If you do it and you aren't paid or otherwise compelled to do it, it's a hobby. Simple as that.
-----
The point isn't that hobbies are legally sacrosanct. They clearly aren't. But it's not the company's place to categorize what I do in my free time beyond what's stipulated my contract. "Hobby" in scare quotes has no purpose in the manager's email.
We don't know the backstory. There could have been confrontation or issues between the other IBM employees working on this with the employee asked to stop. Having him then demand to still work with those employees through the kernel as a "hobby" would then be problematic.
> But it's not the company's place to categorize what I do in my free time beyond what's stipulated my contract.
IBM is probably legally OK telling him he can't work on the kernel on a driver for IBM hardware that he started working on as part of a team at IBM without facing employment consequences.
> IBM is probably legally OK telling him he can't work on the kernel on a driver for IBM hardware that he started working on as part of a team at IBM without facing employment consequences.
Yes I am not contesting this. But that's because the contract allows IBM to mess with hobbies, not because some things, by virtue of being under the pervue of the contract, are no longer hobbies.
I am not going to allow somebody else's contract to indirectly change the meaning of english words.
> We don't know the backstory. There could have been confrontation or issues between the other IBM employees working on this with the employee asked to stop. Having him then demand to still work with those employees through the kernel as a "hobby" would then be problematic.
That doesn't make it not a hobby though. IBM has contractual power (unfortunately) to control their employees outside conributions, but it's philosophically dangerous extend that contractual control to re characterize what it means to contribute to Linux on your own time.
> That doesn't make it not a hobby though. IBM has contractual power (unfortunately) to control their employees outside conributions, but it's philosophically dangerous extend that contractual control to re characterize what it means to contribute to Linux on your own time.
Again, we don't have the context. It sounds like something an exasperated manager might write if an employee is told not to work on it anymore and they change it to their personal email and say they're going to work on it as a "hobby".
-----
The point isn't that hobbies are legally sacrosanct. They clearly aren't. But it's not the company's place to categorize what I do in my free time beyond what's stipulated my contract. "Hobby" in scare quotes has no purpose in the manager's email.