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

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

#71

Post by jasonkostempski »

kriro wrote: post #4

Very, very good. It shows the kind of trust in employees that I like to see. Depends a bit on how they will interpret "As long as the work isn’t related to GitHub’s own “existing or prospective” products and services" but I'd assume that it will be very reasonable. Kudos, great decision.

I'm sure this is all idealistic crap, but I'd still love to see someone try it; I'd like to see a well grounded company include "even if it is related to 's own existing and prospective products". A nice competitive taunt "Go ahead, try and compete with us, we dare you." Code is already covered by copyright, so it's not like anyone could take the repository and start a GitHub with it. Even if they could, not many people are going to trust the new fork because it's future is not backed by the same team and community (unless the existing team and community has become toxic, but, ideally, having this threat in place could prevent that from happening in the first place). Code is only part of GitHub's success, recreating the other parts isn't going to happen easily. No single person could know all the ins-and-outs of every important role in the company.

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

#72

Post by TeMPOraL »

ratherbefuddled wrote: post #41

This is just putting into a contract what ought to be considered normal and reasonable defaults. I don't think they deserve special praise for it, rather companies that don't do this deserve criticism. Whenever I've encountered overly grasping IP clauses in contracts I've always had them re-written so they only cover work which is done during working hours or related to . No employer has ever objected to this, they u…

> I don't think they deserve special praise for it, rather companies that don't do this deserve criticism.

Just like you don't train a dog with punishment but with rewards, it seems like a good idea to reward companies for doing the right thing. Plus, criticism is empirically proven to have mostly zero impact on businesses, so why not try the other way?

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

#73

Post by VLM »

soverance wrote: post #36
uniclaude wrote: post #8

People 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.

Employment is dead, contract is the way of the future.

Do you really want to buy into a feudalistic legacy organizational model knowing that the odds of rising up in the pyramid are approximately zero? And they're going to downsize with no loyalty if needed to bump the stock price later on. Like a decapitated chicken the company will strut around a bit randomly canceling or creating projects so you have no control over your future other than maybe running away to another feudal manor and some have non-competes to try and enforce that kind of slavery. So they're worth nothing to you as an employer unless you want to LARP that you're a feudal peasant in 1300 and you're worth nothing to them as they'll fire you or steal from you in a blink of an eye if they can make a nickel off it.

Meanwhile a competitor smart enough to hire you as a consultant will crush them in the market purely for organizational superiority reasons. Companies that hire contractors are inherently more modern and superior and more likely to succeed.

The future, being unevenly distributed, some folks still think employment is alive, but one effect of post-industrialism or service economy or infinite benefit prices is employment is good and dead. In a dying business model, the employer needs employees a lot more than employees need the employer.

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

KZeillmann wrote: post #48
soverance wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's an absolutely absurd request. I can understand if they said that you wouldn't be able to work on your game during business hours, or on your company machine, but to request that you dissolve your company and sell them your IP? That's insane

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by dopamean »

ratherbefuddled wrote: post #41

This is just putting into a contract what ought to be considered normal and reasonable defaults. I don't think they deserve special praise for it, rather companies that don't do this deserve criticism. Whenever I've encountered overly grasping IP clauses in contracts I've always had them re-written so they only cover work which is done during working hours or related to . No employer has ever objected to this, they u…

You and I have had very different experiences with this. I've lost offers over simply questioning those clauses.

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

#76

Post by MadManE »

kutkloon7 wrote: post #27
ifdefdebug wrote: post #20

Earlier 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…

That's not been my observation. People assume that if you have a lot of money, you must be good at something, not that you are inherently good.

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

#77

Post by jeffbr13 »

ja30278 wrote: post #49

As a thought experiment, for people who agree with the idea that a company 'owns' all of the thought-output of an employee: Why should that mean only the valuable IP, and not _all_ of the thought-output, including the unpleasant parts. If an employee commits a pre-meditated murder, should the company be liable, as a partial 'thought-owner'?

IP's the more specific case here. The company both owns and is responsible for anything an employee does during the course of their employment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_of_employment

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

#78

Post by uncoder0 »

At all the companies I've run I always allow engineers to work on personal projects on personal time and have never cared if they did it on their work laptop. The only time I can see a hands off IP agreement being an issue and is when the project is commercial, in the same space as our product and is cannibalizing the company's user base which it seems Github has allowed in it's IP agreement. I've never tried to get a lawyer to work similar language into an IP agreement so I've just eschewed them entirely. Looks like we may have to get one if we decide to go after funding. Does anyone think sensible terms like ones used by Github will suffice for VCs or do they all want the draconian "all your thoughts are belong to us" IP agreement I've seen commonly thrown around?

Hopefully articles and practices like these will continue to become more commonplace and influence the current VC dogma.

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

#79

Post by fs111 »

VLM wrote: post #73
soverance wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Employment is dead, contract is the way of the future. Do you really want to buy into a feudalistic legacy organizational model knowing that the odds of rising up in the pyramid are approximately zero? And they're going to downsize with no loyalty if needed to bump the stock price later on. Like a decapitated chicken the company will strut around a bit randomly canceling or creating projects so you have no control ov…

> Employment is dead, contract is the way of the future.

I am pretty happy with my employment. Paid vacation, paid sick days, reasonable hours and all that good stuff.

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

#80

Post by lallysingh »

VLM wrote: post #73
soverance wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Employment is dead, contract is the way of the future. Do you really want to buy into a feudalistic legacy organizational model knowing that the odds of rising up in the pyramid are approximately zero? And they're going to downsize with no loyalty if needed to bump the stock price later on. Like a decapitated chicken the company will strut around a bit randomly canceling or creating projects so you have no control ov…

Employment is lower risk. It's tougher to fire employees than contractors, so there's lower firing risk for employees. It also reduces your work overhead for stuff that HR can take care of for you (health insurance, life insurance, etc). As well as sick days.

And at some places, this lets you focus on larger problems that you'd never get solved working from contract to contract.

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