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.
Argh.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Joe Carnes
Promissory Estopple (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Promissory Estoppel (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry for not being clear. Many times a direct manager will make remarks indicating that outside work (especially open source work) is perfectly OK. They do this to keep up morale and they know that professional involvment like this is a good thing. Thus, the manager will make an unwritten policy (via private talks in person) that is directly against the work-for-hire agreement. Then, when things go sour, and upper management finds out, or the lawyers/venture capitalist get into the picture the story changes. The middle manager lies about their promise...
I am not a lawyer, but this is *exactly* what promisorry estoppel is all about. The employer (through middle manger) makes a un-written promise, the employee does work (or continues to do work) based on this promise, and then the employer (upper managment, lawyers, etc) go back on the promise. In this case, it is unfair for the employer to take back their part of the deal... even if it was unwritten. The consideration for the promise could be extra overtime or staying with the company or even doing the open source work with the company's email address.
Since no middle manager is going to admit to making the verbal promise (or it's their job) the employee is left hanging. A resonable judge will understand this situation and use the facts as a guide: (a) the manager knew that the employee was doing open source work; (b) the manager didn't do anything in writing to confront the employee about this fact (turns a blind eye). If these are the facts, then I'd say the employee has a good claim that verbal statements were made in private.
As for Silence, this is _exactly_ what the doctine is all about, no? If the agreement was verbal and both parties agreed that there was an agremment you don't need this doctrine, do you? The doctine is for verbal agreements which one party claims didn't happen. Then the judge has to figure out if it is resonable to assume that the verbal agreement did actually occur.
But then again, I'm not a lawyer... perhaps you are. For other info on Promissory Estopple, see Google, in particular Bus477 [gallaudet.edu] notes which say:
Promissory estoppel
A doctrine in which a non contractual promise may be made enforceable to avoid an injustice. Acceptable alternative ways of describing promissory estoppel are:
* A doctrine which arises when injustice can be avoided only by enforcement of a non enforceable promise.
* Promissory estoppel is used where, although there may not otherwise be a enforceable contract, because one party has relied on the promise of the other, it would be unfair not to enforce the agreement.
* Promissory estoppel is used to enforce charitable gift pledges where the charity relies on them.
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:Promissory Estoppel (Score:4, Insightful)
That's interesting how you got the promissory estoppel definition correct, but then totally mangled your example. Promissory estoppel occurs when a promise is mead without consideration. The one who was promised then reasonably takes actions based on the promise to his detriment. Silence, or the lack thereof, has nothing to do with it.
In this case, if a manager or other agent of the company orally or verbally agreed to let the worker work on open source projects without consideration, then you could claim promissory estoppel. If there was consideration, whether oral or written, then there's a contract which would amend his previous one. The only argument then would be if the manager or agent of the company was acting for the company or not.
As for silence constituting agreement, there would have to be some sort of discussion beforehand to that effect. If, for instance, the worker approached management and they discussed open source work, but did not come to an agreement-and then later the worker, with management knowledge, writes and posts OSS, and management does not complain, you could argue that silence constituted an agreement. I say argue because it would be dependent on the prior conversations, and would probably be a pretty weak case.
In this instance, I'd say it's a pretty weak case altogether. It's common in R&D fields to sign over all projects whether directly or indirectly related to work. I'm not a programmer, so I don't know if this is common or not in programming fields. The one saving grace may be if the OSS was a totally different field than work software.
Depending on the original contract, he may be able to claim joint ownership of the OSS work. Without an express agreement to the contrary, patents are awarded to the individual that invented it, with the employer receiving shop rights-a royalty free, non transferable license to use the invention. Of course, the caveats there are that he can't be employed in inventing, can't have signed away rights to them, and can't have been assigned to invent. That's patent law...copyright law may be a bit different on that matter.
Re:Argh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Argh.. (Score:4, Funny)
a very controversial work that your employer
will have the rights to. A porn movie,
perhaps.
Re:Argh.. (Score:5, Interesting)
You can cross off entire paragraphs. I've done it... many times. In one case they told me that a particular clause wasn't enforcable, I smiled and said "Great, then we can remove it.". In another case, I asked them to clarify what the contract meant... and we wrote in the "clarification", which was very limiting and granted me the exceptions that I required.
In general, if you are doing open source software that is not directly related to your work; you are seen as someone with initiative... and good employers should encourage this sort of professional involvement in your field. If they try to "own you" and not let you be a "professional" then call 'em on it. They want a professional, a professional does these sorts of things.
Re:Argh.. (Score:2, Funny)
Upon hearing my lack of interest in the position the day after that, they spent two weeks harassing me for the unsigned contract, and eventually claimed the printed copy was "company property" and I was legally bound to return it, next-day air, to them, and threatened me with a lawsuit. (This was a law firm, btw). Phone calls stopped, letters came, kept me in stuff to burn for 2 months.
Lawyers suck.
Re:Argh.. (Score:3, Flamebait)
One thing-- overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Blackmail: Sign or else (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not saying blacklisting isn't possible, just that is highly unlikely. Without some direct evidence, like a borker at a new agency telling you that you are blacklisted, I would tend to blame the problem on other events like, say, the dot-bomb effect. Huge numbers of us lost gigs and struggled (and still struggle) to find anything. The market is saturated with talent, lots of it desperate. It is only those in the selective niches who are still able to command high (or in some cases only just decent) rates today.
Signing your life away (Score:5, Interesting)
A. The invention directly relates at time of conception to the employer's business,
or
B. The invention was created at least partially using company equipment.
The law also states that any contract may not override the law.
Check your state's employment and work-for-hire laws (if you work in a different state than the company, usually the laws of the company's state apply). Hopefully this helps people.
Any opinions or ideas expressed herein are solely my own.
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.
Re:Read your contracts (Score:4, Interesting)
When I started at my current employer, I received a nice plain employment agreement. It was good. I signed it.
Then they wanted to change my conditions, which was also good, because it mean more money, so they gave me a new contract to sign.
It has an ambiguous clause in it regarding IP ownership. I corrected it, signed the new version, and sent it in.
Everyone around me was saying "You can't do that."
Oh yes I can.
I don't think they ever read my version.
I don't really care - I know that what I signed gives them the rights to anything done on their time or their equipment.
That's it.
Re:Read your contracts (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, often the changes are never even seen by human eyes.
Re:Read your contracts (Score:3, Funny)
1)
The boss' firstborn daughter, on her 18th birthday, shall be delivered to me while in a cake and wearing a teddy.
2)
[more of the same]
Re: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.
Re:Read your contracts (Score:3, Interesting)
When I've not been able to avoid the document completely, I do modify the clauses that imply or state that the company owns or has any kind of right to the products of my non-working-hours labor.
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.
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.
That wouldn't fly in California (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That wouldn't fly in California (Score:2)
Re:That wouldn't fly in California (Score:5, Informative)
Talk to a lawyer before making this assumption.
Re:That wouldn't fly in California (Score:4, Insightful)
If they weren't enough of an invention, they wouldn't be patentable, right? I'd bet there are more than enough contradictions involved in this.
Re:That wouldn't fly in California (Score:4, Interesting)
Somewhat puzzlingly, the larger, more bureaucratic companies do not always require this waiver. I expected it to be the other way around.
Providing some small hope for humanity, I also know of a lot of very qualified people who have left over this very requirement.
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:You CAN'T waive that provision (Score:5, Insightful)
But then again, I'm no lawyer so I have no idea how this should be interpreted "correctly".
Re:You CAN'T waive that provision (Score:3, Interesting)
IANAL either, though.
Re:That wouldn't fly in California (Score:2)
I believe any intellectual properties gained via such an agreement, are the fruits of a poison tree. (my lawyer boy best friend would kick me in the ass if he heard me saying that =) The real barrier is who's got the deeper pockets.
Re:That wouldn't fly in California (Score:2)
I'll bet that a term in a contract mandating you to give to your employer something you made during the term of your employment is patently illegal anywhere. Particularly if the worker can claim that they did not understand and would not have agreed to such terms.
Of course that advice is worth exactly what it costs, but I'd be awfully surprised (and dismayed) if these people actually could enforce that. However, what they could make plenty gravy out of, and what I'd guess they'll do, is try to show that this guy used resources that work supplied to come up with the ideas that he then open-sourced.
This does raise an interesting question about whether the redisseminated material can be recalled, given that all the people who used it used it legally and in good compliance with wishes of the author, as best they understood. How can those guys demand that people now start paying license fees without given them a chance to choose otherwise?
or in Washington (Score:5, Interesting)
HOWEVER if the work you did on your own time was similar to the work you did at your job (i.e. you designed websites for your job and then you design websites on your own time) then they may have a claim. But typically you just need permission from your manager ahead of time ("Can I go hack websites on my own time?" "Yeah sure") to make your work yours again.
When I worked at Microsoft, they explicitly prohibited people from working on open source (this was not in the contract (or at least the one I signed years before), just in an email). The rationale was not to pollute *Microsoft's* code with GPL code that could then result in someone claiming that Microsoft's code needed to be GPLed (i.e. the opposite of what happened in the situation being discussed here).
- adam
Re:or in Washington (Score:5, Funny)
I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. Microsoft, like every other employer in the world, needs to accept the fact that they don't own their employees and have absolutely no right to tell them what to do or not do after they clock out and go home.
Re:That wouldn't fly in California (Score:3, Interesting)
Hahahahahahah..... I used to think that section of the CLC afforded me some protection, too.
See, I used to work for a company in Cali. In fact, it was a company that was (and is still) producing a Linux distribution. Despite having profited from Open Source for years, the DotCom boom and all the money it brought to the table encouraged management to start making the Great Intellectual Property Land Grab. One of my co-workers came in one day to discover that the company wanted to claim a small perl he wrote on his laptop in his apartment at 2am as vital Intellectual Property. The company's position was that the "relates to company business" exception could be excercised because it was a "software company" (and we were a "linux distributor" when the contract was signed a few months earlier) and his perl script was obviously software.
If he'd been willing to fight, I'm pretty sure that he could have won as I'm pretty sure that the shady stuff they were trying to do wouldn't stand up in front of a judge... but in the end it was easier just to let the company have the damn script and quit the job to get away from the contract terms rather than to fight the good fight in court and try to pretend that management wasn't going to hold a grudge and try to fsck us later.
On a positive note, the company in question has been relegated to irrelevance by the marketplace and is currently struggling to find something to sell that will actually make enough money that they might one day dare to dream of profitability. And all that despite the fact that they own the IP rights to a small perl script. :-)
Kharma's a bitch.
Any rate, point is... Even if it looks like the law protects you, get them to admit that you're protected in your contract as well. "Is this your signature?" is such a damning question that really undermines your argument in court... I'd much rather the other party be the ones that have to answer it than myself.
Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Scary (Score:3, Funny)
although in my case it was a fear of being sued for reverse engineering stuff from multiple companies.
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
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.
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.
Re:Scary (Score:2)
At least the code is GPL'd (Score:2, Informative)
Re:At least the code is GPL'd (Score:3, Interesting)
In a worst case scenario, what happens when you merge all these patches from someone and then two years later some company claims that he didn't have the rights to assign ownership to you? Even if you manage to strip all the patches out, you then need to make sure that the replacement patches aren't borrowing any ideas from the old intellectual property.
Re:At least the code is GPL'd (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:At least the code is GPL'd (Score:2)
Re:At least the code is GPL'd (Score:3, Interesting)
If he was never authorized to license it out in the first place, then the licence is null and void, and the company can demand that anybody using it stop, and that all copies be destroyed, and that nobody distribute it.
What if the code he wrote was a derivitive work of other GPLed code? In that case his employer can claim the copyright on the derivitive work, but they are required to GPL it.
I would like to know the name of the company. (Score:5, Funny)
They deserve a public beating! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
That should involve sending resumes out as fast as he can, taking extended lunch breaks, sick days and vacation until he lands another job. His company has jerked everyone around and deserves no better for themselves. A whole module? That took time and people at his job knew what he was doing. So they let him do it, let others link into it, then sprung this kind of shit? That's bad faith, NOT HIS BAD. Is there other people's work in that module? Does they company expect to extract money from every distro out there that ever rolled it up? Shit on them, they have acted in bad faith to all and deserve to be lied to and ignored.
Legal is not always moral. Never work for or with people who are not moral. Working with people who are out to screw others really is moronic.
National Geographic and Intellectual property (Score:2, Interesting)
No frigging way. (Score:2, Funny)
System Administration? (Score:2, Interesting)
However, a sysadmin position is a very broad job. Does the 100-line perl script I wrote to move SNMP data into a database (which I did for my own use) count as something relevant to my job? Yes, it very well can.
Any idea how to navigate these invention clauses when you are a jack of all trades?
Re:System Administration? (Score:3)
This hurts like... H-E-double-hockey-stick... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's time for a LABOR LAW LAYWER (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but this is crazy.
Run, don't walk from such contracts.
OK, so what about.... (Score:5, Insightful)
At my school (and many others define a PhD this way), PhD work has to be new, original work that adds to the discipline. Almost certainly anything that you do under the PhD banner would be something a company might claim falls under such a contract. Regardless if the work relates to the company's products/goals/ideals, this does not seem right and fair to me.
I am not in this situation, but know others that are. Just wondering...
Re:OK, so what about.... (Score:3, Informative)
___
Re:OK, so what about.... (Score:2)
Can you imagine a company and an educational institution fighting over YOUR software application (tool/widget/etc) which YOU developed for YOUR degree. Bah!
Perhaps you should patent it now, and then let it get real hairy!
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
I resigned. (Score:4, Interesting)
I checked my contract before signing... (Score:2, Funny)
The funny part is that my current employer is very liberal with the licensing on my code and their environment is not very Linux friendly. My former employer was a
;)
You don't own your rant (Score:4, Funny)
One partial fix for that (Score:3, Interesting)
Another thing that also helped is that since at one point a part of their software linked to my (LGPL) library, making it "illegal" would also have made their own product illegal.
Applicability is Dependent on State Law. (Score:2, Interesting)
I found that in California, it had been previously upheld in court that anything an employee creates outside of his work environment, without using company resources can not be considered for ownership by the employing organization.
The only other thing that may bite you in the ass is non-compete agreements you may have with your employer.
Absurd! (Score:2, Insightful)
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
When I worked for Goldman Sachs... (Score:2)
Any intellectual property I developed, such as writing a diary, at home in my own time, was their property. To this day I worry that royalties from my autobography Robert Smithson: My Life at The Coalmine (sales to date: zero) will accrue to GS.
BUT (and this is the point of my post, as you guessed there would be) the contract also stated that any work I did in my own time would be mine, so long as I got their permission. And that such permission 'would not reasonably be refused'.
Maybe GS is uncommonly kind (although that seems a little unlikely), but most emplyers demand more the right to be kept informed, than the right to control your every move. If your line manager says (off-contract) that it is 'no problem' that you work on GNU/Emacs for Dreamcast in your evening time (especially if you mention the important befits to your company, like... errr.. not playing Virtua Tennis instead) ten there is very little the company can do about it.
So, just remeber to ask someone who doesn't care, or know the details, about employment contracts and you'll be fine. Just hope they don't read Slahdot...
*r
Re:Hate to tell you but the Constitution only (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me tell you a story about my boss at GS. (Whose name shall remain anonymous, because he'd kill me...)
He was the most highly rated analyst in Europe at sector X. His calls as to when a stock would go up, or down or just round-and-round were always spot on. In every survery of investors he was rated best in sector.
One day the head of research asked him: "So, Joe, why don't you become our X analyst in the US, you'd earn a lot more money?"
Answer: "You drug test in the US."
The moral of this anecdote: you don't employ people to be crack addicts, you employ them to do a job. If they can do the job better than anyone else despite (insert impediment here) then any *rational* employer would hire them anyway.
Anyway, my boss has given up worrying about those pesky urine samples (by leaving GS) and good on him...
*r
False positives (Score:3, Interesting)
About a decade ago the US Government decided to drug test about 8000 senior civil service employees applying for promotions. These are all highly skilled professionals with a lot to lose, so there's very little chance that any will be using drugs at this time.
About 8 people tested positive. Aha!, said the feds, this proves the validity of these tests! We would have never suspected these highly respected individuals were drug fiends without this testing! They actually used the relative handful of positives as "proof" of the validity of the tests.
Not so fast, countered the lawyers. No drug test is positive, and even if have three independent tests with a 10% false positive rate then 0.1% percent will be falsely labeled as drug users. Or about 8 out of 8,000. (In reality, of course, systemic errors such as a forgotten poppy-seed bagel will tend to skew all three tests.) The relative handful of positives, and the context of the test, suggests that these are innocent people wrongly accused.
The case actually made it to the Supreme Court, and as I recall the Supreme Court essentially said that it couldn't be bothered with questions about the scientific validity of tests when *drugs* are involved. The individuals were denied promotions on the basis of these tests alone.
Adding further insult, many mandatory "drug treatment programs" that can be triggered by these false positives *require* you to admit to your "problem" as part of your "treatment." If you do occasionally smoke a joint on weekends, you can cop to it and keep your job. But if you're drug free you're labeled uncooperative and can be terminated for resisting "treatment."
"Told you so" says the FSF (Score:3, Interesting)
OG.
This only hurts the employer in the long run (Score:5, Insightful)
1) It pisses off the company's current staff.
When an employer treats you as a piece of property then there's very little incentive to treat the company as anything other than a source of income. Why devote your life to the job when you get no respect back?
2) It hurts the company when it's recruiting.
A lot of jobs are filled by recommendation, word of mouth, etc. If your friend's constantly telling you how badly his employer's screwing him would you apply for a job there?
Or, if you were offered two similar jobs would you take the one that wants to own you a third of the time or the one that wants to own you all of the time?
3) It discourages staff from furthering their knowledge and experience.
Pop quiz: if you were the boss, which would you rather have?
a) coders who care are in it for only the money, who switch off at 5.00pm sharp and spend their evenings playing on a PS2; or
b) coders who live and breathe code, who actively take part in open source development, learning new tricks and techniques in their own time and come to work with fresh ideas and more experience under their belt everyday.
Tough one, huh?
I'm amazed this company has the balls to treat it staff so badly. Let's face it, treating your most valuable employees as little more than street urchins, turning away potentially brilliant hires because they refused to be shackled 24/7 and discouraging your employees from broadening their programming horizons and skills is incredibly short-sighted.
Ultimately, company's that persue such restrictive terms of employment are only shooting themselves in the foot.
Much of it is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, right now, in the middle of a down patch. When things pick up in a few months, maltreated employees will be out of there like rats of a sinking ship, and the scumball employers will lose out bigtime. What goes around...
Speaking as someone who just gave a list of "no way" employers to his agent, based on the way they've treated friends of mine in the recent past, I disagree. I work in a high-tech city, and it's a small world. Employers who try to take advantage will find the best employees leaving, or just not applying in the first place. Employers who treat their staff as people to be valued and not "human resources" do much better. The past few years provide several shining examples of each type.
Yep, a fair and reasonable one. Inserting the kind of contractual terms we're discussing does far more to telegraph what kind of employer they are going to be. The kind of employer who objects to such alterations, or, say, rules you out because you have the audacity to ask how long a typical working day is during interview, is not the kind of place I'd work anyway. If they get evasive or uncooperative, they just confirm my initial impression, and save me wasting any more time.
My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
When I got the form, I wrote back with all the changes I wanted to see in order to protect my rights without adversly affection theirs (hey, I can understand a company wanting to protect themselves, so long as they understand my desire to protect myself too). A couple weeks later, the company's lawyer came down to talk to me, trying to convince me that I was taking the document too literally and that the company would never really use it against me. Of course, if that were true, he would have had no problem changing the document as I asked, but his excuse is that this was the same document that everybody signs.
I took the document and marked it up with the changes I wanted, and added a disclaimer which basically said "my signature on this document is contingent on me being able to own my own work". Of course, I detailed what I defined as "my own work". After making these changes, I sent the document in. About two months later, I received another copy of the form in the mail with a letter saying I had never signed the document, and they wanted me to sign this one. I never did, and they haven't bothered me with it since. If they were to hassle me with it again in the future, I have no doubts I could find a better job elsewhere.
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 manfredMoral 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
If you hate your job anyways... (Score:5, Funny)
I often thought that if I really wanted to quit and didn't care about a good reference, I'd take my camera to the local zoo and shoot several rolls of, er..., animal droppings, then lay out a book of photos of these, er... products of nature. And, since the company has all IP rights, put them down as the author.
It'd all be worth it when HR got the pre-press of the glossy coffe table book of Products, by Joe's Software, with the big picture of a turd on the cover.
I did this, and it worked (Score:3, Interesting)
Then I showed him to source to the CGI and DBI Perl modules, and told him that we'd have to extend our timeframe by 6 months while I rewrote all that funcionality. Then he got it, and I've had no trouble.
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.
Re:slavery (Score:5, Insightful)
People who have been sued by a rather famous litigious SF cult, for instance, have frequently had to sign agreements stating that they can never write, speak, or complain about their legal tormenters for the rest of their lives. And at that, some of those same people were still hounded by the nutballs -- but could not sue or even discuss the matter with other people. Because to do so would be a breach of contract that could get them punitively fined, or imprisoned. A contract can say anything.
Justice Scalia of the Supreme Court, just this last Tuesday likened public school to a prison: a student has no constitutional rights if the parents or school board so desire. That case, the suit of a former high school student who is trying to challenge mandatory drug tests as a prerequisite to participation in off-hour school activities, is doomed to be tossed out by a court majority who literally snarled at the concept of constitution rights applying to "druggies" infesting the schools. Just a step away is the tying of waiver of one's constitution rights as a prerequisite to attend school at all -- or later, to be employed.
If a citizen demands their rights, the only option left to them might be to live in a forest subsisting on nuts and termites.
Rights are useless if ideologues in both business and governement tie the ability to get an education and a job to your surrender of those rights.
I'm beginning to think that, broadly, a new judiciary that does not recognize Jeffersonian rights of man has been intermittently installed since '80. They recognize sweeping powers for the right to do business -- yes -- but the old standbys of speech and security in home and person are, as another justice said Tuesday, part of the past, not applicable to the new world we live in.
The pendulum has swung far too far away from classical constitutional thinking. The present atmosphere is not "conservative". It's something else entirely, something new and hostile to ideals we've held for over 225 years.
No rights with corporations... (Score:3, Insightful)
Corporations, unfortunately, have been endowed with all the rights of a citizen. The Supreme Court ruling that established this is possibly the greatest ongoing threat to the rights of individuals. Because of this ruling these corporations can engage in contracts as any citizen would but of course they have substantially more power. They are not boun by the limitations of the constitution. As the power shifts out of the hands of government and in to the hands of corporations, this situation only looks to get worse.
A constitution doesn't mean jack to people if the chief influence on their lives ceases to be government.
Clarification (Score:4, Insightful)
It is this Supreme Court ruling that set up the basis for the campaign finance mess we are in today. Since corporations have the right of free expression, and since spending money is a form of expression, there's not a whole lot that can be done to limit their political influence. We'll see what happens with the new campaign finance law that looks to be passed shortly, but it's likely much of it can get struck down in court.
No, clearly corporations don't have EVERY right of a citizen. As you point out, they cannot vote, and clearly, since they are owned by people, they could be considered slaves. But where it counts they've been given a lot of constitutional protection that was never intended for them.
As for being bound by the limitations of the constitution, I disagree. Through contracts, a corporation can require it's employees or other contract signers to waive just about any right. While a contract cannot directly violate the law, they can limit the free speech of citizens quite readily. Most of the rights we traditionally think of can easily be signed away to a corporation, but a government agency has no such power over us.
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.
So what's the name of the company? (Score:4, Insightful)
Definitely (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course this is all totally unrealistic pie-in-the-sky stuff, because we computer folk are in our infancy politically. However I think that as the vice tightens (SSSCA, etc.) we will be forced to get real about political action. That's another rant, but briefly it means:
Lastly, to those who worry about the effect of such measures on Tilly: I feel bad for Tilly, but I'd happily accept the loss of one coder and some modules in exchange for a high-visibility smack to these corporate abusers. I would like this company to end up as a cautionary tale on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. If we could accomplish that, it would be worth lots of short term pain.I would like to set such an example that corporate decision-makers in the future shy away from such actions as they would from flying a Nazi flag over headquarters. It's not illegal (in the US) but with sufficient effort on our part it could be made very expensive and unattractive.
Use a alias for opensource development work. (Score:3, Interesting)
They will never find out who I am without violation of several privacy laws.
And don't forget about the Bern convention (Score:3, Insightful)
Article 6 (bis)
(1) Independently of the author's copyright, and even after
transfer of the said copyright, the author shall have the right
to claim authorship of the work, as well as the right to object
to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of the said
work which would be prejudicial to his honour or reputation.
So, they can take away your copyright, but they can't do with it as they please. And if these grim goons follow through with their threath, leave them this paragraph as a parting gift. Maybe they find out that the easiest way out is to give the code back to the community.
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
Even these posts (Score:4, Insightful)
This is - of course - manifestly wrong. The reason that companies get away with this sort of thing is horrendous case law; beat up somebody in court who doesn't have the financial resources to fight you and you have established a precedent to use against everyone.
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.
Release Anonymously, claim later (Score:3, Insightful)
Release the code anonymously, if your worried about nazi employers. Release it stating that the author's anonymous, and providing some way by which the author can identify he in fact is the true author later on. When you feel the cost is clear, claim you wrote it.
For this particular prommer, I suggest he start doing that. Release the code anonymously.
As for the code already released under the GPL, that's GPL'ed permanently for everyone (though for the company, its effectively under public-domain). The company can't stop it from being distributed, and can't stop others from redistributing. When WE download a GPL'ed code, there's an implicit understanding on OUR part that we have the freedom to redistribute according to the terms of the license; irrelevant of anything else, we have the right to demand our side of the legal bargain.
Even if the company can somehow get a ruling prohibiting others from distributing it under GPL, that won't stop them from doing it. One, such a order would have to be federal. A court in one state can't have jurisdiction over the other states. Only a Federal Court can. Two, such an order would be unenforcible. Proof? Despite us constantly complaining about the nazis who decided the DeCSS case, DeCSS' distribution hasn't been halted since the judge ordered its distribution stopped. In fact, its increased.
Now, here's something this guy can do. Claim he isn't the author of the programs. He didn't write the programs. How can the company prove that he did? If he wrote these things out of work, there's no way the company can prove he's the author. He simply wipes the files, and there's no proof.
Changing the contract worked for me (Score:4, Interesting)
So they were happy with that. But a few months later when I was approach by a national TV network to do an interview about my software I checked with my boss about it and word came down the line that if I said anything I'd get fired [shrug] Can't win them all but I guess that was reasonable as my software competed with a product my employer was working on internally (which was one main reason they employed me in the first place, because of my specialist knowledge).
Live and learn.
Mixing 'work' and 'hobby' can be dangerous... (Score:3, Insightful)
You need to be careful when your 'work' and your 'hobby' and your 'recreation' all tend to have a lot of overlap.
There are some nasty pitfalls ahead.
Yes, everything might be rosy now, you are on good terms with your boss and upper management, but just wait until your hobby project shows some commercial promise, you upset somebody higher up the food chain, or any other event or change upsets the delicate balance...
A lot of very bright people have been caught in this trap, the most common outcome is that your 'personal, hobby project' becomes the intellectual property of your employer.
When I applied at Motorola, part of the application asked that you detail every potentially valuable idea you had ever had on your personal time, with the understanding that any other idea you came up with from that point on would be the property of Motorola.
(No, I didn't accept the job.)
How to protect your intellectual property rights (Score:3, Interesting)
A few hints:
Unenforceable (Score:3, Informative)
That said, I'd never sign such an agreement anyway. Employers have no claim to time outside of work.
Re:this is a serios problem (Score:2)
Re:this is a serious problem (Score:3, Interesting)
imagine a person working on code at work then coming home and doing the same thing.
I guess it matters what your interpretation of "the same thing" is. Do you mean "programming"? Do you mean "programming Web applications"? Do you mean "programming Web applications for the oil sector, communicating with G7527 devices"? If someone spends 9-5 contributing for his employer, and then spends 6-11 of sweat and tears on "his big break", then please realize that that is the spirit of innovation, and that's what all societies needs to encourage more: Every big company was founded when someone broke the chains from a restrictive engagement. In an ironic twist, these employers who try to strong-arm their employee's personal projects should realize that most employees bring skills TO work FROM their personal project (i.e. usually people work on wideranging things that they'd never get a chance to in the daily grind, but once they've perfected it they can leverage those skills in the workplace). I'd like retroactive 24-hour a day pay instituted for any organization that feels that it owns its employees. As a sidenote: Organizations that fairly compensate ingenious contributions, product ideas, etc, never seem to have this problem: They realize that their employees are what brings in the paycheque, and if Bob thinks up a $40,000,000 idea while mowing the lawn, well then it might be in their best interest to offer conditions that reward him for it. Instead, most of these companies with unbelievably overpaid upper management, CEOs with golden parachutes (who often sit on dozens of boards at different companies), want to be able to say : YOINK! There, now get back to doing that COBOL code. FUCK THAT.
However, the crux of the matter is this: We live in a capitalist society. Capitalism is an eat and be eaten atmosphere, and it's one where EVERYONE is ALWAYS a free agent : You are always an entrepreneur - No company EVER owns you. This (at least where I live) is not slavery, and no one can conscript you into bondage (well, unless you're into that sort of thing). The fact that anyone would even CONSIDER signing contracts like that (or that they are legally allowable or at all enforceable, or even morally comprehensible), is disturbing. Employers pay an employee for the known work that they contribute on company projects, and they compensate the employee for the work that they contribute: If someone is spending their mental energy on personal projects and doesn't contribute to their employer, then naturally they won't get raises, and they might even get fired : That's the entrepreneurial spirit of a capitalist society. Never would I justify an employee stealing code from work projects (nor do I think anyone else is), or stealing proprietary technologies, but for anyone to claim that the spirit and upward potential of someone is constrained because they have a 9-5 gig disturbs me, and if that's what the idea behind our society is then bring on the revolution. Did I nap through when we warped into the communist regime of the USSR?
Re:Can't beat em straight on (Score:2)
Of course, on the other hand, it is up to you to make sure that you are not using employer resources. This means you buy your own copy of Visual Studio if you develop for Windows. This means you don't hack on it at work. This means you might end up owning two copies of Design Patterns -- one for work, one for home.
Response and Responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
It's evident on Perl Monks that Tilly has no practical choice but to: stop contributing Open Source, and, this is worse, not to leave his company or face having his work pulled from CPAN. He's being blackmailed -- and can't afford to leave for the sake of his wife. This is outrageous behavior on behalf of his company. Damn that company!
Re:Response and Responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does anyone know... (Score:5, Insightful)