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

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

#151

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

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.

In the future I think I will add a clause in contracts that work for hire will be open source if payment in agreed terms is not received. It would be a good bargaining chip for getting crazy indemnity clauses removed.

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

#152

Post by Brian_K_White »

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.

He's not on my blacklist.

Perhaps he's aware that every action that anyone ever takes, is approved of by some people and disapproved of by others, and your only choice is between who approves of you and who disapproves of you.

I for one, approve of this resolution a hell of a lot more than courts and suits. They are tools you may be forced to use sometimes. It's great that the system is there for when you need it. But they are merely detestable necessities, not my first or preferred choice.

Did it occur to you that by advertizing this attitude, you may have caused yourself to be blacklisted, even if only informally? Probably not.

It's a favor and a pleasure to be blacklisted by some people or organizations. It's the trash taking itself out.

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

#153

Post by xkcd-sucks »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #78
ygra wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea behind the thing seems to be to initiate a wire transfer (which cannot be refunded as easily as direct withdrawal) and provides the merchant with an immediate confirmation of the same. I've never used Sofort for pretty much that reason that they want your online banking credentials and then automate stuff behind your back. I've sometimes used giropay, though, which does the same, only directly through your b…

This is ridiculous. In Poland, everyone implements online wire transfer with immediate confirmations by either: - using a service like PayU or Przelewy24 that have accounts in every major bank (in-bank transfers are immediate), use bank API to initiate the transfer and provide a confirmation to the merchant when the money arrives on their account (they often allow manual or post-office transfer as a fallback, and Bli…

In English "blik" looks a lot like "bilk", which means "to steal something by scamming or cheating"

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

#154

Post by fj39dkf »

Nursie wrote: post #138
fj39dkf wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's not really how contracts work. A contract is only "void" if it contains something fundamentally illegal, or if someone was forced to sign it. And that would be determined in court, not automatically.

The guy who promised to pay is breaching the contract by not paying, and the contractor's recourse is to sue him in civil court for the money.

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

#155

Post by Hamuko »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #126
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.

That's very strange. Here in Norway we have a unified login system for banks and state services that lets you set up the login with your own bank then any other service that needs you to log in will delegate the login process to your bank and never needs any of your details except for your personnummer (social security number in US/UK I suppose). Then your bank either asks for a code from a one time pad or sends a me…

Finland has a similar unified login system. Probably common in the Nordics.

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

#156

Post by cheerlessbog »

nicoburns wrote: post #145
kwhitefoot wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very strange. Here in Norway we have a unified login system for banks and state services that lets you set up the login with your own bank then any other service that needs you to log in will delegate the login process to your bank and never needs any of your details except for your personnummer (social security number in US/UK I suppose). Then your bank either asks for a code from a one time pad or sends a me…

(The UK equivalent of a social security number is a National Insurance number. But this is generally only used for tax, and not for authentication)

And few people know it by heart.

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

#157

Post by fj39dkf »

facorreia wrote: post #148
fj39dkf wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Was the jurisdiction of the contract mentioned?

Good point, I assumed this is in the US.

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

#158

Post by leke »

finkin1 wrote: post #128
paulsutter wrote: post #107

If a vendor doesn't pay you, call a collections lawyer. Generally speaking the client owns the code whether or not they've paid yet. Of course if the client agrees this is fine. But it's not fine if the client hasn't agreed. Stunts like this are a really bad idea. There's a right way to do it, and it works really well. Call a collections lawyer.

My understanding is that the person who produces the work produces generally owns the code until they are paid. Obviously it depends on the specifics of the signed agreement, but I'm curious why you think the client owns the code by default?

What about the idea?

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

#159

Post by belzebalex »

I had a similar story. At 16, a summer friend came to me. He told me that he knew a company that needed a web app. He got a 5500$ contract. It was so much for us, just high-schoolers.

We didn't know how to do a web app. I knew a bit of Python, him a bit of Javascript. So a month during, we learned how to and built the app they asked with Django. I never learned so quickly!

After a month, we shipped the app. They had a lot of users (900+), so our app that worked well with a database of two people failed miserably.

We spent nights fixing its problems. It used an external API that we had rate limiting problems with. I implemented a cache using Postgresql.

Then, they started to ask us for more features that weren't in the original contract. They said that if we wanted to get paid, we had to do them.

Eventually, we realized they weren't going to pay for us. We asked them to pay us, and they said yes. Then they said no, contact our lawyers. Their lawyers told us they wanted to engage charges because we didn't do the job well. They were still using our website without paying us! We contacted a lawyer and quickly realized that because of the legal fees (2500$ upfront + 500$/hour), it wasn't worth it to seek justice.

We were completely fucked.

Then, I remembered they used Heroku, which was based in the US and therefore applied the DMCA laws. We sent them an email explaining the situation and, in under 48H, they took the website down. I will always remember that morning when my friend woke me up to show me their site down.

As we did the deployment, they took a week to re-deploy our app at a server under French jurisdiction (that we could never have taken down).

Then, their whole company ran out of business as customers were leaving and asking refunds because of the lousy service. They laid off everyone, but our app is still freely accessible at https://crypto-analyse.com.

This experience taught us many lessons: - Never work for something that you're not paid for unless you're doing charity or working for yourself. - Contracts are no guarantee - They made a lot of money with our app. We could have made a lot more by just selling it ourselves.

And that's what we did! We just shipped our new app (it's an app to automate crypto trading with a conditions editor), https://kaktana.com

We now make more money than we had thought before, all of that using the experience we gained from that shitty deal.

“The phoenix must burn to emerge.” - Janet Fitch

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

#160

Post by novaleaf »

rsanek wrote: post #150
novaleaf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a kind of similar situation in that Msft owes me aprox $7k in royalties but they lost track of it internally. I've been pinging them every 6 months about this for the last 4 years, hoping to avoid litigation. in the usa, you can't expect a lawyer to take a case without paying their fees up front. So $5000+ for any case. Assuming you win, you are still looking at years before you might actually get paid (if eve…

Have you considered small claims court? They have low filing fees and typically disallow lawyers.

small claims court in my state (WA) is limited to aprox $5000.

This awkward area between $6k to $15k seems to be a sweet spot for abusive business practices (intentional or otherwise) because of the big time and financial commitment it takes to pursue.

EDIT: Also I should add that it's not guaranteed that legal fees can be reclaimed from successful litigation. This is probably the main reason I keep putting it off (and keep pinging them about it every 6 months, paper trail seems important)

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