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Comment by ctvo | Hacker News Reader

Makes sense, but:

"Hey John, there are legal reasons preventing us from working on VNIC even in an unofficial capacity as IBM employees. I've attached a document outlining the company position as background. Let's chat more about this on Thursday in our 1:1."

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I suspect from the tone of the email that the manager may have already tried that route and gotten pushback. It feels very much like a manager who is tired of the excuses and trying to be as unequivocal as possible so as to be 100% clear.

And that's assuming we even have an accurate statement, which is a big assumption. Aside from the missing context, we frankly don't know that any of this text was written by the manager.

That's being a bit generous. It's entirely possible the manager could be an asshole at best and in violation of FLSA at worst.

The notion that the communication could wind up on the LKML, HN, or more widely distributed, could still argue for restraint in voice.

The employer ultimately has all the power here. Bullying ... doesn't add much.

Depending on internal policy, this could be reason enough for the employee to be fired.

Unless explicitly authorised, I’m not allowed to quote an internal email on a public forum.

As I read it, it looks like it was decided, by IBM, the employee would no longer be a maintainer and adding a personal email to the list of maintainers was a misrepresentation of their current role.

I suspect that HR is probably discussing termination procedure as we speak and this will proceed unless the PR pressure is overwhelming and makes it difficult to retaliate.

Unlikely since termination would mean that Lijun can resume work on the kernel.

That might depend on non-competes (legal in most states outside California), and how they're interpreted.

IBM's bad-will generation here is large.

Maybe, but he still won't be paid for it.

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