-written promise, the employee does work (or continues to do work) based on this promise, and then the employer (upper managment, lawyers, etc) go back on the promise. In this case, it is unfair for the employer to take back their part of the deal... even if it was unwritten. The consideration for the promise could be extra overtime or staying with the company or even doing the open source work with the company's email address.
Since no middle manager is going to admit to making the verbal promise (or it's their job) the employee is left hanging. A resonable judge will understand this situation and use the facts as a guide: (a) the manager knew that the employee was doing open source work; (b) the manager didn't do anything in writing to confront the employee about this fact (turns a blind eye). If these are the facts, then I'd say the employee has a good claim that verbal statements were made in private.
As for Silence, this is _exactly_ what the doctine is all about, no? If the agreement was verbal and both parties agreed that there was an agremment you don't need this doctrine, do you? The doctine is for verbal agreements which one party claims didn't happen. Then the judge has to figure out if it is resonable to assume that the verbal agreement did actually occur.
But then again, I'm not a lawyer... perhaps you are. For other info on Promissory Estopple, see Google, in particular Bus477 notes which say:
Promissory estoppel
A doctrine in which a non contractual promise may be made enforceable to avoid an injustice. Acceptable alternative ways of describing promissory estoppel are:
* A doctrine which arises when injustice can be avoided only by enforcement of a non enforceable promise.
* Promissory estoppel is used where, although there may not otherwise be a enforceable contract, because one party has relied on the promise of the other, it would be unfair not to enforce the agreement.
* Promissory estoppel is used to enforce charitable gift pledges where the charity relies on them.
As for the "revolutionary ideas on NFA's", I would suggest reading up on the last two decades of research in the field. No, a computer science textbook won't even scratch the surface. Optimizing different aspects of finite automata has a lot of different applications, and there has been an enormous amount of work on it.
I've worked for two .coms (both now folded...or trying to) and the first one went round and round with the devs on the IP thing. We refused until I finally brought in sample wording that stated "if it touches your resources (time, hardware, photocopier, ...) it's yours; if it doesn't it's mine." Basically if you're stupid enough to work on your project on the companies dime, it's theirs. That's fine, as I don't count myself stupid. :-)
... if they win ... you know, I lost, I have to pay the piper. But it didn't say anything about the company losing....the way I read it, I'd have to pay even if the company lost. So, I could win the court case, but have to pay *their* lawyers? They could press frivioulous case after case and bankrupt me? No. That clause went away.
:-)
The next company I challenged the contract (after signing...doh) and had the VP of Finance say "oh shit, I signed this, maybe I should fire my lawyers and have you read it". The part in question said "the company can sue you and you have to pay court costs". Which is fine
The trick with contracts is to read them with the 'worst case scenario' hat on. How bad could you be screwed if every clause, unmentioned hanging phrase was used against you or effectively ignored? It's like looking for off-by-one loop errors.
Anyway, I've had two employers not challenge reasonable corrections to the agreement.
As an aside, I'm terribly curious what happens if the severability clause ("if any part of this contract is invalid, the rest is still good to go") is invalidated.
I was talking, not thinking. -D. Franz
Now finding more subtle forms of pressure might be a good idea...
Your Servant, B. Baggins
A company does not own anything developed without its resources and not on its time. This would have killed most startups.
Unless this is clarified elsewhere in the contract, the word work is way too vague to be used in this clause. Suppose I am a programmer who built a tree house for my kids in the back yard. Does it belong to my employer? Of course not. If I write a letter to my congressman does it become illegal to mail it without my company's permission to publish their works? Does it change anything if I professionally write letters for my employer? Ok, maybe those were silly exmaples. What if I were an assembly programmer and used MIPS at work, but then programmed some assembly at home for x86? Not only irrelevent but not even usable for anything the company does. Or I write windows drivers at work, but write CGIs at home? What if both the drivers and CGIs were in C? Suppose I wrote drivers for video cards professionally, but wrote sound card drivers as a hobby? Without clarification, its really unclear where the line is. The tree house would be just as much a work as the sound card drivers. Get a good lawyer and I'm sure you could fight it. You'd still lose your job, but you'd keep your works. As a sidenote, he says that if he continues to work there they will let his old code go. Are they making hime renew his contract to those new terms, or does the employer get to take back the code in N years when he finally retires? How long does he have to stay?
There seems to be a mighty fine line between "licenses" and "contracts" nowadays isn't there? Such as the shrinkwrap licenses given with software...How would one differentiate between a contract and a license? Seems as if licenses are getting ever more constrictive, such as the slashdot articles that were posted about them before.
And if a license and contract were basically treated the same, wouldn't you be able to negotiate the license with the creator? and if not, wouldn't the fact that it's not negotiable have some effect on the validity of the license when counting in the fact that a person purchased that software?
I have seen this happen to people I know. The standard contract has these provisions. When people ask about them the company says they're just protecting themselves and not to worry about it. Yet they are given the legal authority to hold it against you and sometimes do.
For almost every problem I've seen engineers face, someone says, "Well you should have negotiated that with your contract". Well, I know a lot of engineers and the number I know who work full-time and have intellectual property or overtime issues negotiated in their initial employment agreement I can count on my hand. The reality is, if they're handing you something to sign from their lawyer's boilerplate, instead of vice versa, they have the upper hand.
Most professions have professional organizations that look out for their interests, lawyers have the ABA, doctor's have the AMA. Who looks out for IT workers? There are some ancient associations which are more-or-less owned by the industry employers (IEEE, ACM). The professional associations that truly look out for the modern IT workforce - the Programmer's Guild, Washtech and whatnot, are new, small organizations. They do not have the history and well-funded organization of the ITAA, the IT employers association. The ITAA has not only rammed through H1-B legislation but legislation which overturned FLSA so that computer workers don't have to be paid overtime. Section 1706 was lobbied into the IRS tax code to drive independent consultants into body shops. Because the professional organizations are still small, most engineers don't even know this, and know the ITAA is attacking their livelihood down in Washington.
What do most engineers say? Well, they always think they're the smart, hard-working ones who are unaffected by the laws of supply and demand. In some ways, they are a bit of the engineer stereotype, putting their personal self-worth into how "skilled" they are, and think being skilled is a panacea for everything. Luckily for them, this requires no backbone as the boss has no problems with engineers spending what spare time they have improving their skills. Unfortunately, laziness is endemic in the profession and a few engineers will have to deal with these issues, defending against the ITAA's attacks on the profession while a lot of other people lazily sit around and criticize them. Hopefully there will be enough counter-force, I'm not too optimistic however. I think in 15-20 years there will be a lot of carpal-tunnel afflicted (another bill the ITAA killed) guys who have spent the last 20 years working 60 hour weeks, oncall 24/7, and who are burned out, having problems with their families who they don't spend time with and are over-the-hill and less and less employable. I see this because this is what I see now with a large percentage of 40+ programmers today. Luckily everyone I meet thinks they're a unique super-genius who is too smart for all of this, lucky them. We're so smart we don't have to organize like doctors and lawyers do, so we don't even need an organization warning us about the ITAA like the Programmer's Guild and CESO and Washtech do. I'm afraid as time goes by, I am becoming more concerned about the thick headedness of American programmers and that the ITAA will succeed in making everyone a low scale wage slave, I thought this recession and widespread wage freezing, cutting, long hours of unpaid overtime, 24/7 oncall, unemployment and so forth would do it. I'm actually planning a professional exit strategy while I'm still in my 20's as being an American programmer 15-20 years from now looks like a bad deal, I'll be fighting the good fight 2-3 more years however hoping things will start looking like they might turn around until then though.
Anyhow, here is my web page on this:
http://www.geocities.com/oncallguild
The Constitution primarily protects you from government not really individuals or companies. Freedom of speech means you can say things that anger/embarrass government, not your employer. Ex. A reporter can write a story that embarrasses government and he can't be touched, but if he writes a story that embarrasses his employer, or someone his employer likes more than him (an advertiser), the employer can stop the story. If the reporter speaks about such things publicly he can probably be fired.
Under the "We own your life 24/7/365 contract" that most people sign - even these Slashdot postings belong to your employer - since any creative work you do belongs to them. This means that they can censor what you have to say here.
This is - of course - manifestly wrong. The reason that companies get away with this sort of thing is horrendous case law; beat up somebody in court who doesn't have the financial resources to fight you and you have established a precedent to use against everyone.
"In fact under the law their productive output belongs to their employer, 24x7, 365 days a year (366 on leap years)"
I do not get it. Thats the definition of slavery. Contract or what not, you can not sign away your human rights.
Usually all the work you do using your employer equipment becomes property of your employer. So far it has always been like this, unless explicitly decided -with- your company. We provided bugfixes and add-ons to opensource projects where I used to work before, but such contributions always required approval from the management. Personally I think it's quite fair and that is quite legitimate.
Interesting, but I don't buy it. Why? [Disclaimer: I'm from the UK so my US history is a little poor - but I do make the effort ;-)] Wasn't it Tom Paine who said something like the one of the governments tasks should be to stop individuals and companies pressing unnecisary restrictiona on individuals? I thought that [a bit later] a big part of the Civil War was about stopping people doing that.
;-) and slavery is an extreme example, but then these are less extreme times.
I think the only piece of moral high ground his employer has is that he signed a contract of his own free will. Which rules out most of my above arguement... Oh well
e4 e5
dh003i checking in:
Release the code anonymously, if your worried about nazi employers. Release it stating that the author's anonymous, and providing some way by which the author can identify he in fact is the true author later on. When you feel the cost is clear, claim you wrote it.
For this particular prommer, I suggest he start doing that. Release the code anonymously.
As for the code already released under the GPL, that's GPL'ed permanently for everyone (though for the company, its effectively under public-domain). The company can't stop it from being distributed, and can't stop others from redistributing. When WE download a GPL'ed code, there's an implicit understanding on OUR part that we have the freedom to redistribute according to the terms of the license; irrelevant of anything else, we have the right to demand our side of the legal bargain.
Even if the company can somehow get a ruling prohibiting others from distributing it under GPL, that won't stop them from doing it. One, such a order would have to be federal. A court in one state can't have jurisdiction over the other states. Only a Federal Court can. Two, such an order would be unenforcible. Proof? Despite us constantly complaining about the nazis who decided the DeCSS case, DeCSS' distribution hasn't been halted since the judge ordered its distribution stopped. In fact, its increased.
Now, here's something this guy can do. Claim he isn't the author of the programs. He didn't write the programs. How can the company prove that he did? If he wrote these things out of work, there's no way the company can prove he's the author. He simply wipes the files, and there's no proof.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Yes, yes .. Slashdot is not the place for legal advise. But I thought I'd ask for your experiences nonetheless.
I'll be graduating soon and have considered working for a company (developing software) which does work for the government. Some of that work may be classified.
Clearly, I would not incorporate anything classififed into my independant software projects. However, what is to keep them from attempting to sneak in the backdoor, claiming that I did?
Something like, "You have a security clearance. And your work in the office is classified. Your work outside the office is somewhat related. Thus, even though it contains no secrets or proprietary technology, it is also classified. Sorry, you can no longer do anything useful with your property."
Any one have to deal with something like this? What should I look out for in employment contracts in this respect?
I was offered a job by one of the "big" unix computer systems companies in Silicon Valley. Their intellectual property clause was a horrible blanket statment. I refused to sign it as I was working on some stuff of my own as a hobby. They said "We didn't think you'd sign but be thought we'd it on you anyway"!!! I got a lawyer to rewrite their paragraph (it came out to 10 pages long) and the company lawyers took 2 months to ok it but it the end they realised it was all above board.
So they were happy with that. But a few months later when I was approach by a national TV network to do an interview about my software I checked with my boss about it and word came down the line that if I said anything I'd get fired [shrug] Can't win them all but I guess that was reasonable as my software competed with a product my employer was working on internally (which was one main reason they employed me in the first place, because of my specialist knowledge).
Live and learn.
pithy comment
I unfortunately discovered all too late a clause in my contract that no dispute between my employer and I could be handled by anything other than arbitration. I had to learn this just as I tried to sue them over the month of back pay they owed me...
Lesson learned, I guess. Heads up.
Is there a list of friendly (or unfriendly) employers relevant to open source development? If not... we need one. We can also start a "blacklist" for companies that don't like open source development. This will help to fix employment contracts, no? Perhaps OSI should maintain this list?
Yeah, but I'm not going to list every project I've worked on, not to mention how does this cover projects you work on in the future
I've only had to list things in general terms, for example at a telecommunications company "software development tools - compilers, assemblers, debuggers, etc." was sufficient for the PHB that my immediate supervisor answered to. I was hired to work on routers/switches.
As for the future, the lists are not static, they can grow. After a couple of years on the job above a friend wanted some help porting an educational package from one OS to another. The PHB added "K-12 educational software" to my list.
Everyone talks about their rights, what about their responsibilities? It's an employee's responsibility to fill out the friggin form, it's not hard, and most companies are reasonable.
I've heared that Microsoft has been lobbying their "Partners" to not support employees doing open source development work. Perhaps this is the reason for the about-face by Tilly's employer.
There might be a seed of good news here: if his work was based on other GPL work (even incorporating others' bugfixes), then his company gains little or nothing from "owning" the code. They can use it internally as much as they want, but if they try to license it to others (and thus profit from it), they will be required to license it to them under the GPL. But, it appears that their motivations in this affair are not for monetary gain, but rather they are pulling a management discipline trick. Maybe they feel like he was "moonlighting" and making him less productive (who can productively write code 8 hours a day, and then write code another 4 hours a night?), or his involvement with open source projects was actually cutting into his work productivity (email correspondence, etc.), or maybe he is only putting in 40 hours a week while his fellow employees are putting in 60 hours. I think they are probably using this as a strong-arm tactic make him behave and put in more time at work.
I resigned over this very issue. I submitted two essays to the Wipout competition on the matter: The Intellectual Slave, and Current Thoughts on Intellectual Property. The first is the more relevant of the two: the only detail that the second adds is the fact that I did resign.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I've always had a feeling that's the case, and when I read your comment, it made me think that there should be a law that basically invalidates an entire contract if it has two many unenforceable clauses in it. The idea is to prevent this sort of abuse that comes from trying to "slip in" clauses that many employees would not realize are not legal.
After I thought of that, I remember the agreement that I, just yesterday, had to re-sign (after the subsidiary came under closer control of the parent company), and there was a clause saying that if any clause is deemed unenforceable, the rest of the contract is still valid. Which makes me think that perhaps, my idea had occurred to others.
On a side note, I wonder, am I violating any part of the confidentiality agreement by discussing the confidentiality agreement? First rule of work club is, don't talk about work club.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
They want to look good now, get as much money as they can before they retire, and then leave.
I inserted a clause in my contract that states specifically that my employer makes "no claim of ownership of interest in any intellectual property, including inventions, patents, papers, articles, books, documentation, tools, techniques, specific applications and software developed, created, or enhanced" by myself outside of the work I do for them.
They had no problem with this.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
All your code are belong to us!!!
More seriously, though, I'm certainly going to be checking my employment contract more carefully whenever I get my next job.
- Chris
It is well worth the read to check out http://www.unixguru.com. Apparently similar ownership can be applied to anything you think about while working for a company, nevermind produce. Any more stories like this?
Your entire post regarding the situation where the manager made either an explicit or implicit promise is correct. The result would be same in the other situation you describe-i.e. where the manager lies. However, the situation you describe is not silence. Rather, that's just one person lying. The judge/jury is just deciding that the promise was made, but someone was lying when they denied that they made a promise.
Silence falls under equitable estoppel. This is a related but different doctrine than promissory estoppel. The requirements for equitable estoppel are quite strict, and generally require that any silence be misleading. For example, if a manager knows about misconduct, knows that it is a breach of an agreement, and turns a blind eye to it without a word to the employee, it may or may not be misleading. It definitely would be silence, and definitely would not be a promise to the employee. Depending on the circumstances, it may or may not be misleading and a court may or may not enforce the agreement.
BTW, I am a lawyer who deals with IP/employement issues. Don't take this to mean I think the quoted contract would be upheld. It seems a little broad to me and most courts would be skeptical of something that broad. (And this is not legal advice blah, blah, blah.)
...with a friend on AIM, this is what he had to say about it:
Y'know, if my employer tries to get me to sign into one of those contracts that says, "We own everything you do, even if it's nothing to do with the company, doesn't use anything with company resources, or isn't even intended for the company," I'm just going to tell them, "I refuse to cheat on my wife (or girlfriend)." And if they say, "What do you mean?" I'll tell them, "I'm already screwing my wife (girlfriend), I'm not going to be screwed by you."
I think that just sums it up perfectly.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
The first ammendment to the U.S. Constitution only restricts government: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".
Slavery was made illegal by the fourteenth ammendment, again only government is restricted: "Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
IANAL but I believe individuals and companies are not addressed because once a slave was made a citizen then individuals and companies could be procecuted under normal criminal law, i.e. murder, assault, robbery, etc.
Like everyone else on /., IANAL, but here's how it *should* be:
:)
;)
The law of intellectual property ownership is much like the GPL -- if any GPL'd software is used in some other software, the derivative software must be open-sourced as well - hence the "viral" nature of the GPL. The law is similar in that if you use any tools, time, money, or trade secrets of your employer, then your creation (derived from property they own) becomes theirs -- this too, is a viral agreement.
So, the solutions here are:
1) Use a different name to credit your work to (and thus any possibility that you could benefit from the software later is destroyed; you can't just walk into a school or company and say "oh yeah, you know that nifty super-anonymous, crypto-laden, P2P software that 1337-H4x0r wrote? That was me!!"
2) and/or use only your own equipment, on your own time, outside of company property and without allowing ideas from within your day-job to permeate into your OSS work.
Sucks, but remember that companies *do* have some rights -- but they do NOT hold the right to all your thoughts outside the workplace.
And if they do, I want back my rights to think about and communicate all the hot women I *should've* dated, but didn't...
You are not their slave (not yet). You are not one of millions of cattle. You are (unless you're reading this outside the U.S.) a citizen of a supposedly-free country, with all the rights that go along with that citizenship!
There is, considering the circumstances, only one choice for me to make which is not abysmally moronic. Do not expect to hear much from me in the future.
That should involve sending resumes out as fast as he can, taking extended lunch breaks, sick days and vacation until he lands another job. His company has jerked everyone around and deserves no better for themselves. A whole module? That took time and people at his job knew what he was doing. So they let him do it, let others link into it, then sprung this kind of shit? That's bad faith, NOT HIS BAD. Is there other people's work in that module? Does they company expect to extract money from every distro out there that ever rolled it up? Shit on them, they have acted in bad faith to all and deserve to be lied to and ignored.
Legal is not always moral. Never work for or with people who are not moral. Working with people who are out to screw others really is moronic.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
the apples that you grew on the tree in your back yard; clearly this required some work, and should fall under the non-compete clause. If these clauses are not upheld in our courts, Goldman Sachs may wind up as the next Enron, undermined by renegade fruit farming employees.
Nah, you don't have to bother. If you sign it the law already assumes you've read it, so you save yourself all that effort reading. Remember if something is difficult to do, it's not worth doing.
Posting anonymously because I'm a lawyer
If you want to innovate and reap the full rewards of your work, build your own company. No matter how friendly or wonderful the working relationship with employer may be, unless you have equity or a level of ownership, you've got nothing.
Don't believe the common wisdom "It won't hold up in court", because it doesn't matter. You'll still get the lovely threatening letters that will require you to retain an attorney. Sure, when you get to court, you may score some points, but you'll quickly find yourself burning through precious resources and/or spending money you don't have. Typically, even absurd agreements aren't tossed out, they just get reduced (eg. one-year clause turning into 6 months).
Be aware of the state laws that apply to the agreement, each state treats these agreements differently. Depending upon where you live, you may find that an employer cannot have you sign an agreement without some level of compensation, especially after you've already begun work. Remember, anything you sign places you in a convenant with your employer. You might get exposed to creative new uses for a document you signed that you thought was innocent.
Lastly, be careful when you're putting your agreement issues in writing. Some states allow this to be interpreted as you "quitting" your job. A friendly negotiation can quickly turn into you out on the street -- w/o unemployment. Look at curiously timed requests like these with a jaundice eye.
For those reading these posts, consult an attorney. Logic doesn't necessarily apply to these issues. You'll quickly discover information in your head may not even belong to you.
IANAL yet... seems like a better gig than this technology worker crap.
Interesting, but who's law are the companies governed by? The State's law and Fedral law. Therefore are the company working within State law and therefore is the State reponsible? If you see my point ;-) are the State enforcing by proxy by setting the boundaries (or goal posts as we say on this side of the Atlantic) of the law itself and allowing companies to conduct themselves in such a way? If they make the law or have influence over the justice system.
;-).
Can a company be considered wrong when they operate within the laws of the land but against the standard set for government?
I actually agree with you 100% and don't think that this thing is a big deal, but I also think it is complicated
e4 e5
If you reasonably believed that the vendor had legitimate title then thats enough.
Especially as the release of the code under the GPL doesn't reduce the rights of the company to the code in their backup tapes.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
does "company time" include paid sick and vacation days?
if I wake up with an illness that requires medication that prevents me from going to work (i.e. "do not drive" or "may cause you to spend 8/9 hours on the toilet"), can projects of my own that I work on while I am indisposed in a professional capacity be claimed?
-Lx?
I can't help but think of the positive side of this... ;) /PSEUDO-SARCASM >
< PSEUDO-SARCASM >
I imagine Mr. and Mrs. Tilly will be spending alot more quality time together, since now Mr. Tilly will only be coding from 8am to 5pm-ish.
No more late nights at home with Mr. Tilly staying up coding away for the man...
He ought to actually be more productive too, since he isn't spending all this extra time thinking about 'work stuff'...and learning more....and getting help from other people....his mind ought to be extremely fresh now that it will only think about Perl during specific work hours
<
Heck, I bet he'll even have time to pick up a cool hobby like Sky diving or motocross riding.
the later being my favorite, of course....just got a CRF450R...w00t!
reik
Microsoft should have a policy against employees writing open source code. In fact, Microsoft should prohibit employees from writing Mac software (except the Mac BU), Unix software, Be Software, Palm software, etc.
Microsoft shouldn't pay people that use their spare time to help their competitors... Geeze...
Alex
I know when I switched jobs, I just got the legal dept to draft a document which listed projects that I worked on at home were exempt from belonging to my employer since they were in no way related to the stuff I do at work.
I work for a small network services company. When I was hired there was no similar clause in my contract.
To secure funding, a VC required the company to get such an agreement. This thing had language to the affect of, "we own the rights to any product or idea that you produce while employed here". No one would sign this, not even the CIO.
So, they changed it - we got an email from the CFO a few days later profusely apologizing. The new agreement said "we own the right to any product or idea that you produce while employed here that directly relates to our business". Not bulletproof, but good enough for me.
Point being, if it's unreasonable, object. Especially if it's an agreement produced after you signed your original contract.
Glenn
Several years ago when I was hired by Radio Shack and they made me sign one of those agreements. It stated in my hiring agreement that I was forbidden in to write programs on company time (which is understandable) and in my off-work spare time (which is ridiculous). And this was not for some programming or IT position, it was for the job of sales clerk! There I was making $6 an hour selling batteries and connectors to people, doing nothing related to programming, and here they are forbidding me to program on my own spare time and claiming all rights to the program if I dared to. Not that it stopped me--Tandy corporation is the unknowing owner of the world's crappiest mac screen saver.
I can see some situation in the future where even fast food joints will claim an employee's spare time intellectual property. I can just see some poor bastard who in his spare time works on a game he hopes to eventually sell for zillions of dollars getting it taken away because of it's relevance to his sideline job as "fry technician" at McDonalds.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I say that this Tilly fellow take a fine work of art (e.g. usless 5k line version of foo or hello world), print it, wipe his ass with it and then turn it in for extra credit. Name it something like "I own you because I read your email" to top it all off.
Blarf.
It would appear to me that physical inventions are reasonably well protected. If you create something on your own time that directly relates to your employers business you should be putting those creative energies into your job. If you create something with nothing to do with your employers business then it is (or at least should be) yours.
Software is trickier. If you work for a software company it can be difficult to distinguish what is part of their business and what isn't. If you are truly concerned about your employer absconding with your code just make sure that you always starts with some GPLed code and modify it. The modification doesn't even really need to follow the same functionality as the original. The worst case scenario under this scenario is that your employer could claim rights to your changes but could not claim the entire codebase (this rationale breaks down somewhat depending on how much of the code you modify).
Now I am not a lawyer and it is rather late at night so there are probably tons of wholes in this idea, but what the heck, it sounds good now.
Doesn't the plaintiff have to prove their case?
I.e. if the employee can't prove it wasn't using company resources/time, but the company can't prove it was - does the company win the lawsuit and the employee lose? If so the USA has totally become fascist. Just like the Taliban.
Even in civil cases, the plaintiff usually needs a preponderance of the evidence. (*)
(*) Patents seem to be treated differently. If the challenge is against the validity of a patent in an infringement action - the defendant has the burden of proof (this may be due to the fact that the gov't itself grants the patent and that is prima facie evidence of its validity).
Any lawyers care to comment?
Of course, even outside of legal issues (which are expensive to fight and extremely expensive if you lose and are assessed monetary damages!) they can always fire and blacklist you.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
And if the employee doesn't have the copyright any assignment of copyright that he or she makes is invalid.
On the other hand, if an employee gets a statement from the employer stating the employee owns his or her own work on the project, the copyright assignment is superflous.
Ask a lawyer for legal advice.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
My experience has been that employers will not mention the employment contract until after you've accepted the position. Great, I've quit my previous job and now you demand I sign your contract. Great bargaining position. If you don't hear about an employment contract when you're offered a position, ask to see it. Confirm that you can get the changes you need before you accept (and before you quit your current job, if you have one). When I got my current job, I did just this, and it may end up saving me the trouble in the long run.
Also, get something in writing before you accept the job. Getting your contract changed is probably unusual for your company and very likely to disappear in the beauroracy. If you don't push it, it will likely get forgotten. While the change is languishing in the beaurocracy, a change of management or ownership may change what they're willing to change.
hours work. I signed such a contract a few years back, and went to the legal department letting them know I built an AD&D util for the palm. I reminded them that the letter of our contract made it sound like they must be mentioned in the license, and asked if that is what they really intended. If it was, I was going to need the license copy for my Devil and Demon Generator. You can get them to amend things later ;)
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I don't think he even understands the real difference between an NFA and a DFA. You can convert any NFA to a minimal DFA and that's how it should be done. That is the fastest possible strategy, and... I'm surprised none of you karma whores have been able to shoot this one down.
Can't even find this basic fact on Google!!?!?!
Perl people... Soooo far from theory.
--exa--
I ran into this in my company at the time of our acquisition. Here they make you sign this same contract yearly. There is a page that says previous work that is excluded from the company. You fill this out with what projects you may work on for the year. This is then signed by you the employee and your employer. So then you've gotten your projects excluded. You HAVE to go through this extra paper work. Our M&A Lawyer said this was all SOP. It's dumb ass, but it has to be done.
I'm just a student at high school and I decided to try my luck working at Radio Shack. To my surprise when I was signing forms and of the such there was that clause that all my work, even in my free time, was thiers. I was quite shocked that even Radio Shack had such a clause, esp. since I code GPL stuff in my free time.
I signed it anyways because it included the California law stating that the stuff I write completly on my own time is mine. Oh well.
A lot of people have mentioned great success in altering the employment contract given to you and then signing it.
I'll second that, plus tell you a little amusing story.
I was working at a company that decided about 6 months after I started to give us one of these very draconian employment contracts.
First, I totally ignored it. While all my coworkers dutifully signed and returned as requested, I did nothing.
About four months later (!) the HR drone contacted me and said they couldn't find my copy. Fine, please send me another.
About one month later, the HR drone contacted me again to say I hadn't returned the copy. I said: "Right, What about sections 1, 7, 9, 32 34, 35, and 37? Can you tell me the ramifications of those?"
About two weeks later, I had my answers. So I said I had sent my copy off to a lawyer.
Another two months later, I quit.
Right, but it doesn't end there.
So I signed on to another company, and they were smarter. Part of the sign-on package was this draconian employment contract. But it has a sheet where you can list things you've done prior to the job.
I filled that entire sheet and two more with literally thousands of items including such gems as "C program for taking input, doing logic, and producing output." Believe me, I was comprehensive. The HR drone took one look at it, signed it, copied it, and gave me my copy.
Greeeeat.
I've generally followed this line of action since everything I do is a work in progress, then all outside-of-hours work I do on an existing project (and I have many in my CVS repository) is prior work and covered under that big sheet I filled out.
And yes, I'd be willing to back this up in a court of law.
Good luck, people. Remember, though, the best way is just to change the language of the contract. HR drones aren't known for their tenacity. They are usually "yes (wo)men" and aren't used to being hard-nosed about anything.
fifth sigma, inc.
If your employer wants to screw you over, they could probably track down your handle and the code released under that name, but they cannot easily pull your published GPL'd code until they get some solid proof of your authorship.
If any code you write belongs to the company then why don't you write a Windows virus/worm. Then let the company claim ownership of it. Possibly even GPL the virus. It would be interesting if this happened.
If you are not prepared to go that far, write a program with some errors/security holes (buffer overflows, etc...) If the compant asks about it, tell the company that it is something you wrote in your own time and not to use it.
I got ought my trusty black marker and absolutely tore into the thing. ANd then I sent it in. And when the phone call came asking what happened to the contract, I told them if they wouldn't change it, they can hire someone else. Some things were taken out entirely, other things we negotiated.
You have to be prepared to turn down that job. You can't lose. Either you get a workable contract, or you avoid working for a tyrant.
Live free or die, baby.
Seriously folks,
.02
Part of the strength of Open Source is the sheer SIZE of the community. If we all write well thought out complaints about how they are treating Tilly and the Open Source community and how we will not use their products/services they might think twice. Hit them where it hurts. If we raise a big enough stink they might back down.
Just my
Get a lawyer, don't sign these stupid contracts. If you do, it's your own fault. Even now, we have the upper edge. If you continue to sign contracts that not only give your employer all rights to creations made on their time, but creations made on your own time, then you deserve it. Be SMART. No author or musician would consider signing the contracts that we'represented with. Why do we? We need to stop now! We run this country! It's out creativity that has givien the US the edgen in the 21st century. But, we still let them walk all over us. Walk away from any such contract now! Write free software on your free time, and make money building this worlds infrastructure! We cannot let "THEM" take our freedom to PROGRAM away from us. It'sjust as important as freedom of speach and our freedom to pratice our own religion. Again, I say, do not sign these bullshit contracts! It will be the end of us!!
The answer is unambiguous both in theory and practice.
Is there anything in law that is truly unambiguous?
What would lawyers do for a living if it were not for the amibguity of the law?
All work covered under your employment terms belongs to your employer. In the case of professional employees, this is everything. If you go home and write something on the weekend, you do not own it. You might be unaware of this issue and naively put a copyright notice on it, then distribute it. That was your mistake.
What if you have two employers simultaneously?
Do they each get 12/4.5?
Is charity covered in this?
How does the law stand on donating work to charity?
Are you telling me that if write you write a pamphlet for your church or synagogue or whatever, that charitable organization will not own that material?
In that case, it would also follow that your employer could take a tax writeoff for the value of any commmunity service you do.
In any case, you seem to have donated your programming efforts to charity. Can any lawyer claim that donating your efforts to the opensource community, indeed society in general, is not charity?
Whatever may be said, the situation is far from unambiuous.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
If you find yourself trapped into such a contract where the employer owns anything and everything you do whilst being employed there, just write some software that violates the DMCA.
;)
If somebody (say, Justice dept.) runs after you for it, you're not the one who owns, and therefore not responsible for it.
I swear, if I see another Slashdot comment with "It will be interesting to see"...
You need to be careful when your 'work' and your 'hobby' and your 'recreation' all tend to have a lot of overlap.
There are some nasty pitfalls ahead.
Yes, everything might be rosy now, you are on good terms with your boss and upper management, but just wait until your hobby project shows some commercial promise, you upset somebody higher up the food chain, or any other event or change upsets the delicate balance...
A lot of very bright people have been caught in this trap, the most common outcome is that your 'personal, hobby project' becomes the intellectual property of your employer.
When I applied at Motorola, part of the application asked that you detail every potentially valuable idea you had ever had on your personal time, with the understanding that any other idea you came up with from that point on would be the property of Motorola.
(No, I didn't accept the job.)
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
That's interesting how you got the promissory estoppel definition correct, but then totally mangled your example. Promissory estoppel occurs when a promise is mead without consideration. The one who was promised then reasonably takes actions based on the promise to his detriment. Silence, or the lack thereof, has nothing to do with it.
In this case, if a manager or other agent of the company orally or verbally agreed to let the worker work on open source projects without consideration, then you could claim promissory estoppel. If there was consideration, whether oral or written, then there's a contract which would amend his previous one. The only argument then would be if the manager or agent of the company was acting for the company or not.
As for silence constituting agreement, there would have to be some sort of discussion beforehand to that effect. If, for instance, the worker approached management and they discussed open source work, but did not come to an agreement-and then later the worker, with management knowledge, writes and posts OSS, and management does not complain, you could argue that silence constituted an agreement. I say argue because it would be dependent on the prior conversations, and would probably be a pretty weak case.
In this instance, I'd say it's a pretty weak case altogether. It's common in R&D fields to sign over all projects whether directly or indirectly related to work. I'm not a programmer, so I don't know if this is common or not in programming fields. The one saving grace may be if the OSS was a totally different field than work software.
Depending on the original contract, he may be able to claim joint ownership of the OSS work. Without an express agreement to the contrary, patents are awarded to the individual that invented it, with the employer receiving shop rights-a royalty free, non transferable license to use the invention. Of course, the caveats there are that he can't be employed in inventing, can't have signed away rights to them, and can't have been assigned to invent. That's patent law...copyright law may be a bit different on that matter.
what are you getting at?
The ironic thing is that he has the most to fear if he never uses illegal drugs.
About a decade ago the US Government decided to drug test about 8000 senior civil service employees applying for promotions. These are all highly skilled professionals with a lot to lose, so there's very little chance that any will be using drugs at this time.
About 8 people tested positive. Aha!, said the feds, this proves the validity of these tests! We would have never suspected these highly respected individuals were drug fiends without this testing! They actually used the relative handful of positives as "proof" of the validity of the tests.
Not so fast, countered the lawyers. No drug test is positive, and even if have three independent tests with a 10% false positive rate then 0.1% percent will be falsely labeled as drug users. Or about 8 out of 8,000. (In reality, of course, systemic errors such as a forgotten poppy-seed bagel will tend to skew all three tests.) The relative handful of positives, and the context of the test, suggests that these are innocent people wrongly accused.
The case actually made it to the Supreme Court, and as I recall the Supreme Court essentially said that it couldn't be bothered with questions about the scientific validity of tests when *drugs* are involved. The individuals were denied promotions on the basis of these tests alone.
Adding further insult, many mandatory "drug treatment programs" that can be triggered by these false positives *require* you to admit to your "problem" as part of your "treatment." If you do occasionally smoke a joint on weekends, you can cop to it and keep your job. But if you're drug free you're labeled uncooperative and can be terminated for resisting "treatment."
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Thanks... this is very informative. I suspect two other factors would be important here: (a) if the GPLed code is significantly different from what the person was doing for their day job, and (b) that the person was contributing "free" software via the GPL. I'd also presume someone doing "for profit" work on the side would have a much harder case here, no? ;) Clark
When I own a company, I'm going to hire writers and own everything they write (including grocery lists and love letters). I'm also going to hire speechwriters and own everything they say. Then I'm going to hire janitors and own everything they clean (including their homes). MOO HAA HAA!!!
In the long run, the number of people impacted is so small, companies do not care.
It pisses off the company's current staff
With the mood in America (200,000+ layoffs) the employer / employee relationship is such that many people feel this way without a draconian employer. In addition, software patents have the potential to make a company millions. Open sourcing the work prevents that.
It hurts the company when it's recruiting
Rarely. While I have seen loved postings about striking paragraphs and rewriting lines, they were apparently dealing with rookies.
Unless you have a skill that cannot be gotten elsewhere you are not worth the headache. Making the comments, or striking paragraphs telegraphs the kind of player you are going to be. Nothing forces you to take a job, but nothing forces them to hire you either. (Patent=$millions)
It discourages staff from furthering their knowledge and experience.
They want you to get the training, but they expect it to be put to work for them. Two questions to ask of the people you work with: 1-How many have heard of Slashdot? 2-How many know what open source software is and how it is developed? The number of people impacted by such an approach is so small that it just does not matter.
I'm amazed this company has the balls to treat it staff so badly. Let's face it, treating your most valuable employees as little more than street urchins, turning away potentially brilliant hires because they refused to be shackled 24/7 and discouraging your employees from broadening their programming horizons and skills is incredibly short-sighted
Okay, real cynical time... Yes it is short sighted. I completly agree and they probably would if they appraise it from a people perspective. However, they do not care. Your knowledge is only good for the technology you are producing. (Patent=$millions again) It is becoming very common for companies to buy tech knowledge. Move to XYZ? Hire XYZ programmers, who are probably young and thus cheap. Moving to PDQ? Lose the XYZ folks unless they can come up to speed without much help. Otherwise, use them until the new system is in.
When I negotiate with a client, I tell them up front, their goal should be to get rid of contractors as quickly as possible. Use us for knowledge transfer and to backfill while your people get up to speed on the technology.
so if you write a virus in your spare time,
is your employer responsible?
If they want rights, they must assume
responsibilities as well...
A few hints:
Probably a dumb idea, but. . .as much as I hate organized labor in most industries , it does serve a purpose, it keeps companies from taking advantage of its employees. This sounds liek exactly what is/adn could happen to a lot of our co-patriots. I believe STRONGLY that in many many cases unions have gone too far, and do nothing but leech of the companies, but the fact remains they HAVE protected workers.
Anyway, perhaps we should think about organizing some type of programers union based on the principles of our open source community.
The few other programmer I know in the real world work for relatively small businesses, and would be sorely missed if they up and left. In some csaes it would be very difficult for their companies to replace them without serious consequences to the bottom line.
I am really not sure how this would work, as this is more or less an off the cuff response to the post.
I guess the one thing that a union would help the open source community do is shed the imagine of grassroots free spirited hippies communists which is unfortunately how a lot of old school IT managers still view us. A union would present a unified voice to the people who actually have to deal with the technoilogy boondogles we are often presented with.
A company that restricts an employee's speech is acting within the law. AFAIK the government has not enacted statutes permitting employers to restrict employee speech, rather there are no laws prohibiting such restrictions. The employers ability to impose such restrictions probably derives from contract law. There is no requirement for contracts to be enlightened or fair or reasonable, only that they are entered into willingly.
Our theory over here is that the government works under a much more restrictive environment than individuals and companies because of government's enormous power. Only government has the power to deprive you of life, liberty, property, etc. The abilities of government are defined, all else is restricted. The restrictions imposed on individuals and companies are defined, all else is allowed.
And yes, most things are far more complicated than people realize.
Nonsense. Microsoft, like every other employer in the world, needs to accept the fact that they don't own their employees and have absolutely no right to tell them what to do or not do after they clock out and go home.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I've never tried this approach because it hasn't come up yet, but if an employer ever tries to force one of those blanket IP clauses on me, my plan is to remind them that by owning all my software they will be assuming complete legal liability for it. So if I decide to develop, say, the next generation peer-to-peer file sharing system at home, or for that matter, if any of the other employees who have already signed this contract are doing exactly that right now, the company will get to fend off the RIAA when the time comes.
I would be interested to know how a corporate lawyer would react to this.
Are you still certain of that, in light of this bit about employment contracts? What exactly are you going to do when every employer insists on owning everything you create while in their employ?
It seems to me that a much more reasonable system would simply insist on enforcing the rights of the individual (the courts being there to arbitrate disputes between individuals whose rights conflict somehow). A "hierarchy of rights" would help enormously in reducing the number of such conflicts.
But as it is, many people seem to believe that individually negotiated contracts should override an individual's rights. I don't subscribe to that belief, especially in light of this most recent case with employment contracts.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Microsoft doesn't use Source Safe... That would involve 'eating their own dogfood'.
Sorry, I just hate SS.EXE with a passion...
-jerdenn
I thought that seemed unnecessarily draconain.
Today, many XXX employees are engaged on their own time in routine activities that involve personal computers, software or other products that XXX offers to its customers. Generally, such activities do not result in a conflict of interest. However, employees should be careful not to become engaged in activities that do conflict with XXX's business interests.
Obviously, you may not commercially market products or services in competition with XXX's current or potential product offerings. Such marketing activities are "commercial" if you receive direct or indirect remuneration of any kind. Performing such activities on a noncommercial basis is usually permissible, but not if XXX decides that such activity has or may have more than a minimal impact on XXX's current or future business.
Because XXX is rapidly expanding into new lines of business and new areas of interest, the company will constantly redraw lines of acceptable activity. It is unlikely that you will find definitive answers to many of your questions regarding the boundaries of acceptable activity in published guidelines. It is therefore your responsibility to consult with your management or XXX Counsel to determine whether your planned activity will compete with any of XXX's actual or potential businesses. This should be done before you pursue any activity that might create a conflict of interest with XXX.
You may not perform non-XXX work or solicit such business on XXX premises or while working on XXX time, including time you are given with pay to handle personal matters. Also, you are not permitted to use XXX assets, including equipment, telephones, materials, resources or proprietary information for any outside work.
(my comment here addresses most responses to my initial comment)
Yes, but from OUR standpoint, it was. Why should the standpoint of ONE company be more important than that of MILLIONS of people? When you or I downloaded the GPL'ed code, WE were of the understanding that we would be FREE to redistribute it and modify it was we pleased. We put significant stock in that assumption: time learning to use the program, and possibly time modifying it. From our side of the agreement, everything was legit, so why should we be punished by not being allowed to distribute/modify?
If a court invalidates the license from OUR side, invalidating OUR rights, then we've been wronged and shafted. We put effort into learning how to use the program well because we knew it could be redistributed, and we developed or helped develop the program because of that. The releaser might not have had legal standing to release the code, but we, having sacraficed what we have to uphold our half, SHOULD have legal standing to redistribute/modify under the GPL.
In other words, the public which downloaded GPL believed there was a contract in effect guarenteeing them certain rights; to nullify that is to violate the PUBLIC's rights. We have a right to have the contracts we enter into be respected, irrelevant of the other side. So what, this guy didn't technically have the "right" to release it? We didn't know that. And we sacraficed to use that code, so we should be able to continue operating under our terms of the contract.
Finally, I think that all work for hire nonsense should be illegalized by the Federal Government. It should be just as illegal as buying slaves, or as a company putting a clause in their contract saying they have the right to "kill" an employee if (s)he shows up for work late. If someone develops code, it should be THEIR code, unless a specific contract was in effect saying, "I'll develop a for you and give you the IP rights". This means that if I don't have such a contract with my employee, and I develop something on his/her computer, its MINE. Companies should, however, be allowed to make policies which stipulate that the IP rights to any program developed on their resources or their time must be transferred to them, or the employee can be fired (i.e., a legitimate grounds for termination is failure to transfer IP rights to software developed on company time/resources for company-related software).
Corporate-o-philes will bitch about this. But the fact is, corporations don't have the right to do whatever they will (though I stated in an earlier post, "companies have rights too", that no one's entitled to screw off on company computers). The gov't has the rights to regulate acceptable employment terms. Though I generally support minimal intervention, there's already too much IP exploitation and hogwash which needs to be eliminated.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
If they wish to own the copyrights to all the work you produce, and that means ALL the work, then start writing child porn stories. They don't belong to you, after all, right?
In not child porn, then just really poor quality work, viruses, anything. Make them pay dearly for wishing to own your mind.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I'm not all that fond of unions, but the very idea behind their existence is to protect workers from this kind of abuse. Let a huge number of highly-skilled programmers walk out on strike for a few days, and see how badly employers really want to continue with this "we own you" mentality.
The problem is that the constitution is only a limit on the power of the government over its citizens. The government cannot enact laws or contractually obligate the citizenry in such a way that the constitution is violated. This doesn't apply to corporations.
Corporations, unfortunately, have been endowed with all the rights of a citizen. The Supreme Court ruling that established this is possibly the greatest ongoing threat to the rights of individuals. Because of this ruling these corporations can engage in contracts as any citizen would but of course they have substantially more power. They are not boun by the limitations of the constitution. As the power shifts out of the hands of government and in to the hands of corporations, this situation only looks to get worse.
A constitution doesn't mean jack to people if the chief influence on their lives ceases to be government.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I have made (sometimes ago) a special part for working contract about the ownership of the source code remaing to the author itself.
:-).
The contract (are in French) for the moment and available under the GPL
http://www.foo.be/librecontrat/
Just a quick question, assuming for a minute that you can't get out of signing this contract as it stands.
If they own everything you produce, what happens if work you do on your own time violates someone elses IP? You'll obviously be fired by your employer and named as a co-defendant by the plaintiffs, but wouldn't the company also be liable for your actions, even if they were unaware of them?
I'm sure there'll be some clause in the contract stating that if you screw up you're on your own and they have nothing to do with it, but would this really hold up in court?
If the answer to the above is no, then maybe you could get their lawyers to agree to the changes out of self-interest, by giving them an example their paranoid legal minds can understand.
I probably have a fairly unique view of contract law but it's always been my belief that things can be right, even though they're in contradiction of a contract.
to that end, it's my assertation, and one I would defend to the point of quitting an assanine job, that if I do things in my off time, it is not the property of the company no matter what they sat do or make me sign.
Though I'm the same type of person who believes heavily in derative work.
And if, by reading Code, I reach some understanding, that understanding of that code is mine and mine alone. Any work produced using that understanding of that code is mine and mine alone. To do with what I see fit.
I'm probably trolling GPL advocates right about now, but heck.
~a
I worked in the engineering dept of an international telecom company several years ago. When I first signed up, they gave me an IP agreement that read like Tilly's. Basically, it said that "the company" owned *everything* I produced, coded, or imagined, days, nights, and weekends, during my entire term of employment, without restriction. It further restricted me from working (at the companies discretion) for other telecommunication companies for 5 years after my employment ended.
I declined to sign the IP agreement. I was doing a little side work coding for a family owned software business at the time. When I made it clear that I wouldn't sign the restrictive IP, they pulled out a pre-written IP that was *much* less restrictive. I said that everything I created on company time, with company materials, was company property.
I was surprised how much "hard-sell" they put on the original restrictive IP. They made veiled threats about how I "may be un-hirable" if I didn't sign. They also acted stunned that I might write code for someone else in my spare time. When it became clear I wasn't willing to play their game... they had a real IP ready...
Of course this is all totally unrealistic pie-in-the-sky stuff, because we computer folk are in our infancy politically. However I think that as the vice tightens (SSSCA, etc.) we will be forced to get real about political action. That's another rant, but briefly it means:
Lastly, to those who worry about the effect of such measures on Tilly: I feel bad for Tilly, but I'd happily accept the loss of one coder and some modules in exchange for a high-visibility smack to these corporate abusers. I would like this company to end up as a cautionary tale on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. If we could accomplish that, it would be worth lots of short term pain.I would like to set such an example that corporate decision-makers in the future shy away from such actions as they would from flying a Nazi flag over headquarters. It's not illegal (in the US) but with sufficient effort on our part it could be made very expensive and unattractive.
In our world a book like that might be considered art or a gag gift, and could actually sell. Also, someone said no press is bad press.
I've always had a feeling that's the case, and when I read your comment, it made me think that there should be a law that basically invalidates an entire contract if it has two many unenforceable clauses in it. The idea is to prevent this sort of abuse that comes from trying to "slip in" clauses that many employees would not realize are not legal.
IIRC this is the default case now. What you'd need would be a statute to void clauses of the form "if any of this is void by law then the rest of it still stands".
So now Tilly is partners with RMS. Any problems he can goto RMS. Problems with the employer, IP rights issues, beefs with other coders, he can goto RMS.
But now he has to come up with RMS's money every week no matter what.
"Ain't writing any code, fuck you pay me"
"Your hard disk failed huh?, fuck you pay me"
"Oh, your company fired you huh?, FUCK YOU PAY ME!"
So when you can't get another PayPal donation. When you can't bum another dollar from your parents. You bust your computer out. You whip a windows 98 cd, and format the box.
During the last weeks, a somewhat similiar argument was going on in Europe regarding the patentability of software, but it looks like, this is going to be put down by the European parliament.
And it's standard law in Germany for example, that Employees own their intellectual property, can apply for their own patents even if they are in the field of their employment work etc.
Somehow the all to prominent interest in business in the US seems to have backfired and it became too easy to sell one's individual rights in simple civilian contracts.
So it's time for you to fight again for your freedom - not just overseas with weapons, but this time at home with free speech and free contracts.
Good luck, but don't forget you as a nation have created that situation for yourself.
Hi.
I have an interesting question. My employer does not seem to make a big fuss about working for open-source projects (I have even forced a change to my contract to include all non-profit projects), but the contract does limit me what I do for profit - wheather it is on my time or company time. My contract states that I am liable to damages if I do anything similar (we have argued a lot about what similar means) to what I do at the company.
What are your experiences with this?
boky
Note that in California, such a contract is void and unenforceable. The Labor Laws state that any work performed outside the scope of employment belongs to the employee, and *even if* an agreement stating otherwise is signed, it is against the public policy of the State of California and cannot be enforced.
That said, I'd never sign such an agreement anyway. Employers have no claim to time outside of work.
This was brought up in the MAINTAINERS file that comes with the linux source:
6. Make sure that you have the right to send any changes you make. If you do changes at work you may find your employer owns the patch no you.
tilly needs to make a new login on perlmonks and not tell his boss?
Where are you getting the idea that Tilly's modules are GPL'd? I would be very surprised to see core Perl modules GPL'd. Every time I've paid attention to the license of such a module, it's "same terms as perl" which means Artistic License OR GPL at user's discretion. The AL allows nearly anything, including proprietary code-swallowing.
I was given an IP agreement to sign at a previous employer (a warehouse/manufacturing firm.) My job during working hours? Operating pipe cutting machinery. I made Pipe Nipples.
We were merged with another local firm by our corporate parents, and during the fracas that ensued, some employees were asked to sign IP agreements.
I had already been looking for a reason to quit, so when I was asked to sign this, I handed it back, asked to use a typewriter, and quickly dashed off my 'two weeks' notice. (note, this is an At Will employer.)
I was told my employment would be ended immeadiately if I refused to sign. I said "REally? Great, I can go out to lunch with my wife then." I *left*.
I believe you are mistaken. You would have to do that if a patent were involved, but that's not likely. More likely the only worry is copyright infringement, and copyright does not apply to ideas, but to specific sequences of words (or notes or numbers or what have you.) So you can use the same ideas without problem - just make sure you don't use the same coder, or an obvious derivation of it (changing only variable names, for instance, won't cut it.)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
company claims ownership on all of the GPL'd work he has performed since he was hired
I suspect they do own the copyright on the work produced, but that does not preclude them from obeying the GPL.
Just tell us who the mystery psycho-PHBs are, that we may boycott their products and/or services.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
And another amen!
FYI: Contracts must have certain elements:
- Mutual agreement, more specifically,
- Mutual understanding of the agreement
- Mutual benefit (sometimes called "consideration")
- Mutual right to remedy upon breach
- Mutual obligation
- Competent adult parties (sui juris)
- Proper subject matter
For example, I argue here that being forced to defecate in a bag, pee in the cup, or do anything that requires taking off one's underwear is not proper subject matter for an employment contract (unless of course the job actually requires peeing, pooping, etc.In this case, I would argue that not only is a clause asserting that your employer owns all your works (including those created off hours on your own equipment) is not only not proper subject matter, but it may be shown to be constructive fraud (the deception being: causing you to believe that you must sign such a contract or not work, and that such a clause is proper, and the injury being your loss of your own works, and the loss of your basic freedom to choose what to do with your free time).
Such a clause is more akin to endentured servitude (Prohibited by the 13th Amendment) than a proper employer-employee relationship.
If you didn't understand that clause in the contract, then you certainly didn't agree to it, and that clause, perhaps the entire contract becomes null and void and subject to re-negotiation.
I suggest picking up a good law dictionary, and recommend Barron's Law Dictionary, by Stephen Gifis, and no other. (Just because the a book is bigger or more well known does not make it better. The Gifis book is excellent with clear definitions, and many other law dictionaries are muddled and confused, no doubt published by lawyers to justify their own existance.)
Actually it can be. I don't know how US law works, but over here in the UK the basic principle is that there must be some "meeting of minds": both sides must understand the same things about the agreement. The writing is evidence about what was agreed, but it is not absolute.
Normally this works to help the little guy. If you are in dispute with some company and they point out some clause you didn't read written in Flyspec 3 on the back of the invoice, you can reply that you didn't know about that clause, didn't agree to it, and therefore it isn't part of the contract. If its routine stuff like promising to pay within a certain time then they can still claim that you must have expected that such a clause would be there. But if its "unusual or onerous" (such as punitive charges for returning hired goods late) then they have to draw your attention to it, e.g. by putting a bold print warning on the front of the contract.
However in this case the rules are reversed. If you hide a modification to a contract in the middle of several pages of legalese and don't draw their attention to it, they can reasonably claim not to have known about your changes, and therefore not to have agreed to them. At this point things become seriously murky. In a dispute the Judge might decide there was no contract since there was no meeting of minds, and hence the default rules apply. Or s/he might decide that you were being deliberately deceptive and rule against you.
Disclaimer: I am not a laywer.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
company owns the rights to all work produced during the term of employment
... basically the output of your whole life as long as you are under that contract, even raising your children.
From reading the statement it seems that such a clause needs not necessarily be explicit in your contract but can be implicit by your employee status (professional employee).
But the question is, if such an overbroad term like all work doesn't render the whole clause invalid. All work includes the work you did in your home, maybe repairing or even building it, when you repaired your car, helped a friend install software on his computer, wrote and somehow published an arbritrary text, any kind of art you produced,
So if you built your home with your own hands over weekends it'd be your employers, he can charge you for yourself repairing your car and teching your children and your friend for any help you gave him, he has copyright on any texts and art you produced, you basically won't own anything you made with your own hands or in any way worked at. I wonder how such a clause can be valid.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
I have had no problems getting "annotated" employment contracts accepted. They didn't even negotiate the issue.
Does making babies constitute "creating intellectual property" I wonder ? If you did that while you were employed with this company perhaps they own the rights to your kids.
The company was a large investment firm. Everyone thought I was crazy, but since I was also working on another contract I said the wording had to be changed to be limited to worked directed by the firm and not "ALL" work I do.
They wouldn't budge claiming "This is just standard stuff".
If I had signed they would own the work I did for the other company. If they sued guess who would be holding the bag?
I wouldn't sign and lost the contract.
I FELL VINDICATED! Thanks for the story
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
When code is leaked to the net, it should be considered public domain, free and clear.
The OSDA Initiative is a collaborative effort to provide resources to help people who work on Open Source projects. The initiative was started as a service to the members of SAGE-AU - the System Administrator's Guild of Australia, and it has now been made available to the general public.
The initial OSDA Initiative resources are a group of documents providing suggested variations to employment contracts that would allow employees to develop Open Source software without encumbrance from their employer, where there is no conflict of interest.
As far as my responsibility goes to my company. I'm only responsible to them during work hours. I don't feel I should be held accountable or my free time. My private live is my private life. I didn't sell myself in bondage to a company, I sold the use of my skills. Skills they need. As a software engineer (I'm sure many other occupations as well) as soon as they feel it's not cost effective to keep me on I'm gone. Even when I work for a good company (which I do) business is business, so I understand this. But why should I allow them control over my private life?
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Although this discussion centers around employees, many of us do contracting. If you think you aren't affected by this stuff, think again. Often times a contract will come with a non-compete clause which will prevent you from doing business with the company's clients. It will frequently refer to future clients as well, which is simply absurd.
An easy way to derail this is to request a list of all their present and future clients so you can make sure that you aren't already in violation. Odds are they can't or won't provide it. At this point it is pretty easy to claim that you have a non-enforcable clause in the contract, so strike it.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
those despair.com demotivator calendars...see this which goes something like "it could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others"
Care to explain your rationale? So long as you take only the most basic of precautions in covering your tracks, (i.e., don't use your employer's ISP), then how the heck is a giant comany going to isolate a piece of GPL'd code floating around in the jungle of cyberspace and recognize it as something one of their employers created?
Naturally, the more sensitive the code and the more aligned with Evil the employer, it couldn't hurt to hike across town with a fake moustache, a baseball cap you'd never wear normally, an old jacket from your camping days, (to fool the video cameras), and post the code from one of those internet cafe places.
Though, of course, a good 50% of Slashdotters keep raving about how 'cool' face scanning technology is, and how we need a national I.D. system to stop, 'Terrorists'. .
Hm. .
You know, this is just another example of why NOT to make the shift toward a cashless, bio-metrics based society, --Or allow yourself to be implanted with a GPS-I.D. chip. "Sure you can use our internet cafe, but we only take debit or credit. Please look into the eye scanner, sir."
Terrorists, my sweet arse! This reality is all about control, greed, and repression. Publicly shared software created for the good of all flies in the face of this. It makes Evil boil and fume and get all pissy.
-Fantastic Lad --I miss the days when people robbed banks with potatoes!
What I find interesting is that in these examples, the manager is considered a representative of the company, but the employee is not.
IMHO, the employee works for the company, the company is responsible for the actions of the employee. Just as people can make mistakes, so can companies. In this case, the employee and therefore the company GPL'd the software. If the employee violated his employment contract by doing so, then he should be subject to termination and/or a lawsuit, but the GPL of the code should not be in question. The copyright is in the hands of the company, but the code was released as GPL. Tough cookies.
That might help. Someone could start a webpage where people can anonymously submit stories about companies known to be unfriendly to open source.
IANAL - but you'd think that if the law is followed to the letter then:
Any employee's after work hobbies, be it writing a novel, painting, or playing music, etc. etc. etc. becomes property of the company they work for.
Begin a group of class action suites against the employees of companies, demanding the rights from their hobbies.
Sit back and watch the law change so damn fast...
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
The scary part is that such non compete clauses are fairly statndard for scientific fields, the silver lining is that they are completely illegal and unenforceable since it is illegal to keep someone from being employed. Usually they are just used to bully people around when the need arises... like most of this stuff.
sic transit gloria mundi
The company I work for is actually pretty good about this sort of thing. In fact, I've occasionally written code for the product that I wanted to be in the public domain (because I knew that I'd want to re-use it myself later), so I just said "I want this code to be in the public domain". They replied "fine, as long as it's not written on company time". An example of such code is my C HashTable. (Yes, I know this has been written a million times before, but all of the other public domain implementations I've seen suck!)
It sounds like he must have done something high-profile to get noticed, otherwise they never would have gone looking for his employment contract and run it through a black-letter-of-the-law interpreter.
I think the issue that has been uncovered is critically important, and I feel better educated because of it, but I can't shake the nagging feeling that Tilly must have somehow angered management - maybe by spending too much time on Open Source projects and not enough on his company assignments? Hmm?
His PerlMonks posting wasn't too forthcoming about what started this whole mess. I'd like to know what did.
In the UK, details are routinely modified by one business sending a revised version of a document to another. If no response is received in a reasonable time disagreeing, the details change. This happens all the time. I'm no lawyer, but I can't believe that if an employer takes you on, after you've sent a revised contract back and they haven't even bothered to read it, then they have a legal leg to stand on if they don't like the conditions you changed.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
We are nothing but brain whores according to most contracts. Open source, inventions, and anything else your wondeful mind can think of belongs to the company that hires you according to most contracts. In some cases, you can obtain minimal rewards for your ideas, but in most the company is just raping your brain.
Once published, GPL code cannot be re-closed. If any code was lifted from another GPL project, the copyright holder of THAT code may be owed damages for any attempt to do so.
Tilley can rewrite anything he did under contract with the jerky employer under the bad contract and re-release it under GPL as hiw own (derived from his jerky-boss's old GPL code).
Jerky boss go screw!
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Let it go to court, keep up the good work.
I had a similar contract dispute when I woked at
Unicom, This isn't a big deal as long as your employer was not working on GPL code and also as long as the the work was done at your home. If the work was done at your home any Judge would throw the lawsuit out! Also if the scope of the work did not match the scope of the work done for your former employer.
On the other hand, if this work was done during company time then you are screwed. If it was done
after hours, they do not have a pot to piss in.
Sure, right now, in the middle of a down patch. When things pick up in a few months, maltreated employees will be out of there like rats of a sinking ship, and the scumball employers will lose out bigtime. What goes around...
Speaking as someone who just gave a list of "no way" employers to his agent, based on the way they've treated friends of mine in the recent past, I disagree. I work in a high-tech city, and it's a small world. Employers who try to take advantage will find the best employees leaving, or just not applying in the first place. Employers who treat their staff as people to be valued and not "human resources" do much better. The past few years provide several shining examples of each type.
Yep, a fair and reasonable one. Inserting the kind of contractual terms we're discussing does far more to telegraph what kind of employer they are going to be. The kind of employer who objects to such alterations, or, say, rules you out because you have the audacity to ask how long a typical working day is during interview, is not the kind of place I'd work anyway. If they get evasive or uncooperative, they just confirm my initial impression, and save me wasting any more time.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If you develop open source, can the contract you sign mess up the actual open source community by allowing the company to "own" your code? Does anyone know the specifics on what would happen in this case?
Sir_haxalot
stuff |
Man, you just ain't found the right software then.
That paper clip screwed me up. Turned me into the twisted ball of hate I've become. Just say no!
Erm, on second thought, Just Don't Do It (thanks, Bob Dole!)
...usually don't require these nefarious contracts because they know they'll be working the holy crap out of you all day long so that by the time you get home at the end of the day, you'll have no energy or desire left to work on any side projects of your own :-)
Lots of comments here about changing contract law to "prevent" this from happening (again). But what do we do for this instance? If you aren't a Perl coder, you might not realize that dropping Carp and Exporter from the standard distributions will break about 99% of what's out there.
...
...
Perhaps the Perl community needs to take up a collection to buy the rights to these two modules from the corporate overlords. Oh, and once the deal is struck, a little note to their CIO letting them know that the corporate overlords' domain will be essentially blacklisted on Usenet comp.*
I know I'd be amenable to adding that domain to my killfile, on general principles
Okay, not quite ALL the rights, allow me to clarify. Originally corporations operated under charters which narrowly defined the ground rules for their operation. During the 19th century, the power of corporations grew substantially, and in 1886, the Supreme Court ruled in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad that a corporation was deemed a "natural person" under the US Constitution. This effectively extended all constitutional protections to a corporation as thought it were a citizen.
It is this Supreme Court ruling that set up the basis for the campaign finance mess we are in today. Since corporations have the right of free expression, and since spending money is a form of expression, there's not a whole lot that can be done to limit their political influence. We'll see what happens with the new campaign finance law that looks to be passed shortly, but it's likely much of it can get struck down in court.
No, clearly corporations don't have EVERY right of a citizen. As you point out, they cannot vote, and clearly, since they are owned by people, they could be considered slaves. But where it counts they've been given a lot of constitutional protection that was never intended for them.
As for being bound by the limitations of the constitution, I disagree. Through contracts, a corporation can require it's employees or other contract signers to waive just about any right. While a contract cannot directly violate the law, they can limit the free speech of citizens quite readily. Most of the rights we traditionally think of can easily be signed away to a corporation, but a government agency has no such power over us.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The fact that the modules are AL instead of GPL may have an effect on Tilly's case, particularly this sentence (not from the license itself but from Perl's distribution notes):
Miko O'Sullivan
Which may well deserve such treatment.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
They can find your ISP if they discover the IP adddress and time that the offending information was sent from. If you're the only user of your ISP, then finding the ISP means finding you. You have to say that your ISP has a bunch of users and it deletes enough log information to make it impossible to figure out who did what after the fact.
My experience is if you don't get sued by your employer or by users you'll get shafted by one or the other. Although a defect in the software causes it, the retaliation usually is not a software lawsuit but something you did long ago getting used against you, like illegal parking or shoplifting, and it comes in the form of a web page or a broadcast email to recruiters.
You can't give away software in your own name anymore. Software is now the domain of businesses and governments with individuals being mere employees. Losing the ability to write software as a private individual isn't the end of the world. No-one complains about not being able to build ASIC's in their dorm room.
I'd disagree with the statement that only a government has the power to deprive you of life, liberty, property, etc. I think the overlap between government and buisness is such that either can deprive you of freedoms, not nessisarily your life but certainly your liberty. Getting tied up in a court case over a cease and desist order from a private company is a pretty quick way of most of the above (if you can't afford the legal fees) bar life.
e4 e5
Illinois Act 83-493 (which applies to all employee contracts with invention clauses) states:
The agreement does not apply to any invention for which no equipment, supplies, facility, or trade secret information of the employer was used and which was developed entirely on the employee's own time, unless (a) the invention relates (i) to the business of the employer, or (ii) to the employer's actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development, or (b) the invention results from any work performed by the employee for the employer.
I think this is fair.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
Umm, since when is anything in the dragon book considered "revolutionary"? The DFA->NFA conversion algorithm has been (a) known for a loooong time and (b) used for compiling regexes the whole time. How to you think lex works?
But, they are exponential in time and space in the worst case (doesn't happen often), but once compiled, the matching time is linear in the size of the candidate string. But again, those big tables are neither cache, pipeline, nor paging friendly (not an issue when the DFA algorithm was discovered), so a matcher that minimizes backtracking can often work well.
I would just like to say that, IMO, it is morally unacceptable for any company to attempt something like this. It's one thing to see your employee build something similar to your product and thus rightfully claim it... it's another thing to see someone doing volunteer work that's appreciated by thousands and have them try to take credit for it.
One would think that the company would prefer the good PR spin that comes from having an employee that's liked and respected by their peers.. but some people only count nickels.
If my employer tried to take possession of my (unrelated) work, I think I'd have to find a new employer. How could I ever trust them, knowing that they care nothing for the consequences to others of their actions?
I suspect the result of this will simply be that the company Tilly works for will be blackballed by the community of software engineers. Maybe not as scary as a trade embargo, but hiring talented people in the future might be a bit harder for them.
I wonder just how much legal trouble you could get a company into...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I work in the technology arm of a major financial firm, and our employment contracts have the usual language about owning everything we think of. However, I have created several projects outside work and own them. How? I asked the company before starting them. The lawyers drew up an agreement and voila, I own what I made. Of course the projects do not compete with my employer in any way. Moral: ask first.
Did you stand there and gloat at the asshole while the judge yelled at him?
You're forgetting weekends and holidays!! That's damn close to another 116 days. Ask for 4 times as much salary.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Ok, I have a question for all of you ... I currently have an "open-ended contract" with my current "employer" ... everything that we have agreed upon is verbal ... IOW, I haven't signed a thing ...
Since this is the case, I started early on using my equipment (laptop) at home, and now more and more at my employers' office. In fact he hasn't even offered me equipment ... which is fine by me, since it takes quite a while to make sure that you have all of the tools on the machine, etc.
Granted, right now I'm too busy working on his stuff to work on anything of mine, I have several ideas for utilities that I would like to write ... I even have design documents drafted up to make sure that I wasn't drunk when I typed them (and yes they still make sense) ...
If I were to start on my own projects, about the only thing I would have to worry about would be that it's on "my own time" ... which has never been brought up, since in the _past_ I have worked at home on his project ... lately, it's been more of a 9-5ish job ...
Since I don't have anything (not even a Non-Disclose) signed ... should I, or do I need to be worried about starting my own projects?
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
I do consulting work. Every time I hit an NDA I didn't like or a clause like this, I changed it. Past three jobs, each time I've had to modify the contract to meet my standards. Only one employer (with a particularly draconian contract) complained, and that was just about my lack of politeness in the flame I sent about the clauses snuck into the contract, rather than the contract itself.
Is it even legal to sign away your brain by contract? Are these contract clauses even legally binding?
Yes, this is exacly the type of thing we (programmers, network/system admins, techs) need. It's also much like the hunters and opther sportsmen have the NRA.
Would you mind if I made use (ie copy with minor changes) of your pages within my website? Not to mention your post.
c_j_n at yahoo dot com
If you were to be a contract employee and you sign one of these contracts, you then leave and work someplace else and again sign one of these contracts. Continued this pattern over several years, who would own what???? If you were to write something amazing that the entire world would use, could you imagine the legal battles that would ensue over that bit of IP??
According to This Poll, up to 56% of Slashdotters could be restricted under these clauses.
Hi: I am out and about looking for a postion is S/W development - MSc in Elec Engineering, 5 years experience. I was wondering with my profile, should I be working with a recruiter? And are there things to watch out for? I was always under the impression that recruiters were for CEO-type positions and they took a % of the salary.
Amen! That's the clause in my employment agreement. When I started doing open source development, I pulled it out and double checked. If I create it at work it's theirs. If I create it at home, it's mine.
... thankfully I no longer do) because, while we were brilliant programmers and engineers, we knew nothing about law or even how to seriously negotiate.
Every university in the United States (I won't presume to speak of the entire world, though I think the same might apply to many other places as well) should have as part of its required curriculum a course that deals with contract negotiations, common pitfalls like this one, and other tidbits of wisdom that graduating students really need to effectively negotiate their way into the business world.
The vast majority of us, myself included, got absolutely reamed in our first job (and back then I had clauses like this too
But then, Universities attempt to abuse their students (and sometimes faculty/staff) in just such a manner, so I guess depending on them to actually educate their students about such thing is a little much to hope for.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
This is why major contributors to GCC who are also employed as a programmer must get a disclaimer signed by their employer, stating basically, "We don't really give a rat's ass about this work and promise not to try and hijack it in the future."
Without such protections, there wouldn't be much of g++ these days: the employer of the original author tried to make it a proprietary product once he was mostly done with it. Fortunately it was too late for them.
I wonder why the Perl folks don't require such protection of themselves.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
If you're going to have a collective contract you absolutely need collective bargaining where the employees get to work out amongst themselves what they would prefer and then democratically decide on a suitable contract. That would satisfy the employer's concerns about things getting complicated with a thousand different contracts...
Of course, the lawyer was bullshitting you, though. I've never heard of a lawyer telling someone not to take a contract too literally when the lawyer is legally required to give good advice. If that same lawyer ever gave such advice to a client, they would be disbarred. Of course, your employer is his client, not you, and he is only legally required to look out for his client's interests.
We are BOFH. We have taken all of these issues into account. It also helps that two of the six original founding members were lawyers :-)
We do not quite have a /19 allocation yet, but we are getting there.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The company I work for was bought out a few years ago, and the new company had an IP agreement which was enormously broad. Most people in my development group simply refused to sign it. We just tossed it, and ignored it.
A while later, I get an e-mail from HR, saying, you have to sign this. I write back, saying, "No, I won't. I will happily negotiate a contract for the purchase of exclusive IP rights to anything you want, however."
I went through this sort of roundaboutness with the HR and legal departments a couple times over the last few years. Basically, though, it always went away when I brought up my willingness to negotiate a purchase.
The point is, if you think my IP is worth owning, it's worth paying for. If it's not worth owning, why do you want me to give it to you?
In my case, they couldn't claim hiring me was the consideration, because I was already hired.
I really succeeded in infuriating the company lawyer who wrote the IP agreement... she became completely unprofessional, turning red in the face and shouting at me when I calmly and quietly pointed out that what they asked for was unconscionable. She said that it wasn't legally unconscionable, and I said, "No, I meant morally." She turned various shades of purple, then.
After that meeting, I heard about the agreement only once more. It's now been almost two years since the last time they bugged me about it.
Even when I work for a good company (which I do) business is business, so I understand this. But why should I allow them control over my private life?
... I have to start a new thread.
Perhaps because a person willingly signs a contract agreeing that certain programming activities are no longer part of their private life and accepts money in return. I.e. the company is paying not for your work day programming skills, but for a semi-exclusive contract regarding your programming skills.
Which leads to the idea of two pays scales, work day only and semi-exclusive,
what does "without consideration" mean in this context?
No, only government has the power. The company can not take your property or liberty, they have to make a case to the government and then a government agent may take away the property or liberty by force.
Separately two companies may negotiate a private deal that is mutually beneficial and a 3rd party may loose out, but that 3rd parties right's were not infringed. Ex. A person's website infringes on someone's trademark, trademark owner has ISP remove website. The website owner was not deprived of liberty. It is not the ISP's duty to get the website owner's message out. The website owner has the responsibility to act in a mutually beneficial manner if he expects other to work with him.
Doesn't that violate the 13th amendment against slavery? Since they are forcing you to hand over personal work without compensation that sounds pretty close.
u ti on.amendmentxiii.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constit
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
America is about as capitalist as the former Soviet Union was communist. Real capitalism, or anything close to it, has never existed in modern history. Although it's a great buzzword for shutting down rational thought and inspiring patriotic fervor.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I noticed a few people commenting on how to turn the tables on them "owning" all of you work and how to turn this positive for them into a big negative.
:-)
So if you wrote and unleashed the next big computer virus, it would belong to them not to you.
The Constitution protects everyone at all times because *no entity other than government can make laws*. And since only government can make laws, prosecute laws, and sentence offenders, the actions of government in all three endeavors are regulated by the Constitution.
It doesn't matter for jack what a company thinks on the matter. The company has no legal authority of any kind. The worst it can do is complain through a civil suit - which immediately remands the matter before a judge *who is bound by the Constitution in interpretating the law, just as Congress was when they made it.*
The idea what corporations are somehow exempt is a bogus one fronted by slashdotters who think (or wish) that we live in some sort of cyberpunk reality. This simply isn't at all true. These folks should stop smoking the crack that inspires such delusions.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
A change in the law is needed. These companies make restrictive contracts because they are totally unaccountable.
If they sow the wind, they must reap the whirlwind - if a company has restrictive policies or uses bullying or blackmailing then if that employee walks in with a machine gun and kills everyone at his workplace then the company must be held liable as if it has performed the murders itself.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
What about civil court cases and debt collection agencies?
I know they don't have the power, but they they have the powers vested in them.
e4 e5
Consideration is what the parties to a contract agree to give up under the contract. One common misconception is that consideration is what you get, rather than what you give up. See Hamer v. Sidway, 124 N.Y. 538 (1891) (agreement to give up smoking, drinking and gambling until age of 21 sufficient consideration).
When I worked as a contractor for Intel, this was part of the standard contract -- which of course I did not read, and only became aware of later. Intel had a procedure in place for employees to petition for exceptions for code which was not related to their job and developed entirely off-hours and without company resources. They were mainly interested in keeping their own IP in-house and avoiding "contamination" of their own code with the dreaded GPL. In my experience, they were pretty reasonable about it, and my open-source project (a C library that duplicates most of Perl's functionality) was granted an exemption.
On the other hand, if I had actually read the contract, I would have turned down the job. And no, it wasn't negotiable. I've seen similar clauses elsewhere since, and sometimes they're negotiable and sometimes they're not. I've never seen anyone get upset by discussing the possibility of striking it from the contract -- although this is occasionally politely refused -- and one employer was willing to amend the contract after the fact. IMHO, it should not be legal to claim anyone's own-time work, but the fact is that it is legal, so pay attention, be assertive, and be prepared to say no and walk away.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
If my employees want to undermine my business, that is their right. However, the can do so without paychecks from me. I will not support the lifestyle of soemone that wants to destroy me.
You all need to get a grip. You don't have a right to a job. There is a big difference between claiming ownership of your employee's free time and prohibiting them from engaging in certain behavior that endangers the company.
If they want to engage in behavior that hurts your company, they don't fund it from you.
Alex
I apologize in advance for the pop-under ad.
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
Loose wording, IANAL. :-)
If you loose a civil case a judge orders you to pay up, turn over property, etc. Agents, if needed, are often law enforcement or supervised by actual law enforcement and are acting under the judge's orders.
Private debt collectors are more bark than bite. If you get tired of their calls you can send a form letter to stop calling, if they keep calling you can take them to court for harassment.
Outside the courtroom the influence your creditors have is that a new potential creditor will check with previous creditors (indirectly through a few central reporting firms) to check your financial reputation.
Some collection agents seem to have power to act without a judge but there is catch. For example auto repossession. In such cases the private agents are working for the owner of the car, ex. the bank. If you default on your payment contract with the bank the bank collects its property, no judge needed since ownership has not changed.
I advise strongly against looking over google.com for legal guidance. As the description to which you refer indicates, promissory estoppel is a doctrine by which a promise that otherwise would not be legally binding -- for lack of consideration, a topic of some complexity, but which subject I would be happy to discuss further, if you are interested -- will be enforced to prevent the injustice of one party having reasonably relied upon the assertions of another. It would have no application to the circumstances you describe.
I work for a VERY large company (not in the USA). When I was appointed I received a document giving the regulations on doing consulting during one day of company time. This was one of the main reasons I accepted the post. It has since been retracted with no consultation with me. They did consult the staff representatives so they meet the contact requirements. Problem is that the staff representatives are either part of management or they are just ignored. And that's it... there is nothing I can do about it.
I'll probably vote with my feet and leave.
Imagine if Linus had signed a contract such as this one... What would the effects be? How would the OSS community cope?
status is failure. status is failure
I misinterpreted some comment I read about the proposal of the European commitee. So here in Europa we might get the same situation regarding patentability of software. And of course, we created them for ourselves as well :-(
My apologies for the misinformation.
But see for yourself proposal to make all useful ideas patentable
How is the situation described in the article different from the situation that enables the slashdot organization to disable both the View|Source and File|Save As menu's on the web browser on "my computer?
Keep the aspidistra flying!
You are right. Think of this. One of the reasons why people haven't raised this concern about the new way of looking at the world, symbolized by Scalia and Kennedy (I think), doesn't have a name. It's not "right-wing" or "conservative", words which I have used frequently of late, but only because there isn't a neologism to replace them yet.
It IS a fascism. Business fascism is not quite right. Corporate fascism? How about American fascism? How about neofascism? Should Bush lend his name to it, since it is blooming on his watch?
This is a serious concern of mine. If you can't give a unique, powerful name to a new thing, it gets confused with other unrelated concepts.
Anyone else? Let's kick this around.
If you count resurfacing the entire planet as `not practical', then I guess you could be onto something. To make that assignation, though, you'd have to ignore an awful lot of physical geology.
As to the `corrupt' - in whose opinion? Yours? Go read the book of Job and think about it before replying.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Amen! That's the clause in my employment agreement. When I started doing open source development, I pulled it out and double checked. If I create it at work it's theirs. If I create it at home, it's mine.
Of course, I just have to be careful not to use any of my open source code for anything at work. That would make it very easy for them to claim I worked on it at their expense. If you've written something you want to use at work, right up a separate contract and license it to your employer for one dollar, just to keep everything clean.
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
WashTech