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Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

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Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#151

Post by pjc50 »

mdni007 wrote: post #139
ThePhysicist wrote: post #118

It’s not really possible to give specific advice without knowing which jurisdiction you’re in. In most European countries there are laws that govern employee inventions and grant a share of the profits of an invention to the employee (in Germany e.g. the Mitarbeitererfindungsgesetz). Besides advising you to talk to a lawyer - which people already did here - there’s really little to say without knowing more details. I…

Did you type out that entire German word without referring to Google?

Native speakers can usually spell words in their own language. But really it's just a compound, just without any camel or snake case to indicate the word boundaries.

Mitarbeiterer_findungs_gesetz : "employee invention law". Where Mitarbeiterer can be further broken into "mit arbeit -erer". Mit=with, arbeit=work, and -erer is a suffix also used in English for "person who does a thing".

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#152

Post by megous »

nocturnial wrote: post #140

Tell them it's OSS and they can fork the code-base if they want more fine grained control. I know it's not going to resolve any issues but at least you are forcing them to say why that's not possible now and what long term plans they might have in store.

Well, the question is about the authorship. If the company holds the copyright, and always held it based on whatever is in the employment agreement, this will not work, since they can just relicence the project, and the original licencing of the work under OSS license would also be in question.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#153

Post by nl »

yolo42 wrote: post #46
nl wrote: post #32

What kind of outcome do you want? Most of the responses here concentrate on trying to get some kind of financial return for your work. That's important, but for you it might not be the most important thing (you were giving it away and working on it in your spare time, right?) Consider asking to make it your full time job, or something like that. You clearly know the field well, and you've managed to build community.…

> What kind of outcome do you want? I wish I knew myself better. Maintenance and taking the product forward will naturally become part of my job, so that's a given (and I'm happy about it). What can I ask more for is what I'm trying to figure out and having a hard time. I'm generally creative with software and products but I'm really bad when it comes to negotiations and figuring out a good barter. I absolutely don't…

Consider asking for a title that reflects that ("Open Source Product Director - your product name" or something)

It doesn't cost them anything, and in the future if you leave it's surprisingly useful if that is a direction you want to go.

I know you are getting a lot of advice saying "get a lawyer". That's up to you.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#154

Post by asimjalis »

Think entrepreneurially. Could you spin this off as a separate company with your current company owning some equity in it and you holding the rest? Maybe the company or its investors could give you funding to help productize your code. I’m other words this was not a mistake. Everything is working out perfectly. Instead of thinking about compensation or cashing out think of ways your current company can contribute to improve the product.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#155

Post by abdusco »

pjc50 wrote: post #151
mdni007 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you type out that entire German word without referring to Google?

Native speakers can usually spell words in their own language. But really it's just a compound, just without any camel or snake case to indicate the word boundaries. Mitarbeiterer_findungs_gesetz : "employee invention law". Where Mitarbeiterer can be further broken into "mit arbeit -erer". Mit=with, arbeit=work, and -erer is a suffix also used in English for "person who does a thing".

Small nitpick: it's more like: Mit-Arbeit-er + Erfindungs + Gesetz.

There's no -erer suffix, the first -er makes Arbeit + er (= work + er). Second one belongs to the word Erfindung (= invention)

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#156

Post by mch82 »

yolo42 wrote: post #14
buboard wrote: post #11

Would they still be interested if it was gpl?

I should have thought about GPL when I released the code. But, that boat has sailed. Could they change the license later on if it is initially GPL? I'm thinking about the next project that I'll be doing so that I don't repeat the same mistake.

The copyright holder can change the go-forward license at any time. The license doesn’t restrict the copyright holder, it restricts everyone else.

Your employer isn’t seeking a copy of your Apache 2.0 code, which they already have, they’re seeking transfer of copyright ownership.

It really does sound like you’d learn a lot from talking with a lawyer, maybe one recommended by an open source foundation. Lots of lawyers have a first meeting is free policy, so schedule meetings with a few lawyers. Pick the one you like best, or pick none.

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#157

Post by fierarul »

onion2k wrote: post #95
koala_man wrote: post #30

>developed it on my own time but the product directly relates to what my employer does As much as I hate to say it, that doesn't sound like a side project. That just sounds like overtime.

Couple that with the point that; In hindsight, I also made some mistakes in how I went about evangelizing it. It sounds like the author implied the company actually had something to do with whatever it is. That definitely makes it an unsanctioned overtime project rather than something separate like a side project.

> That definitely makes it an unsanctioned overtime project rather than something separate like a side project.

Is it overtime if you were never paid for it? How does unpaid work have to be 'sanctioned'?

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#158

Post by rvnx »

greggman2 wrote: post #39

IANAL and I'm sure this will get downvoted since people won't like what I have to say. I'd concentrate on the positive rather than the negative, that if you get to work on this project via your employer from this point on you'll be getting paid to do the thing you were doing for free. Getting paid for past work seems unlikely. You already admitted you didn't care about compensation by open sourcing the project. You w…

Well, for Google it's not that ideal. Google claims 100% of the IP done inside and outside of your work.

"As part of your employment agreement, Google most likely owns intellectual property (IP) you create while at the company. Because Google’s business interests are so wide and varied, this likely applies to any personal project you have. That includes new development on personal projects you created prior to employment at Google. However, we understand and sympathize with the desire to explore and ship technology projects outside of Google."

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#159

Post by giancarlostoro »

relaunched wrote: post #23

Find a lawyer, ASAP, that specializes in employment and / or IP. This is a legal issue and you need to solve it with people that know the law. Talking, signing, admitting things, etc, only hurt you. Depending on your country and state, as well as your employment agreement, there are a lot of impactful variables. Intuition and personal relationships are not going to help you solve this issue, especially, absent knowin…

> Find a lawyer, ASAP, that specializes in employment and / or IP. This is a legal issue and you need to solve it with people that know the law. Talking, signing, admitting things, etc, only hurt you.

This. Anything you say. Anything at all. Can. And will be used against you in a court of law. Your job wants your code. Personally I would lawyer up and start applying for new jobs elsewhere and ensure they wont pull the same. Just never work on code from their hardware on their resources (internet, power, etc).

Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?

#160

Post by heartbreak »

ronilan wrote: post #40

Every once in a while something like this comes up in HN and the top voted answer is always “find a lawyer”. My 2 cents - don’t. You want compensation, you want to direct the roadmap. Your employer wants ownership. Where is the conflict? Why make one? (P.S. - my legal experience “peaked” about a decade ago when I hired Andrew Valentine, managing partner of DLA Piper Palo Alto to help bridge what should have been an e…

The broad spectrum of legal counsel available to OP includes far more than extremely expensive biglaw partners. And besides, if all of DLA Piper’s outcomes were poor, they wouldn’t exist. It’s remarkable that they refunded you.
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