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How can McVoy enforce this kind of crap?
How can McVoy enforce this kind of crap?
Posted Oct 1, 2005 5:15 UTC (Sat) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)Parent article: Mercurial loses a developer
Let's say Person X works for Corporation Y, and X has an understanding with
Y that he's allowed to work on non-competing Free Software projects.
Now suppose Corporation Y buys Bitkeeper. I can't see how Bitmover can
have any leverage over what kind of free software X develops. After all,
Bitmover's agreement is with Corporation Y. Person X is not a party to
that agreement at all, and has no responsibility to Bitmover (beyond
the normal not-violating-Bitmover's-copyright, of course.)
This is really an ugly move on McVoy's part.
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How can McVoy enforce this kind of crap?
Posted Oct 3, 2005 16:10 UTC (Mon) by southey (subscriber, #9466) [Link]
Easy because is it probably part of the license agreement signed by Corporation Y and, thus, by all current employees of Corporation Y. Employees are parties to the agreement because the terms of their employment would have something about upholding the Corportations values, interests etc. that makes any employee party to anything the Corporation does. The only way out is to leave Coporation Y unless Person X can change the Corporation's policies.
An 'understanding' is not sufficient unless it is a signed document that clearly states what is being done. Person X would be silly not to have this anyhow as it is the only way to protect themselves.
I do not see why this is 'ugly' as 'McVoy's part' is to act in the interest of his company. This is really a matter of someone ensuring the terms of the license are being followed.
How can McVoy enforce this kind of crap?
Posted Oct 3, 2005 17:31 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Easy because is it probably part of the license agreement signed by Corporation Y and, thus, by all current employees of Corporation Y. Employees are parties to the agreement because the terms of their employment would have something about upholding the Corportations values, interests etc. that makes any employee party to anything the Corporation does.
I doubt that. Employees are not parties to agreements made by their employer with suppliers. They may be bound by certain rules if they are spelled out in the agreement (eg, most Non-Disclosure agreements compel corporations to enforce certain employee behaviours), but this sounds way too broad.
How can McVoy enforce this kind of crap?
Posted Oct 4, 2005 4:29 UTC (Tue) by aotheoverlord (guest, #3993) [Link]
Actually, most employees sign an agreement with their employer that signs over all code written by said employee to the employer(*). It's the reason that many GNU projects require copyright assignments signed by a contributor's employer before they will accept code from that person.
Assuming such an agreement exists between this employee and his employer, then it would stand to reason that code contributed to Mercurial is actual "owned" by the employer which is therefore in violation of the BitKeeper license the company has with Larry.
(*) While I doubt this has been tested in the courts, this usually extends beyond code written by the employee expressly for the employer, and includes all code written, including that written in the persons spare time. Be careful what you sign the next time you take a new job!