GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by btilly » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC

zekevermillion wrote: post #154

matthewmcg wrote: post #137

I work at a large law firm that represents a lot of software companies. Our standard employee agreement forms have the usual default (company owns everything you create with its resources or that relates to the scope of your employment). This default has always amused me because lawyers never sign these kinds of agreements with their own law firms . We spend most of our time writing contracts, memos, and other bits o…

Contracts theoretically could be protected by copyright. However, we reuse so much of the functional language that it would be difficult to prove that a given contract is sufficiently transformative to merit protection. One exception is that heavily-annotated firm templates and file memos. I would be more cautious about sharing a detailed, annotated template from a previous employer. Some large firms in fact do requi…

In theory, functionally important language should be uncopyrightable.

This is the same world of theory in which software is not subject to copyright...

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

#192

Post by fs111 » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

lsaferite wrote: post #166

fs111 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that all sounds nice and dandy, but imagine you don't find new clients or they don't pay your invoices or you get seriously sick or something in your private life needs all your attention. Employment isn't so bad in those cases.

Yes, you have to get new clients, that is always a risk. Proper structuring of payment schedules and IP transfer helps with invoice payment. Also, having long-term relationships with clients also helps there. I would hope you carry some sort of insurance in the case of life taking a sudden left-turn, but perhaps you don't. Ideally you financially plan enough to cover something like that. I've been a contractor as sev…

> I currently work as an employee and also like the benefits it provides and the people I work with.

So you broadly claim that "employment is dead" using big words like "feudal system" and how you can make so much more money contracting etc. etc. and then it turns out you are an employee after all? Seriously?

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

#193

Post by joshuamorton » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC

lsaferite wrote: post #166

fs111 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that all sounds nice and dandy, but imagine you don't find new clients or they don't pay your invoices or you get seriously sick or something in your private life needs all your attention. Employment isn't so bad in those cases.

Yes, you have to get new clients, that is always a risk. Proper structuring of payment schedules and IP transfer helps with invoice payment. Also, having long-term relationships with clients also helps there. I would hope you carry some sort of insurance in the case of life taking a sudden left-turn, but perhaps you don't. Ideally you financially plan enough to cover something like that. I've been a contractor as sev…

Time I need to spend managing clients is time I don't spend on self improvement or development. I'd prefer to specialize and be a better software developer than a decent software developer and mediocre client wrangler.

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

#194

Post by mmalone » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

matthewmcg wrote: post #137

I work at a large law firm that represents a lot of software companies. Our standard employee agreement forms have the usual default (company owns everything you create with its resources or that relates to the scope of your employment). This default has always amused me because lawyers never sign these kinds of agreements with their own law firms . We spend most of our time writing contracts, memos, and other bits o…

It's also interesting how infrequently this is actually enforced by employers. Outside of extreme cases (like the current waymo/uber litigation) I've never heard of it being enforced -- even when it's pretty obvious that IP was transferred (e.g., foursquare / dodgeball). I feel like it's in there because it always has been. I thought about removing it for my new business, but I'm worried about diligence issues if I end up raising more money or selling. At GitHub's scale that's less of a concern.

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

#195

Post by eeZah7Ux » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:21 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #108

lostboys67 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The real question is how expensive they are. The US has les protections but thus pays a lot more. Soft engineers moving from SF to europe get their income cut by more than 50%. In the end, more europeans move to the Us that the other way around, showing ultimately what the body prefers.

> more europeans move to the Us that the other way around

Biased metric. The US makes it hard for people to leave.

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

#196

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:28 PM UTC

lsaferite wrote: post #161

Dayshine wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so any one client 'firing' you is suddenly not a huge thing With 3 months notice and strong union protection (public sector) it already isn't. I'd much rather work for a single excellent organisation where I know I'm doing good than many who can't hold on to good staff and need contractors.

I'd love those protections personally, but I have no such luck.

Always Be Interviewing.

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

#197

Post by brudgers » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:29 PM UTC

This makes sense for Github (and probably for a lot of other software firms). I mean if you hire people to write code and be creative it doesn't make sense to turn around and create demotivating conditions upon their writing code and being creative...there are good constraints and bad constraints and constraints that create an inherent split between a person's best code and what they do for money is not a good constraint. For people motivated to make stuff outside of work, a separate laptop creates a physically different context for "what I care about" and "how I pay the rent".

There are probably businesses where it might make sense to have IP policies: perhaps those with huge infrastructure costs like the automotive industry. But for industries where the trend is away from patents and licensing, trying to own all the IP does not have much economic value.

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

#198

Post by andrewfong » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #165

matthewmcg wrote: post #137

I work at a large law firm that represents a lot of software companies. Our standard employee agreement forms have the usual default (company owns everything you create with its resources or that relates to the scope of your employment). This default has always amused me because lawyers never sign these kinds of agreements with their own law firms . We spend most of our time writing contracts, memos, and other bits o…

Wow, that's...really something. I do have a bit of a quibble with one of your assertions though: > It would not even be possible to ascertain the original authorship of most form contracts that cross my desk. I highly doubt this statement is true if given Documents X, Y, Z et al are given stringent, professional forensic examination for remnants of markings. Maybe not every single one, sure, but enough in a Universe…

> stringent, professional forensic examination for remnants of markings

Don't doubt it's possible, but might be a little trickier than you suspect. My old firm, as a matter of course, installed software on our laptops that stripped all sorts of metadata from outgoing documents. It was actually really annoying since "tracked changes" in MS Word got removed too.

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

#199

Post by paulcole » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:33 PM UTC

shawnee_ wrote: post #179

matthewmcg wrote: post #137

I work at a large law firm that represents a lot of software companies. Our standard employee agreement forms have the usual default (company owns everything you create with its resources or that relates to the scope of your employment). This default has always amused me because lawyers never sign these kinds of agreements with their own law firms . We spend most of our time writing contracts, memos, and other bits o…

The result is that contract forms have become a sort of IP-free zone. Exactly. One of the sleaziest tricks used by Realtors (most Realtors are not lawyers) is getting clients to sign their forms: their terms usually have the word "percent" hard-coded into the contract. Rather than opening the door to hourly or fixed dollar amounts, they insist that their forms are the "standard". I heard one recently say in a public…

>I've been trying for a long time to alter the common perception that Realtors add value; they don't.

I don't know anything about the law so I hire a lawyer I trust. I don't know anything about buying a house so I hire a realtor I trust.

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

#200

Post by js2 » Tue, Mar 21, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

shawnee_ wrote: post #179

matthewmcg wrote: post #137

I work at a large law firm that represents a lot of software companies. Our standard employee agreement forms have the usual default (company owns everything you create with its resources or that relates to the scope of your employment). This default has always amused me because lawyers never sign these kinds of agreements with their own law firms . We spend most of our time writing contracts, memos, and other bits o…

The result is that contract forms have become a sort of IP-free zone. Exactly. One of the sleaziest tricks used by Realtors (most Realtors are not lawyers) is getting clients to sign their forms: their terms usually have the word "percent" hard-coded into the contract. Rather than opening the door to hourly or fixed dollar amounts, they insist that their forms are the "standard". I heard one recently say in a public…

Nit: one fell swoop. It's from Macbeth.