Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 272 posts

Re: I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project

#131

Post by greenyoda »

dragonwriter wrote: post #26
greenyoda wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The copyright of a work belongs to its creator by default. (That's U.S. law; no contract is required to make that happen.) A standard contract for a contractor will stipulate that the copyright will be assigned to the client upon payment. If payment never occurs, the copyright stays with the work's creator.

> The copyright of a work belongs to its creator by default. (That's U.S. law; no contract is required to make that happen.) If it meets the criteria for a work-for-hire, the contracting party is the creator from the beginning for copyright law purposes (this is significant for reasons other than those under discussion; copyright transfers can reversed by the legal creator during a legally-specified window that occur…

For contractors (in contrast to employees), it's not a "work for hire" by default. The contract must explicitly state that it's a "work for hire", and various other conditions must be met. From Wikipedia[1]:

On the other hand, if the work is created by an independent contractor or freelancer, the work may be considered a work for hire only if all of the following conditions are met:

- the work must come within one of the nine limited categories of works listed in the definition above, namely (1) a contribution to a collective work, (2) a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, (3) a translation, (4) a supplementary work, (5) a compilation, (6) an instructional text, (7) a test, (8) answer material for a test, (9) an atlas;

- the work must be specially ordered or commissioned;

- there must be a written agreement between the parties specifying that the work is a work made for hire by use of the phrase "work for hire" or "work made for hire."

It doesn't seem that software written by one person meets any of the nine criteria above. (A "collective work" seems to refer to something like a magazine that contains the writings of several authors.[2])

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire#Law_in_the_Unite...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_work_(US)

Re: I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project

#132

Post by draw_down »

xwdv wrote: post #81

Don’t understand why someone would throw away their integrity by doing this. When a client refuses to pay, the standard procedure is to take them to court and then make them pay what is owed + attorney fees. Instead, this developer has put himself on industry blacklists by doing this. No way he’ll be trusted with sensitive projects. Don’t do this.

Interesting! What blacklists are there? Who maintains them?

Re: I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project

#133

Post by fj39dkf »

mdpopescu wrote: post #110
xwdv wrote: post #81

Don’t understand why someone would throw away their integrity by doing this. When a client refuses to pay, the standard procedure is to take them to court and then make them pay what is owed + attorney fees. Instead, this developer has put himself on industry blacklists by doing this. No way he’ll be trusted with sensitive projects. Don’t do this.

Huh? If you believe in Imaginary Property, you own the copyright to your code until you get paid. He won't be trusted with sensitive projects that he doesn't get paid for .

Do you mean intellectual property?

It would be defined in the contract, but usually the contractors never own the copyright to code written for other people.

Anyway, I agree with the other comments that this is unprofessional and immature. We have a civil court system to deal with these kind of issues.

Re: I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project

#134

Post by y4mi »

ilogik wrote: post #115
davedx wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*will solve it with laws. I'm working with a fintech company in Germany at the moment that asks users for their internet banking credentials. Apparently it's quite common in Germany.

usually this is done using oauth

No, it's not.

We're taking about end-users utilizing a third party service to get some kind of visualisation for their Bank accounts.

While German banks have a standardized API (FinTS), the normal authentication details are still necessary in order to use it, so basically all third party services demand them for that.

The only place where oauth2 is used is for single sign on between services of the same company and maybe - very rarely - you also get social auth from Facebook or similar.

No bank I've ever seen ever provided a public oauth API with which you could fetch data.

Re: I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project

#135

Post by neya »

mdpopescu wrote: post #125
neya wrote: post #102

Most contracts always have a clause about IP which usually states the work done for the project is the clients' IP regardless of you got paid or not. The smarter thing to do without violating this clause is to add "Fuck you pay me" sort of notices inside the application that doesn't allow the user to use the software until you get paid AKA kill switch. Kill switches are pretty easy to implement and you usually obscur…

Ouch. There's a good chance this might be considered hacking under some interpretation of US laws. I wouldn't do it. Set up frequent milestones and get paid for them.

Not familiar with US laws, but thanks for sharing!

Re: I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project

#136

Post by neya »

finkin1 wrote: post #124
neya wrote: post #102

Most contracts always have a clause about IP which usually states the work done for the project is the clients' IP regardless of you got paid or not. The smarter thing to do without violating this clause is to add "Fuck you pay me" sort of notices inside the application that doesn't allow the user to use the software until you get paid AKA kill switch. Kill switches are pretty easy to implement and you usually obscur…

I run a dev shop and that's not how our contract works. Here's our transfer of work clause: "Transfer of Work. Except for any portion of the deliverables subject to license terms (collectively, the “licensed materials”), Stratosphere initially owns all rights in the work created. Subject only to Stratosphere’s receipt of the fees and costs described in the applicable SOW, Stratosphere assigns all of its right, title…

> In case you're wondering, our lawyer is Gabe Levine, the same lawyer in the famous "F*ck you, Pay Me" talk by Mike Monteiro.

Wow, that's awesome. And thanks for sharing that clause :)

Re: I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project

#137

Post by Nursie »

Animats wrote: post #41

This thing wants the password for your bank account? WTF? That's way more than it needs. Enough info to authorize an ACH transfer, maybe. But the login password for your bank account? No way. That voids Bank of America's security guarantee.[1] If you provide info for an ACH transfer, and the other party abuses that info, it's reversible. If you provide login info and the other party abuses that info, it's not. [1] ht…

Lots of things do this as it has been the only way to access banking data.

It's also security lunacy to allow apps unfettered access to your accounts, acting as you.

This is why in Europe we have stuff like PSD2 in the works...

Re: I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project

#138

Post by Nursie »

fj39dkf wrote: post #133
mdpopescu wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? If you believe in Imaginary Property, you own the copyright to your code until you get paid. He won't be trusted with sensitive projects that he doesn't get paid for .

Do you mean intellectual property? It would be defined in the contract, but usually the contractors never own the copyright to code written for other people. Anyway, I agree with the other comments that this is unprofessional and immature. We have a civil court system to deal with these kind of issues.

> usually the contractors never own the copyright to code written for other people.

Under the terms of the contract that's now void due to non-payment?

Re: I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project

#139

Post by mythrwy »

nryuk wrote: post #27

As someone who occasionally does recruiting for developers and always do some quick searches for GitHub profiles. You'd be dropped as a potential candidate on our team if we stumbled upon this, "After he signed and I began building he decided to pivot and not pay me." Just screams unprofessionalism in my opinion.

Sounds like he got an extra bonus from the project then!
Post reply on HN