Re: Non-Compete Challenges for Community Work

On Fri, Jan 2, 2026 at 6:47 PM Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 31, 2025 at 02:17:10PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > I don't know if things are improving and we can ignore the issue, or if
> > there is some action that can be taken. Ideas are:
> >
> > * New employees should read employment contracts and ideally have them
> > reviewed by an employment lawyer. It might be difficult, but not
> > being able to find a suitable job for a year is clearly worse.
> >
> > * Somehow incentivize companies to limit their non-compete restrictions
> > to be more limited, and hopefully not block community involvement.
>
> I think a question is whether it is wise for the community to be
> influencing how companies specify compete restrictions in their
> employment contracts. Even if the community were successful in making
> changes that are positive for employees, is this an overreach for the
> community?

> An idea would be to allow companies to voluntarily submit their
> non-compete clauses to the community for approval to be listed on some
> community fair-employment page. Would any company do that?
>
I have a feeling companies won't do that unless there is a clear benefit to
them...

>
> A more fruitful and less heavy-handed option might be to encourage
> employees to read and actively evaluate their compete restrictions.
> However, many of our contributors become involved with our community
> only _after_ being employed, meaning the employment contract has already
> been accepted by the employee.
>

We could perhaps consider having some PostgreSQL community guides about
non-competes. Along the lines of:
1. Employees are generally advised to review their contracts for
non-compete clauses.
2. Broad or generic non-compete clauses are not advisable, as they may
hinder future work in the PostgreSQL field.
3. It’s worth clearly defining community work in the contract to avoid
restrictions on contributing to the PostgreSQL community after leaving the
company. (I am aware that this might be tricky) and so on...

Some of these are fairly obvious but it will make people a bit more aware
of this potential issue. Of course, having this thread in the archives is
helpful already.

I don’t believe that starting to contribute after an employment contract
has already been signed is something we can realistically prevent.

However, we could add a note to our guides that if someone has already
signed a contract and is considering community contributions, the
non-compete clause in their contract should be reviewed to ensure their
ability to contribute to the PostgreSQL community in the future,
irrespective of their employment status.

It would likely be worth consulting with community lawyers if we decide to
put together guidelines like this.

Valeria

> --
> Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
> EDB https://enterprisedb.com
>
> Do not let urgent matters crowd out time for investment in the future.
>
>
>