That isn't the issue... you can see two other maintainers listed that have IBM email addresses.... this seems to be about wanting the open source work associated with IBM, their employer, rather than their personal email. If they are paid to work on open source, it makes sense they would want it tied to an IBM email. I think the wording was saying "you are employed to work on this open source project, so all your work on this open source project should be tied to your IBM identity, no matter when that work is done. This seems normal for salaried employees... the general rule is that since you don't have set hours, you can't spend your off time "competing" against your employer.... normally that means I can't run a side business selling analytics products if my day job is working for an analytics company, but it makes sense that if your salaried job is this specific open source work that they would want all contributions to it made in the company name.