You are clearly not a lawyer, and I strongly advise people to not follow your advice. I say this as a non-lawyer who has direct experience with this exact situation.
What you have said is the case in California only. In most other states the test is very, very different.
That said, there is a fairly simple process within Google which this guy can use to get permission. While Google wants to assert its intellectual property rights, Google also understands that it is usually good for everyone when Google employees have the freedom to work on open source projects.
I think your case was tougher on you that these cases normally are. It seems in your case, your options were, "get fired and lose code", "get yelled at and lose code". In most cases where psychopaths are not involved, it's "can you edit the copyright statement and run this by me again"?
I think that is why you are a lot more bitter than the person involved in the linked article :)
The irony is that in this day and age of $3-per-month offshore VPN services, you can say, "yeah, I won't contribute any code to open source projects" and just start contributing under a pseudonym. Nobody will ever know. (Maybe I already do this!)
I have only seen such a contract once. And I just laughed at them. What am I going to work for, if not to fund the stuff I really want to be doing in my own time?
What you have said is the case in California only. In most other states the test is very, very different.
That said, there is a fairly simple process within Google which this guy can use to get permission. While Google wants to assert its intellectual property rights, Google also understands that it is usually good for everyone when Google employees have the freedom to work on open source projects.