Re: Non-Compete Challenges for Community Work

On 12/9/25 08:42, Andres Freund wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2025-12-08 09:20:18 -0500, Robert Haas wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 8, 2025 at 8:24 AM Dave Page <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org> wrote:
>>> Agreed - and companies like pgEdge and EDB have policies and often employment contracts that specifically encourage contributions.
>>
>> I'm kind of surprised by the direction of this conversation, because
>> I'm aware of some problematic cases.
>
> Seconded. I'm also aware of quite a few cases. I'm rather surprised to hear so
> many others not having seen problems - IME it's a rather substantial portion
> of job changes that run into problems around non-competes.
>
> Sure, in most cases the non-competes are not in the end not going to be
> legally enforceable. But it's going to cost a lot of lawyer time to go to that
> point, and most are going to do their best to stay far away from the legal
> system.

It seems to me since this is a legal issue it merits a legal response.
My thought is the fund suggested in the original post go to sponsoring
legal representation from one of the FOSS law firms in aid of
challenging the non-competes. Making companies cough up money to defend
what are probably non-legal actions would get their attention. Once it
becomes plain there is a cost associated with the clauses I suspect
their use would diminish. Yes, I realize we are getting into the realm
of international law and it could get complicated.

>
> Greetings,
>
> Andres Freund
>
>

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian(dot)klaver(at)aklaver(dot)com