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Developers’ side projects

joelonsoftware.com

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Re: Developers’ side projects

#111

Post by brilliantcode »

I feel like this article grossly exaggerated the nature of the laws and relationship between you and the employer. I think it's a good thing that Joel isn't a lawyer because anyone following his advice will lead to implosion.

First, there is a very high bar for what is regarded the property of the company vs your own work. Even if you created your own open source project website and pushed code on your own github account using their laptop, as long as it doesn't directly compete or use portions of proprietary code, there is zero chance it will stand in court. Non compete clauses are next to impossible to uphold unless they literally sold trade secrets or company's code directly for profit. Even if they made a near identical version, it would be a tough uphill climb if you didn't copy & paste their code directly in your own source code.

Of course, the Goldman Sachs vs open source dev was a very interesting and a rare case. I don't have more insight into that case but if somebody could that 'd be great.

But for the most part, Joel's piece is spreading FUD into innocent developer's dreams and projects, and you don't need to heed attention.

For the truly paranoid and follower of Joel's flawed legal analysis which looks at syntax than the semantics or spirit behind the written law which almost always the overwhelming use:

1) Incorporate your own company

2) Purchase laptop under your new corp

3) Do your work on there.

Disclaimer: This is not a legal advice. I'm not a lawyer. I could be wrong. Check with a real lawyer and do your own due diligence.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#112

Post by tptacek »

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…

This is terribly dangerous logic exactly because it's so alluringly close to right.

As I said elsewhere on the thread: the worst, most heartbreaking problems a startup can have are the kind that only become apparent after the company is successful. You screw up vesting or grants somehow. You mess up liability in a contract, or don't get any legal review at all. In almost every case, you're fine either way...

... except in that one, 1% case, where your omission almost entirely counterfeits your success, negating the work you put in only after you've navigated the rest of the whitewater rapids of getting traction for a new company.

If you're just doing side projects for the hell of it, with no intention of ever starting something commercial with it, I'm almost right there with you, and I think the side project concern is overblown.

But if there's even a chance that you're going to commercialize something, you need to be aware that the gravity of your legal fuckups will almost never be apparent until after you're worth caring about, and in most cases --- especially for your first company --- the work and stress you have to put in to reach the point of being "worth caring about" is grueling.

If it helps my case at all (it wouldn't for me, since I'm an inveterate bootstrapper): not taking this side-project stuff seriously is going to seriously complicate both fundraising and later M&A stuff, where the warrants and reps process is going to go through this IP stuff in agonizing detail.

Just fill out the stupid invention disclosure form thingy your company almost certainly has, and quit if they give you any shit about it. It's too good a job market to take this risk in.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#113

Post by gumby »

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…

> The courts rarely side with the company, and only in cases where it's quite obvious the work was directly related.

The courts in California rarely side with the company, (so if you work on billing for Google and decide to do some machine learning on the side, even though Google does a lot of ML work no court would find in their favor -- though I doubt google would go after you anyway). But at the opposite end of the spectrum, a court in Texas have ruled that simply the thoughts in the head of an employee are a company's (DSC) proprietary information -- the ultimate non-compete (non-competes are illegal in CA).

Re: Developers’ side projects

#114

Post by eridius »

stevesun21 wrote: post #51
eridius wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game designer is a full-time employee.

'You are going to pay the game designer $6,000 a month to invent new games.' This is what origin say in the article, it sounds to me really not like a full time employee.

That's $72k a year, which sounds like a full-time employee somewhere outside of silicon valley. In addition, you don't generally pay contractors a fixed amount per month, but rather per hour. Note how the example of Sarah the contractor has the pay rate set at $20 per hour. Also, further on down, it explicitly says the game designer is being paid a salary, which is something that employees, not contractors, get.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#115

Post by anonymousDan »

KallDrexx wrote: post #100
chucksmash wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did the company know what he was working on six months after he was forced out?

He was at the original company for 15 years at the time and was the 2nd developer at the company. So he had a lot of friends at the company and he told his friends at the company that he made this cool app and word got around because everyone thought it was harmless to repeat.

Can you name the company? This kind of thing deserves bad press.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#116

Post by udkl »

curiouscat321 wrote: post #99
uiri wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't even tell your employer about side projects. Leave them out of the loop entirely. This depends heavily on the employer. Google, for instance, is extremely friendly towards both side projects (done entirely on your own time and with your own equipment) and open source contributions done either on or off company time. I wish more employers had the same level of transparency.

How is Google so friendly towards them?

It could just be the people that google attracts ? People who are constantly tinkering ... side or hobby projects could well be ingrained in the company culture ....

Re: Developers’ side projects

#117

Post by udkl »

OliverJones wrote: post #86

Joel doesn't often miss things, but with respect I think he missed something here. If you, the employee, are working for an employer you respect, and vice versa, YOU CAN HAVE A CONVERSATION! If your day job is, say, maintaining high-capacity forum software in dotnet, and you have this hankering to develop, say, a WordPress plugin to show the time of sunrise, you can talk about it. If you respect your boss and she res…

> If you, the employee, are working for an employer you respect, and vice versa, YOU CAN HAVE A CONVERSATION!

This. I know Amazon is good at this.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#118

Post by anonymousDan »

What would people think of a website that collates instances of companies taking legal action against employees regarding side projects and then ranks them with respect to 'side-project' friendliness? Would a bad rating for a company impact your decision to take a job there?

Also, it would be cool if there was some widely available standard 'developer friendly' contract (or even addendum to a contract) that software engineers could table when negotiating a new job. It should be fair to the employer too of course, but it would give less experienced developers or those in a weaker negotiating position for whatever reason something well thought out to use.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#119

Post by eropple »

st3v3r wrote: post #46
danjoc wrote: post #43

I negotiated IP assignment out of my employment contract before taking my job. I wouldn't take a job that tried to lay claim to my work outside of work.

That's cool, and I'm happy for you. But is this something that should be a luxury only reserved for those in a good bargaining position?

For the most part, a developer shouldn't be in a poor bargaining position by the time a contract is on the table. They've invested time and money into you. They want to hire you. This is where you stake out your claim.

Re: Developers’ side projects

#120

Post by slmyers »

OliverJones wrote: post #86

Joel doesn't often miss things, but with respect I think he missed something here. If you, the employee, are working for an employer you respect, and vice versa, YOU CAN HAVE A CONVERSATION! If your day job is, say, maintaining high-capacity forum software in dotnet, and you have this hankering to develop, say, a WordPress plugin to show the time of sunrise, you can talk about it. If you respect your boss and she res…

I'll be damned if I'm going to let my boss tell me if I can write a WordPress plugin on my own time.
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