[Astronaut3315]

I upstreamed a 1-line fix, plus tests, at my previous company. I had to go through a multi-month process of red tape and legal reviews to make it happen. That was a discouraging experience to say the least.

[toast0]

My favorite is when while you were working through all that, the upstream decided they need a CLA. And then you have to go through another round of checking to see if your company thinks it's ok for you to agree to sign that for a 1 line change.

Certainly easier to give a good bug report and let upstream write the change, if they will.

[jamwil]

In this scenario does your employer have strong controls around what whether you can write hobby code on your own time?

[subscribed]

One of my past employers in the UK added to the policy all the software the employee writes during the employment (eg. during the weekend, on the personal hardware), is owned by the company.

Several software engineers left, several didn't sign it.

Yes, company was very toxic apart of that. Yeah, I should name and shame but I won't be doxxing myself.

[achierius]

Generally yes. Or yes, you could just do it yourself in your free time.

[masto]

I found a tiny bug in a library. A single, trivial, “the docs say this utility function does X, but it actually does Y”. I’m not even allowed to file a bug report. It took me some time to figure out how to even ask for permission, and they referred it to some committee where it’s in limbo.

[amarant]

My team lead once approved me upstreaming some changes to a open source project, so long as I did it using my private account.

Basically I got to do the work on company time&dime, but I couldn't give my employer credit, due to this kind of legal red tape.

I liked that teamlead