871–880 of 1001 posts
This is what happens when everyone expects to use the work of others for free without paying a dime.
Eventually the companies go looking for buyers with deep enough pockets to support them.
Apple, Google, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Facebook,..., take your pick.
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Well, I can easily imagine something worse, like for example Oracle buying it... ^__^;
Or EMC...
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The boilerplate and vague statement of Red Hat remaining a distinct unit doesn't really tell us anything. More relevant is what the CentOS and Fedora communities think of this acquisition, because no matter what they are community driven projects. There are two coins to toss: whether IBM reaches into Red Hat in a way that kills off either project; and whether enough of the community steps out. I'm curious what openSU…
I wonder if the Fedora community could immediately fork off their own and essentially "leave" IBM/RH hanging? Not even sure if that is legally possible now, as the terms of the sale could have potentially included looming/upcoming license changes that might prevent that. I'd say they'd have to act quick and with their general feeling on whether they'd want to go that route (the Fedora community), and I'm sure their w…
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Come to Sweden then :) As a researcher you explicitly own the rights to any foreground, i.e. results, as stated by law — the so called teacher’s excemption.
Careful, this might only apply to professors, not the rest of the staff.
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I have the same problem in academia, being in a non-CS department, I'm required to notify the University's Center for Technology & Venture Commercialization about assigning my copyright over software to another entity (like the FSF), but so far I have been unsuccessful at getting them to sign the letter the FSF wants, despite the code I would be contributing being completely outside of my work at the University and s…
I totally understand that large organisations don't want to sign papers about things that are none of their business. It's ridiculous that they need to sign them. This shouldn't be a requirement for Open Source contributions. But with some businesses claiming their employees' unrelated work done in their free time, I can see how this has become a necessity. It's harmful for open source, and a terrible situation that'…
The problem as someone else stated above in this discussion is that with a company the size of IBM it is hard to do anything that is guaranteed not to compete with anything they do.
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There is also the big difference that Sun was in the middle of transitioning to open source company (almost begrudgingly I think after everything else had failed), they weren't the great friend of open source they now are remembered as at their peak of their success. Sun still held significant amount of proprietary IP when they were acquired. In comparison RH has been open source from the get go, and pretty much ever…
Sun was helping open source before Linux existed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunsite
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It's a terrible and completely unreasonable stance for an employer. You get the hours you pay for. You don't get to own people's free time.
One relatively benign reason behind such policies is that the employer wants your free time to actually be free time that helps your recover, not a second job that leaves you exhausted and fighting burnout and sleep deprivation.
It’s purely to help themselves.
Having worked at IBM for 10 years, this is what I have come to know how IBM operates top-down: 1. To make significant profits, we need to sell services on top of our software products (this is essentially GBS and their "strong" sales people) 2. To make very good profits, we need to make highly customizable software (for example AI and BI offerings). 3. To make even more profit we need to make sure the software is tun…
What's not clear here is that why would one company, which is dong pretty well, better every year, would want to be sold to another company, which doesn't look well (from your own description), instead of just continuing growing and eventually "winning" the cloud market by themselves? Is that just because top Red Hat people wanted to cash out more quickly?
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A long time ago I joined IBM via an acquistion of the company I worked for. One part of the (lengthy) contract I had to sign, was a form listing any side projects I may have that I would be required to no longer work on. I simply omitted that page when I returned the contract and no one ever noticed.
I'm curious. Anyone care to outline the legal ramifications of this action? What would happen if IBM tried to stop his side-project? 1. Would IBM be able to enforce the original contract as it was outlined when they sent it to him? Would he be liable to fraud or other similar charges (for instance if he altered the contract after IBM representative added their signature)? 2. Or would the altered contract stand up in…