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Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2025 09:12:39 -0800
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Subject: Re: Non-Compete Challenges for Community Work
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org>, Umair Shahid <umair.shahid@gmail.com>,
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From: Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com>
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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@pgadmin.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.klaver@aklaver.com