So, under California law, which is probably the most liberal in the United States coving IP, you are prescribed from competing with your employer even on your own time or on your own equipment. This is reinforced in industry employment agreements, including Google's (my employer)

Most employers take the position that everything you do in the space is logically competitive. Recognizing that, we, Google, make it very easy to get permission to open source things, but under Google copyright.

We have a process for releasing under your own copyright, but it is not as flexible. That said, we've cleared about 200 (75% of those requested) projects in the last year for copyright release.

It's easy to get knee-jerk about this and get upset, but recognizing the nature of IP in a company and acting on it is infinitely better than pretending the problem doesn't exist and then, in the future, retroactively claiming copyright when convenient. The latter leads to lawsuits and unfair restraints on creativity and competition.

This system works. We've released 10s of millions of lines of code into thousands of open source projects. It protects the employees and it protects Google and the price is a bit of complexity and the odd thread like this.

Also, thanks to this system, Googlers can work on Google equipment and during their 20% on these kinds of projects, which is clearly useful and recognizes that people who work on open source almost universally do so without regard to the machinery or network they use.

idiots...2 years from now, when all the businesses know what a bad value proposition Groupon is, they'll look back and kick themselves for not taking the offer

Don't you think that this system is at least a little bit unfair? Why does Google automatically get claim on work that has no relation to Google, done without compensation from Google, and without any of Google's equipment or facilities? How come these people need Google permission to assert a claim on their own intellectual property that is entirely distinct from anything involving Google? It sounds like this was established simply so that Google can claim things that they have no real right to claim and misappropriate an employee's work as convenient.

How come you can't just say "All work on Google-owned software is copyright Google. All work directly assigned by Google management is copyright Google. All work performed wholly independently and separate from Google by Google employees is copyright its respective owners."? I don't get it.