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Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

law.stackexchange.com

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Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#21

Post by woutersf »

armada651 wrote: post #7
bell-cot wrote: post #2

IANAL, but "would it be legal for me to delete..." is the completely wrong approach here. Instead... - You were an hourly warehouse flunky, not any sort of professional programmer. While doing your warehouse job, you cobbled together a mish-mash of software stuff, on company computers, to try to make your job easier. With you there to fiddle and debug and update as needed, that worked pretty darn well. - Now, you are…

Or, if you're more of the entrepreneurial mindset, convince management of the value of the software and offer that they can pay you to keep improving it.

I agree. Put a modal in it, the trial period is over, contact x for renewall.

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#23

Post by exodust »

bee_rider wrote: post #11

My gut says, for this sort of thing: why delete it? Let them have it, there’s no upside to deleting it. Who cares, right? But hypothetically, it probably has no license or anything like that. Not even the “no promises of merchantability” stuff you sometimes see. Hypothetically could there be a risk to the coder? If my buggy “forklift stacking high” software says “stack that stuff up to the roof,” and gets hurt listen…

Good point, but realistically if harm is caused due to unsafe warehouse stacking, there is a human employee behind that error. The exception might be automated stacking software, which would need to be licensed and done properly.

So it's more likely the software in this case was an office admin data entry solution. When they fail, people say "oh crap" and call IT who may or may not fix it!

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#24

Post by rented_mule »

I saw something that was sort of the inverse of this. A teammate quit with zero notice in a 3 AM email. In that email, he indicated he'd made the decision to open source all the code that he had written in his last year or so with the company. It was in a public github repo in his personal account. The company had a lot of open source, but this was never expected to be part of that.

We were able to get it taken down and no other action was taken against him, but it was an interesting move on his part. His motivation didn't seem to be bad blood - he continued pleasant interactions with several of us, including those in his management chain, long after leaving.

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#25

Post by hansvm »

bhaney wrote: post #3

There's a lot of answers stating that if the code was written by an employee during work hours, it's automatically owned by the company. Is that true? My understanding is the author would still retain copyright unless they've already entered into an agreement with their employer that anything they build during work hours is owned by the company. That kind of thing is pretty standard in employment agreements for softw…

Not a lawyer.

California (and to a much lesser degree other jurisdictions) limits how much an employer can extract from an employee. The default status (with or without those clauses) though is that the employee owns the IP they produce. A warehouse worker would not have had any contractual agreement to the contrary (probably), so CA's limits wouldn't come in to play since the whole thing is handled by ordinary IP law without any agreement superceding that normal behavior.

Things get complicated a bit if there were a lot of trade secrets or whatnot that went into the software, but those restrictions would generally of the form rather than . Deleting the software or revoking access should be fine.

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#26

Post by [deleted] »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #19
qiqitori wrote: post #12

There are a lot of comments saying that the situation is clear-cut and the guy is commiting a crime. But that's BS, this situation isn't a normal situation at all. Also, intent matters. If I delete some old code that I think I no longer need, to free up space or even to get my home directory into an OCD state, I'm not liable for destruction of company property even if I accidentally got rid of something that might ha…

Hypothetically you're right, the situation is not clear cut. But if you're ever asking this question, then your intent 99% makes you liable. Substitute "code" with "documentation" and it becomes even more obvious.

[deleted]

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#27

Post by rendall »

Just leave it. It could lead to a contract for you down the line. Or kudos. Or, nothing, but you've made coworkers' lives a little bit easier. I doubt there would be legal consequence for deleting it, unless the company were feeling vindictive, but if they are, now you have a headache for no good reason.

I do say "you" here, not knowing if the stackexchange poster zelembia is azeemba, nor if OP will otherwise ever see this. Some posts are like a message in a bottle, flung heedlessly into the ocean of the internet. Or like forgotten software, left to decay on an aging computer in the backroom of a warehouse. But it still must be written.

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#28

Post by [deleted] »

rented_mule wrote: post #24

I saw something that was sort of the inverse of this. A teammate quit with zero notice in a 3 AM email. In that email, he indicated he'd made the decision to open source all the code that he had written in his last year or so with the company. It was in a public github repo in his personal account. The company had a lot of open source, but this was never expected to be part of that. We were able to get it taken down…

[deleted]

Re: Deleting Software I Wrote Upon Leaving Employment of a Company

#30

Post by captainkrtek »

rented_mule wrote: post #24

I saw something that was sort of the inverse of this. A teammate quit with zero notice in a 3 AM email. In that email, he indicated he'd made the decision to open source all the code that he had written in his last year or so with the company. It was in a public github repo in his personal account. The company had a lot of open source, but this was never expected to be part of that. We were able to get it taken down…

Reminds me (tangentially) of when a coworker got let go, proceeded to open source code that I solely wrote (just some internal tooling), but editing the files to show he authored them. Think he was doing this to help find a new job by posting projects on GitHub. Company proceeded to contact him and the rest is history..
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