IBM To Kernel Maintainer: "You Are An IBM Employee 100% Of The Time"

[gbcox]

Obviously there is something else going on here between the employee and the manager. I haven't looked into the project but I'm assuming that it is owned by IBM. If that is the case, then perhaps they only want IBM contributions. Just because something is open source doesn't mean the project owner has to accept all contributions. In addition, maybe they only want contributions from IBM employees. If that is the case, then obviously they would want all the contributors to use their ibm email accounts for identification purposes. Common sense is that the manager wasn't telling him that he needed exclusively use only his company email while employed by the company.

[ferry]

The gentle conservative american citizen is considering this as "socialist country" ...but in fact its just human.

IBM germany is also not so nice concerning their management culture (I have heard that of a retiered employee - just his experience but I dont have any other input).

I recommend to watch Where to invade next (Michael Moore) https://youtu.be/qgU0I8rl-ps for all the US readers here :-)

[kreijack]

It is a strange situation. The author sent several patches with an @linux.ibm.com email[*]. This could suggest that he developed (even recently) the driver as "IBM employee". The email suggested also that he is still an "IBM employee".

So I understood the request of IBM, which sound like: "because I am sponsoring the develop of a part of the kernel, I would like to have an evidence of the IBM effort in the linux kernel source."

Moreover, if he developed the driver as IBM employee, he increased their know out about the driver as IBM employee. So his work done in the free time depends by know how acquired as IBM employee.

If my understanding is correct, IMHO ( and IANAL) the commit under the IBM umbrella should be marked with an @ibm email address, which sponsored directly (with money) and indirectly (with *specific* know how) his work.

However, I have to point out that he changed the email address not for a code but only in the list of maintainers. If he is doing the maintainer job as IBM employee, the IBM request is still understandable.

My opinion would be different if he committed patches for or he support code never sponsored by IBM. But in this case the commits seem to suggests that IBM was involved.

Say that, nobody can be Employee 100% Of The Time. However there are case where an opera of an author is a direct child of his work; in this case an employer can have some rights.

BR[*] e.g. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux...cf1c5b9bcbbc4e

[finalzone]

Thankfully Red Hat has lost its free-spirit culture even before the gulp by the Big Blue Bruvva.
Makes it sort of hurt less.

Red Hat has nothing to do with this topics.

[illwieckz]

Unless it's in your employment contract, there's no such thing as "8 hours/day, 5 days/week", or anything like that. Salaried positions don't pay overtime. If you get a salary and you're being overworked, all you can really do is quit.

Wow, what is that country that is still practicing slavery? The point of salaried position is that every extra over time hour requires an extra payment, otherwise it's not a salary but a pension while being kept in a vulnerable situation. That's abuse. There can be a lot of abuse in salaried positions but what you just described just makes abuse a requirement.

If you get a salary and you're being overworked, either you get less work from the employer, either you get more money from the employer, otherwise it's not a salary but you're your own employer and then you have full power to decide what to do yourself. If you cannot require from the employer (yourself or someone else) to do what to do, you're a slave.

[smitty3268]

Wow, what is that country that is still practicing slavery? The point of salaried position is that every extra over time hour requires an extra payment, otherwise it's not a salary but a pension while being kept in a vulnerable situation. That's abuse. There can be a lot of abuse in salaried positions but what you just described just makes abuse a requirement.

If you get a salary and you're being overworked, either you get less work from the employer, either you get more money from the employer, otherwise it's not a salary but you're your own employer and then you have full power to decide what to do yourself. If you cannot require from the employer (yourself or someone else) to do what to do, you're a slave.

It may mean different things in different countries, but in the US the point of a salaried position is a guaranteed minimum level of income. Not getting OT - that's what hourly positions are for.

There are several labor laws in the US that only apply to hourly positions, rather than salaried positions. The reason is that in order to qualify as a salaried position it has to pay a high amount of money (at least compared to what non-salaried positions can). So the idea is that for a guaranteed high wage, there are fewer limitations on what can be required. Higher wage workers are expected to be able to protect themselves, and either negotiate or move to another job when they want. Whereas for low wage employees, the government steps in and mandates certain protections.

[kpedersen]

A slight risk I see it is that kids would be proud of signing off as a big fancy corporation (especially for games development). So many companies would take advantage of this and perhaps normalize it. If you as "the older generation" don't want to play ball, then they will replace you with some young kid. It is a slippery slope and laws do need to protect this.

[rastersoft]

Most of us don't have that kind of leverage and most managers don't have that kind of budget or flexibility. In particular, HR departments constrain managers' flexibility on pay, to limit the potential of their generosity depleting the company's profits. To go outside the normal compensation limits usually requires moving mountains and getting approval at a very high level.

I know, and that's the point: if a manager wants to posses everything that you create in your own time, he has to pay for it. If there is no money, then he can't have it.

[smitty3268]

It could be as simple as IBM telling him they only wanted him to spend 5 hours a week on the project, and to spend all his time working on some other project. Which he then decided to work around by claiming all his work on it was on his own personal time, and his manager got pissed off because he knows in reality he's spending all his regular work time on it as well.

There's a lot of different things that could be going on behind the scenes here, but i think it's obvious there is some kind of argument going on between that guy and his boss, and the manager finally lost his cool and the guy decided to then air it out publicly to try and embarrass the guy.

[illwieckz]

It may mean different things in different countries, but in the US the point of a salaried position is a guaranteed minimum level of income. Not getting OT - that's what hourly positions are for.

So you're saying salary position is considered upper class with yet another poorer class under? Eh, in some countries salaried were considered the lowest class! Well, unfortunately you may be right, what I said was true until Uber and companies like that came from United States and reintroduced slavery in a wide scale (usually with deported people as primary victims). Well speaking about victims, it looks like Uber is focusing on new human markets anyway: their current big image in home page is an old woman that should have well earned the right to be retired and to focus on her and her family…