Rackspace’s Policy On Contributing To Open Source

http://www.rackspace.com/blog/rackspaces-policy-on-contributing-to-open-source/

by VanL • 12 years ago

33 45 12 years ago

brynary3• 12 years ago

Is the main point that Rackspace has relaxed a restriction that required pre-approval for employees to contribute to OSS _on their own time_ but they still need approval to contribute while at work?

VanL9• 12 years ago

That's not it. Contributions on Rackspace time are also approved. We just need people to understand that the still will need to respect the priorities set by their managers. We don't want them to interpret this policy as allowing them to unilaterally deprioritize their assigned work in favor of hacking on $PROJECT_OF_CHOICE.

If your manager agrees that hacking on $PROJECT is a good idea, go for it.

VanL (I wrote the policy)

auvrw2• 12 years ago

Now, there are a couple of nuances to this new policy:
1. Rackers are encouraged to contribute on their own time, and if they wish to contribute during work hours they must obtain approval from their manager.
2. If a Racker would like to contribute to a project that is directly competitive with Rackspace, we’d like to understand why before they contribute.

2 has got to mean

"If a Racker would like to contribute to a project that is directly competitive with Rackspace [during work hours], we’d like to understand why before they contribute."

otherwise, i don't think such a policy is even legal?

lazerwalker2• 12 years ago

Every full-time employment agreements I've signed in my career as a software engineer has had some sort of clause to the effect that my employer owns any work I do, even if it's done with my own hardware on my own time, if it is demonstrably in direct competition with my employer's chief line of business. This seems completely in line with that.

(Whether that sort of clause is enforceable in court is another question. IANAL.)

mindcrime2• 12 years ago

Most companies at least try to sneak in a provision like but, but a couple of important points:

1. Whether it's valid or not may depend on prevailing state law that is in effect. Just because you sign a document saying "you own my brain 24x7" does not necessarily mean that it's the case.

2. These provisions are often negotiable. When I worked for Lulu.com, their IP Assignment paperwork was so onerous that they could have claimed to own a fantasy novel that I might write in my spare time. I refused to sign until they made an exception. It took a while, but we worked something out that was reasonable.

3. A lot of times companies hand you a big stack of paperwork to sign, but have no process to audit that it all got returned and signed. Other than tax and insurance related stuff, your best bet may be to put it in your desk drawer and forget about it until somebody asks. There's a good chance nobody ever will. I worked at a job 4.5 years once and never did sign any of the NDA / IP Assignment / etc. crap. It was still in my desk drawer the day I left, right where I put it the day they gave it to me. shrug

4. Always talk to an actual lawyer if you have serious concerns about this stuff. :-)

VanL9• 12 years ago

What we are saying is that it is our policy that the work for hire doctrine (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire) does not apply to OSS contributions at Rackspace, and that we encourage all employees to become involved with a community.

If you work at a company bigger than 10-15 employees, check your employment agreement. Rackspace's stance on this is highly unusual (I think even unique) for a company its size.

protomyth• 12 years ago

Does the employee agreement for Rackspace claim code ownership on code written on employee's own time and equipment?

jnoller4• 12 years ago

This type of policy is very frequently known as the Assignment Of Inventions or Invention Assignments. Sadly - they are very enforceable depending on the state you're in. For example, non-competes are still in force across the US, but in some places if they go to court they fall over.

IP clauses like this are slightly more enforceable - all the employer has to do is prove you were employed at the employer when you started a company/made some code/wrote a book. See also: http://theemplawyerologist.com/2013/01/17/works-for-hire-and...

lazerwalker2• 12 years ago

If I'm understanding this correctly, the chief change is that now a Rackspace employee who wishes to contribute to OSS during work hours only needs their manager's approval, as opposed to having to go all the way to legal?

This could be worded more clearly to indicate what about this is new; I can't think of an alternate interpretation that doesn't suggest Rackspace previously forbid employees from contributing to OSS on their own time, which I assume (and surely hope) has never been the case.

VanL9• 12 years ago

Our default policy was (as is the case at most companies) that code written by our employees is copyright Rackspace. This is true just about universally - look on wikipedia about the "work for hire" doctrine.

Because employee code was technically the property of Rackspace, we had a policy that they needed to ask for permission before releasing it to the public under an open source license. But when we looked at our actual history, we saw that we were granting 100% of the requests.

This new policy grants pre-approval to all Rackers to contribute to open source projects under their own name, holding their own copyright. We even allow contributions that occur on Rackspace time using Rackspace resources, as long as their manager agrees that it is a good use of their at-work time.

VanL (I wrote the policy)

dragonwriter3• 12 years ago

Our default policy was (as is the case at most companies) that code written by our employees is copyright Rackspace. This is true just about universally - look on wikipedia about the "work for hire" doctrine.

Such a policy seems impossible to reconcile with the statutory requirements for a work to be a work for hire, which (when based on employment status rather than specific commission of the work in question) is specifically limited to works that are "prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment", 17 USC Sec. 101 (emphasis added).

brynary3• 12 years ago

It sounds like what you're implying is that Rackspace's employment agreements assign all code written by an employee, regardless of when/where/why it was created, is owned by Rackspace.

This is not universally true. I have never and would never work under such terms. Only work done on company equipment or assigned or materially related to the business should be owned by the company.

To position otherwise is to significantly stifle employees ability to pursue projects outside of work (even if they are generally approved)

mindcrime2• 12 years ago

This sounds like a pretty reasonable policy to me. Good job, @Rackspace! Now let's get more companies to follow suit.

caniszczyk2• 12 years ago

Nice job. What are the inbound policies :)?

jnoller4• 12 years ago

You mean using OSS at work? Or something else? I can confirm we use a LOT of OSS. Like OpenStack. :)

caniszczyk2• 12 years ago

Yep, I meant OSS usage at work. Some companies have a procurement process (those that hate their engineers), some use code scanning tools and some have more liberal policies.

Not many companies talk about their policies and since Rackspace doesn't do much distribution (most things run on the server), I'm curious how things are handled.

jbaudanza2• 12 years ago

Rackspace, a company that is built on open source technologies, had a policy that required its employees to get permission from a lawyer before contributing back to any open source projects during their free time. And now one of their executives is patting himself on the back for relaxing this awful policy. Am I reading this correctly?

VanL9• 12 years ago

It is a matter of responsibility. Anyone, in any organization, has a responsibility to make sure that the organization's "assets," however defined, are properly handled. Agree or not, intellectual property is one of the assets, and we had a responsibility to make sure that we followed the proper procedures before it was handed out.

What we did today was make a statement that encouraging participation in various communities and allowing Rackers to develop their skills whenever and however they want is both better for everyone and more consistent with our values. As obvious as this may be to you, we needed to do this in the proper way so that we could satisfy our duties to our shareholders.

I challenge you to find a public company with a similar policy. I have been around a long time, and I've never found one.

jbaudanza2• 12 years ago

Do you think Heroku requires its employees to get permission before hacking on OSS on the weekend? Facebook? Twitter? Even Amazon, which contributes relatively little, only asks that its employees use their private email addresses.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that you've decided to hold yourself above the lowest common denominator of tech companies. I just don't think you should be congratulating yourself publicly on HN for it.

In this industry, having a solid background in open source contributions is serious mark of credibility for any engineer. The rest of us are falling over ourselves to work with and encourage people that hack in their free time.

Are there any Rackspace engineers in the thread? Please tell me this is all legalese and nobody actually asks you to get your weekend pull requests approved by a legal department.

DannyBee• 12 years ago

"I challenge you to find a public company with a similar policy. I have been around a long time, and I've never found one. "

Google's policy was, for years, identical to this :)

(It is only slightly more onerous now, in that we ask to see the first few patches you contribute, mainly the result of too high a rate of unreasonable judgement generating actual issues, which I chalk up to statistics and having a really large number of engineers now)

stefan_kendall• 12 years ago

So only open source work doesn't need to go through a lawyer?

"You can claim a copyright, but only if you couldn't be successful enough to make money."

Sounds like a big "fuck you" to me. Other corporations just ignore side projects outside the problem domain of the business. By making this statement explicitly permitting open-source, it feels like the screws are setup for the moment someone wants to make money.

Rackspace’s Policy On Contributing To Open Source

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