Developers’ side projects

These two are the same in Germany; German doesn't have a word for moral rights.

It would depend on the local laws and the wording of the contract. It would be highly unusual for an employer to claim ownership over pre-existing IP (unless that was the reason they were hiring you).

Of course even if pre-existing IP is owned you don't want to be in a position where contributions to the same project after date of new employment are owned by the company, creating a divide in ownership.

That's an interesting thought - does the copyright assignment happen before or after the license assignment?

Let's say my contract says "employee agrees to transfer copyright to all work". Does that happen immediately the moment the work comes into existence? If yes - you can't actually license it how you want, since you're never the copyright owner of the work.

What if I just don't assign the copyright? It is clear breach of contract, but at least for some amount of time, the company isn't the copyright owner, so you CAN assign a license. Can the court grant a retrospective copyright ownership, so that the original license is null? What if it was GPL3 and you gave the code to someone else, who made their own modifications and started distributing their version? If they're making money from it, could they sue the original company for loss of profit in the event that the court decrees that they don't actually have a license following the resolution of the lawsuit between the company and employee?

The way you handle this as a typical employee is to not work for dicks. That way when they see you being successful they cheer you on rather than try to bring you down.

Also, you don't always have no leverage to negotiate contract terms. When I separated from my last job, my severance agreement as given to me included a 2 year gag clause keeping me from talking about it to anyone. I negotiated it down to six months, using the time-honored tactic of bitching until I got my way.

Bitching is a useful tool in the kind of low-stakes environment that most employee negotiations happen in. Legal action is the equivalent of nuclear warfare, if you're willing to bitch about something, the company, so long as you're not working for a bunch of dicks, is going to eventually open up about what they need to get out of a particular contract clause. This paves the way for a gentleman's agreement whereby you agree to not fuck their shit up, and they agree to not fuck yours up.

In my case, what they wanted was for me to not lead an employee charge for better perks / compensation, and I just wanted to be able to yak about it on Hacker News. So I agreed to keep my mouth shut to my fellow employees about the agreement, and they agreed to reduce the length of the gag clause.

But again, you can't be working for a bunch of dicks. You need to maintain good relationships with your bosses and company leadership and your work output and ethic should never be in question. You are, in other words, loyal to each other. It's great to be ambitious and to want more out of life, but you shouldn't stomp all over the people who are helping you to get there.

Every time I've ever seen one of these "former employer fucked with me after I moved on" stories, the employee in question was clearly working for a bunch of dicks. Your intuition is your most valuable asset as a little guy. Your chances of getting stepped on can range from 0% all the way up to 100% if you're working in the entertainment biz where stepping on little guys is just the culture. You don't have to bury your head in the sand and ignore the risk.

Well, why not just go development and collaborative way of doing things and not make a gist/repo with a list of companies friendly to side projects, and unfriendly? Like Glassdoor it will add more clarity and competition to those companies, since people would know what they're signing for _before_ sending CV, going to interview or signing the offer.