[ContractPatch] on Ethical Employment Contracts

[Tom Marble]

All:

Unsurprisingly I like Karen's ideas in
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/dec/17/ethical-contract-patch/

... and I'm huge fan of Contract Patch in general.

I especially want to focus on this idea:

    Like most ContractPatch proposals, these approaches works best when the
    clause becomes standard. Companies are more likely to agree to these
    terms if many developers who interview ask for it.

Proposing marking up an employment agreement is a scary prospect when
a new employee wants to make a good first impression. At the same time
modern legal teams really (ought to) know about open source licenses:
arriving at a shared community understanding of terms will make this
less scary and more effective.

Last year I took a full time job and did not attempt to keep copyright
in my works. However I did have my lawyer review the agreement
for any potential conflicts with my work on free software. And, for
what it's worth, I had quite an extensive "Limited Exclusion
Notification" section for pre-existing intellectual property.

Maybe we can steward this like a free software project? Folks that
are passionate about a particular area can contribute? For example
even a common set of definitions would be super useful. In the
past couple of years (as an independent business owner) I worked with
my lawyer on several agreements to define "Open Source Software".
We should share these efforts!

Is a shared version control system a good next step?

Ideas please!

--Tom