Only on Slashdot can someone post the question "a company approached me offering money for goods and services", and then find themselves hypothetically compared to prostitutes and Darth Vader. Nobody owes "the open source community" their code.
"It's shameful because it comes with a non-compete that prevents him from working on open source". And? It must be even more shameful to choose not to contribute to open source, which is what the overwhelming majority of developers do.
Slashdot can get a little heavy on the FOSS evangelism, but I think it's fair to say the company is being underhanded.
Think of it this way: the company wants to hire him because of the open source project. To rephrase: the open source project got him that job. As such, it is logical that the open source project could get him other jobs in the future - possibly several. By agreeing to a non-compete on that project, he is agreeing that it will never be a selling point for his future employment since he can never work on that code again.
I'm perfectly fine with developers spending their time on closed source projects. I'm perfectly fine with a company demanding that their code stay proprietary. What I think is crazy is a company demanding that you give up what got you the job with them.
That is, unless this is being treated as an acquisition. As such, the author should be entitled to a sweet buyout deal. But that isn't the case here. The author is being ladened with the conditions that should apply to a buyout deal without the buyout payoff. If you founded a company and produced proprietary code and another company came along and wanted it, you'd ask for a buyout (of your company, of that project, whatever). Pay day! Here, the company wants that kind of control without paying for it. Not ok.
If the company can pony up enough money to convince the developer to permanently move his efforts from the open source project to their product, what's "not ok" about that? Companies are entitled to offer money in exchange for goods and services. Developers are entitled to consider accepting money in exchange for their services.
The only condition that's been "laden" onto this deal is a noncompete, which actually strikes me as reasonable, as the company has every reason to believe that this person will work in their spare time on a project that will cannibalize their own market.
Again: they're not forcing him to do anything. They're saying that if he'd like to move from open source to commercial development full time --- at least for the application he's working on now --- they'll pay him to do that. Most developers would be happy to face that kind of decision. Only on Slashdot is it considered a tragedy.
Yeah because slashdot (as part of "the open source community") has something to lose but isn't a part of the economic decision. This isn't a moral cause & there's no need for strawmen. Nobody said anyone's forcing anyone, nobody said developers aren't entitled to work for money. There's a lesson here to be had.
I was thinking "markets work poorly when it comes to public goods & externalities", but I suppose you can add "politics makes people crazy" and "karma is annoying".
I know this is going to seem like a strange concept to some, but this is called negotiation. The guy is in a good position and has nothing to gripe about.
Now sharpen up those skills and have some fun, guy! You're doing something somebody wants to pay you money for. Good job!
This "predicament" is interesting to me, but not for the reasons that a lot of commenters are pointing out. Previously I didn't understand why someone would license their open source project under a BSD-like agreement as opposed to GPL. On the surface, it looks like you're completely giving away control of the work you've done, and that the only beneficiaries in the deal are those who aren't doing the work.
This situation made me realize the possibilities that a BSD-like license offers to both the original authors and subsequent contributors. If the project is interesting enough, it is feasible that multiple contributors could get hired by different companies to work on proprietary forks of the original BSD project, possibly with some kind of initial "payout" for signing a non-compete.
This seems to be a much better alternative to the GPL model, where the main alternatives are consulting, selling documentation, hoping for enough donation money to support you, or (the longshot) getting hired by a company which uses the project to continue open source development, bug fixes, and in-house modifications.
It's super common, actually. Employer wants to hire expert, so they google for experts. They find one and they've done some OSS stuff in the area. They offer him a job, but with the standard non-compete clause. It's not nearly as devious as it sounds.
Depends where you are, but people often question all non-competes. Also, in some countries/states they are proven to be unenforcable (so generally companies don't try, except for US based companies that try to slip it in).
Non-compete is really a joke, look at half the large tech companies out there, lots of them came out of people forking off from another large company (heck, oracle execs have spawned heaps of companies).
Sorry, I meant non-compete while you're there -- which I think is pretty standard everywhere. After you've left the place they're not enforceable where I live either.
right yes, well for OSS that could put a dampener on things if the OS project does indeed compete (but then why join? or, join, and let someone else take over the project !).
I'm not surprised that it is common, as it definitely makes sense the way you describe it. I don't think it sounds terribly devious. That is the only way it is sensible for a lot of companies.
If the project is relevant, it will be forked. He will retain the copyright to his contributions or sell them to the company that's hiring him, but it doesn't change the fact the code has already been released under a BSD license. It's gone. It belongs to the world now.
As for the NCA, it should be very expensive for the company hiring him and should reflect the value they place on his project. NCAs, in general, are very expensive.
"It's shameful because it comes with a non-compete that prevents him from working on open source". And? It must be even more shameful to choose not to contribute to open source, which is what the overwhelming majority of developers do.