Here's the repo, hosting the documents - https://github.com/github/balanced-employee-ip-agreement
GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources
61–70 of 484 posts
Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources
#62Exactly how it should be.
Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources
#63As developers, we're biased towards one view of this issue, but it's intellectually lazy of us to just say "Yeah, we deserve it! Because... fairness!" Last December, Joel Spolsky wrote about developer side projects, and honestly, he's right. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr... My view: In some companies, depending on their business model, it might be reasonable to ask to own your own work…
Why does this only apply to IP? Why isn't the company considered to own the employee's labour 24/7 in all regards? Your employer should be compensated for the labour you spend doing your washing. Or if you happen to spend an hour in the evening driving an Uber or subletting on AirBnB, your employer should own that as well?
/s
Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources
#64Looking at the alcatel case and github agreement, i think even alcatel made employees sign an agreement like this, they would have right on Brown's idea.
Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources
#65People 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!
Sad that having even minimal employee rights is some how seen as exceptional.
I couldn't care less about IP myself - but the real reason this stuff is pretty standard is that investors are somehow really bullish about IP (the "secret sauce"). Against our own beliefs, we decided for pretty strict contract terms around IP as this topic usually turns out to be one of the standard blockers in any funding and exit negotiations. In former companies, after a financing round people had to sign new terms and that can get pretty complicated.
That's the real reason things are pretty messed up all around protecting IP.
As we've survived without funding so far, we're thinking of relaxing this as well. Kudos to GitHub's investors for staying away from this nonsense.
Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources
#66When I was an employee of BizRate/Shopzilla in 2005 I would take my laptop downstairs to my car parked in the company parking garage, and code on my personal project for exactly 1 hour from 12-1 my lunch break. But the laptop was charged with electrons from shopzilla's office plug and the parking garage turns out is still technically on the company's property.
So you got sued and lost it?
Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources
#67For anyone interested in the Alcatel horror story mentioned in the article, it's even worse than you thought: Therefore his thoughts, which were characterised as “invention” in the decision, should be disclosed to Alcatel. The judge also ordered Brown to pay Alcatel’s legal fees, which exceeded $330,000.[1] 1: https://www.law360.com/ip/articles/1899/appeals-court-affirm...
His job at alcatel was converting old code to new code (probably architecture or similar), and he figured out a way to do this faster (or automatic), I think in this case github's IP agrrement also covering rights of company on this invention
Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes it feels like Kafka's The Trial is where the US court system takes most of it's inspiration from...
In think that in most countries, a large company will always win big trials. Andrew "bunnie" Huang has written a very good 2-page note on this in: http://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf (first two pages, but the whole book is a good read) In the US it seems especially bad, since Americans seem exceptionally obsessed with "living the American dream" aka making a lot of money. Many people assume that if…
> 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 up yourself by your bootstraps, the American Dream. And they must be smart people, they have lots of money!
And vice-versa.
As an aside, I'm increasingly seeing spammy "Soros is an anti-american progressive socialist communist" comments on other low quality forums. Which is interesting considering his investments, wealth, views on Russian, path to citizenship, and interest in helping economies move away from communism into capitalism. Post-truth, I guess.
Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources
#69People 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.
Yep. I was hired at a major hedge fund. Disclosed my interest in various companies ahead of time. Got to the hedge fund. Was told that I had to dissolve the interest. Quit job. Everyone pissed.
I had other reasons to quit which had nothing to do with the job itself (I loved it), but that was a major one. I get paid more, per hour, from my businesses than any job I've had so far.
Re: GitHub lets staff own IP developed for personal projects using company resources
#70People 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.
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