Beware Employment Contracts 619
A lot of people think they have no negotiating ability. You do. When you're thinking of signing on with some company, and they send you a boiler-plate contract to sign, don't just sign it and send it back. Read it carefully. Alter it as you see fit, striking out sections, adding sections, and initialing each change. Then sign it, make a copy for yourself, and send it back.
Where it says:
company owns the rights to all work produced during the term of employment
Just strike it out, and change it to:
company owns the rights to code written during working hours and in direct furtherance of any tasks assigned by the company
See how much nicer that reads? Now, when you do this, there are two possibilities: either the company will ignore it and hire you, or they will object to your alteration of the contract. In the second case, if they stand firm on the boiler-plate contract, I suggest you simply ask for more money - for instance, if you were expecting an 8 hour/day job and their contract asserts that they own what you do 24 hours/day, then you'll need at least three times as much salary to compensate.
And if you and the company cannot reach an agreement, well, maybe you didn't want to work for them anyway. If they're already screwing you before you've even signed on, that's not a good omen.
There's already some good advice in the comments on the perlmonks story, so I'll leave it at that.
Read your contracts (Score:5, Informative)
Amen! That's the clause in my employment agreement. When I started doing open source development, I pulled it out and double checked. If I create it at work it's theirs. If I create it at home, it's mine.
Of course, I just have to be careful not to use any of my open source code for anything at work. That would make it very easy for them to claim I worked on it at their expense. If you've written something you want to use at work, right up a separate contract and license it to your employer for one dollar, just to keep everything clean.
That wouldn't fly in California (Score:5, Informative)
At least the code is GPL'd (Score:2, Informative)
Re:That wouldn't fly in California (Score:5, Informative)
Talk to a lawyer before making this assumption.
And keep a copy! (Score:4, Informative)
company owns the rights to all work produced during the term of employment
Just strike it out, and change it to:
company owns the rights to code written during working hours and in direct furtherance of any tasks assigned by the company
Don't forget to keep a photocopy of the modified contract!
An even better solution: many such contracts have a space for exceptions (e.g., in case you are already bound by the terms of a previous employer's contract). Just put in something like "excluding work on software distributed under licenses (GPL, etc.) that would otherwise conflict with the terms of this contract."
If they object, just ask (with an innocent face) "do you really want to get the company's IP tangled up with the GPL? I think we should keep them seperate, don't you?" Ten gets you one they will shudder and agree to the exclussion.
If they try to say you can't work on open source projects, put the innocent look back on and say "is it really company policy to prohibit employees from doing community service on their own time? I find that rather...unusual."
-- MarkusQ
You CAN'T waive that provision (Score:5, Informative)
I've worked for several small companies in California whose agreements tried to grab everything they could from me, and if they could have gotten me to "waive" section 2870(a) they would have. Instead, the employment agreements and IP assignments specifically said stuff under 2870(a) wasn't covered. The paragraph that I typed in came verbatim from where it was quoted on one of my old employment agreements that I pulled out when I saw the /. article. Any employer who fools around with that needs to be reported to the labor board.
Re:OK, so what about.... (Score:3, Informative)
___
Dodgy Situation in Australia and help (Score:5, Informative)
Down here in Melbourne (Australia) the whole IP situation is similarly screwed as in the US because Australia tends to follow the "good example" and add some additional bull****.
Luckily there are sample contract snippets available at the Open Source Developer Agreement [sage-au.org.au] site.
I made sure that my contract contains some even harsher wording (because I want to also be able to write under the open content licence and other open licences than the GPL) also DURING my work time WITH work equipement.
My contract snippet looks like that then:
-----------3.14.The Employee expressly covenants that all discoveries, ... will be the exclusive and sole property of the Company. The Employee must disclose promptly to the Company and hereby assigns to the Company without further ... and so on ..
3.15.The Employee hereby assign to the Company in perpetuity all present and future rights, title and interests in all works as defined in the Copyright Act 1968 in all countries throughout the world, created by him whilst doing any act or carrying out any task, whether alone or together with other persons, in the course of their employment under this Agreement; including without limitation:
3.15.1.all the rights that a copyright owner has under the Copyright Act 1968 and under any similar legislation in any country;
3.15.2.the right to apply for and maintain design, copyright, trade mark or patent registration; and
3.15.3.the right to sue for past infringements.
3.15.4.any moral rights that he may hold in such works. In this respect the Employee consents to .the alteration and variation in any manner of such works; and the use of such works without any attribution of authorship.
3.16.The provisions of the sections above shall not include Open Source software, code, documentation, publications or any other work developed by the Employee during the term of their employment provided such software, code, documentation, publications or any other work is
3.16.1.Open Source or covered by any other Open Licence (see e.g. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html or http://opensource.org/licenses/index.html)
3.16.2.developed independently by the Employee on their own time or on direction of the Company during normal working hours.
The Employee agrees to unconditionally disclose all such software or code to the Company immediately upon its creation.
That should help a bit manfredRe:Read your contracts (Score:5, Informative)
Also, when striking out and writing in changes on an existing contract make sure to date the modification and that you and the employer both initial the changes, or you risk the employer stating they didn't agree to the changes.
Moral Rights might help (Australian Idea) (Score:2, Informative)
Hi again!
just a follow up to my contract snippet. In Australia there is a term called Moral Rights of Authorship that are part of the Copyright act.
Normally you have to sign an waiver of all moral rights on employment because they give you VERY wide control of your work.
They were intended for book or film authors preventing from rip offs and so on, but they DO apply for programmers and engineers and so on as well.
If your contract does not contain a waiver for those rights you are most likekly fine and actually have a lot of control.
Maybe there is something like that in the US as well...
manfred
Also, part-time work (Score:2, Informative)
Places like Blockbuster, Radio Shack, Best Buy, etc., have strange clauses as well.
I remember Radio Shack's clearly when I worked there for a short time, something regarding that any patents or intellectual property you file during the course of your employment there, up to one full year after you've left there, becomes property of Tandy/Radio Shack, regardless of what it is, or whether you did it on your own time.
Even if you work there only four hours a week, they'll still claim all your patents if you work for a bigger company, and filed the patents for your other work.
Companies like this really only want to extort their employees, not cover their butts.
Tilly's post (Score:5, Informative)
In the interests of helping to spare our beloved Monastery further merciless Slashdotting, here is the whole of tilly's post:
This post is somewhat long, so I would like to start by saying that this is very much relevant to PerlMonks even though it is not about Perl or programming. It is also very relevant to CPAN, perl, and the broader open source community. This is about aspects of being an employee which generally get ignored, and really, really, really shouldn't be.
I will talk about New York State's laws, since that is what I know best. However in discussions with legal types it appears that New York's provisions are not unusual, and therefore what I say is applicable in some way to most of the US, and likely in many other countries as well. I should also disclaim at this point that I am not a lawyer, nor is this legal advice. But the general outline of what I am saying has been verified to me by both lawyers, and people who are merely interested in the legal profession. I have also been told that this is bound to become a huge issue for the open source world.
Enough advertising.
In New York State there are three basic classes of employee:
- Hourly employee: If you show
up at work, punch a clock, and are paid overtime, then
you are an hourly employee. Factory workers are commonly
hourly employees. As an hourly employee the company owns
the hours you are at work, and has no other claim on you.
I believe it is uncommon for programmers to be hourly
employees.
- Contract worker: In this case you are working
per defined contracts. The work you do on that contract
is (barring specific contract provisions saying otherwise)
owned by the company that has hired you. They have no
claim on your time or energy when you are not working on
the contract. Many programmers work this way. But if you
are (for instance) hired by a consulting company to work at
clients, then your employment with that consulting company
is not contract work, see the next option.
- Professional employee: This is the rest of us.
Professional employees have employment that is not defined
by a clock or by a contract. In fact under the law their
productive output belongs to their employer, 24x7, 365 days
a year (366 on leap years). It is customary for these terms
to also be spelled out in employment contracts very clearly,
though truth be told most people read these, sign them, and
have never given the contents of those contracts much in the
way of thought.
This brings me to intellectual property law. Intellectual property law in general assigns the rights to intellectual property to the creator of an idea, work, or implementation. That creator gains delimited control of their creation. In theory the reason for this is to encourage potential creators to create new things, and for them to pass into the public domain. Or at least this was the reasoning that Thomas Jefferson used (and he got it from French thought on copyrights), though the reality in this century has not matched theory very well.But who is the creator?
One would think that the creator of a work is the author, the person who actually produces it. But the realities of life are not so simple. What if one person conceives of an idea, and then gets multiple people to implement it? Is it owned by the implementers, or the person who thought it possible and paid for it to be done?
The legal resolution is the doctrine of a work for hire. A work for hire is a work that you produced for someone else, and they own all rights to any potential intellectual property that might arise from that work. (Including, obviously, both copyrights and patents.)
Now what happens if you combine these two legal areas?
The answer is unambiguous both in theory and practice. All work covered under your employment terms belongs to your employer. In the case of professional employees, this is everything. If you go home and write something on the weekend, you do not own it. You might be unaware of this issue and naively put a copyright notice on it, then distribute it. That was your mistake.
Now let me make this personal.
I am a professional employee. I signed a routine employment contract while I was still pretty much of a novice as both a programmer and an employee. As is common, 6 months later I had completely forgotten about the terms of the contract and was blissfully unaware of the laws I live under.
My bad.
Over the course of this job I have slowly become more and more involved in open source work. I write software for fun and release it. I have put code into posts here, released stuff on CPAN, and even contributed a core perl module. All of which I thought I had the right to do, but as it turns out none of which I did. There isn't even a legal issue to contest, I simply didn't know better.
My very bad.
As of today here is the status. This came up from an incidental issue about a month ago. I have been told that if I wish to continue being employed, I cannot post code. If I continue being employed, then I will be admonished for the code I have released so far. If I leave my employment then the decision about what happens with any and all of the code of mine that people here have seen is not mine. (Stupid comment removed.)
I live in NYC. It seems likely that my wife is going to have no option about moving any significant distance for at least a year. I am carefully considering my employment options. I have a likely job prospect near Philadelphia which would allow me to work on open source stuff. That is farther than I want to commute, and the pay cut would be painful, plus it does not resolve the other issues. I have not seriously searched for any potential jobs which are closer.
Now my food for thought for everyone is this. How many more people are in the same position I am, and are not aware of it? How much open source software has been put out there by authors who thought they owned rights that they do not? If you are an employee, are you one of them?
These are, as I have just learned, extremely non-hypothetical questions.
UPDATE
There is, considering the circumstances, only one choice for me to make which is not abysmally moronic. Do not expect to hear much from me in the future.
just like the RIAA (Score:2, Informative)
from:
Article [salon.com]
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Last November, a Congressional aide named Mitch Glazier, with the support of the RIAA, added a "technical amendment" to a bill that defined recorded music as "works for hire" under the 1978 Copyright Act.
He did this after all the hearings on the bill were over. By the time artists found out about the change, it was too late. The bill was on its way to the White House for the president's signature.
That subtle change in copyright law will add billions of dollars to record company bank accounts over the next few years -- billions of dollars that rightfully should have been paid to artists. A "work for hire" is now owned in perpetuity by the record company.
Under the 1978 Copyright Act, artists could reclaim the copyrights on their work after 35 years. If you wrote and recorded "Everybody Hurts," you at least got it back to as a family legacy after 35 years. But now, because of this corrupt little pisher, "Everybody Hurts" never gets returned to your family, and can now be sold to the highest bidder.
Over the years record companies have tried to put "work for hire" provisions in their contracts, and Mr. Glazier claims that the "work for hire" only "codified" a standard industry practice. But copyright laws didn't identify sound recordings as being eligible to be called "works for hire," so those contracts didn't mean anything. Until now.
Writing and recording "Hey Jude" is now the same thing as writing an English textbook, writing standardized tests, translating a novel from one language to another or making a map. These are the types of things addressed in the "work for hire" act. And writing a standardized test is a work for hire. Not making a record.
So an assistant substantially altered a major law when he only had the authority to make spelling corrections. That's not what I learned about how government works in my high school civics class.
Three months later, the RIAA hired Mr. Glazier to become its top lobbyist at a salary that was obviously much greater than the one he had as the spelling corrector guy.
The RIAA tries to argue that this change was necessary because of a provision in the bill that musicians supported. That provision prevents anyone from registering a famous person's name as a Web address without that person's permission. That's great. I own my name, and should be able to do what I want with my name.
But the bill also created an exception that allows a company to take a person's name for a Web address if they create a work for hire. Which means a record company would be allowed to own your Web site when you record your "work for hire" album. Like I said: Sharecropping.
Although I've never met any one at a record company who "believed in the Internet," they've all been trying to cover their asses by securing everyone's digital rights. Not that they know what to do with them. Go to a major label-owned band site. Give me a dollar for every time you see an annoying "under construction" sign. I used to pester Geffen (when it was a label) to do a better job. I was totally ignored for two years, until I got my band name back. The Goo Goo Dolls are struggling to gain control of their domain name from Warner Bros., who claim they own the name because they set up a shitty promotional Web site for the band.
Orrin Hatch, songwriter and Republican senator from Utah, seems to be the only person in Washington with a progressive view of copyright law. One lobbyist says that there's no one in the House with a similar view and that "this would have never happened if Sonny Bono was still alive."
Patent != copyright (Score:2, Informative)
If they weren't enough of an invention, they wouldn't be patentable, right?
Grandparent was referring to code, which is copyrighted [microsoft.com] far more often than it is patented [burnallgifs.org]. Under U.S. law, the term "invention" relates to patents, whereas copyrighted things are called "works."
Blackmail: Sign or else (Score:5, Informative)
1. We once were sent to a convention. At the convention we were told that we were on duty 24/7. So I asked for 24/7 compensation. They shut up and left me alone after that.
2. I have always marked out, struck through, and changed any documents which a company has given me when they were considering me for hire. I've always signed them, made copies, and keep the copies with me. No one has ever had a problem with this except one company.
As I do not wish to be sued - I'll leave company names out of this: I did not go to work for one company because they said sign the contract or don't work here. I had gone through a headhunter company and the job looked really great. Lots of money, great benefits, etc.... The only problem was that the contract basically said everything I'd ever done belonged to this company. Even things created prior to joining the company belonged to them. I've helped a lot of people and written a lot of code so I was very concerned and even brought it up to both the headhunter as well as the company. When I had finally decided not to accept the contract I let both parties know and I even went over with both of them why I had decided to turn down the offer. The headhunter company became very nasty. Even going so far as to threaten me with a lawsuit if I didn't take the job. I told them I couldn't. The terms were so terrible that I just could not "Sign Zee Papers" (If there are any C&C fans out there.) So then, curiously, I could no longer get a contract with anyone. No contract or perm for a very long time. Only after a year and a half had gone by was I able to get another contract.
So my thing is - there is a very real threat to contractors (and even people looking for permanent positions). Sometimes they blacklist you if you do not sign and there isn't much you can do about it. So what do you do? I was lucky - I had a friend I could live with. But someone else might not be so lucky. Then what? Do you go ahead and say "Sure - take everything I've ever created" like this guy is having to do? I believe there has to be a limit to what a company can claim as theirs. We aren't slaves but we are being treated as such.
Employers Receptive (Score:2, Informative)
The next company I challenged the contract (after signing...doh) and had the VP of Finance say "oh shit, I signed this, maybe I should fire my lawyers and have you read it". The part in question said "the company can sue you and you have to pay court costs". Which is fine
The trick with contracts is to read them with the 'worst case scenario' hat on. How bad could you be screwed if every clause, unmentioned hanging phrase was used against you or effectively ignored? It's like looking for off-by-one loop errors.
Anyway, I've had two employers not challenge reasonable corrections to the agreement.
As an aside, I'm terribly curious what happens if the severability clause ("if any part of this contract is invalid, the rest is still good to go") is invalidated.
Yet again (Score:5, Informative)
For almost every problem I've seen engineers face, someone says, "Well you should have negotiated that with your contract". Well, I know a lot of engineers and the number I know who work full-time and have intellectual property or overtime issues negotiated in their initial employment agreement I can count on my hand. The reality is, if they're handing you something to sign from their lawyer's boilerplate, instead of vice versa, they have the upper hand.
Most professions have professional organizations that look out for their interests, lawyers have the ABA, doctor's have the AMA. Who looks out for IT workers? There are some ancient associations which are more-or-less owned by the industry employers (IEEE, ACM). The professional associations that truly look out for the modern IT workforce - the Programmer's Guild, Washtech and whatnot, are new, small organizations. They do not have the history and well-funded organization of the ITAA, the IT employers association. The ITAA has not only rammed through H1-B legislation but legislation which overturned FLSA so that computer workers don't have to be paid overtime. Section 1706 was lobbied into the IRS tax code to drive independent consultants into body shops. Because the professional organizations are still small, most engineers don't even know this, and know the ITAA is attacking their livelihood down in Washington.
What do most engineers say? Well, they always think they're the smart, hard-working ones who are unaffected by the laws of supply and demand. In some ways, they are a bit of the engineer stereotype, putting their personal self-worth into how "skilled" they are, and think being skilled is a panacea for everything. Luckily for them, this requires no backbone as the boss has no problems with engineers spending what spare time they have improving their skills. Unfortunately, laziness is endemic in the profession and a few engineers will have to deal with these issues, defending against the ITAA's attacks on the profession while a lot of other people lazily sit around and criticize them. Hopefully there will be enough counter-force, I'm not too optimistic however. I think in 15-20 years there will be a lot of carpal-tunnel afflicted (another bill the ITAA killed) guys who have spent the last 20 years working 60 hour weeks, oncall 24/7, and who are burned out, having problems with their families who they don't spend time with and are over-the-hill and less and less employable. I see this because this is what I see now with a large percentage of 40+ programmers today. Luckily everyone I meet thinks they're a unique super-genius who is too smart for all of this, lucky them. We're so smart we don't have to organize like doctors and lawyers do, so we don't even need an organization warning us about the ITAA like the Programmer's Guild and CESO and Washtech do. I'm afraid as time goes by, I am becoming more concerned about the thick headedness of American programmers and that the ITAA will succeed in making everyone a low scale wage slave, I thought this recession and widespread wage freezing, cutting, long hours of unpaid overtime, 24/7 oncall, unemployment and so forth would do it. I'm actually planning a professional exit strategy while I'm still in my 20's as being an American programmer 15-20 years from now looks like a bad deal, I'll be fighting the good fight 2-3 more years however hoping things will start looking like they might turn around until then though.
Anyhow, here is my web page on this:
http://www.geocities.com/oncallguild
Re:And don't forget about the Bern convention (Score:2, Informative)
Here are a couple of links from Google to good overviews of "moral rights" in the U.S.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property/library/mora lprimer.html [harvard.edu]
http://www.rbs2.com/moral.htm [rbs2.com]
Count me in on any legal expenses (Score:4, Informative)
I have benefitted personally and professionally from open source contributions of others (including Tilly). While I am happy to pay for proprietary software that I use, I am also happy to contribute both my time [sourceforge.net] and money [perlfoundation.org] to open source projects that I derive benefit from.
Regardless of Tilly's decision, he should know that I for one would like to be first in line to contribute to a legal defense fund should he decide to defend his right to his intellectual property.
And if his decision ends up costing him his job, I would be happy to use my professional contacts (mostly in the Denver area, many of which work in Perl shops) to the best of my ability to try to find him a new and better position. Just send me an e-mail [mailto], Tilly.
Re:This is US specific (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Promissory Estoppel (Score:4, Informative)
Silence falls under equitable estoppel. This is a related but different doctrine than promissory estoppel. The requirements for equitable estoppel are quite strict, and generally require that any silence be misleading. For example, if a manager knows about misconduct, knows that it is a breach of an agreement, and turns a blind eye to it without a word to the employee, it may or may not be misleading. It definitely would be silence, and definitely would not be a promise to the employee. Depending on the circumstances, it may or may not be misleading and a court may or may not enforce the agreement.
BTW, I am a lawyer who deals with IP/employement issues. Don't take this to mean I think the quoted contract would be upheld. It seems a little broad to me and most courts would be skeptical of something that broad. (And this is not legal advice blah, blah, blah.)
Re:Signing your life away (Score:2, Informative)
used company resources in support of it (including using your office-provided computer to email someone about your neat new software, to post to bulletin boards/newsgroups or to boast about it on /.)
wrote/diagrammed it on your office whiteboard
wrote/designed/sketched it on your office notepads (paper, some people still use it)
worked on it during company time (including chatting about it to co-workers)
worked on it at home, but using office supplies or materials provided by the company (includes that box of stolen highlighters)
Bear in mind that this is contract law, so the usual assertions of civil rights, constitutional rights or strong statements of "This is America, danm it" may have less weight than you imagine.
If you are working on the next great thing (GNU/C# for example), then you have to be able to demonstrate/document that all the work was conducted on your personal time on your personal equipment. And this may well include your "lunch hour" or "break time" if you are on company property (ie the lunch room). It's somewhat analagous to the misery that the IRS puts you through to claim part of your home as an office!
Now many companies won't be pricks about it; but if you piss someone off in your corporate hierarchy, beware. Be very ware.
My experiences were in MA several years ago, but I don't think it's gotten a lot easier.
Re:Signing your life away (Score:2, Informative)
BTW, this company was (and sometimes still is) reviled as "evil" on slashdot. But they are not so bad really.
"It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing." -- Raymond Chandler
Sensible Policy (Score:1, Informative)
Today, many XXX employees are engaged on their own time in routine activities that involve personal computers, software or other products that XXX offers to its customers. Generally, such activities do not result in a conflict of interest. However, employees should be careful not to become engaged in activities that do conflict with XXX's business interests.
Obviously, you may not commercially market products or services in competition with XXX's current or potential product offerings. Such marketing activities are "commercial" if you receive direct or indirect remuneration of any kind. Performing such activities on a noncommercial basis is usually permissible, but not if XXX decides that such activity has or may have more than a minimal impact on XXX's current or future business.
Because XXX is rapidly expanding into new lines of business and new areas of interest, the company will constantly redraw lines of acceptable activity. It is unlikely that you will find definitive answers to many of your questions regarding the boundaries of acceptable activity in published guidelines. It is therefore your responsibility to consult with your management or XXX Counsel to determine whether your planned activity will compete with any of XXX's actual or potential businesses. This should be done before you pursue any activity that might create a conflict of interest with XXX.
You may not perform non-XXX work or solicit such business on XXX premises or while working on XXX time, including time you are given with pay to handle personal matters. Also, you are not permitted to use XXX assets, including equipment, telephones, materials, resources or proprietary information for any outside work.
Re:Scary (Score:3, Informative)
(BTW to inform _only_ a copyrightholder may legally track license infringements not another person like i.e. the FSF if they don't happen to be the copyrightholder themselfs) (and now you know why they require you to sign the copyright assignment papers for their projects
Unenforceable (Score:3, Informative)
That said, I'd never sign such an agreement anyway. Employers have no claim to time outside of work.
Re:Scary (Score:3, Informative)
Just include a file with a public key somewhere in your package, and keep the private key. If the need arises, you can then come out of your anonymity and prove you are indeed the author by using the private key to sign a declaration to that effect.
And make sure they read theirs (Score:3, Informative)
Actually it can be. I don't know how US law works, but over here in the UK the basic principle is that there must be some "meeting of minds": both sides must understand the same things about the agreement. The writing is evidence about what was agreed, but it is not absolute.
Normally this works to help the little guy. If you are in dispute with some company and they point out some clause you didn't read written in Flyspec 3 on the back of the invoice, you can reply that you didn't know about that clause, didn't agree to it, and therefore it isn't part of the contract. If its routine stuff like promising to pay within a certain time then they can still claim that you must have expected that such a clause would be there. But if its "unusual or onerous" (such as punitive charges for returning hired goods late) then they have to draw your attention to it, e.g. by putting a bold print warning on the front of the contract.
However in this case the rules are reversed. If you hide a modification to a contract in the middle of several pages of legalese and don't draw their attention to it, they can reasonably claim not to have known about your changes, and therefore not to have agreed to them. At this point things become seriously murky. In a dispute the Judge might decide there was no contract since there was no meeting of minds, and hence the default rules apply. Or s/he might decide that you were being deliberately deceptive and rule against you.
Disclaimer: I am not a laywer.
Paul.
Re:slavery (Score:3, Informative)
That's actually precisely not true, that's the good thing about constitutional rights, they are yours and even you cannot take them away from yourself. No contract claiming you surrendered those rights would be considered valid (well at least that part of it) by any court, that includes the (sadly) common clauses regarding limiting your litigation options. It's that they usually go unchallenged, that's the problem.
Your children are an entirely different thing, but you rights, at least in theory, are yours to keep, whether you like it or not.
Contributing to GCC (Score:3, Informative)
This is why major contributors to GCC who are also employed as a programmer must get a disclaimer signed by their employer, stating basically, "We don't really give a rat's ass about this work and promise not to try and hijack it in the future."
Without such protections, there wouldn't be much of g++ these days: the employer of the original author tried to make it a proprietary product once he was mostly done with it. Fortunately it was too late for them.
I wonder why the Perl folks don't require such protection of themselves.