Ask HN: Company IP agreements and unrelated FOSS projects
I'm a scientist and not a software engineer. However, I have several small open source projects that I'd like to at least keep alive. They're basically things that either came out of my dissertation or are pure hobbies. I only ever work on them in my free time. I've also been an occasional contributor to a handful of large projects.
I asked about contributing to FOSS projects, and the answer was basically, "As long as it's not related to any sort of company IP, it should be okay, but everything needs to go through the external publication review process". (Which takes 4-6 weeks.) By everything, they mean every commit.
Obviously, not all terms are enforced in practice. I know other people who just ignore it for unrelated hobby projects and (obviously) for things like showing vacation photos to friends.
Let me preface this with: “I'm asking for moral/practical advice, not legal advice". Legally, the issue is quite clear.
What would you do? Would you stop contributing to FOSS entirely? Would you stop contributing to larger projects so that there aren't any copyright issues in the future? Would you just do everything anonymously? Would you just send every commit through their review process? (Which requires a _word_ document of it... I find this idea amusing... I wonder if I can write a git hook to make a .doc of the diff and e-mail it automatically?)
2 comments
[ 89.4 ms ] story [ 705 ms ] threadPractically speaking, if you decide to skip their "external review" process, then yes, I'd say make sure your name isn't obviously associated with any given hobby project.