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Ask HN: What is your company's policy around using GitHub for personal projects

6 points by mrphoebs ↗ HN
In our company we are having a debate about our opensource contribution policy. One of the Items being debated is "Should developers be allowed to create their own repos on github?"

I'm strongly for developers being able to create their own repos for personal projects to tinker.

HN, can you tell me how companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix deal with developers creating their own repos for personal projects on github. What are your company's policy around it and is there a policy in place.

4 comments

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twunde
In general, github should be treated as any social media site. Employees cannot reveal propietrary information but otherwise its personal and not company-related. Facebook and Google both have policies surrounding the open-sourcing of company code. This is an approval process and varies by company
jfrisby
If they are prohibiting (or even DISCUSSING the possibility of prohibiting) you from creating repos under your personal, non-work-related Github account I think it's safe to say it's time to go elsewhere.
coffeecodecouch
The question seems so absurd that I'm assuming OP meant publishing personal repos to the company's GitHub account.
gregcohn
IANAL, but having spent time at a big company, I can tell you the issue here is clarity of IP ownership.

Of course employees should be able to do what they want on their own time, but employers usually feel entitled to the fruits of things done on company time, machines, IDE's, and in general related to company work.

In this context ambiguity -- where an employee commits something of potentially ambiguous ownership to an open-source project -- is bad. Even very well-meaning companies have to manage to this issue.

I'd love to see any examples of written policies on this that manage to strike a good balance and encourage open-source contributions by employees.