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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

#31

Post by formerly_proven »

em-bee wrote: post #24
dmos62 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cla…

> i believe in the US it is generally assumed that everything you do belongs to the employer even if not specifically mentioned.

https://store.legal.thomsonreuters.com/law-products/news-vie...

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

#32

Post by mellosouls »

I don't know the history of the development, and I'm instinctively against overreach by employers but considering both repos are clearly influenced by repos on similar platforms (eg Badoo), it doesn't seem unreasonable for Bumble to at least take an interest in their provenance and - if they have been developed on company time and equipment - their ownership.

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

#33

Post by qwertyboi »

mellosouls wrote: post #32

I don't know the history of the development, and I'm instinctively against overreach by employers but considering both repos are clearly influenced by repos on similar platforms (eg Badoo), it doesn't seem unreasonable for Bumble to at least take an interest in their provenance and - if they have been developed on company time and equipment - their ownership.

Practically speaking, Badoo/Bumble doesn't go after EVERY OSS project written by an employee. MVIKotlin is conceptually the same as badoo/MVICore, and even Decompose is conceptually the same as badoo/ribs.

If these projects are "eerily similar" and both were written on company time, the official variants (MVICore, RIBs) having been written by dedicated teams while the other two (MVIKotlin, Decompose) written in rogue, then what do you do?

P.S.: Badoo and Bumble have the same owner, so "influenced by Badoo" is the same as "influenced by Bumble".

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

#34

Post by noduerme »

elric wrote: post #27
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…

This.

I developed a very large viral kind of game site that was acquired by Fox. I was an hourly dev and I was the only dev, working for a few money guys who made a bunch by paying me to develop it and then selling it literally without informing me. So I went from maintaining it for them (as one of several jobs) to suddenly being called by Fox to hand over the source code and also to sign a contract which said they owned all the IP and that I worked for them, and that everything else I did in my free time would be theirs, and they were offering me $50/hr when I had been paid double that for the dev work of building the thing. I told them to go fuck themselves, and refused to hand over the source. I'd never had a contract with the original guys saying that they owned the source, so, as far as I was concerned they only owned the compiled Flash bytecode.

Fox spent somewhere close to $1m to try to tear that bytecode apart and keep their new property running, and then shuttered it a few months later. Rather than not being assholes.

So yeah. Run, don't walk, if you see a contract that includes anything like owning your off-site work.

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

#35

Post by qwertyboi »

elric wrote: post #27
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…

Employers might not own you, but they might own IP developed at the company. See my other comment.

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

#36

Post by StrLght »

mellosouls wrote: post #32

I don't know the history of the development, and I'm instinctively against overreach by employers but considering both repos are clearly influenced by repos on similar platforms (eg Badoo), it doesn't seem unreasonable for Bumble to at least take an interest in their provenance and - if they have been developed on company time and equipment - their ownership.

JFYI: Bumble and Badoo are the same company.

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

#38

Post by justshowpost »

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…

> transfer your likes to us

Yikes! Not likes!

Mob just became too brazen. Allowing employees to work on their own stuff while [ab]using company's dough was a company's good will and great trust. That employee should go back to normal and work for company during paid hours.

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

#39

Post by _odey »

I've asked this before and never got a straight answer, but I'll ask again: what exact clauses do I need to modify in the employment contract, and what exactly must they say, in order to avoid this sort of situation? (relevant to UK employment that is). If you've solved this for yourself, please tell us all how and what it's written in yours so we can do the same.

Here is a link to what my previous employment contract stated about copyright: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24220800 (right now I'm just a shareholder in a company and not employed). Basically it says employer owns all, and I'd like that to say something else... but what?

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

#40

Post by kungito »

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…

Isn't it so that if the employee published the code under lets say gpl license but the company acquired the rights, the company can reserve the rights and the code cannot be forked
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