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

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 339 posts

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

#191

Post by wackro »

pawelwentpawel wrote: post #185

Did any of you ever request an example contract that would be signed before starting to go through a marathon of interviews or even negotiating an offer? Finding a non-negotiable blanket clause like this in a contract would most probably stop me from taking the interviews or at least establish completely different salary expectations. I would understand if the work would be done on company's equipment or during some…

Unfortunately I can see requesting a blank contract early on in the hiring process being a huge turn off. Maybe even at any point.

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

#192

Post by znpy »

ainar-g wrote: post #23
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”.

I know a company whose name is similar to that, and many people say claim that company has no customers, only hostages.

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

#193

Post by yawnxyz »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #170
teeray wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me wonder if there’s a way to put together a standard rider that overrides those clauses. Then it just becomes an exchange of paper to sign.

Yes, this is part of California law. I forget the url, but if you google for it, it is less than one page. You can just print it out and bring it with you and say “FAANG does this, and I expect it as well”

Could you (or anyone) please post it? I'm not even sure what phrase to Google for

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

#194

Post by filoeleven »

btrettel wrote: post #141

Amusing previous HN comment on this sort of problem (not from me): > I've always thought that if a company claims rights over what you do outside worktime, they should do it not only for your genial ideas, but for the bad ones too. So, if you incur in a stupid debt it must belong to the company. Your newborn baby? The company mus pay alimony. It's all or nothing! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1113065 Edit: I f…

I read an apocryphal story about a guy whose manager saw him leaving and coming back during the workday, and asked later why he didn’t clock out and back in.

“I was getting a haircut,” the man said.

“That’s not part of your job duties here, you cannot do that on the company’s time,” replied the manager.

“Why not?” said the man. “I grew most of it on the company’s time.”

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

#196

Post by vmception »

marcinzm wrote: post #179
vmception wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source means the code is available it doesn’t mean you have the license to use it and that is dependent on the license Your stance is basically akin to viewing source of a paid javascript template site and taking all the js because its all in plain text

The Badoo/Bumble code was Apache 2 published on Github, and the code in question is also Apache 2 published on Github. So I have no idea what your point is.

How was the approval given for that license to be used? Did the company sign it over and then retroactively renege? Did they just notice that a core developer was their employee at an overlapping time?

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

#197

Post by wdb »

_odey wrote: post #127
wdb wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got to watch out with this one. My past experience is that even approving a PR on the company Wifi internet caused a lot of discussion regarding the use of company facilities

Company WiFi falls under their "equipment"/"facilities" as far as I'm concerned and it's fair for the company to be upset about you using it for your personal benefit in my opinion.

Indeed, sometimes you forgot you are connected to work Wifi on your phone :)

Since then I don't install any work stuff on my phone anymore

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

#198

Post by marcinzm »

vmception wrote: post #196
marcinzm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Badoo/Bumble code was Apache 2 published on Github, and the code in question is also Apache 2 published on Github. So I have no idea what your point is.

How was the approval given for that license to be used? Did the company sign it over and then retroactively renege? Did they just notice that a core developer was their employee at an overlapping time?

Huh? The company made their code open source under a permissive license. A developer working there then built their own package inspired by that code on their own time. I'm not sure where ethically the issue is here. Many things are legal but not ethical. So while they may legally be able to compel him that doesn't mean their action isn't unethical and petty. Companies that do unethical and petty things tend to be horrible places to work eventually.

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

#199

Post by Xylakant »

stefan_ wrote: post #162
Xylakant wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a good analogy. A substantial chunk of the value of software is often the idea, not only the time worked on something. Ideas and inventions don’t happen on a schedule. Think of a chemist that is tasked with finding a way to synthesize a compound. He tries all day at work, and in the evening, on the couch, he’s struck by a bolt of enlightenment. Who does that idea belong to? German law would be pretty clea…

That's a bizarre comment because the least protected thing here is the idea. This guy is free to get a new job and write a new library from scratch, or just tell his new company to do X + Y. Also, of course, German law does not allow the US-style overarching IP clauses at all.

> This guy is free to get a new job and write a new library from scratch, or just tell his new company to do X + Y.

But that’s not what’s the issue at stake here. If I understand the tweet correctly, the code in question was written during the time of employment, though in their spare time. Depending on the exact situation, this could be problematic - for example if internal knowledge of the employer was used or if a profit motive enters the picture (sponsorship for the open source library, as in this case) Both would no longer be an issue if the code was written after employment ends, unless there’s an explicit noncompete in place.

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

#200

Post by vmception »

marcinzm wrote: post #198
vmception wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was the approval given for that license to be used? Did the company sign it over and then retroactively renege? Did they just notice that a core developer was their employee at an overlapping time?

Huh? The company made their code open source under a permissive license. A developer working there then built their own package inspired by that code on their own time. I'm not sure where ethically the issue is here. Many things are legal but not ethical. So while they may legally be able to compel him that doesn't mean their action isn't unethical and petty. Companies that do unethical and petty things tend to be ho…

I think you jumped the gun trying to predict how this conversation would go

I am asking exclusively about the legal circumstance

And also stop acting confused at every response, this is a normal conversation where someone asks about the context and the other person replies with the answer, I skimmed the tweet thread but the background isn't familiar to me and thats what the point of the conversation is

You are too tuned to expecting an adversarial comment to defend, when thats not the case at all

Post reply on HN