
Apple engineer in need of OSS maintainers - Austin_Conlon
https://twitter.com/mdiep/status/1252586799098183682
======
jedberg
This is another place where Netflix really shines. Their policy is basically:

Go ahead and work on open source. Use our computers and our office and our
internet if you want. If we use the software inside Netflix, please mention
that on the project page if you can, but if we don't or you can't, then
whatevs.

Also, if the software was created here at Netflix, feel free to open source it
if it has to do with operations, but if it has to do with moviemaking, we'd
rather keep that to ourselves for now.

They understand that open source software is great for the community and great
for recruiting. What better way to attract great engineers than to point out
that the maintainer of their favorite open source project works for Netflix?

~~~
saagarjha
Question: is that the official or unofficial policy? I know a lot of companies
that are willing to look the other way–or even encourage contributions–most of
the time, but if you end up doing something that they don't like they can and
will come after you due the actual employment contract still being the
standard verbiage that legal wrote.

~~~
aliceryhl
If you work on open source software, you should probably not accept a contract
with such a clause.

------
umvi
> Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in
> their personal time).

Wow, that seems petty. And it enrages me enough that if I worked for Apple I'd
immediately start looking elsewhere for a job. I can do whatever I darn well
please in my personal time and any employer that says otherwise is being
overbearing.

~~~
wlll
Is that even legal? In my mind, if you want to dictate what I do in my non-
work time, you pay me for the time.

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
By default it's not. However, if you join FAANG, chances are that you'll be
required to sign a contract that basically says "I waive my rights of doing
side-projects to to the greatest possible extents under the laws of
California". When speaking of contributing to open source, Google generally
has a more positive image, but there are still occasions that something could
only be released after being reviewed by the legal department if it's work-
related. On the other hand, Apple is known to have strict restrictions.

------
sdwolfz
While not employed at Apple, I too have a clause in my employment contract
(UK) that states I "assign copyright and IP rights produced by me in the
course of my employment, whether during normal hours of business or otherwise,
or at the premises or using company facilities or otherwise". I was told by my
manager that I need to notify them if I plan to contribute/create an open
source project, and even had one open source project I created get claimed by
the company since I used it for one of my work tasks even though I created it
for personal use initially, in my personal time, because "I could not prove
that I developed it independently of my company work needs" and was told "if
you don't like this then why are you still working here".

What I want to know is how exactly do you go about getting that part of you
contract removed so you own copyright and IP for work you do on your free time
without the need to justify it to your employer?

I tried speaking with my company's legal department and they slightly re-
worded the contract to say the same thing (basically lied to me as later my
project's ownership was claimed), all my managers so far did not take me
seriously and basically ignored my request to change/remove this clause, or
told me they would approve anything and it would be open source anyway
(another lie as my project was taken) to the point I gave up, reduced my OSS
contributions greatly and only worked on things I confirmed previously were OK
for me to do, which added a lot of useless bureaucracy and got me demotivated.

The only thing I can come up with was quitting my job after I negotiate with
another employer to not have such a clause in my contract. But I have not done
any interviewing yet, so I don't know if that is even possible.

Any ideas/hints/help would be greatly appreciated!

~~~
burnte
I have never signed a non-compete or a "we own everything you do" clause.
However, rather than just saying no, I offer a compromise. I agree not to go
after clients if I leave, and I agree anything I make ON COMPANY TIME is
solely the property of the company.

It's been a non-started for a couple of companies, but if that's the case, I
don't want to work for them anyway.

Once I worked for a company, and me and the owner had a disagreement that
wasn't resolvable so I said that I'd have to quit. She leaned back, smirked,
and said, "remember that you signed a non-compete." I simply replied, "No, I
didn't." She suddenly had an "oh crap" look on her face and looked at the HR
director, who said, "I thought I'd get him to sign it later so we let it slide
when he came on." The owner then tried to stop me from leaving, but after
seeing that shark smile on her face I knew it was only a matter of time before
she found another way to screw me and left anyway.

There are more of us than there are them. We all need to stop agreeing to
these clauses.

~~~
wasyl
Why would leaving with a non-compete be so bad that the owner thought they
somehow had an upper hand?

~~~
burnte
If I has signed a non-compete, that limits my income potential, meaning they
have me in a bad position if I quit. That means I'm more likely to just go
along with their orders rather than wait out a non-compete on savings or an
alternative industry.

------
louwrentius
Original tweet: (now gone)

Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in
their personal time).

So some of my projects could use a maintainer to manage PRs: <cut> If you’re
interested, please let me know!

~~~
sebastien_bois
Sounds to me like if they own you 24 hrs/day, you should get paid 3x normal
wages.

~~~
nine_k
Do they? I suppose that Apple is one of the FAANG which are known for their
rather-above-market compensation packages.

~~~
nailer
No they don't. It's nowhere near 3x .

------
floatingatoll
HN may find this unpalatable, but it’s still legal and permissible.

Apple indicates this restriction against personal project work prior to
hiring, and employees agree as part of being hired to adhere to it. If they do
not, they are not hired.

Non-compete bans are generally structured to prohibit restricting an ex-
employee’s choice of work after their departure, but only once you are an ex-
employee and not before. I am aware of no laws guaranteeing the inalienable
right to create and publish software IP while contractually bound not to do
so.

Apple’s restriction does not prohibit contribution of work to open-source
projects, but permits only those contributions approved by Apple as necessary
and appropriate by Apple’s decision. The personal projects linked here were
either denied that permission or never submitted for it.

Personally, I’d have to think quite hard about whether to accept this
restriction if I considered working for Apple someday. Silver lining, my tiny
projects are all unused abandonware, so it wouldn’t require finding new
maintainers. I don’t envy the author of the linked tweet their duty to find
others.

~~~
himinlomax
> HN may find this unpalatable, but it’s still legal and permissible.

It's obviously legal and for obvious reasons, but it's both hostile to the
culture of the profession at large AND counterproductive.

~~~
woodrowbarlow
it is not obvious. the law in question (for california) is CA labor code 2870.

[https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/...](https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2011/lab/division-3/2870-2872/2870)

the law says that employers cannot claim ownership of inventions made without
work resources, even if the employee signed such a clause, unless the
invention is in competition with the employer.

~~~
nomel
> unless the invention is in competition with the employer.

Companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon work on all sorts of projects. I
don't think it's possible to know what is actually in competition with
companies like this, at any given time. This is probably why most require
permission. With somewhere like Apple, where everything is kept secret, asking
and being told no would confirm the existence of a project.

------
ryandrake
Whenever this topic comes up HN reacts first with disbelief, like you're
lying. Nice to see this awful practice getting some exposure from the
Twittersphere. As someone who's worked in large companies for most of his
career, this has been a major trade-off of accepting the offers: You need to
shelf your open source work and any hobby programming you think you might one
day release. Period. These companies have armies of lawyers vs. just you.
People here will spout off a bunch of simple solutions like "just negotiate,
bro." You may be a whiz at negotiating your salary, but you are likely to not
get anywhere negotiating legal terms like this with a FAANG company. If you
try the cute "strike through the clause in your employment agreement and
initial it" trick that HN will advise, I guarantee you will get a stern letter
from Legal in 2-7 days telling you to sign it unmodified or GTFO. Ask me how I
know.

~~~
dman
How do you know?

------
antoncohen
California Labor Code section 2870[1] states:

> (a) Any provision in an employment agreement which provides that an employee
> shall assign, or offer to assign, any of his or her rights in an invention
> to his or her employer shall not apply to an invention that the employee
> developed entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s
> equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information except for
> those inventions that either:

> (1) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the
> invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated
> research or development of the employer; or

> (2) Result from any work performed by the employee for the employer.

> (b) To the extent a provision in an employment agreement purports to require
> an employee to assign an invention otherwise excluded from being required to
> be assigned under subdivision (a), the provision is against the public
> policy of this state and is unenforceable.

Large companies like Apple and Google get away with broad rules that
effectively ban unapproved open source contributions because nearly every type
of software can be said to "Relate at the time of conception or reduction to
practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or
demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer".

If you work at a small company in California, I suggest pushing back on any
rules like that. At my current company the employment contract they initially
sent me required me to notify them in writing every time I created any work I
felt was protected by section 2870 (any personal open source, any music, any
writing, anything that could have a copyright). I had that paragraph removed
from the contract. The burden should be on the company to enforce their
copyright ownership, and provide evidence of ownership, the burden shouldn't
be on me.

[1]
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=2870.&lawCode=LAB)

~~~
phendrenad2
Worth noting that this law is probably one of the driving factors behind the
growth of the tech sector in California compared to other states. We're free
to dream our dreams and seek funding later, not the other way around.

------
akling
This subject makes me sad. I've recently heard from a bunch of Apple employees
who had asked for permission to contribute to my open source project and got
denied.

Having worked there in the past myself, it's really weird to think back on how
normal it seemed (to me) to allow an employer to put such extreme restrictions
on my personal time.

I hope they change their attitude about this some day.

~~~
musicale
> it's really weird to think back on how normal it seemed (to me) to allow an
> employer to put such extreme restrictions on my personal time.

Yeah, that's really not OK.

------
wayneftw
Given that Apple would be the primary beneficiary of a strong Swift ecosystem
and seeing how they treat developers on their platform - maybe they should
rethink their stance or at least bring all employee projects in-house.

Are there many developers out there that only program for Apple platforms?

I suppose if you want to be one of those developers or if you want to work for
Apple, it might be not be a bad idea to contribute.

------
olalonde
Makes you wonder how many GitHub accounts are pseudonyms for people who want
to hide their open source contributions from their employer. (cue _Damn It
Feels Good To Be A Gangsta_ )

~~~
gnulinux
I have a pseudonym account that I write all my software in. Currently my
employer does not restrict me working on side-projects; however, I still don't
want my professional persona to be associated with my side-projects.

------
ProAm
I dont feel like helping a developer who's employer doesnt respect its
customers or its employees.... It sounds like this is the trade off he gets
for working there?

I wish it werent like this, people should be able to work on whatever they
feel like in their own personal time.

~~~
levosmetalo
Of course, people can work on whatever they like on their free time. The
developer in case _chooses_ to abandon his open-source projects to work for a
company of his choice. Nobody forced him to take this job, it was his choice.

~~~
inetknght
> _The developer in case chooses to abandon his open-source projects to work
> for a company of his choice. Nobody forced him to take this job, it was his
> choice._

This is so reductionist that it's blind to reality.

------
jeffrallen
Here's a possible solution. Do it anyway, knowing that if your company really
wants to piss you off by making an issue out of it, you can (and will) tell
them to piss off and quit. No job is worth sacrificing your personal life and
freedom for.

When they make a problem, and you quit, if you've got someone in the company
that values your contribution enough to fight for you and find a compromise to
get your OSS contributions back-approved or whatever, great. The employer will
benefit from the loyalty you will feel towards the person who solved the
problem ("the greatest boss evar"). If your boss can't make the problem
disappear, then you quit. If you've organised your life correctly, you can
afford a few months of job search, and your OSS contributions are a testament
to the quality of your work.

(Not saying that I ever did this. And you should probably not cross-reference
"git log" with my CV either.)

~~~
james-mcelwain
This might be the correct advice in many scenarios but is essentially playing
with fire. A company that wants revenge could easily bankrupt you with even
the smallest contractual leg to stand on. Your 200k base comp isn't going to
look so sweet when you're paying a lawyer $1,500 an hour to defend you from
some tech giant.

------
BossingAround
What did the tweet say? It's deleted now.

~~~
founditincache
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fmdiep%2Fstatus%2F1252586799098183682&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fmdiep%2Fstatus%2F1252586799098183682)

~~~
juliansimioni
Because it took me a minute to find the tweet text on that page:

> Apple doesn’t let employees contribute to unapproved OSS projects (even in
> their personal time). So some of my projects could use a maintainer to
> manage PRs: -
> [https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle](https://github.com/mdiep/Tentacle) \-
> [https://github.com/mdiep/Logician](https://github.com/mdiep/Logician) \-
> [https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2](https://github.com/SwiftGit2/SwiftGit2)
> … If you’re interested, please let me know!

------
jtdev
WTF Apple..?! Is this due to some fear of IP leaking via employees
contributing to OSS?

~~~
bitwize
Yes, and it is a legitimate fear. Someone with access to Apple's IP may
unintentionally or even inadvertently leak that IP in an open-source project.
Say you developed a clever new optimization on the job at Apple. You use the
same trick in your open source code, thinking it's no big deal, it's just one
small piece of code. But that code is now the property of Apple, and they may
consider it more valuable than you do. It may enable, for instance, faster
encryption with one of their custom chips. That's an edge they have in the
marlet that they might lose were it not for exclusive use of that bit of code.
They could lose millions -- meaning they could sue you for millions. In a
court of law, it is sufficient to prove that the defendant had access to the
infringed work and that their work is substantially similar to the infringed
work in order to have a case for copyright infringement.

Rather than risk that sort of loss, Apple and many other companies include
clauses forbidding employees from working on outside software projects even in
their spare time as standard boilerplate in their employment contracts. If you
don't want to play by those rules, don't work for the company. They can find
plenty of top-tier engineers who will gladly play by those rules.

~~~
gnulinux
Ok ok, you're taking this way over the top. No engineer ever invents a new
optimization that will give Apple competitive advantage and they don't know
this is important and "accidentally" put it on OSS code. I don't believe this
for a minute. Inventions that give companies technical competitive advantage
are created via multiple iteration by a team of engineers, by them doing
research. It's never the case that someone wakes up one day and writes code
that can be considered an "invention". It usually starts with an engineer
finding a problem, another engineer doing research on this problem for some
time, and then to improve found solutions, a group of engineers discuss viable
solutions.

~~~
phendrenad2
I think large corporations are big targets for frivolous lawsuits, so they
grow big paranoid legal teams. Those teams succeed based on crossing every t
and dotting every i, so they eventually look for any threats, no matter how
small. Eventually it turns inward and they start stifling innovation by trying
to handcuff their own developers, because there's some small chance they could
accidentally leak something.

------
nathancahill
Wow, glad I passed on an Apple interview.

~~~
xyst
Still a good company to get an offer from. Most companies are willing to budge
the compensation packages to meet the competition.

------
JoshuaScript
Well, if your company is _not_ like this and you're interested in being
featured on a job board for companies with employee-friendly IP policies, drop
me a line (email in bio).

------
strenholme
Whenever this comes up, the question I have to ask is this: Has there even
been a case in California where a jury decided that an employer owned the open
source (or other software) an employee developed in their own free time? Has a
company in California successfully litigated to take ownership and taken down
an open source project because it was an employee’s side project?

To protect myself, I have done the following:

• I make sure, before signing an “inventions” clause, to put all of my open
source on GitHub a date stamp before the date when I signed the inventions
clause. This way, any and all of my own open source I use on the job (usually,
a password generator, but I was once at a company with DNS so broken I had to
run MaraDNS locally to have a usable Internet) is stuff I did _not_ develop
while working for the company.

• I list all of my GitHub projects, state that none of them are related to
what the company develops, and that any and all development is done on my own
time, using my own computer.

------
RMPR
The tweet seems deleted, any workaround?

------
miker64
What did it say, the tweets been deleted.

------
rambojazz
The tweet was removed. Any mirror?

------
layoutIfNeeded
Just "transfer" ownership to your girlfriend or your brother and make
contributions in their names. Problem solved.

~~~
saagarjha
Do you think Apple’s legal team is stupid?

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
Ok, if you’re that paranoid then use a pseudonym ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

------
aeonflux
I am not from US, but isn't that kind of standard practice in US? While
working at any company they can hold right to everything you do in the field.

While outrageous at the first glance it does make a lot of sense for me. If
you wan't to work on your side project you should quit your job. Otherwise
there is a big risk you might quickly burn out, be less effective at your main
work.

People seem to critique overtime and time pressure on software engineers. At
they same time they want to be able to code their startups after hours
effectively working 15 hour per day.

Working on open source projects instead of side gigs doesn't differ much in
that regard. You might hook up on your project and spend tons of mental energy
on it, making your main job suffer.

~~~
richardwhiuk
That's a theory that develops from "work is the most important thing in your
life".

It's not the only correct starting assumption.

Other things that develop from it are "employees shouldn't be allowed to have
kids as it might sap mental energy from your job" \- which is clearly a
ludicrous position, but not dis-similar.

~~~
aeonflux
Quite the contrary in my opinion. This kind of limitations does force many to
actually rest after hours.

~~~
inetknght
Your method of resting differs from others'.

------
aeonflux
Non of his projects have any activity during last year. Yet this announcement
is formed in quite an aggressive and quite frankly unnecessary way. In few
days we might get another post here which will blame Apple for firing him.

~~~
saagarjha
Why do you think they have no activity?

------
bitwize
Apple's IP, and their zealous guarding thereof, is why most of y'all carry
MacBooks to work instead of Dells. So before you open your mouth to criticize,
think about how policies like Apple's actually allow them more freedom to
innovate.

~~~
saagarjha
It is possible to contribute to open source without infringing on Apple’s IP.

~~~
bitwize
It's too risky for an Apple employee to do so willy-nilly.

~~~
saagarjha
It's too risky because Apple will go after you even if you're not infringing,
not because you're using trade secrets or patents from your job.

