I received a buyout offer with the terms of being prohibited to do anything that &quot;directly or indirectly competes with &lt;company&gt;&quot;. Indirectly? So if I take a contract from a competitor and work on improving a DB engine, well that&#x27;s indirect. It transitively closes over essentially everything. Especially difficult as I contribute to some OSS projects that a lot of businesses in that industry use.<p>I just kept refusing that part and eventually they gave in; it&#x27;s not like they intended to prohibit everything, they just needed tighter language that wouldn&#x27;t harm me.<p>My favourite part is when people say part of a contract is &quot;just there&quot; but it&#x27;d never be used. OK well in that case, let&#x27;s just remove it and I&#x27;ll just agree to be nice.