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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

#111

Post by brazzledazzle »

falcolas wrote: post #57
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.

Wouldn't that keep you from being employed for a year after termination? If so, I hope a year's worth of severance is part of your contract.

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

#112

Post by cookiecaper »

VLM wrote: post #85
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…

I'm not a lawyer so this isn't legal advice but that's very interesting about English law, because in the USA employees have the "in the course of employment" as you state but USA independent contractors retain copyright unless they assign it as part of their contract, so about 99% of contracts have a clause to assign ownership and copyright to the client. Also in the USA putting language like "employment" in a contr…

>because in the USA employees have the "in the course of employment" as you state but USA independent contractors retain copyright unless they assign it as part of their contract, so about 99% of contracts have a clause to assign ownership and copyright to the client.

I'm not a lawyer either but this is not true in the US afaik. "Works made for hire" are automatically copyrighted by the hirer, not the contractor.

Copyright assignment clauses in contracts exist to remove any potential ambiguity over whether anything supplied to the hirer is technically "specially ordered or commissioned" or otherwise legally qualified as a "work made for hire". It's to prevent situations where someone claims "Well, I actually did that important part of the work without billing for it, so I've retained the copyright and if you use it, I'll sue you." (I've actually had a contractor tell me this before!)

See this circulation from the Copyright Office for more discussion. [0] [PDF]

[0] https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf

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

#113

Post by kutkloon7 »

I agree, and I think that people should be able to make the distinction between legally correct and morally correct. (It's very easy to make a Godwin here)

Is it that uncommon to factor in the situation? I've heard of judges in the Netherlands who find people guilty, but give them just a small fine. Likewise, they might rule that technically, someone is guilty, but that this application of the law is not in the spirit of the law.

In the US, this might be less common. However, Steve Jobs was legally responsible for Apple backdating options in 2006. He plays the "Oh, I didn't know"-card and sure enough, an exception to the law can be made.

However, a woman in Texas was jailed for 8 years for crossing a wrong box on her voting form. Now suddenly "I didn't know" is not a valid excuse.

The law is not that independent. Screwing over someone powerful is likely to yield repercussions, even if it is morally and legally the right thing to do. Screwing over someone without power mostly goes without consequences, so this happens more often.

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

#115

Post by sklivvz1971 »

lallysingh wrote: post #80
VLM wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employment is dead, contract is the way of the future. Do you really want to buy into a feudalistic legacy organizational model knowing that the odds of rising up in the pyramid are approximately zero? And they're going to downsize with no loyalty if needed to bump the stock price later on. Like a decapitated chicken the company will strut around a bit randomly canceling or creating projects so you have no control ov…

Employment is lower risk. It's tougher to fire employees than contractors, so there's lower firing risk for employees. It also reduces your work overhead for stuff that HR can take care of for you (health insurance, life insurance, etc). As well as sick days. And at some places, this lets you focus on larger problems that you'd never get solved working from contract to contract.

In my experience employment is not lower risk at all, in terms of continuity of employment. Companies will fire you even in countries where your rights are strongly protected, the only difference being you get paid for the nuisance. This is not really a differentiator: let's say that incentivised employees get a month of salary for each year of service, then you can factor that in your daily rate as a contractor.

The big advantage is when you have strong rights and we're talking about long term illness. For example in Italy you can't be fired if you are truly sick for months: your employment will be retained, however you might not get paid, or not get paid fully.

Other advantages might be related to discrimination: for a young white male it might be easier to get a developer job, or for a seasoned white male might be easier to get a lead/manager role. It's the same with employment, but as a contractor, passing job interviews becomes a significant part of your job, as well as cultivating relationships.

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

#116

Post by gcb0 »

cmiles74 wrote: post #95
0xfeba wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people assume that if you have a lot of money, you must be a good person. I used to agree with that, but now politics has cleaved this into two. A) If you're a democrat/progressive (Soros, Hillary, et al.) you're corrupt, greedy, immoral. And you got all that money via ill means. They must be stupid and anti-American be B) If you're a republican (Trump, Murdoch, Ted Stevens, et al.) your earned it from picking…

I can't help being somewhat cynical and jaded on this one. I tend to think that people become wealthy through (1) inheritance, (2) something nefarious (greed, cheating, etc.) (3) working hard and the equivalent of winning the lottery, being rewarded for that hard work I believe that I could maybe relate to the people in category 3.

except that statistically you will never meet #3 but will meet tons of #2 and #1.

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

#117

Post by gcb0 »

ja30278 wrote: post #49

As a thought experiment, for people who agree with the idea that a company 'owns' all of the thought-output of an employee: Why should that mean only the valuable IP, and not _all_ of the thought-output, including the unpleasant parts. If an employee commits a pre-meditated murder, should the company be liable, as a partial 'thought-owner'?

why go for something like murder and not the widespread ip violation crimes such as using ideas from patents but hiding that you ever saw that patent (why do you think every company has rule against discussing patents on email?)

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

#118

Post by Negative1 »

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.

You're not shameful enough to direct plug so I'll do it for you: http://soverance.com/ethereal/

Looks cool (fighting the "infected mushroom", ha).

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

#119

Post by cookiecaper »

kutkloon7 wrote: post #104
jerf wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Many people assume that if you have a lot of money, you must be a good person." That sounds like one of those things that people assume everybody else must think, but nobody actually thinks.

Of course no one literally thinks this, but I observe that many Americans have a tendency to like rich people, and give them the benefit of the doubt. In a presidential election, for example.

Everyone has a tendency to flatter wealthy people because the truth is that they're hoping, consciously or subconsciously, they'll get a dispensation from them somewhere down the line: a sale, a gift, or some other kind of benefit from association with a powerful individual. Unfortunately, it appears that many wealthy people forget this and begin to believe that they actually are just brilliant and special and that must be why they get a lot of attention.

This is in no way exclusive to Americans. In fact, from my admittedly limited experience, this is much more explicit in other cultures.

Politics is a totally different ball game. You basically must be wealthy to be successful in national politics (not necessarily in the Trump or Clinton stratospheres, but still need significant personal wealth and resources), and this is also the case in not-America as far as I can tell.

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

#120

Post by londons_explore »

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

"It's worth $1B. Still want to buy it from me?"
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