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Property Rights and the MSDN PDA Give-Away?
An anonymous reader asks: "MSDN subscribers recently qualified for a free Viewsonic V37 PDA (supposedly, around 25,000 units were given away). The software development group, at my company, just received our shipments; however, now there is contention between the developers and the company over who owns the PDAs.
The company I work for (a worldwide information technology and services company) contends that that they own the PDAs because they were obtained through a subscription purchased by the company and, therefore, the PDAs are company property (and so all company policies governing the use of their property applies). This upset quite a few developers in my group who were excited to have a new gadget to work/play with and now any tinkering must be approved by the company. So, who owns the PDAs -- the developers who found out about the promotion, filled out the forms, paid for the stamps, on their own initiative, etc. or the company who purchased the MSDN subscriptions to make the developers eligible for the 'free' promotion? Also, I am curious to find out if others are having similar debates at their respective companies. Details of the offer can be found here."
Here's a hypothetical situation for you: You buy a new digital camera, and are unaware that there is currently a $100 rebate available for that camera. If I fill out the rebate form, and mail it in at my own expense, would you say that that $100 is mine, or yours?
Nevermind the fact that you probably don't want to lose your job over a PDA.
IANAL...
We are not a lawyer...
Slashdot is not a lawyer...
I doubt you'll get anything, since the company paid for the merchandise. If you get a "buy one, get one free" your neighbor who told you about the offer doesn't get your freebie. You could ask for the cost of the stamp, but that's about all you'll get. The best you can hope for is to ask for an exemption and to the usage policy and let you tinker with it.
This annoys me so much, I'm tempted to think the question is a troll. Does anyone really think that the PDA wouldn't belong to the company?
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
I agree with you that the PDA technically belongs to the company. However, every place I've ever worked has let prizes of this sort go to the employee. Your company pays for you to go to a trade show and you drop your card in someone's fishbowl, winning a DVD player/PDA/Microsoft Inflatable Girlfriend/whatever. I've never known a company that tried to take that away from the employee. Ditto for this sort of thing. The company doesn't need the PDA, else they would have gone out and bought it (unless they have *SERIOUS* cash-flow problems). It's just plain good for morale to let the employees keep the extras.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
If the company paid for the subscription, then the employees were doing company work when they filled out the coupons (or whatever) and therefore the company owns the devices. Were I in charge of company resources I would then lend the devices to the people who showed the initiative to fill out whatever needed filling out, with specific instructions that they could do whatever constructive thing they wanted to do with the device, but they couldn't take it with them if they left.
You would not have these devices without Visual Studio.NET 2003 and so if you didn't purchase VS.NET 2003 or MSDN then you have no rights to the V37.
When I filled out my forms and sent in my reciept I knew full well that my company owned the device. Luckily my company didn't care about them and let us developers keep them.
although what MS wants to think and what the law is isn't always the same thing.
It probably is in this case. It previously belonged to Microsoft. Microsoft was entitled to give it away to whoever they wanted. Essentially, it belongs to whoever MS thinks they gave them to.
Ok, now that it has become a can of worms you pretty much have to submit to the will of the company. In all rights they bought the software licenses and the PDA is something that came free with purchase ... so in effect it is theirs.
: ... I don't even want to think about it.
... this is technically the same thing. In fact it should be reported as income to the IRS by the individual employees, but that isn't going to happen. If you could pick the most charismatic of your group and tactfully get the deciding manager to align these PDAs in his head to the same sort of business perk as SkyMiles, subtly suggesting that hey, we are all on the same team and yea, we acknowledge that we are in effect getting some free goodies as part of the business process, and actually SkyMiles could be used for business travel to save the company money whereas the PDAs could in no way save the company money by being micromanaged ... you might get away with taking them home to play with them as you wish as long as playing with them didn't negatively affect your work. If your company micromanages SkyMiles and doesn't let the flyers keep them for personal use, you are fuxored, hand over the toys.
Two thoughts
1. Who the fsck told anybody with any sort of authority about the PDAs? If I have to guess I would say that there are only half a dozen or less licenses at your company and thus only half a dozen (or less) PDAs - and probably no more PDAs than people in the IT department who would be getting them. The boxes come in, go directly to IT and you little weasles tear them open and start playing with your new toys - nobody else needs to know. Whoever leaked this to the managers needs to be blackballed, cause it cost you guys your toys (an important aspect of being IT.) Maybe it was the seventh guy on the totem pole, the guy that didn't get one and he was jealous, or maybe
2. SkyMiles. Whoever is making these decisions is a manager - and managers fly places. Now you are not in a position to be making demands, but if there is any leverage for discussion on the matter right now you need to turn it around into a language they understand : business perks. If your company lets the manager keep his SkyMiles when he flies for business, even though they are rightfully an extension to the ticket bought by the company, so he can later use the miles for personal travel or whatever
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Aren't these kind of things supposed to come with a disclaimer of "no purchase necessary"?
If it did, then it should make it obvious that the MSDN subscription only facilitated the entry into the contest, but was not required, and therefore the spoils should go to the individuals.
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I work for a large company at which us MSDN-having developers applied for the giveaway. I hear that management had some discussion about taking them away, but decided to let us keep them. I think my company was irritated that MS didn't instead offer them a cash credit.
.Net Compact Frameworks runs on this PDA, so VS.Net developers can write apps against it. It moves .Net to a new platform, and it gets a lot of geeks writing apps on MS's PDA platform.
I don't think they (the PHB's) understood that Microsoft is not simply giving away PDA's to make people happy that they are MS developers. Instead, I think MS is giving them away as yet another way to 0wn a market.
All that being said, I was concerned with what the company was discussing, because while I completely understand their right to keep the PDA's, it really would have been a bad move on their part in terms of employee morale.
I agree with you that the PDA technically belongs to the company. However, every place I've ever worked has let prizes of this sort go to the employee.
Reminds me of one company I worked for. A large hardware manufacturer donated a dozen or so PDAs to our development group. They weren't quite a perk per se; said hardware manufacturer was just getting into PDAs, and they gave us the hardware and associated SDKs for free, to see what we'd come up with by way of cool applications. Then, we'd go to market together. It was more like seeding developers than giving away freebies.
All those PDAs ended up in the attache cases of non-technical managers. No applications, cool or otherwise, for that platform were ever developed by the company. In fact, it doesn't produce much by way of anything anymore. Exactly the same thing happened when a handset manufacturer gave the developers their latest phones too.