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

331–339 of 339 posts

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

#331

Post by cheradenine_uk »

brundolf wrote: post #224
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…

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…

This nonsense seems rife.

A few years ago, my co. was acquired, and they wanted to change our contracts.

New contract had a clause: You cannot do any work - paid or unpaid - without the companies' express permission.

So, like, I can't fire the starting gun at the village 3-legged race without your say-so ?

Cue the usual "oh it's standard we never enforce it" BS. Entire team refused to sign. Eventually it got struck.

They similarly wanted to wheedle in 24/7 support rota into my contract. I simply crossed it out (annotated with a witness signature in the margin) and returned. Never heard about it again.

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

#332

Post by _6lik »

_6lik wrote: post #228

This thing has been bugging me the first time signed an employment contract years ago. So from what I understand is that everything I do on conpany property (that includes coding in a pub but on the company laptop) belongs to the company. So what I do is to first code it (any new idea that I'm working on) at home on my personal setup (including cloud an all). Then I release everything on a Apache V2 + MIT combo with…

This

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

#333

Post by asddubs »

whats-the-hype wrote: post #299
asddubs wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

if you don't want people to make open source projects based on your ideas, don't release them as open source. Bumble has just as little a right (morally speaking, not legally) to seize someones fork/inspired repo as any other open source maintainer does.

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

#334

Post by anaganisk »

anonymousiam wrote: post #262

I signed away all IP rights to Teledyne (my second job) in 1980. I've worked for three companies since then, and never had to sign anything like that. I'm pretty sure it's unenforceable, but the thing I signed basically said that anything I invent from that point forward, even after leaving Teledyne, would belong to them.

Doesn’t that open up a chance of lawsuits with all your other employers?

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

#336

Post by AndrewSChapman »

throwaway984393 wrote: post #135
marcinzm wrote: post #78

A note to Bumble, this makes me not want to work for you or anyone who is currently in a related leadership position at Bumble (ie: eng leadership, etc.). Given the lack of supply in engineering the bad publicity is going to cost you more than any miniscule gain. edit: And I don't even publish OSS anymore but if you're willing to go after an employee for something this petty what else would you go after them for.

Same. They'll never hire good coders this way.

There are plenty of excellent engineers at Bumble. It is not easy to get a job there.

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

#337

Post by White_Wolf »

_6lik wrote: post #265
White_Wolf wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I don't use the comp laptop for my own stuff. I remote into my machine/network at home from my personal phone. DP over usb-c works wonders with a BT keyboard. As a side note: I don't publish anything. My wife on the other hand does. It's been like that for over 10 years now. EDIT: Forgot to mention that I ended up doing this after a previous employer wanted to grab a load of VBA modules. Big pain the back…

Your charged your phone in your office? There, Gotcha! You used "company resources". Believe it or not, lawyers will put arguments like these and the judge will accept those as valid reasons. btw, I have a similar setup (I don't work on it during office time inside the office, though) with a minor difference. I vnc/ssh to my aws setup rather than my home. This way my laptop lives longer and wife doesn't bicker about…

that charging thing... I didn't think about something like that :( christ. It's becoming absurd but you made me realize that there might be other things I missed.

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

#338

Post by CRConrad »

castrojr913 wrote: post #324
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worked for a company once that had this sort of "we own everything" IP clause. To clarify: Bumble doesn't appear to be going after everything this developer produced while working for them. They're claiming ownership of only two specific repos, both of which even mention that they were "inspired by" Badoo/Bumble open-source projects. These two repos were developed while the developer was working for Badoo/Bumble…

I really hate this draconian attitude of these sort of companies. I think these 'brilliant' lawyers, experts in putting on abusive clauses, also ought to making the software for these companies. There is still a lot of work to do with OSS philosophy for software industry.

While you have a point in general, it's a bit weird posting this in response to a comment that explains how this particular case apparently isn't actually all that "draconian".
Post reply on HN