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from the better-don-your-asbestos-undergarments dept.
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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @12:32AM
My company made you sign this type of clause, and it says that they own any code you write, plus you have to notify them of anything on which you are working. The FSF statement about assigning copyright will not apply to work for hire. I thought about this for a while, and decided that if I want to work on anything it must have a GPL V3 license. I will tell the company that they can claim copyright to what I create, but they must comply with the requirement to provide source code, and patent indemnity.