On homework problems for jobs, I have a strict policy of "no more than 4 hours of free work, and I retain full copyrights to that work." A lot of people are picking up on the first clause of that policy, and companies seem to be adapting, but the second clause still isn't common yet.
When the company is asking for open source contributions to an open source code base, as it is in this particular case, that second clause is clearly a deal breaker.
