An anonymous poster 'The ABKCO Thieves' writes in about new hire paperwork.
I recently started work at a well-known e-commerce business, which is a great opportunity for me. Only after I started did I find out the full inventions, NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), non-poaching, and work-for-hire agreement is onerous. It treats any work of authorship during my employment as their property, even if done on my own time and equipment. I can't post the agreement because it would identify the company, and potentially me as well.
Earlier this year I began contributing code to a GPL v2 project that has existed for more than a decade. I want to continue to do so, but how can I without risking "contamination" of it thanks to this agreement? Part of my goal in contributing is to have real live code I can point to, so going under the radar defeats that purpose.
Are these sorts of intellectual property agreements common?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @08:55AM
This is why we need basic income, so we call all ork as dish washers and moon light as super elite coders for freedom! Except dish washing machines took our dish washing jobs. Oh well. Still got the basic income, right?! Uh, wait. Has the New World Economy not happened yet? What year is this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:42PM
Don't worry. There are always job openings for cannon fodder.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday September 13 2016, @01:56PM
To elaborate on your remark:
> There are always job openings for cannon fodder.
There is an underlying reason for that. Making the cannons (and other high tech toys) supports a gigantic infrastructure of hugely profitable corporations in the military industrial complex. It's tentacles reach into congress. It provides jobs in every congressional district. Peace is unthinkable because War is simply too profitable for those sucking the government tax dollar teat. Therefore you can expect a continued state of undeclared war forever into the future. The name of the enemy may change from Al Queda to ISIS to something else. But we have always been at war with Eurasia, or was it Eastasia. And expect video conferencing cameras as a fixed feature in all your future Telescreens, er, I mean Smart TVs. But I digress.
People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.