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From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
To: Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>
Cc: Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org>
Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: Umair Shahid <umair.shahid@gmail.com>
Cc: Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids@gmail.com>
Cc: Cornelia Biacsics <cornelia.biacsics@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-advocacy@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Non-Compete Challenges for Community Work
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2026 10:16:30 -0500
Message-ID: <aV_KTpkxEmhD5btz@momjian.us> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABUevEyn1OPQSfqmep=y3f1MhA1Ltg2+vYfLpNbsNCx5We4iog@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAKAnmmJPD11WpS-RCbsddhgDrZ2-_61SMjo1vaFtJuUogwTJEw@mail.gmail.com>
	<CAM184Afu+rcc-eVfc4nTMNDcyjAQcopFd4hygU+UZtW70d6xtQ@mail.gmail.com>
	<CA+OCxowxEj2=6PvofPHy_azBsv3p_k8jkB_jaFnRq2Tw6iQv2g@mail.gmail.com>
	<CA+TgmoYC0AesZbVEa+5HKv5LrUaMXwzJVJq=PCEs8vqESN+=hQ@mail.gmail.com>
	<CA+OCxozvGs4dA5hcKkffedBwUVET47OZLiXoztk8ON7e8ap8Jg@mail.gmail.com>
	<CA+Tgmoa7skap0a42zn=YU3NqGwcGzp-r6G--PdTJNjj-JTtckw@mail.gmail.com>
	<CA+OCxozFtSC24tcAumXi8+tG6+xt1SMrXLcBbK==+p+WrNaKqA@mail.gmail.com>
	<aVV2tqTab7FCFu2U@momjian.us>
	<aVgSt4xDjaBvrgG_@momjian.us>
	<CABUevEyn1OPQSfqmep=y3f1MhA1Ltg2+vYfLpNbsNCx5We4iog@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Jan  8, 2026 at 04:14:08PM +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 at 19:47, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.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?
> 
> Regardless of whether the companies would, I think that's a really bad idea. It
> would amount to us giving what would potentially be seen as legal advice in
> basically all different jurisdictions around the world. We should definitely
> not get into that.
> 
> Having some generic recommendations for either not having non-compete clauses
> or explicitly excluding OSS contributions from it is reasonable, but we don't
> want to review any actual texts IMNSHO.

I was thinking we would allow them to be posted publicly, rather than us
reviewing them, though it seems even less likely they would do this.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  Do not let urgent matters crowd out time for investment in the future.





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