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Why I left

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Re: Why I left

#91
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're putting words into his mouth. Particularly the first one is not at all what he wrote.

> If Aeternity is going to use the technology invented, and they wont pay me to make their software secure, then my only way to get paid is by selling zero-day exploits for people who want to attack Aeternity No sane or honest person would ever write that.

Here's who would write it: A person sane and honest enough to realize how insane the proposition and their position is and who decides to state it to illustrate the point that they're completely out of options.

You're jumping to wild conclusions that say more about you than you're trying to say about him.

Re: Why I left

#92

I had a brief conversation on github with Zack few years ago over cryptocurrency implementation, great guy and really knowledgeable about cryptocurrency. Knowing Aeternity had him on the team, I immediately told my friends who invest in cryptocurrency they should pay close attention to it. I also wanted to look into its code and help, but I'm not an erlang programmer. To be honest, when I checked Ae's official websit…

> I too have been approached by non-technical people who wanted to form a team, but rely on me to come up with both the idea and the product. I don't trust people who can only talk.

I like these words, especially "I don't trust people who can only talk."

Re: Why I left

#93

don't understand how you can find zero-day exploits if your codebase was solid. If it wasn't maybe it's better that they don't use your code?

Exploit could be from dependant libraries or os related..

Re: Why I left

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be ironic, however it's not unethical to engage in unethical behavior specifically against unethical actors.

Yeah because history always treats kindly those who believe the ends justify the means.

I never said or implied ends justify the means. I simply said it is not necessarily unethical to to engage in what would otherwise be unethical actions against actors who engage in unethical actions against ethical actors.

Re: Why I left

#95
post #47
post #37

Their new CTO did an AMA on reddit recently. https://www.reddit.com/r/Aeternity/comments/6vxiei/ama_sessi... The relevant parts: > There are no zero days. And we are not using any of Zack’s code in the new repo. Take a look at our Github. Zack’s leaving has zero effect on our technology and we are not using any of his code. > We have been working alongside Zack for quite some time now and understand the code. We felt…

Fascinating. That seems to confirm a lot of Zack's claims (not the physical assault parts, of course). Highly unusual to start over with an empty repo when your lead developer quits. Which makes me suspect that the answer to the asked-but-unanswered question: > Is this down to IP issues / lack of any contracts or legal agreements? Is "yes".

Sure sounds like it. I've been through a somewhat similar (but less jarring) situation, mine was a customer silently started hiring people to clone a kind of trading system they licensed from us at the time, but the strangeness tastes the same way.

A bit of story, might entertain someone:

It started with them started asking somw weird questions, and generally behaving odd in our meetings about fixes and new features. Somehow, I came to the conclusion they had to be working on a clone, which I told everyone on the team. They were quite surprised by that, especially as I wasn't myself present at the strangest meeting. Que a year or so later, when my boss walked in. One sentence that said it all: - How the hell did you know ? Turned out I was right. But truth to be told, I couldn't answer his questions. It was simply the only possible reason I could imagine.

Re: Why I left

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly to me, it sounds like a junior (or at least, a non-business-savvy) person tried to extort somewhere in the area of $3.5 million from the owner of their company. In this instance, "trying to break his leg" may have been more like "got shoved and fell over" (Which to be fair, could be a reaction someone might have if their employee came into their office demanding several million dollars - who knows). I don't…

Junior? He has worked on the codebase since 2015 alone, then Aeternity stole his code and raised 77 million USD entirely based on his own work. He is the sole reason the company even exists so definitely not junior. And they stealing his code and starting a company based on it was how they got started so they are clearly not nice people.

Junior/younger/etc. Don't need to get too caught up in the terminology.

They also didn't 'steal' his code from the sounds of it. It sounds like he was in some form of verbal partnership to help develop a company (which they were clearly fairly far along with) but hadn't signed any real contracts. After two years someone isn't stealing your code, and you should be savvy enough to realise that the business world isn't really about being nice people - you need to cover your bases.

Re: Why I left

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Junior? He has worked on the codebase since 2015 alone, then Aeternity stole his code and raised 77 million USD entirely based on his own work. He is the sole reason the company even exists so definitely not junior. And they stealing his code and starting a company based on it was how they got started so they are clearly not nice people.

Junior/younger/etc. Don't need to get too caught up in the terminology. They also didn't 'steal' his code from the sounds of it. It sounds like he was in some form of verbal partnership to help develop a company (which they were clearly fairly far along with) but hadn't signed any real contracts. After two years someone isn't stealing your code, and you should be savvy enough to realise that the business world isn't…

I don't care about terminology/title. That's irrelevant. My point is that the company raised 77 million of dollars based entirely on technology invented by this developer. Him asking to own a small part of that is totally reasonable.

I agree that he should have signed a proper contract with them and not rely on verbal agreements (but after reading little bit about him online he seems to be some sort of extreme libertarian, he doesn't believe in lawyers and contracts, just in voluntary exchanges).

But that doesn't mean it's not a bit evil for the company to just throw him away after using his name and technology to get people invest in them.

Re: Why I left

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Junior? He has worked on the codebase since 2015 alone, then Aeternity stole his code and raised 77 million USD entirely based on his own work. He is the sole reason the company even exists so definitely not junior. And they stealing his code and starting a company based on it was how they got started so they are clearly not nice people.

Junior/younger/etc. Don't need to get too caught up in the terminology. They also didn't 'steal' his code from the sounds of it. It sounds like he was in some form of verbal partnership to help develop a company (which they were clearly fairly far along with) but hadn't signed any real contracts. After two years someone isn't stealing your code, and you should be savvy enough to realise that the business world isn't…

Yes, I agree about stealing the code. They did not literally do it as it seems they had some verbal agreement and he worked on the code for them voluntarily. But still they haven't paid him anything and I think if he actually decided to get a lawyer and sue he has a pretty strong claim on the company ownership as the whole funding round was based on his IP.

The company has hastily deleted all his code and replaced it with new repositories starting from scratch so apparently they are also at least little bit worried he might legally be entitled to own part of the company.

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