Developers’ side projects • Hacker News Board

Re: Developers’ side projects

#311

Post by walshemj » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:49 PM UTC

KallDrexx wrote: post #59

mikepavone wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the full article, it covers the law in California which has three tests. Two of those tests are straightforward (company time and company equipment), but the third (related to the company's business) is less straightforward. My impression as a non-laywer is that the courts will probably take a somewhat narrow view of that third test, but the actual language in the law is pretty vague and some companies ar…

I think he is too dismissive of company time though. Company time is very straightforward only if you work 9-5, but a lot of companies let developers work flexible hours and work from home, which I think makes company time less straight forward. Then when you add on call or emergency work you have to do off hours or on weekends (even once every 6 months) it makes the idea of "company time" even more vague.

and pretty much all developers are salaried so the concept of 9-5 doesn't apply

Re: Developers’ side projects

#312

Post by fornever » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #232

charlesism wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not in the habit of accepting anything anyone says at face value. Well, that is generally a wise approach. The only reason I'm defending him is that I mentally pegged him a long time ago as an unusually decent guy. To be fair, I only know him from his writings and public speaking, but that has been consistently developer-minded.

I have met him and he is generally a very decent guy, but like I said his perspective is informed by specific experiences.

That is probably true, but then you also have to look at the merit of those experiences. His fight has essentially been trying to make programming a "respected profession", where you contributions and time is respected. If that's the environment you're trying to create, then side projects are less important. Since your best work, excitement and learning is supposed to happen at work. Side projects might even undermine your efforts since programmers at worse workplaces compensate by having more exciting side projects. So I think the perspective is less that side projects are bad and more that work should be good enough that side projects (that leads to commercial products rather than hobbies) become unnecessary.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#313

Post by cgio » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

shandor wrote: post #224

charlesism wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Be mindful of Joel's bias (he's a CEO, not a developer). Sorry, but this is ridiculous. Spolsky has built his career around promoting a good work environment for developers. After reading his blog for many years, listening to his talks and podcasts... he's either an extremely talented thespian, or one of the most conscientious people in tech. And, while everyone has bias, I seriously doubt Joel and StackOverflow wo…

I have nothing against Joel. But to be fair, as people in finance use to say, "history is not indicative of the future".

They also say: "you are as good as your last trade", in finance.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#314

Post by gumby » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

greggman wrote: post #284

gumby wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That doesn't fit my understanding of the law. Do you have references? Do you live in California? If not, I have no idea what law applies to you and your work. But if you live in California you are in luck: Section 2872 of the labor code is explicit in this matter. In fact every employee assignment agreement I have handed out to someone I've hired (going back to 1989) has included the text of that section, for examp…

You seem to have left out this entire paragraph in your summary of the law you sited > a. Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice to Company’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development.

No, that's in the text I quoted and I referred to it in my original comment: the CA courts have historically sided with the employees over the companies except when it was pretty unambiguous that the employee was going into the same business as their (former) employer, e.g. Avant! -- which typically includes actual taking of source code.

On the other hand stories like google's self driving car team departing to start their own self driving car company, or the tons of people who have left Cisco to start routing companies are legion.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#315

Post by alkonaut » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

Lewton wrote: post #299

chrisan wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if the fight continues and you run out of money, what then? How does this work? I always hear the "sue you until you run out of money" type of bullying. Why do you need to pay lots of money for a lawyer if you are in the right? * I worked on my project at night: here is my git log * I worked on my personal laptop * Your business is automated cars and my side project is a T shirt sale website

This kind of naïveté about the legal system is dangerous. I know someone who spent 4 years of his life in court in a case where he was obviously in the right But every time he won, it was escalated to a higher court and it ended up costing him several magnitudes more than the sum the case was about ($10k, yes, seriously) Just the opportunity cost lost due to spending 4 years in litigation is insane in itself This was…

Presumably, in most systems, the loser pays all (legal) costs for both sides at least.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#316

Post by brianwawok » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:20 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #315

Lewton wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of naïveté about the legal system is dangerous. I know someone who spent 4 years of his life in court in a case where he was obviously in the right But every time he won, it was escalated to a higher court and it ended up costing him several magnitudes more than the sum the case was about ($10k, yes, seriously) Just the opportunity cost lost due to spending 4 years in litigation is insane in itself This was…

Presumably, in most systems, the loser pays all (legal) costs for both sides at least.

Not in the US

Re: Developers’ side projects

#317

Post by chris_7 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:41 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #128

leggomylibro wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the first point, big companies clearly feel that they can claim any project that is related to the company's lines of work, not yours. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have arms for hardware design, video game development, web development, close-to-the-metal graphical programming, embedded systems, retail...that's not just big enough to drive a truck through, it's big enough for that platform they truc…

Specifically at Google, you must submit work-unrelated open source submissions through Google legal; though they seem to be fairly quick with it.

This seems insane. I make tiny pull requests all of the time - sometimes it's just a documentation typo fix! If you're a Google, you need to send those through a lawyer, or you'll (I assume) get fired? Ignoring the intrusion, that's a good use of Google's expensive lawyer time?

Re: Developers’ side projects

#318

Post by solatic » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:41 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #306

solatic wrote: post #305

Isn't there a relatively easy way to solve this problem? As an employer, when you decide to hire someone to produce software for you, you assign them a private key tied to a certificate issued by the employer's certificate authority. The employer then has tooling which requires all commits to the employer's repositories to be signed with a certificate issued by the employer's certificate authority. Then it's very sim…

What is to stop an employee cloning his work and signing it with his key

There isn't, but remember, the whole point of signing something is to put it out there in the open. If an employee grabs older work, signs it with his personal-project key, and then tried to sue the employer for using code which belonged to him, then the employer could easily show a court the timestamps/logs which prove that the code was originally signed over to the employer and thus belonged to the employer under contract. And if the employee is secretly signing work with his own key over time before signing it with the employer's certificate, then his own record of ownership will be in parallel to the employer's record of ownership, thus proving that the work belongs to the employer under contract.

The whole point is how to distinguish work that the employee is not signing over to the employer at all - because it's originally a personal project. Then the employer will have no record of the code being signed over to the employer, and the proof clearly shows the code belonging to the employee.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#319

Post by alkonaut » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:43 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #110

ThatGeoGuy wrote: post #58

As a Canadian I don't even know what the requirements are, or protections if any. But I did notice one thing in particular: you need your own equipment (no company equipment) to qualify under the Californian protections. How does this factor into bring your own device (BYOD)? At what point is it your employers equipment, and at what point is it yours? I think BYOD is a terrible idea for several reasons (usually lever…

The problem looks reasonably clear. If something is provided to you by the employer, don't use it for a side project. This can be hardware, software, know-how, office space, work hours, etc. If something was not provided by the employer as a part of your work environment, it's probably fine to use it. But a clear separation should additionally help.

I agree it's probably wise to separate the two, but it's very hard to prove you worked on company equipment.

My personal projects are all in my dropbox, which is synced to all my computers (both home and work). That means all the code for my side projects is always sitting on my work computer as well. I doubt that makes a difference.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#320

Post by chris_7 » Sat, Dec 10, 2016, 2:44 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #138

alxmng wrote: post #65

> Not related to your employer’s line of work. Um, wait. What’s the definition of related? [...] I don’t know. It’s a big enough ambiguity that you could drive a truck through it. No, it's not that ambiguous at all. The courts rarely side with the company, and only in cases where it's quite obvious the work was directly related. If your side project isn't directly related to the work you are doing, then you don't nee…

> Don't even tell your employer about side projects. Leave them out of the loop entirely. On this, my last company had a similar clause, but you could just run a project by the HR team and they would clear any ownership of it. I worked at a media company and I was working on a media-related side project (so definitely "related to your employer’s line of work") and they 'released' any rights to it.

This seems crazy, though. I'm supposed to run some utility script I'm throwing up on Github through an HR team? That'll take more time than actually writing the script!