"I also made some mistakes in how I went about evangelizing it."
What does this mean, did you use company time and resources in doing so?
Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?
211–220 of 327 posts
Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?
#212Send this letter to your manager and your manager's manager. [Manager Names] My time at [Company Name] has been a great experience. It has been a pleasure working with you. As you may know I created [ Open source project ] on [Date] and have enjoyed growing the product and user base. Building and supporting successful products is something I enjoy and will be looking for opportunities to do that outside of my current…
In some EU countries that resignation letter wouldn't be legally accepted, given the required notice period.
On the other hand, it is usually not legal for the employer to have any right over what employees do on their free time, provided no resources from the company (phone, laptop,...) have been used.
Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?
#2131. Don't commit to anything until you know what you are doing.
2. Gather information
- your contract
- what your states law on Non-compete is
- Was it your time, your equipment, your services used for development?
- What are the open source licenses
3. Decide what you want. Do you want to start a business?
4. Understand your employers position and what they want.
5. Get a free consultation from a GOOD lawyer. Ask around and find out who is the best. Then see them
Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like it'd be a pretty bad idea on the paralegal's part to take the gig.
Why is that?
It is illegal in every US jurisdiction I’m aware of for a paralegal to give legal advice.
Attorneys have a legally enforced monopoly on legal advice because, well, they write the laws.
Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?
#215Surprised that no one has mentioned that you should first review the employment doc you signed. In many (most) cases any IP you create does belong to them. Getting a lawyer involved may just turn in to an expensive and antagonistic experience that winds up with you simply ending up....with them owning the IP. One thing to consider- spin off your side project and try to get your employer as your first customer or as t…
> In many (most) cases any IP you create does belong to them. Why do Americans consider themselves free?
This is rampant in Europe too.
Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In many (most) cases any IP you create does belong to them I've heard this many times before but what are the limits to this? Say you work at software company x and on the weekends at home you are coding a project completely unrelated to work, a dating app, a mobile game, whatever. How can any contract be all encompassing as to legally allow that?
It doesn't. IANAL but I'm pretty sure that no matter what the contract says an employer's claim on work that an employee does on her own time and with her own equipment and unrelated to the company's IP is not "obviously" something that will stand up in court. I don't know if there is relevant case law but this seems like the kind of claim that is likely to be invalidated in court. Of course at least one and possibly…
These things all depend on the country and state/province in which you are employed.
Whenever this topic comes up on HN, all these armchair lawyers come out of the woodwork and start making blanket statements about what they are "pretty sure" is allowed, but this issue is dependent on what's in your contract, and what your national and/or local laws allow companies to claim. "Talk to a lawyer" is the best answer to something like this.
Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?
#217Even if there was agreement from the beginning that this is the company's IP, and you have to transfer control over it, remember you are under no obligation to continue to do what you are doing. If you were to stop now, no one else is going to support and maintain the code-case.
You have two other options: 1. You can stop immediately. Just say you are no longer maintaining and supporting it for free. You can work on it on company time. If anyone wants to pay you for your personal time to work on fixes and bug-fixes they wan, they can, at which point you can do that work, and release it as either part of the open-source project you have, or as a private fork for that customer.
2. You can quit your job. Go work somewhere else who is willing to work on your own open-source projects on your own time and maintain IP. Then, abandon the project since it no longer belongs to you. Your current company is the copyright owner. Start a fork, which will now be yours, and you're the copyright owner of any new code, including changes you made to the old code. If the original license is permissive, you are under no obligate to contribute back.
Having said all of that, this is not what I would personally do. I would be happy that the company I work on wants my work so bad that they're asking for the transfer of ownership back to them. I would tell them that shouldn't be a problem but you'd like something for it, such as being able to work on it on company time, etc. Otherwise it sounds like they just want to own this thing you created and have you continue to work on it for free on your own time indefinitely, which I don't believe is what they're asking for -- you weren't clear about that.
Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?
#218> I've developed it on my own time
Are you paid by the hour? If not, what does your "own time" mean?
Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
even if it's explicitly stated in the contract and the employee has agreed to it? Why would it get thrown out?
There are things that you can't contract away. An obvious example in the U.S. is that even if you have a contract saying you have to work for someone for no pay, forever, with no possibility of getting out the contract, it would be unenforceable because we, as a nation, have decided that slavery should not be legal. It turns out, many of these un-contractable issues involve the employer/employee relationship... anoth…
Sure, plenty of stuff is unenforceable in contracts. Is there any evidence that this particular sort of extremely common clause is in that set?
Re: Ask HN: My company wants my side project. What can I do?
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can be the same thing in Europe, at least the contracts I've seen say so.
Just because it's there in the contract doesn't mean it's legal. I'm not sure which European country you are referring to, but as a German I'd look at you funny if you had the audacity to put something like that in an employment contract (but honestly, I very strongly doubt any employer would do so in the first place).
In the UK I've signed a few employment contracts with such clauses, that If I produce something outside of working hours the company still owns it.
I signed the contracts anyway assuming that most likely the company would not be interested in what I created outside working hours (or even know of it) and that they would only get interested if it becamse really successful, in which case I would probably have the means to defend it.