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An anonymous poster 'The ABKCO Thieves' writes in about new hire paperwork.

I recently started work at a well-known ecommerce business, which is a great opportunity for me. Only after I started did I find out the full inventions, NDA, 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?

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