How GitHub Is Helping Overworked Chinese Programmers
Two Chinese software developers are trying to harness the power of open source software to improve working conditions for coders.
Last weekend, Katt Gu and Suji Yan, published the “Anti-996 License,” which requires any company that uses the project's software to comply with local labor laws as well as International Labour Organization standards, including the right for workers to collectively bargain and a ban on forced labor.
The license is part of the growing Anti-996 Movement in China, which refers to a common schedule of working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. This grueling schedule is allegedly widespread in the Chinese tech startup industry, according to a story in the South China Morning Post last month. Last week, one or more anonymous activists launched a website called 996.ICU, detailing Chinese labor laws that a 996 schedule may violate, including provisions that generally limit work to 44 hours a week and require overtime pay. The activists also launched a site, or "repository," on the code-sharing and collaboration site GitHub, which has quickly become one of GitHub's fastest growing repositories ever. It now has more Stars—sort of like Likes on Facebook—than Google's open source artificial intelligence framework TensorFlow or Facebook's user interface library React.
