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Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

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Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#21

Post by wruza »

gmueckl wrote: post #12
DarthNebo wrote: post #8

GitHub should try to enable some sort of toggled anonymous mode for select repos, while users should make their FOSS/social identities less obvious or decoupled if their employers aren't that friendly with such clauses. With remote work becoming more pervasive, employees should really not be doing any personal things on work computers because their traffic is definitely going to be analysed by someone or some system.…

Such an anonymous mode would be damaging for GitHub because it needs to stay friendly with its commercial and corporate customers. Besides, such a mode only provides obfuscation, but no legal protection at all. In fact, lawyers would turn it around and claim that using that mode showed that the owner of a repo was aware that what they were doing was wrong. Your idea would have a better chance of success as a separate…

lawyers would turn it around and claim that using that mode showed that the owner of a repo was aware that what they were doing was wrong

Can’t you turn it around and claim that it was done to reduce the possibility of debating with idiots who like to unreasonably turn things around by blah blahing all possible and impossible versions out of thin air?

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#22

Post by DarthNebo »

gmueckl wrote: post #12
DarthNebo wrote: post #8

GitHub should try to enable some sort of toggled anonymous mode for select repos, while users should make their FOSS/social identities less obvious or decoupled if their employers aren't that friendly with such clauses. With remote work becoming more pervasive, employees should really not be doing any personal things on work computers because their traffic is definitely going to be analysed by someone or some system.…

Such an anonymous mode would be damaging for GitHub because it needs to stay friendly with its commercial and corporate customers. Besides, such a mode only provides obfuscation, but no legal protection at all. In fact, lawyers would turn it around and claim that using that mode showed that the owner of a repo was aware that what they were doing was wrong. Your idea would have a better chance of success as a separate…

I meant someway for the repo to exist without coming under a specific individual, like an organisation would make more sense instead of having repos under your public profile. But then again the user has to be careful with their email addresses with every commit.

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#23

Post by ainar-g »

kgeist wrote: post #4

Here in Russia Rambler tried to do the same with nginx, and they failed to achieve their goals. I don't know, it creates nothing but bad publicity without giving anything in return considering they won't maintain it anyway if the core devs leave (and nothing stops them from forking and creating their commercial solution right now). The image of Rambler before: "Igor Sysoev created nginx while working at Rambler" (pos…

It seems like at a certain level, when a company achieves an unfortunate combination of buttloads of money and incompetent leadership, that company starts to think that it is above puny human concepts like reputation. Compare it with the behaviour of A Certain Database Company, Whose Name Is Similar To “Oral Care”.

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#24

Post by em-bee »

dmos62 wrote: post #17
pjc50 wrote: post #11

Check. Your. Contracts. It is risky to do open source work without having a written agreement with your employer that exempts it.

Should your work in spare time be explicitly exempt in the contract, or, if side projects are not mentioned in the contract, does that implicitly exempt it?

depends on the country where you work.

i believe in the US it is generally assumed that everything you do belongs to the employer even if not specifically mentioned. in some countries it is restricted to work done during work hours or on company equipment. in those countries it is safe if you work at home on your own computer, at least if the contract doesn't mention anything to the contrary. if the contract does claim personal work then it depends on whether that is legal or not.

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#25

Post by greatgib »

Here the question is even a little bit more interesting than just the "open source" code you created I think:

There is lot of discussion about the ownership of the code, but what about the other things related to the project? Like stars and issues.

In no way stars and issues belongs to the company, they belongs to each user that submitted them.

They submitted them to the project that was on a specific username. So, I'm not sure that the company could legally ask to take over that by force without the user agreeing.

Imagine if a company ask that "you transfer your likes to us"...

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#26

Post by mellosouls »

geewee wrote: post #20
turbinerneiter wrote: post #3

Bumble has a wave of abuse incoming. Everyone checking their Twitter account will see a stream of wokeness and be triggered by the discrepancy to their petty evil behaviour. This kind of ignorance is and should be pretty damaging to their brand, although I already sympathize with their poor social media workers who will have to deal with the onslaught.

What does "a stream of wokeness" mean?

Presumably it means they are obnoxiously pious.

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#27

Post by elric »

pjc50 wrote: post #11

Check. Your. Contracts. It is risky to do open source work without having a written agreement with your employer that exempts it.

Read the contract before you sign it. Don't work for companies that include any clauses what you can or cannot do in your free time (excluding reasonable exceptions, such as not directly competing with $employer).

This sort of greed/zealotry on the side of employers is why some FOSS projects are such a pain to contribute to (i.e. anything that's part of the Eclipse Foundation). You pretty much have to sign your name in blood on a contributor agreement, and you may even have to get your employer to sign it too. This is madness. Slavery is not a thing. Employers do not own us.

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#28

Post by onemiketwelve »

geewee wrote: post #20
turbinerneiter wrote: post #3

Bumble has a wave of abuse incoming. Everyone checking their Twitter account will see a stream of wokeness and be triggered by the discrepancy to their petty evil behaviour. This kind of ignorance is and should be pretty damaging to their brand, although I already sympathize with their poor social media workers who will have to deal with the onslaught.

What does "a stream of wokeness" mean?

It means they're about to get a butt load of criticism and I'm an asshole

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#29

Post by ainar-g »

greatgib wrote: post #25

Here the question is even a little bit more interesting than just the "open source" code you created I think: There is lot of discussion about the ownership of the code, but what about the other things related to the project? Like stars and issues. In no way stars and issues belongs to the company, they belongs to each user that submitted them. They submitted them to the project that was on a specific username. So, I…

An interesting related question I've always had is what even counts as a contribution. For example, consider the three situations:

(a) I open an issue about a feature not working. E.g.: “When I press the button, the app crashes”.

(b) Same as (a), but I also point out the place in the code where the error is without providing any code to fix it. E.g. “When I press the button, the app crashes, and I think that it has to do with a null pointer dereference in function pkg.foo()”.

(c) Same as (b), but I also provide a simple diff to fix it, but not a formally submitted merge/pull request.

The (c) sounds close enough to a contribution but not quite. And I'm not sure about (a) and (b).

Re: Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs

#30

Post by noduerme »

kgeist wrote: post #4

Here in Russia Rambler tried to do the same with nginx, and they failed to achieve their goals. I don't know, it creates nothing but bad publicity without giving anything in return considering they won't maintain it anyway if the core devs leave (and nothing stops them from forking and creating their commercial solution right now). The image of Rambler before: "Igor Sysoev created nginx while working at Rambler" (pos…

I don't know how copyright laws work in Russia, but it's a bit of a gray area in America when you write code for someone unless it's explicitly spelled out in the contract. The end product (compiled binary or whatever they're paying for to "just work") belongs to them, but the source code does not belong to them unless it's explicitly stated in a work-for-hire contract that all of your intellectual property goes to them while you're hired. I always make it clear in my contracts that I am not re-selling rights to anything I build that's derived from FOSS or, even my own code if it's part of my own open source projects; the client cannot own something that is not for sale, just by hiring me on an hourly basis. I make sure to communicate that with them verbally as well beforehand, in case they mistakenly have the idea that they are buying the rights to something that I can't legally sell them. Usually I present them a list of modules and files that will be used in their project which (a) are FOSS, (b) belong to me, and (c) which I will write for them that they can reuse/rewrite/resell the source code for.
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