The name 996.ICU refers to "Work by '996', sick in ICU", an ironic saying among Chinese developers, which means that by following the "996" work schedule, you are risking yourself getting into the ICU (Intensive Care Unit).
If you want to refer to the 996.ICU badge, read the section What can I do? below.
- RadiiChina: GitHub Protest Over Chinese Tech Companies’ “996” Culture Goes Viral. 26 March, 2019.
- Sixth Tone: Chinese Developers Protest Overwork on GitHub. 28 March, 2019.
- Abacus: Follow China’s “996” work hours and you’ll end up in an ICU, says Chinese developer. 28 March, 2019.
- South China Morning Post: ‘Developers’ lives matter’ – Chinese software engineers use Github to protest against the country’s 996 work schedule. 29 March, 2019.
- TechNode: Briefing: Chinese developers protest ‘996’ in viral Github post. 29 March, 2019.
- Packt Pub: ‘Developers’ lives matter’: Chinese developers protest over the “996 work schedule” on GitHub. 29 March, 2019.
- Inkstone: China’s tech workers protest brutal work culture with communist jingles. 29 March, 2019.
- THE VERGE: Chinese developers use GitHub to protest long work hours. 2 April, 2019.
- THE VERGE: Tencent and Xiaomi may be censoring a GitHub page for airing worker grievances. 3 April, 2019.
- Financial Times: China tech worker protest against long working hours goes viral. 3 April, 2019.
- Abacus: Chinese browsers block protest against China’s 996 overtime work culture. 3 April, 2019.
- ZDNet: 996.ICU : Sur Github, les développeurs chinois donnent de la voix. 3 April, 2019.
- Wired: How github is helping overworked chinese programmers. 4 April, 2019.
- Reuters: Rare overtime protest by China tech workers goes viral. 5 April, 2019.
- Vice: Chinese Workers Are Trying to Bake Fair Labor Practices Into Software. 5 April, 2019.
The Wikipedia page on the 996 working hour system.
A "996" work schedule refers to an unofficial work schedule (9 a.m.–9 p.m., 6 days per week) that has been gaining popularity. Serving a company that encourages the "996" work schedule usually means working for at least 60 hours per week.
- Update this list with evidence to help every worker.
- Add this badge to your project to support 996.ICU.
- License your awesome projects with the Anti 996 License.
- Add proposals to give advice about the development of 996.ICU.
- Go home at 6 pm without feeling sorry.
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996.ICU is an initiative initiated by IT practitioners. We welcome people from other fields and other countries to join the discussion.
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This is not a political movement. We firmly uphold the labor law and request employers to respect the legitimate rights and interests of their employees.
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It is a great progress from closed source to open source, and it will also be a great progress from open source to emphasizing labor rights at the same time. What we want is to create an open source software license that advocates workers' rights.
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We are willing to hear all positive and constructive proposals and advocate mature and responsible speech.
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We are working on the drafting of Anti-996 License right now and we hope to receive assistance from professionals with relevant experience.
A proposal is a document accepted by 996.ICU.
Typically, a proposal should outline a solution or suggestion about the development of the project and community.
For more details, please read the proposal template document.
To help the development of 996.ICU, you can do several things base on proposals.
- Read the accepted proposals and try to improve them.
- Take actions according to the accepted proposals.
- Give your own proposals with a PR following the proposal format.
Please feel free to translate 996.ICU's contents, adjust the format, add some contents or fix grammatical errors. Please note that adding too many translations is getting off the track.
- 955.WLB is a repo that maintains a whitelist of 955 work–life balanced companies. It promotes people to flee 996 and join 955.
- 996.LAW is a repo that collects useful information about cases between employees and enterprise.
- 996.LIST is a repo of a rank list of 996 companies and 955 companies.
- 996.RIP Old news never vanished.
- 996.Leave encourage & introduce working overseas.
- 996.Petition initiates petitions by sending open letters to relevant government departments.
Even with interaction limits on, the issues area was totally out of control. So I personally decided to switch it off, not by GitHub or others.
- The purpose of this license is to prevent anti-labour-law companies from using the software or codes under the license, and force those companies to weigh their way of working
- See a full list of projects under Anti-996 License
- It is an idea of @xushunke: Design A Software License Of Labor Protection -- Anti 996 License
- This version of Anti-996 License is drafted by Katt Gu, J.D, University of Illinois, College of Law; advised by Suji Yan, CEO of Dimension.
- This draft is adapted from the MIT license. For more detailed explanation, please see Wiki. This license is designed to be compatible with all major open source licenses.
- For law professionals or anyone who is willing to contribute to future version directly, please go to Anti-996-License-1.0. Thank you.