On Tuesday, June 05, 2018 10:34:54 ExportThis via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote: > On Tuesday, 5 June 2018 at 06:55:42 UTC, Joakim wrote: > > This reads like a joke, why would it matter if you contributed > > to open source projects on an open platform that your employer > > runs? > > If you read between the lines, you can 'kinda' get the message. > > A Microsoft employee. > A Microsoft platform. > Encryption. > U.S Export Controls. > > How they all come together is anyones guess though ;-) > > That's why we have lawyers.
Given that he works on SecureD, that could be part of it, but I don't think that exporting encryption is the problem that it once was in the US, and I'd think that the issue was more likely related to what Microsoft can claim to own. In general in the US, if your employer can claim that what you're doing in your free time is related to what you do for work, then they can claim that they own it. And if you're in a state with fewer employee protections, they can even claim to own everything you do in your free time regardless of whether it really has anything to do with any company intellectual property (e.g. a coworker at a previous company told me of a coworker who had gone to work at Bloomberg in NY after the division he was in was laid off, but he quit Bloomberg soon therefafter, because Bloomberg was going to claim to own everything he did in his free time - and he was a Linux kernel developer, so that would have caused serious problems for him). What paperwork you signed for your employer can also affect this. So, the exact situation you're in can vary wildly depending on where you live, who you work for, what exactly you do at work, and what exactly you do in your free time. If you want to sort out exactly what situation you're in, you do potentially need to see a lawyer about it. That whole set of issues may or may not be why Adam is moving his stuff to gitlab, but it does mean that you have to tread carefully when doing anything that relates at all to your employer or what you do for work. So, I can easily see it as a good idea to avoid doing anything in your free time with a site that is owned or operated by your employer. It may or may not actually be necessary, but playing it safe can avoid legal problems down the road, and typically, employees are going to have a _very_ hard time winning against employers in court, even if the employee is clearly in the right, simply because the legal fees stand a good chance of destroying the employee financially, whereas the employer can typically afford it. You simply don't want to be in a situation where your employer ever might try and do anything to you with the legal system - and of course, you don't want to be in a position where your employer fires you. So, an abundance of caution is sometimes warranted even if it arguably shouldn't need to be. - Jonathan M Davis
