hotter tech take
I think that NDAs are extremely, extremely overused across all industries
like, I get that most public environments (especially gamers) are hostile and it's better to have a unified front when announcing stuff
I think that from a basic standpoint it makes sense to hide things from the public, although I don't think that it should be at the risk of anything but your job, tbqh
games companies and tech companies in general are so quick to just say "yeah sign away your rights to reveal this thing to literally anyone, including your closest friends, and we will sue you for thousands to millions of dollars if you break the contract"
like
that's bad, actually
and the idea of no one knowing that you're working with a company who was probably problematic a year ago, until you've spent a year investing in them, is also bad??
hotter tech take
@clarfonthey It's also like, in most cases they're not even really *needed*, they're just proposed as a matter of procedure.
I do a varying amount of FOSS development work as a freelancer, and the procedure for every 'company larger than a single person' has been identical:
1. Be asked to sign an NDA, as a prerequisite for contract agreement
2. Reject the NDA, explain that it is incompatible with my work, ask what problem they are seeking to prevent with it
3. "We don't want our proprietary code to be distributed"
4. Explain that this is already not allowed anyway, under copyright law
5. "Oh okay, we'll just go ahead without an NDA then"
Just... nobody ever really cares, in the end, it's never as hard of a requirement as it is presented as initially. They're massively overused indeed.
re: hotter tech take
@joepie91 also the idea of an IPAA (intellectual property assignment agreement) is extremely legally dubious anyway
it's from the time where inventors were actual jobs, and the idea was that if you thought of an idea on your own time, that idea was owned by the company you work for
now, that already is bullshit, but like, applying that to code, it's arguing that any code you write on your free time off company devices is owned by the company, which is just not something that's going to ever be possible to uphold in court. california explicitly outlawed it probably because some silicon valley jackass tried to uphold it in court and they didn't want any wiggle room
re: hotter tech take
@joepie91 corporate legal procedure is just so so much boilerplate and also often done in ways that reveal how little they give a shit about people
like, for example, a previous company had a boilerplate "company guide" which explicitly had pages like "if you're in the state of CA, read this" where they'd explicitly say stuff like "oh by the way, CA, outlawed our ability to take all your IP if you're not on company time or devices, so, we won't do that if you're in CA" and
how about you not do that anywhere? thanks??