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GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

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Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#51

Post by Humdeee »

soverance wrote: post #36
uniclaude wrote: post #8

People keep complaining about how hard and expensive it is to attract top talent. This kind of measure is exactly how you do it. Provide an environment where employees feel trusted and empowered, pay market rate, screen properly instead of having applicants jump through hoops, and you won't have much trouble hiring. Kudos to github for this, I'm impressed!

For real. I am an indie game dev who recently released his first big game on Steam. Just a week or two ago I had a prospective company tell me that, in order to hire me, I would need to sell them the entirety of my personally-developed IP and dissolve my interest in my own company. Needless to say, I decided against that job.

Congrats on release. Assuming you were interested to sell, what would that number be? How did the conversation go after that point?

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#52

Post by Kapura »

I work at a fairly large independent game studio and there is a similar arrangement with the developers here. The studio has developed a framework of Unity extensions that aren't open source, but that the developers are free to use in their own side projects without having to cede any ownership back to the studio if/when their game is released.

Even the fact that game developers are allowed to create other games outside of work, potentially with other non-studio teams is a super nice perk of working here.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#54

Post by falcolas »

It's nice that they explicitly spell this out. I'd personally still be leery of running personal projects on company time/property, simply because of the "existing or prospective products and services" clause; it's amazing how many products and services large companies are prospectively looking into.

The cost of not using company hardware or time is that of a laptop and working outside your "9-5"; simple insurance against the potential costs.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#55

Post by chadlavi »

lostboys67 wrote: post #10
uniclaude wrote: post #8

People keep complaining about how hard and expensive it is to attract top talent. This kind of measure is exactly how you do it. Provide an environment where employees feel trusted and empowered, pay market rate, screen properly instead of having applicants jump through hoops, and you won't have much trouble hiring. Kudos to github for this, I'm impressed!

Sad that having even minimal employee rights is some how seen as exceptional.

For real, this should be the norm. Good on GitHub anyway though!

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#56

Post by andrewfromx »

When I was an employee of BizRate/Shopzilla in 2005 I would take my laptop downstairs to my car parked in the company parking garage, and code on my personal project for exactly 1 hour from 12-1 my lunch break. But the laptop was charged with electrons from shopzilla's office plug and the parking garage turns out is still technically on the company's property.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#57

Post by falcolas »

ratherbefuddled wrote: post #41

This is just putting into a contract what ought to be considered normal and reasonable defaults. I don't think they deserve special praise for it, rather companies that don't do this deserve criticism. Whenever I've encountered overly grasping IP clauses in contracts I've always had them re-written so they only cover work which is done during working hours or related to . No employer has ever objected to this, they u…

> No employer has ever objected to this

I've not had this luck, personally. They are always willing to forgo the job offer just to ensure that everyone has the same contracts. I'm guessing that it's going to be a size of business issue.

And the IP assignment clauses are, for the most part, getting worse and worse; my current one extends the assignment to a year after termination, voluntary or not.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#58

Post by freebs »

lostboys67 wrote: post #10
uniclaude wrote: post #8

People keep complaining about how hard and expensive it is to attract top talent. This kind of measure is exactly how you do it. Provide an environment where employees feel trusted and empowered, pay market rate, screen properly instead of having applicants jump through hoops, and you won't have much trouble hiring. Kudos to github for this, I'm impressed!

Sad that having even minimal employee rights is some how seen as exceptional.

It really is sad. The worst part is, employees are treated poorly at many companies. I feel like it's even worse during and after a recession because employers know people are desperate.

I have been working on mplyees.com, a site where employees can share what needs to change publicly and anonymously. Hopefully we can bridge this divide since employee happiness is key to a successful business.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#59

Post by pjc50 »

KZeillmann wrote: post #48
soverance wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real. I am an indie game dev who recently released his first big game on Steam. Just a week or two ago I had a prospective company tell me that, in order to hire me, I would need to sell them the entirety of my personally-developed IP and dissolve my interest in my own company. Needless to say, I decided against that job.

That's an absolutely absurd request. I can understand if they said that you wouldn't be able to work on your game during business hours, or on your company machine, but to request that you dissolve your company and sell them your IP? That's insane

Information feudalism. The slim possibility that you might get into an IP dispute with them later used as an excuse to make sure employees have no independent revenue-earning capability.

Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources

#60

Post by badminton1 »

snovv_crash wrote: post #23
badminton1 wrote: post #12

Pet projects are not necessarily good for a company: 1) Code is not necessarily an asset, it is also a liability: needs to be maintained, tested, documented, etc. This has a non-trivial cost. 2) Engineer salaries are usually more expensive than a license. 3) Experience working using internal frameworks/libraries/etc can be harder to trade in the marketplace, especially if you are not the author. 4) It is hard to keep…

You might want to move the last sentence to the beginning. Your opening comment could easily be interpreted as "companies should forbid pet projects".

Don't judge a book by the cover.
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