Bumble claims IP rights on employee's open-source libs • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 3:02 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #287

quadrifoliate wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After reading more closely, it appears both repos are derivative works of pojects that Bumble (aka Badoo) owns. It says so in the README.md. That is how Open Source is supposed to work , I don't understand why everyone is thinking that this is some kind of huge discovery. Since both the MVICore and MVIKotlin repos are Apache 2.0, Badoo could simply pull in any improvements from MVIKotlin in if they wanted. They cou…

> That is how Open Source is supposed to work i dont know if you can claim this - OSS is not supposed to be unsanctioned derivative works of commercial software that is private. The company _could_ make it OSS, but an employee cannot, since they do not actually own the rights to make this decision. Perhaps Bumble was a bit heavy handed, but from the point of view of the law, they are acting within their rights to dem…

[deleted]

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

#292

Post by lolinder » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 4:37 AM UTC

_6lik wrote: post #282

lolinder wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe in your original comment is that you write code at night with the intent of it being used by your company the next morning. I can't see how that doesn't "relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business".

Oh it's not like I am trying to steal its IP from my company. I don't do that shit for everything I do. But only for the ideations that I know are great and think I am going to use later. In that regard, programming can be easily generalised. Let me give you some examples. 1) Let's us say my company wants me to create a full stack dashboard that helps you visualise the inventory. I can just create a corona dashboard…

> I don't do that shit for everything I do. But only for the ideations that I know are great and think I am going to use later.

"I thought I might need it later" does not constitute a legal defense if your employer comes after you for IP theft.

IANAL, but I can't see what foundation your strategy rests on. That the code is generic does not change the fact that it was written by you to solve a problem that your employer had. This pretty unambiguously places it within the range of what your employer can claim as theirs, no matter how applicable it might be to other use cases.

It'd be one thing if you had code that you'd written a few months back that turned out to be useful solving today's problem. But what you're describing is that your employer asks you to do something and then you go and open-source part or all of the solution without consulting them.

If you are as indispensable as you say you are, the actually bulletproof approach to getting this code open sourced legally would be to use your influence to persuade your employer to officially open-source that code.

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

#293

Post by GauntletWizard » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 4:51 AM UTC

_6lik wrote: post #250

GauntletWizard wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is foolproof, but there's always a bigger fool? How do you prove that your commits weren't made on company time? How do you prove that they weren't made on company laptops? How do you prove that you didn't include trade-secrets in your implementation of these libraries? You can show that your commits were made at hours outside of office hours, you can show that the commits were made with your personal e-…

yeah... somebody needs to always make sure not to be the bigger fool... 1) Git commits have timestamps. 2) Proving I did on company laptop is their onus. Innocent until proven guilty. ;-P 3) I do that. Along with randomisation of sample data. but yeah, you make a very important point in general. 99% of people get screwed on such things. 4) If I do something using company laptop, it is bound to be logged somewhere. Al…

    git commit --amend --date="Wed Feb 16 14:00 2011 +0100" --no-edit

Certain proponents of Fossil and Mercurial will tell you that this is an advantage of those systems - They're fooling themselves, because you can make those edits, there's just not nice tooling for them.

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

#294

Post by turkey99 » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 6:07 AM UTC

KronisLV wrote: post #146

ealexhudson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright is automatically the employer's in the UK: the term is "in the course of employment", and no contractual language is required. The employer is effectively the author. What that term means is a matter of case law, and is different if you are contracted / self-employed. Typically it is interpreted in a pro-employer manner, and if you are employed to write code then then assume that all the code you write is y…

> Typically it is interpreted in a pro-employer manner, and if you are employed to write code then then assume that all the code you write is your employer's. Hmm, this makes me feel that having one's own company in addition to any other employment and writing off time spent working on open source for it could be a way around this. Of course, then you get into the whole non-compete mess...

You’d need to agree this with your employer

It’s how I’ve managed it in the past with a subordinate. We discussed the nature of his other work and agreed no conflict of interest.

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

#295

Post by eterevsky » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 6:16 AM UTC

There was a discussion about a similar clause in employee contracts with Google Switzerland. Turns out such conditions are illegal according to Swiss law, and the clause was dropped.

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

#296

Post by BeefWellington » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 7:23 AM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #115

I worked for a company once that had this sort of "we own everything" IP clause. They tried to get me to sign it after I had already started. I crossed out that part, initialed the change, and sent it back unsigned. Ended up going back and forth a few times, and then it got dropped behind a desk or something and we all forgot about it. Not surprisingly, I suppose, that company turned out to be a bit of a mess for oth…

I once had a company demand I sign a non-compete after I'd handed in my notice.

I honestly don't understand what kind of thought process goes into this. In my case it was pure bridge burning and I have no idea why they thought they could pull it off. They even tried to claim they had the full backing of their legal team despite none of the legal team being present in the meeting.

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

#297

Post by randomswede » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 7:28 AM UTC

stavros wrote: post #275

brundolf wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add an anecdote: on my last job search I got offers from two different but very similar companies (both around ~200 people). I got one first, read through the contract, saw the standard clause about owning your whole life. I told them it was a deal-breaker if we couldn't get it changed. I got the standard response "oh we never act on that, lots of people here have side-projects", etc. I told them if that was the p…

Thirded, I would never knowingly work for a company with a clause like that. Whenever I see it, I strike it out and return the signed contract. Usually it's easier for them to just sign and get it over with than to go into a whole thing with legal. This is startups, though. YMMV with big companies. Still, no way I'd accept them owning my considerable volume of (FOSS) side-projects.

I applied for a job as a network engineer with a (then large) UK ISP that had a "we will own all your IP", managed to negotiate that to "I keep anything done on my kit, on my time" (which is fair, I think). Then the ISP was acquired, we were promised that all extra contract negotiations would be honoured, but it seems my contract amendment was in one of a few boxes that somehow did not make it across.

Cue an exciting month or two when I technically had no contract, as the previous workplace no longer existed as a legal entity, but the new workplace had failed to come up with one having equivalent terms and conditions.

ETA: By "all IP", I literally mean "all IP", as it was worded, the company laid claim to even fiction. May have been challengable in court for over-reaching, but I felt much better renegotiating it to terms taht were more liveable-with.

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

#298

Post by pritambaral » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 8:40 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #287

quadrifoliate wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After reading more closely, it appears both repos are derivative works of pojects that Bumble (aka Badoo) owns. It says so in the README.md. That is how Open Source is supposed to work , I don't understand why everyone is thinking that this is some kind of huge discovery. Since both the MVICore and MVIKotlin repos are Apache 2.0, Badoo could simply pull in any improvements from MVIKotlin in if they wanted. They cou…

> That is how Open Source is supposed to work i dont know if you can claim this - OSS is not supposed to be unsanctioned derivative works of commercial software that is private. The company _could_ make it OSS, but an employee cannot, since they do not actually own the rights to make this decision. Perhaps Bumble was a bit heavy handed, but from the point of view of the law, they are acting within their rights to dem…

> ... commercial software ...

Commercial and OSS are orthogonal.

> ... that is private

It seems to have been released under Apache 2.0: https://github.com/badoo/MVICore/blob/master/LICENSE

> The company _could_ make it OSS

They _did_

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

#299

Post by whats-the-hype » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

asddubs wrote: post #249

whats-the-hype wrote: post #206

The internet is quick to grab the pitchfork but it looks like there's a different story here. If you compare arkann1985's MVIKotlin vs badoo/MVICore it's an understatement to say it was "inspired by". It looks like an almost identical clone. And as others have pointed out, it's not like Bumble is going after all of this guy's projects, just the ones where he was "inspired by" company work. It would be difficult to ar…

so? it's apache licensed, so that doesn't really change anything

It does change the perception though. Compare "This company is taking away all the great inventions this poor developer came up with" against "The company is retaining those ideas which the developer copied from them".

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

#300

Post by toshk » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 9:21 AM UTC

toshk wrote: post #273

cassianoleal wrote: post #82

Many years ago I had a job offer at Badoo in the UK. After many rounds of going back-and-forth with the contract, me trying to better understand certain clauses, them going back to the lawyers, etc. I told them I'd be happy to sign if they removed the caluses that stated pretty much anything I created on or off hours belonged to them. They went back to the lawyers and came back to me saying that this is not the first…

In Dutch law it's actually by default the case that your employee can claim the ip of your work, if you want to prevent it you need to put the clause in, most people are not aware. Very disturbing.

I mean employer