Comment by mcv
7 years ago
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's not to anyone's benefit. I guess US law should make more clear that employers don't own their employees' private work?
It's not only owning the outcome that is the problem, if you develop a software system that in any ways competes with your employer they may have a reason to fire and/or sue you.
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.
Totally agreed.
I always imagined it stems from historical experiences where staff ran off with ideas that they were paid to have within the scope of their employment. So perhaps this is the only way employers have thought of protecting themselves against that. Ie., what other way do we have to offer them?