Subject: Non-Compete Challenges for Community Work

From: Cornelia Biacsics <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2025 17:27:20 +0100

Dear Community,

I would like to raise a general challenge that could affect contributors in
the PostgreSQL ecosystem (in the future).

Broad non-compete clauses in employment contracts — regardless of whether
they would hold up in court — may temporarily prevent people from
continuing their work in the database industry.

This could potentially interrupt ongoing community contributions and reduce
continuity.

Before exploring either path further, I would like to understand whether
there is actual demand or interest in addressing this challenge
collectively.

   1. Do you see this as an issue the PostgreSQL community should discuss?
   2. Would either of these options be valuable for community health and
   sustainability?
   3. Is there support for forming a small working group to evaluate
   feasibility and governance?

If there is interest, I see two possible directions:
*1. Community Support & Retention Fund*

A fund to offer temporary financial support or non-commercial project work
for contributors who may be restricted from working within the PostgreSQL
ecosystem due to broad non-compete clauses.
During such a period, these contributors would work exclusively for the
community, focusing on non-commercial tasks aligned with PostgreSQL’s
values and needs.
*2. Community Recognition for PostgreSQL Community-Friendly Companies*

Extending the existing community recognition model (used for meetups and
conferences) to organizations. Companies could voluntarily follow
community-aligned guidelines (based on general & expanded CoC guidelines)—
including avoiding restrictive industry-wide non-compete clauses — and be
recognized as community-friendly employers within the ecosystem.

I look forward to your thoughts and perspectives — publicly or privately —
and appreciate your openness in discussing what can be a sensitive but
important topic.

Thanks a lot and best wishes

Cornelia Biacsics

---

From: Darren Duncan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2025 09:41:45 -0800

Are you talking about people already in the community who feel they might have 
to stop working here due to a non-compete clause, or those not year yet who 
would feel they can't start because of them?

I feel that working on Postgres itself or its tools would be a very distinct 
industry niche that could only conceivably be considered similar work to someone 
working on some proprietary database engine like Oracle or MS SQL Server etc, 
and most employment anyone is likely to have would be in the application space 
or other spaces which are very clearly separate and arms-length that there 
should be no risk of a non-compete clause overlapping that isn't stupidly 
non-enforceable like can't work in IT at all.

I feel your expressed ideas have some merit, but that I feel that they should 
all be strictly non-financial, and that the idea of this dedicated community 
fund for this specific scenario seems unfair to everyone else who needs paid work.

Darren Duncan

On 2025-12-02 8:27 a.m., Cornelia Biacsics wrote:
> Dear Community,
> 
> I would like to raise a general challenge that could affect contributors in the 
> PostgreSQL ecosystem (in the future).
> 
> Broad non-compete clauses in employment contracts — regardless of whether they 
> would hold up in court — may temporarily prevent people from continuing their 
> work in the database industry.
> 
> Before exploring either path further, I would like to understand whether there 
> is actual demand or interest in addressing this challenge collectively.
> 
>  3. Is there support for forming a small working group to evaluate feasibility
>     and governance?
> 
> A fund to offer temporary financial support or non-commercial project work for 
> contributors who may be restricted from working within the PostgreSQL ecosystem 
> due to broad non-compete clauses.
> community, focusing on non-commercial tasks aligned with PostgreSQL’s values and 
> needs.
> 
> 
> conferences) to organizations. Companies could voluntarily follow community- 
> aligned guidelines (based on general & expanded CoC guidelines)— including 
> avoiding restrictive industry-wide non-compete clauses — and be recognized as 
> community-friendly employers within the ecosystem.
> 
> I look forward to your thoughts and perspectives — publicly or privately — and 
> appreciate your openness in discussing what can be a sensitive but important topic.
>

---

From: Adrian Klaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2025 10:17:33 -0800

> community, focusing on non-commercial tasks aligned with PostgreSQL’s 

 From what I gather 'community' is this:

https://www.postgresql.org/ftp/source/

Everything above that is third party. If that is the case any work done 
for the 'community' would be non-commercial work by default, done under 
this:

https://www.postgresql.org/about/licence/

-- 
Adrian Klaver
[email-masked]

---

From: Adrian Klaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2025 10:22:55 -0800

On 12/2/25 09:41, Darren Duncan wrote:

> I feel your expressed ideas have some merit, but that I feel that they 
> should all be strictly non-financial, and that the idea of this 
> dedicated community fund for this specific scenario seems unfair to 
> everyone else who needs paid work.

+1

---

From: Greg Sabino Mullane <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2025 10:58:08 -0500

On Tue, Dec 2, 2025 at 11:27 AM Cornelia Biacsics <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> No. I've seen no examples of this. The Postgres ecosystem is thriving, and
people jump jobs from one employer to another with no friction right now.

--
Cheers,
Greg

--
Crunchy Data - https://www.crunchydata.com
Enterprise Postgres Software Products & Tech Support

---

From: Umair Shahid <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2025 16:43:23 +0500

On Wed, Dec 3, 2025 at 8:58 PM Greg Sabino Mullane <[email-masked]>
wrote:

>> No. I've seen no examples of this. The Postgres ecosystem is thriving,
> and people jump jobs from one employer to another with no friction right
> now.
>

+1

I have not seen any examples of non-compete clauses that prevent the person
from contributing to PostgreSQL. The clauses that I have seen & experienced
are designed to prevent poaching.

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2025 13:23:57 +0000

On Mon, 8 Dec 2025 at 11:43, Umair Shahid <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I have not seen any examples of non-compete clauses that prevent the
> person from contributing to PostgreSQL. The clauses that I have seen &
> experienced are designed to prevent poaching.
>

Agreed - and companies like pgEdge and EDB have policies and often
employment contracts that specifically encourage contributions.

-- 
Dave Page
pgAdmin: https://www.pgadmin.org
PostgreSQL: https://www.postgresql.org
pgEdge: https://www.pgedge.com

---

From: Robert Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2025 09:20:18 -0500

On Mon, Dec 8, 2025 at 8:24 AM Dave Page <[email-masked]> 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. Even if none of us were, that
wouldn't mean that there are no problems. People are going to be
understandably reluctant to discuss their terms of employment
publicly.

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I feel like Cornelia's proposals
are perfectly reasonable ideas. There are, of course, lots of
practical problems. For instance, if we wished to recognize companies
that do the right thing around non-competes, we'd have to define what
that is, and there is no guarantee that every company treats every
employee the same way, and companies might be reluctant to make
blanket promises. And, if we wished to have a foundation to employ
PostgreSQL contributors, someone would need to provide the money, and
there would inevitably be some challenges around how that money got
allocated and who got to make decisions about it.

But if I had a billion dollars, would I use some of it to set up a
PostgreSQL foundation and hand out grants for community work? Heck
yeah I would. I think that'd be awesome. I just don't have a billion
dollars.

-- 
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2025 14:54:13 +0000

> understandably reluctant to discuss their terms of employment

I don't think she's wrong - I just think the issue is much smaller than
suggested and that there are likely better places to spend time, effort,
and money at the moment (such as, I believe, the average age of our
contributors being on the rise). More and more jurisdictions seem to be
banning non-competes (or regularly ruling against them) for employees, so
it seems to me that the problem is slowly going away anyway.

---

From: Robert Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2025 11:56:55 -0500

On Mon, Dec 8, 2025 at 9:54 AM Dave Page <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I don't think she's wrong - I just think the issue is much smaller than suggested and that there are likely better places to spend time, effort, and money at the moment (such as, I believe, the average age of our contributors being on the rise). More and more jurisdictions seem to be banning non-competes (or regularly ruling against them) for employees, so it seems to me that the problem is slowly going away anyway.

It's all a bit related, though. Older, more established contributors
are more likely to have leverage that they can use to preserve their
employment options, or the resources to get through a period of
unemployment or under-employment. Younger or less well-established
contributors are more likely to get pushed out of the community by an
adverse event (such as an employer or ex-employer with a good lawyer).

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2025 16:59:33 +0000

> adverse event (such as an employer or ex-employer with a good lawyer).

True, that could definitely be a factor.

---

From: Willy-Bas Loos <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2025 14:14:23 +0100

Sorry for asking a stupid question, but could someone please re-post the
original proposal?
For me it starts with Adrian Klaver replying "From what I gather
'community' is this" (and more) on Dec 2, 2025.

---

From: Daniel Gustafsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2025 14:17:17 +0100

> On 9 Dec 2025, at 14:14, Willy-Bas Loos <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Sorry for asking a stupid question, but could someone please re-post the original proposal?
> For me it starts with Adrian Klaver replying "From what I gather 'community' is this" (and more) on Dec 2, 2025.

The online archives can always be referred to as all emails are archived there.

https://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-advocacy/2025-12/

This particular thread can be found at:

https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAN_SPgpnvhZzUjXJ_u4h7bYT_9%3DN8RO1AytA7_T--4pScpeU_g%40mail.gmail.com

--
Daniel Gustafsson

---

From: Andres Freund <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2025 11:42:07 -0500

Hi,

On 2025-12-08 09:20:18 -0500, Robert Haas wrote:
> 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.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

---

From: Adrian Klaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2025 09:12:39 -0800

> point, and most are going to do their best to stay far away from the legal

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.

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2025 14:17:10 -0500

> True, that could definitely be a factor. 

I thought about this for a while.  I think there are several factors:

*  Many people have companies based in jurisdictions that don't enforce
   non-competes.

*  Many people have not read their employment contracts and will not
   find out about non-compete restrictions until they leave their
   employer.

*  Because broad non-compete restrictions are often unenforceable, newer
   non-compete restrictions are more limited, which makes them less of a
   problem. 

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.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <[email-masked]>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

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

---

From: Chris Travers <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2026 12:10:30 +0700

Granted it was from another era but when I worked at Microsoft 2001-2003 my
noncompete did include requiring permission for open source contributions.

Generally speaking it may still be the case for some proprietary software
houses out of fears of IP loss.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor
lock-in.
http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2026 13:47:19 -0500

>    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?

A more fruitful and less heavy-handed option might be to encourage
employees to read and actively evaluate their compete restrictions.
However, many of our contributors become involved with our community
only _after_ being employed, meaning the employment contract has already
been accepted by the employee.

---

From: Valeria Kaplan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2026 09:24:52 +0000

> community fair-employment page.  Would any company do that?
I have a feeling companies won't do that unless there is a clear benefit to
them...

> been accepted by the employee.

We could perhaps consider having some PostgreSQL community guides about
non-competes. Along the lines of:
1. Employees are generally advised to review their contracts for
non-compete clauses.
2. Broad or generic non-compete clauses are not advisable, as they may
hinder future work in the PostgreSQL field.
3. It’s worth clearly defining community work in the contract to avoid
restrictions on contributing to the PostgreSQL community after leaving the
company. (I am aware that this might be tricky) and so on...

Some of these are fairly obvious but it will make people a bit more aware
of this potential issue. Of course, having this thread in the archives is
helpful already.

I don’t believe that starting to contribute after an employment contract
has already been signed is something we can realistically prevent.

However, we could add a note to our guides that if someone has already
signed a contract and is considering community contributions, the
non-compete clause in their contract should be reviewed to ensure their
ability to contribute to the PostgreSQL community in the future,
irrespective of their employment status.

It would likely be worth consulting with community lawyers if we decide to
put together guidelines like this.

Valeria

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2026 16:14:08 +0100

> 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.

//Magnus

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2026 10:16:30 -0500

On Thu, Jan  8, 2026 at 04:14:08PM +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> 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.

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2026 16:22:14 +0100

On Thu, 8 Jan 2026 at 16:16, Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]> wrote:

> idea. It
> clauses

Oh, just like a list of them basically? "If you go to work for <x> here's
what it might look like" but with no judging or comments from the community?

Yeah, I think that's very unlikely that companies will be interested in
that. And even if they are, I bet they wouldn't update them as their
templates change anyway...

//Magnus

---

From: Adrian Klaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2026 08:33:32 -0800

On 1/8/26 07:22, Magnus Hagander wrote:

> Oh, just like a list of them basically? "If you go to work for <x> 
> here's what it might look like" but with no judging or comments from the 
> community?
> 

I am still waiting on a convincing argument as to why the project would 
want to wander into this mess in the first place?