Avow-CI Is No More

by campuscodi • 12 years ago

260 242 12 years ago

mjolk6• 12 years ago

This isn't what I have in mind when I think "open-source bullying." This is standard corporate lawyer sending of C&D orders.

rubiquity6• 12 years ago

Agreed. This should be renamed to "Employer bullying open source now-former-employee." It's an incredibly crappy situation and the former employee is doing exactly what the Employer wants, not defending themselves due to the expense of doing so.

michaelochurch• 12 years ago

It's an incredibly crappy situation and the former employee is doing exactly what the Employer wants, not defending themselves due to the expense of doing so.

... and protecting (rather than naming) the employer, something the employer also wants, out of fear of causing a reputation issue for "bad-mouthing" an ex-- in this case, an objectively deserving ex.

We need representation, agents and collective bargaining, like actors and writers in Hollywood. This event just proves that, because we (as tech workers) fail to fight for our own, employers can get away with far too much shit.

tokenrove• 12 years ago

It's one thing to work on unrelated open source software while working somewhere. It's a much more tenuous situation when you're working on OSS in the same domain as your commercial software, even if the entire technology stack is completely different. Unfortunately it sounds like the employer's claim might have some legs in this case.

cones688• 12 years ago

Also when nearly all mid-sized corps and above have in their employment contract that all knowledge/output etc whether on company time or not, is property of the company.

rubiquity6• 12 years ago

Does that really hold up in court? I suppose it depends on the state you live in. I hope someday a developer stands up to this, wins in court and scares the crap out of employers all across the country from trying the same. We need a Rackspace/NewEgg of Employer Intellectual Property trolls.

Nursie8• 12 years ago

Never sign these.

They have no right. None at all.

It's fair enough to get people to sign something that says they won't leak IP, and even that they won't do other projects that compete with company business. But a catch-all "All your code belongs to us?"

No. Way.

JohnBooty2• 12 years ago

Tip: I've worked at 4 or 5 small/medium companies where I crossed this out of my employment contract before signing it, and had the hiring person initial the modification. I just explain that I have a number of hobby projects that I can't hand over to the company.

In my experience most companies don't even know or care that clause is in there and have no problem waiving it. Remember, employment contracts are almost always just prepared by their legal firm, and the legal firm is just copy-pasting most if not all of the contract.

You can do this with literally any clause of any contract, by the way. The other party might balk (good luck if you try it on your mortgage papers!) but generally it's much easier than you think...

mgkimsal2• 12 years ago

Usually the clause is more nuanced, giving them an option to own it, or something to that effect. I asked an HR person years ago if they actually wanted to be on the hook for any intellectual property I might create off the clock - I might be in to illegal porn stuff, or security virus work, or whatever. Did they really want to claim ownership of that, without even knowing what it was? "Well, no, we don't want that" was the response.

balls187• 12 years ago

Depending on location, those may be illegal.

In WA state, only work you do on company time, or with/on company resources can be claimed by the company.

rjknight• 12 years ago

I would like to know the precise mechanism here. What is the harm that the employer is claiming to experience?

_wp3r2• 12 years ago

Most likely they would claim a reduction in competitive advantage if the employer CI was internal.

Fuxy3• 12 years ago

I would disagree.

What you do in your personal time is none of your employers business he is not paying for that time and he does not own whatever you create in that time.

Not unless you signed a ridiculous contract saying something like that which in my opinion should not be enforceable anyway.

It's like a construction company saying it owns the house you built for your family just because you happen to work for them and you gained experience by working for them.

They certainly didn't supply the raw material which in programming would be time and effort so they shouldn't have any claim on it.

deong2• 12 years ago

They certainly didn't supply the raw material which in programming would be time and effort so they shouldn't have any claim on it.

It's this last point where you might well run into legitimate disagreement. What is the "raw material" for a piece of software? If it's the knowledge that goes into writing it, then arguably the employer did supply that.

I can pretty much remember what code I wrote during a day. Not verbatim of course, but if I solved a problem at 10:00 AM, I'll be able to figure it out again at 6:00 PM. What is to prevent me from going to work for a small software company, working on their product during the day, cashing their paychecks, and duplicating my work at night? When I'm done, I just quit and sell my version as a competitor?

Xylakant19• 12 years ago

I disagree. Your employer is sponsoring a lot of your learnings in a specific area, so he's entitled to all your ideas in that area, that's what your paid for. It would be extremely easy to just keep your best ideas for "your" project and not use them in your work project.

The construction company would have a valid claim if you stole the blueprints at work.

JackFr3• 12 years ago

Well, sometimes what you do in your personal time is your employers business. Would you feel the same way if rather than working on open source, he were doing the same work moonlighting for a competitor of his employer? Its fine to say that the technology stack is different, but certainly he carries with him, perhaps unwittingly, certain proprietary information including but not limited to feature lists, customers and leads, marketing strategy, performance characteristics, etc.

I don't think this guy is a necessarily bad guy by any stretch, and I don't think he was intentionally trying to harm his former employer, but he's a little clueless.

chaostheory3• 12 years ago

Not unless you signed a ridiculous contract saying something like that which in my opinion should not be enforceable anyway.

The problem is that pretty much every employment contract for tech companies big and small in the US have this type of clause as standard even for non-techie employees. It's been this way for over a decade now. INAL but I've heard that the only "easy" way around it is to make a specific change to your employment contract that makes it less ridiculously broad and aggressive BEFORE you have any issues. You probably need a lawyer for that, and even if you do; your lawyer's work only helps if your employer, more specifically their legal team, actually agrees to it. My former coworker's wife is a employment contract lawyer so that helped him become aware of it and mitigate it. I don't feel that most people have this advantage.

presootto• 12 years ago

That depends on your contract. And unfortunately those contracts are legal. I gave up working on open source projects as I'd rather that code didn't exist then having to surrender it to my company.

My employer, Google, has the most expensive lawyers money can buy and they will not hesiste to ruin your life in order to defend the company's interests. Like the guy in the article I have a family to support and the pottential affect is just not worth the risk.

mwfunk• 12 years ago

You're talking about how you think it ought to be (which I agree with); the person you're disagreeing with was simply describing how it is. None of this is unusual in any way, unfortunately.

hyp02• 12 years ago

He's at least safe from IP infringement because it utilized a completely different approach.

I guess it's understandable the legal dept would be upset, because this different approach would be hard for them to see. It's also understandable that some pitch-forks might come out.

Perhaps a resoluion is to get independent confirmation of his claim that it is a "completely different approach".

Of course, the legal dept's concern might be more on stopping a potential competitor/alternative.

awda• 12 years ago

I'm not sure of that, simply because many employment contracts have a term something like "any employee output of value, even in off hours, is the property of the employer." So even if it was in his spare time, he might not own the IP rights to his creation.

f0nd004u• 12 years ago

That would imply that they own the ideas that give birth to the code you write, rather than the code itself, right?

berkut• 12 years ago

I would have thought so too (and did), but at my previous employer they took over another company which broadened the scope of the products (VFX software) they offered, which then came into conflict with work I'd been doing in my own time.

I ended up signing a specific non-compete and agreeing not to open-source my stuff for a year for the opportunely to work on something I wanted to there, but it turned out that up to that point, the managers' interpretation of the contract that I thought would have prevented working on open-source competitors (i.e. blender or something) meant that they wouldn't have been able or had the right to. Which I found surprising, but I guess wasn't really put to the test.

So I guess it varies.

octo_t• 12 years ago

This seems less like bullying and more like a company enforcing a 'do not compete' clause in the programmer's contract.

Even if its a different stack, they would have had access to things like A/B testing, client feedback and client names if he wanted to try selling his version!

nraynaud• 12 years ago

I don't know how you can create a better mousetrap if you can't use your knowledge of the industry gained on the field to build it.

ambrice• 12 years ago

So quit your job at MouseTrap Enterprises before you go off and build your better mouse trap. If you have a job as a MouseTrap inventor at MouseTrap Enterprises and you have a great idea for a mouse trap, it does seem kind of sketchy to go off and create your better mouse trap at home on the weekends while you're cashing your MTE checks. That is what they're paying you for..

fredgrott• 12 years ago

ah..am I missing something?..source is still up in release download section

rubiquity6• 12 years ago

The README states that the entire repo will be deleted on April 18th.

mcv• 12 years ago

Presumably, lots of people will fork it before that time.

werid• 12 years ago

The company is AppendTo.

"In appendTo, we’ve constructed our business model to encourage our staff to keep an effective and balanced schedule. The definition of work-life balance is unique for each person, but we’ve built our organization with the features and tools that empowers our employees to customize their interaction with appendTo to their needs. This manifests itself many ways, from flex time to giving our engineers time to work on personal growth or open source projects."

-- http://appendto.com/company/values/

trhway• 12 years ago

today's winner in BS bingo.

Basically, manager can push you in any way and you'd not have any structure to hold for.

rubiquity6• 12 years ago

Shame on them. They used to be a front runner in web development tutorials and it seems they have built a company out of that.

A quick pro-tip for appendTo: if your company's business model is in building things for developers, don't do scummy things to your developer employees.

Twirrim2• 12 years ago

Shame on them for not wanting an employee to take what they've learned at work (on a monetised product) and release it open source? The tech stack is largely irrelevant, the products are in the exact same domain.

I think any company would be rightly pissed off if their employees did that. Can you imagine github, for example, being happy for one of their employees to be working on a complete web front-end / issues tracking system for git, in their spare time and releasing it open source, provided it was written in Java? Or Atlassian being happy for one of their employees writing a complete ticketing system in their spare time, and releasing it open source provided it was written in javascript?

Really?

sremani• 12 years ago

They do have a section for Open Source on their web site. This is their github repository https://github.com/a2labs

cowbell• 12 years ago

Management team is here

http://appendto.com/team/

I guess go ahead and find where one of them contributed to prop 8 or something.

According to the readme, the guy only worked on the repo for a week while he worked there. Shouldn't be too hard to redo a week's worth of work. Maybe easier than undoing the damage being done to appendto's reputation by their scumbag policies.

themodelplumber• 12 years ago

They have a Visual Design Engineer position? That's unique.

dictum• 12 years ago

we’ve built our organization with the features and tools that empowers our employees to customize their interaction with appendTo to their needs

Welcome to Zombo.com. You can do anything at Zombo.com.

jrochkind1• 12 years ago

If it was legally released under an open source license, someone can and should grab it before he deletes it, put it somewhere else, and people other than him can certainly legally keep using it or working on it, right?

I guess the employer could try cease-and-desisting others and claiming it is their IP and the open source license was not legal.

staticelf2• 12 years ago

Yes. At least in my country. That's why I forked the repo and perhaps see if it is useful maybe I'll even commit something.

I think they will have a hard time tracking down me and then fight a legal battle overseas. If they were to send me a C&D letter I would simply not comply, answer or do anything. First they have to find my address though.

A lot of people already has forked it, the code is available in a ta, maybe even in the history. Because of the seemingly bad communication now it will never go down.

keithpeter2• 12 years ago

I was wondering if anyone has simply forked and reissued the code.

romanovcode• 12 years ago

Open-source bullying is when someone says "your code sucks and you should kill yourself!".

This is more of a company enforcing that you do not copy the systems they are doing to minimize competition. Many times when people leave they try to create same product that previous company created.

hapless5• 12 years ago

This is a sad story, but it could have been seen coming from a mile away:

- He worked on a personal project during company time. Edit: Oops. I misread this one as the inverse of what the author was saying. He only worked on it while employed. Still very ugly given the field of his work.

- His personal project is directly related to his work.

- His personal project conceivably competes with his employer's products.

- The company does not have staff in NY or CA, so the author lacks even the minimal limitations on non-competes imposed by state law (http://newappendto.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1...)

All of these things are typically barred by completely reasonable non-competes. As the author, I would absolutely expect to receive a C&D. As his former employer, I would feel (personally) hurt, even betrayed, by this behavior.

voidlogic• 12 years ago

>He worked on a personal project during company time.

Doesn't he claim this is not true?

"I did not do so on company time (as proven by the git commit logs), I worked on it in the evenings after I had completed my work for the day."

Hovertruck• 12 years ago

To be fair, you can work on something and wait until the evening to commit it.

johnfactorial2• 12 years ago

Time isn't the only corporate asset he could have utilized to create his competing code. He might have utilized corporate-funded computers, LAN hardware, Internet access/bandwidth, etc. When I worked for a major Internet corporation I signed a contract specifically stating that anything I created using any corporate resources belonged to the company. Thus, when I worked on open source stuff, I did it from home using my own computer on my own time. Did the author sign such a contract, or violate such a contract by using company assets other than business hours? We just don't know.

knappe• 12 years ago

He did not work on it during company time.

"I did not do so on company time (as proven by the git commit logs), I worked on it in the evenings after I had completed my work for the day."

tankenmate• 12 years ago

The OP explicitly said that he worked on it during personal non work time, and further more has evidence (git logs) to prove it. Whether his former employer has any evidence (either way) apart from the existence of the project on github obviously hasn't been stated.

Xylakant19• 12 years ago

Sorry, but git logs prove nothing. Git allows rebase and modification of commits. Even a full log of when pushes to github happened prove nothing - I can work during the day and just commit later.

kibibu• 12 years ago

Git logs are pretty flimsy sort of evidence though. You can work all day and commit at midnight.

masklinn2• 12 years ago

- His personal project is directly related to his work.

He worked on the same thing in his work is very different

- His personal project conceivably competes with his employer's products.

As far as I can tell, his former company is not in the CI business and do training and consulting, I'm guessing they wanted an internal CI for their client projects and stuff, there's no competition (not to mention there are already a billion CI out there)

hapless5• 12 years ago

He was paid to work on a CI tool, by a firm that sells development services. Even if we assume that tool would never, ever be sold to customers, releasing a product that erodes their competitive advantage is still foul play. It's dirty pool.

We don't know exactly what contract he signed with his employers, but this would not be permitted by any reasonable contract.

mildtrepidation2• 12 years ago

Either you don't quite understand the purpose of a non-compete or there's an entire class of them I'm not aware of (which is entirely possible), but in my experience, their purpose is to explicitly bar employees from poaching customers from the business.

Working on something in your personal time that's similar to what you're working on for your employer -- unless your employment contract is entirely unreasonable -- isn't and shouldn't be a violation unless you are using company resources (including but not limited to trade secrets learned in the context of your employment and not legally available through other sources).

hapless5• 12 years ago

This is a matter of non-compete agreements, signed by private parties. Personally, I think it's totally reasonable to ask employees not to work on competing products in their off-time. As an employee, I have signed such agreements myself. The author appears to have signed such an agreement.

We can disagree about this. You, personally, are free not to sign these agreements with your employer, because you feel the request is unreasonable.

(Trade secrets are different. That's typically governed by state law, no special agreement required: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Trade_Secrets_Act)

fecak• 12 years ago

Non-compete is a somewhat generalized term being used here, but it can mean what you referenced ("don't poach customers") as well as "don't steal our product ideas". These are sometimes called NDA or PIIA (1) which might be better representations of what we are talking about here. In this case, the company is claiming that he stole their code (an 'invention' or 'property' of the company) for the benefit of some other party.

NDA or PIIA agreements are common in software development.

1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement

fragmede• 12 years ago

Non-competes, as applied to tech workers in Massachusetts, essentially say from start, to two years after you quit your job, you will NOT work on anything similar, for anybody. (Depending on the contract you signed.)

(Current Governor of Mass is looking to change this.)

greggman5• 12 years ago

It IS a violation in many places and it should be IMO. See my reply above.

I'll try to dig up some relevant links to laws

Here's a relevant link.

"Employees Owe a Duty of Loyalty to Their Employers

...

Thus, an employee who improperly competes with his employer, assists a competitor during the course of employment, or makes use of the employer's confidential information to compete with the employer after termination may have breached the duty of loyalty.

etc..

http://shawvalenza.com/publications.php?id=68

teebs• 12 years ago

Your own source for the fourth point, the map of offices, actually does show an office in upstate New York. Look again at http://appendto.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/100-Remote.pn...

bashcoder• 12 years ago

The author makes no reference to a non-compete agreement. His former company claims that he stole their code and put it into his public repo, not that he is violating his non-compete.

If the accusation is false, it's easy to prove. But the problem is that a company can bankrupt an individual with just the legal fees involved in the discovery process and depositions alone, even if it doesn't go to trial. So most folks are forced to yield, as the author is doing.

mbillie1• 12 years ago

But the problem is that a company can bankrupt an individual with just the legal fees involved in the discovery process and depositions alone, even if it doesn't go to trial.

This is the damning thing. It looks like the company is, if not right, at least able to make a reasonable enough claim of rightness to warrant further discussion. However, what if the company was dead wrong? What is to stop an unethical corporate entity from punitively suing employees into cooperative behavior, knowing they cannot pay? Our lawsuit culture is quietly underlying this entire discussion: what if the company couldn't sue this man into legal-fee-poverty in the first place?

hapless5• 12 years ago

If he's not governed by a non-compete, yes, this is outrageous behavior on the part of his former employer. I had not even considered that possibility.

homulilly• 12 years ago

Remind me never to work for you.

artellectual• 12 years ago

Another 'big guy bully small guy' story, there seems to be a lot of these nowadays. Again, the law doesn't protect the small guys at all does it. Shame Really.

appendTo on the blacklist of companies to work for, someone should make a site with a collection of companies with these kinds of behaviour, so people are aware. last one I read about was Goldman Sachs.

stefek99• 12 years ago

Welcome to my world :)

14. Intellectual Property and Related Rights

14.1 All records, documents, papers, databases (including copies and summaries thereof) and other original matter, work or creation (collectively “Creations”) made or acquired by the Employee in the course of the Employment shall, together with all copyright, database rights and design rights both registerable and unregisterable that subsist in all such Creations worldwide, be and at all times remain the absolute property of the Company.

14.2 The Employee hereby irrevocably and unconditionally waives all rights granted by Chapter IV of Part I of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that vest in the Employee (whether before, on or after the date hereof) in connection with the authorship of any copyright works in the course of the Employment with the Company, wherever in the world enforceable, including without limitation the right to be identified as the author of any such works and the right not to have any such works subjected to derogatory treatment.

I wonder if I can teach my 2yo daughter alphabet or counting 1-2-3 or would she become property of the company?

guan• 12 years ago

I think the key here is how “in the course of the Employment” should be interpreted. Is it anything that happens during the dates you are employed, or is there a requirement of some connection to the employment?

lrem• 12 years ago

It gets even funnier. The contract of my wife effectively bars her from getting any software developer job in the same country for a year after cessation. Now, this makes you think about enforceability, doesn't it?

That's exactly why you should ask prospective employer about their stance on open source/unrelated side projects before signing a contract.

Rizz• 12 years ago

"Course of employment" has a legal definition, it's the things you do because you have to for your work, so the actual work in the office, required education, travel to customers, that sort of stuff.

AustinW• 12 years ago

I get that this can be generic, and we can discuss this as a open source issue with an employer asserting their rights, but I want to take a more direct approach to the specific situation.

Does a company really think they are able to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage from controlling a continuous integration system? What is the business rationale here?

_wp3r2• 12 years ago

If they do a lot of consulting, they could have heavy third party approval processes or some other consulting workflow structure in the CI that "greatly" improves their customer experience or engagement in the dev process.

I am not sure that there would be a burden on the employer to even prove value though.

reuven• 12 years ago

As is often the case, the problem here could have been avoided if there had been clearer and more open communication.

All this guy had to do was go to his employer and say, "Listen, you should know that I'm working on an open-source project that is in the same ballpark as what I'm doing at work. However, there is no shared code, a different architecture, and the two don't even compete against one another. Plus, what I'm doing is open source."

If his employer had said, "Yeah, go ahead -- no problem," then there wouldn't have been a problem.

If his employer had said, "We're all in favor of open-source contributions and projects, but not when they compete against our core products, from which we make money," then they could have worked out a deal. Or not. But at least it wouldn't have been left up in the air like this.

I definitely see a problem with an employee creating an open-source project in the same space as his commercial, day job. While a cease-and-desist order is pretty unpleasant, all they're saying is that he has to stop work on the project. It could have been much worse, and much more expensive.

It also seems weird to me that while the former employee is saying he needs to stop, he's letting others fork the code and keep going with it. If I were interested in picking up an open-source project, I'd be hesitant to join one in which there had been explicit legal threats against the original author.

tptacek6• 12 years ago

I think that as a descriptive (and not normative) explanation, this is right on the money.

pvg• 12 years ago

This is pretty standardized in many US-based software jobs - the employer gives you an Assignment of Inventions bit of paper in which you agree they own a chunk of your brain, you add additional bits of paper where you and the employer agree to exclude specific things, say, your personal open-source groupon for kittens. It's usually routine and painless.

mikeryan• 12 years ago

It should be noted that many states, including CA puts limits on what can be covered by this language.

Under California law, an employee cannot be required to assign any of his or her rights in an invention he or she develops “entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information”

There are exceptions, see the whole article. This case even if in CA may be marred by the "Trade Secrets" restriction.

http://www.intellectualpropertylawfirms.com/resources/intell...

eternalban• 12 years ago

If his employer had said ...

Paper, ink, and signatures, or it didn't happen.

nailer2• 12 years ago

I'd get it in writing, but asking someone for a paper and ink OK for your Open Source project in 2014 is a bit much.

bunderbunder• 12 years ago

A nice, even-handed summary of the situation.

TBH, it never would have even occurred to me to work on an open-source project that directly competes with what I do to pay the bills. I've got a noncompete, of course, but even without that it strikes me as a violation of basic business ethics.

And even without that, as much as I enjoy programming after hours, working on the same problem you spend your work days hacking on seems like such a recipe for burn-out.

chc2• 12 years ago

TBH, it never would have even occurred to me to work on an open-source project that directly competes with what I do to pay the bills. I've got a noncompete, of course, but even without that it strikes me as a violation of basic business ethics.

It takes an extraordinarily broad definition of "compete" to apply that to this situation, though. He works on an internal CI system at his company. He makes an OSS CI system in his spare time. Since these things have different uses and one is merely an incidental tool that his company uses to acomplish actual goals, he is not competing with his company in the sense that normal human beings would use the word. (Similarly, no sane person would look at someone sewing an apron at home and say, "Wow, that person is competing with Home Depot because their workers wear aprons!")

aardvark179• 12 years ago

There are a couple of interesting things in what the former employee says

1) He claims the commit logs are proof of when he did the work. They aren't, they are simply proof of when he did the commits.

2) He says, "I worked on it in the evenings after I had completed my work for the day." Which instantly makes me wonder whether he was doing this on a work computer after hours?

If you want to do open-source work on an area related to your job you must talk to your employer first, and whatever open source work you do you should be sure you're either not using company resources or have permission to use them. Commit logs cannot prove when you did the work, they can only prove you did them at or before that point.

mjolk6• 12 years ago

If you want to do open-source work on an area related to your job you must talk to your employer first

I promise you that's not the law.

A bartender that makes drinks for his friends at a house party doesn't have to reimburse his employer for skills learned when tending a bar.

and whatever open source work you do you should be sure you're either not using company resources or have permission to use them

But this is a valid point. If you're using company hardware and resources, you're arguably spending resources owned by the company.

plorkyeran• 12 years ago

He claims the commit logs are proof of when he did the work. They aren't, they are simply proof of when he did the commits.

Not even that, since you can trivially set the commit date to whatever you want.

lightblade• 12 years ago

Even the timestamp on the commit can be changed. That doesn't proof anything. It's totally possible the timestamp has been tempered with.

git rebase -i

pick and edit each commit and do this

git commit --author <override-author> --date <override-date>

I think you do this better with filter-branch too. But I don't know that command as much.

steveklabnik• 12 years ago

They aren't, they are simply proof of when he did the commits.

They're not even that:

  git commit --amend --date="Mon, 14 Apr 2000 16:42:16 +0000"

rmc3• 12 years ago

1) He claims the commit logs are proof of when he did the work. They aren't, they are simply proof of when he did the commits.

True, but it lends evidence that they were done outside of work. After all, if the commits were made during 9-5, then you can claim it was during work.

mjolk6• 12 years ago

A) If his employer had said, "Yeah, go ahead -- no problem," then there wouldn't have been a problem.

B)If his employer had said, "We're all in favor of open-source contributions and projects, but not when they compete against our core products, from which we make money," then they could have worked out a deal. Or not. But at least it wouldn't have been left up in the air like this.

---

False dichotomy. They could have pretended to go with '(A)' and then sued him over it later when/if the product became popular/made money.

He (the developer) also then exposes himself to risks that he otherwise might not (e.g. lazy lawyers that only act when prompted).

tomp2• 12 years ago

That's why you don't "talk" to your employer about such things, you "write" them an email (or better yet, a contract/copyright release).

apaprocki• 12 years ago

And when you read "go to the employer" and "the employer said", think to yourself: My company should have a clearly defined IP policy that states how to make these requests and hopefully an associated SLA.

I sit on our IP group as an R&D representative and there are other representatives from HR as well as Legal. This allows the group to basically handle any situation that comes up efficiently and employees have a clear single point of contact. We try to ensure no request takes longer than a week to resolve, but most take minutes.

btilly4• 12 years ago

It also seems weird to me that while the former employee is saying he needs to stop, he's letting others fork the code and keep going with it.

I think he received poor legal advice on this, and the same goes for anyone who forks it.

The issue is that he does not own copyright. Given that he doesn't own copyright, what he says does not matter. It is as meaningful as my giving permission for Bob to drive YOUR car. Since I don't own it, I can't actually give permission.

Usual disclaimers. I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

j_jochem• 12 years ago

I don't think you can say that he does not own copyright. In this case, it is unclear who owns the copyright and a court would probably have to be involved to clarify the situation.

laureny2• 12 years ago

Listen, you should know that I'm working on an open-source project that is in the same ballpark as what I'm doing at work.

No employer will ever be comfortable with something like this. I write open source on my spare time and I support the idea wholeheartedly but hearing that one of my developers is doing something like this would make me question what exactly she is doing and why.

I'm perfectly fine with her working on totally unrelated projects but this smells very dangerous for both parties, starting with the fact that it's probably impossible to make sure the two projects are not leaking into each other, with unforeseen legal and competitive consequences.

jeswin2• 12 years ago

Anything that I do with my time, my equipment and my brain outside paid work hours belongs to me. If there was a contract that insisted on it not being so, there is no need to offer the said clause the protection of law.

I find it troubling that so many people are alright with signing away their personal rights. The employee individually isn't obligated to the company any more than the company is obligated to the society collectively. Without the public obeying rules such as copyright, the said company wouldn't even be in business.

The west's definition of freedom is confounding. Capitalism has eroded the rights of the individual and left him utterly powerless and subservient. To the extent that many people don't even realize how much of their rights have been ceded.

ChuckMcM2• 12 years ago

"... hearing that one of my developers is doing something like this would make me question what exactly she is doing and why."

When someone is working on something 'outside' there can be a number of motivations. As a manager I'm thrilled if they are learning new skills or packages, I can't always come up with projects that keep people interested, and side projects can help with people keeping technically alert. I also love to hear about what they have learned "Hey Chuck, Chef does this much better than we do." Or "Hey we can use this new Meteor framework to build cool stuff."

On the other hand if they say "I'm working on an entirely new way to crawl the web, but it isn't at all like our crawler." I'm going to talk to them about switching to our crawler, after all if that is where there interest has taken them, I'd rather it help both of us company and employee. If they don't want to do that because of personality issues, or some other structural issue which has been lingering, as a manager I want to know about that and try to fix it.

Bottom line is if your working off hours to charge your technical batteries, its great. If you're working at those hours because of some problem at work, I want to fix that. If you are working on something because you don't want to work here anymore, I'd like to know that too and make the transition smoother for everyone.

tptacek6• 12 years ago

We're totally comfortable with things like that. We have different parameters (steering well clear of client conflicts), but we also (a) care very deeply about IP and (b) don't have problems with people doing off-hours work.

My previous employer (Arbor Networks): roughly the same way. People had side/off-hours projects that involved network instrumentation.

I think you're overgeneralizing.

That's important because if you weren't, and virtually all employers would have a problem with these kinds of side projects, the risk/reward for asking permission would be different.

eyko• 12 years ago

"We're all in favor of open-source contributions and projects, but not when they compete against our core products, from which we make money,"

This right here is the classic definition of a leech. I am only in favour of open source if i can benefit from it. I am not in favour of the part that suggests that I "contribute back to the community". Well, I guess everyone is in their right to be an asshole. When you smell the stench then you know what's coming :)

cruise02• 12 years ago

There's a huge difference between writing open source software that benefits your company and open source software that directly competes with your company's core products. There's plenty of room to find something that wouldn't be a conflict of interest.

mathattack• 12 years ago

This is a very touchy area. You have to get buy-in from your employer for side projects, otherwise they (with some legal standing) believe they own the work. The only alternative is to be very discreet about what you do on the side. It's wrong, but see how companies react...

whatevsbro• 12 years ago

All this guy had to do was go to his employer and say

All his employer had to do was not be retarded little bitches.

ChuckMcM2• 12 years ago

If he is based in California then the court systems will put the onus on they company for proving his project infringed. There are three things I've learned to remember in California about moonlighting; Don't work on any project that has the same goals as one of your employers project, get clearance in writing when you start, and keep good notes.

Early in my career doing hardware design on my own was 'easy' since I was always employed as a software engineer, and number two (get clearance) really helped me understand both how cool NetApp was and how bogus Google was in what they consider 'their space'. Number three helped early on, keeping a notebook I found was helpful for me to keep from not bringing things from work home into my projects.

nullz• 12 years ago

Shouldn't we name names in this case? This behaviour should be part of the company's public image. Or does that just greatly increase the legal risk for the author?

keithpeter2• 12 years ago

I personally would not do business with or purchase products from a company that decided to threaten an ex-employee in this way. But then, I am not an important person.

FD3SA• 12 years ago

Another reason to work for an employer as a consultant, so that you control your own IP and time.

I'll keep saying this until one day talented programmers get the message. If you're creating open source frameworks, you're talented enough to not have to take any bullshit from employers. Offer them your services, and nothing else.

Sadly, the state of health insurance in the US makes this somewhat difficult.

EGreg• 12 years ago

Could have been worse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov

pawelkomarnicki• 12 years ago

It's sad, but a rule of thumb is: "never EVER open source anything that is close to your employer", because people don't care how different your open source project is. They see what they monetize on, so they sue. Unless you really do something generic, like "yet another social network for kitten owners having foot fetish" ;-)

cordite• 12 years ago

Wow, the repository is really gutted out.

In the case I needed to do something like this, how would I?

ephidias• 12 years ago

His former employer is claiming that he worked on it on their time and that he stole code. He denies these claims and even offers some evidence to prove it.

So HN says he should have discussed it with them, he probably had a non-compete clause, he probably conferred his intellectual property to his employer in his contract, or that his actions are just in general bad form.

BULL - The companies claims are pretty specific and if they are false as he claims then their behaviour is indefensible.

I'm shocked that the HN community is in favour of this.

kabdib• 12 years ago

Depends on your employee agreement, and where you live. Most of the companies I've worked at said that anything related to any of their business was theirs, regardless of the times that I worked on it. Since a large company does a lot of things, you're pretty much down to selling fruit or watercolor paintings of stuffed animals, if that. (I believe that Microsoft has a blanket "No moonlighting" that they want to apply to all jobs; makes those paying hobbies interesting).

My current employer doesn't care at all, and gives explicit permission in the employee contract. I can even write stuff that is in their business space, as long as I do it on my own time and equipment. Very enlightened.

staticelf2• 12 years ago

I forked the repo, but I think I will actually see if I can put it up in a non-forked repo so it'll be a tiny bit harder to take down. Also I am starting a private repo as backup on another git service.

They will never be able to shut it down now lol. I think the communication of the employer was really bad even if it's not that good to do the same at home as you are doing at work.

briantakita2• 12 years ago

Is this a case to use a personal corporation and submit open source code?

To limit liability...

cfqycwz• 12 years ago

Shouldn't the title of this submission be that on the page, "Avow-CI Is No More?" The submission title was previously highly editorialized, now changed to "Open-source bullying or just the company's right?" but I think that's still pretty slanted and limits the discussion to only two viewpoints.

dang• 12 years ago

Yes, the title was against the rules and we changed it. I didn't see the previous one, but if it was worse it must have been really bad.

All: Please don't editorialize titles, especially not to make them more linkbaity.

markbnj• 12 years ago

A lot of good comments here, and I think the OP stepped in it a little bit. It should have been a wee bit more obvious that the overlap was likely to cause some concern, so chalk this one up to a professional learning experience, which as others have pointed out could have been a lot more costly.

Another factor, imo, is that regardless of how supportive of open source your employer is, human jealousy and possessiveness still comes into play. Nobody is getting as much work done as they would like, and they never will. When a manager hears about an open source project I guarantee you some little corner of his or her brain feels like they want those hours for themselves. I've seen this emotion inadvertently aired on more than one occasion. If the project in question is truly a side project and truly unrelated then the manager's best course is obviously a held tongue. But it if is potentially competitive? Now the reaction has legitimacy, and for that reason alone it's best to steer well clear of anything that might be a conflict.

d_theorist• 12 years ago

Doesn't it just come down to what's in his contract? Many contracts now do include a clause assigning copyright to all employee code (even that written outside work) to the company. I would never sign such a contract, but it's a perfectly reasonable thing to put in one.

In the absence of such an explicit clause I am pretty sure that copyright automatically belongs to the author of the code.

georgeecollins• 12 years ago

I would have preferred it if he had included “what was practically a cease and desist letter”. It would be easier to judge the case if you knew what his employer was asking him to do in their own words.

I have worked in the game industry for a long time and it used to be said that code walks with programmers. The use of open source repositories may end up making this more visible.

filmgirlcw2• 12 years ago

This whole situation is really sad. I don't know if he violated any terms of his contract or not (and I take him at his word that he didn't reuse code), but I certainly understand his position that his family and livelihood are more important than fighting some lawsuit.

That said, I think this highlights and important point -- when you work on outside projects that are even tangentially related to your full-time job (and by that, I mean, if you are an engineer, any software you write, not just stuff associated with what you write at work), it's important to get that cleared and approved in your contract. Preferably at the time of hiring.

I'm a writer and reporter. I can't make money or even contribute articles for free to a publication that could be considered a competitor -- that's obviously clear. But when I was hired, I was working on a few freelance projects that were not directly related to my main employer. I got it in writing that those projects (including things like podcasts or magazine work) are clear. Every year when I review my contract, I make sure those points remain intact, along with the new names of other projects I work on.

But if I were to start another creative project, even one that on the surface didn't intersect or compete with my employer, and I didn't get that cleared (or I didn't already have the ability t do so in my contract), that would absolutely be a problem.

nsfyn55• 12 years ago

This is why I don't have kids. So I can irresponsibly and irrationally fight the good fight. Sorry for your loss.

lucb1e• 12 years ago

Not sure it won't get deleted along with the original repos that I forked it from, but at least here is the repos reverted to the last useful commit:

https://github.com/lucb1e/avow-ci/

And if it gets deleted, I have the code locally.

gcb02• 12 years ago

That's why the easiest way to improve the world by open source is to only commit anonymously.

sad, but true.

Avow-CI Is No More

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