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Fucking Sue Me (2011)

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Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#81

Post by 6d0debc071 »

Lawyers can either be your best friend or your worst enemy in getting a contract worked out. If they're just posting letters back and forth at each other, I'd try and find a different lawyer fast.

A conversation needs to take place with the interested parties so that people know what they can compromise on and what they can't - see how much leeway they're prepared to give each other. Marked up contracts, after the initial exchange arguing about things that the client perhaps doesn't even care that much about, is not such a conversation.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#82

Post by goostavos »

pepve wrote: post #63
wavefunction wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted your post because it only contained a link to a web comic. If you had provided some of your own opinions on the blog post or why the comic was relevant to the blog post, I would have refrained. I like to explain my downvotes when the downvoted post is not an obvious troll.

I think you're being silly. And I don't think that's what downvotes are for (not that I have a say in the matter, because I don't have the button). Explaining why the comic is relevant would be like explaining the joke itself. That hardly every works. Would you downvote a comment with just a link to a paper about the technology being discussed in the article?

I have the downvote button :) while I wouldn't have downvited the parent comment, I understood why he was. The comments are what separates HN from other sites in my opinion. A "relevant:" comic comment doesn't do much to advance the discussion, its just noise in the thread -- this is of course simply my opinion.

Linking a comment, and linking a journal article are two very different actions. I wouldn't downvote someone who linked to a journal article, but that's still kind of a crappy comment. Give a summary of why you're linking to the article, not a chore for us to try and figure out what kind of point the commenter is attempting to make.

The fear is that without moderation, the reddit-ification of the comments will continue its steady march forward. Hence, down voting comments which don't add much

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#84

Post by flavor8 »

jonnathanson wrote: post #10

"I'm not sure what the lesson is here." I'm not sure, and furthermore, I'm not sure I agree with being overly 'fuck-it' about legal matters. But I can tell you what it's like having been where you were with the "endless lawyering," and why it sucked so badly. I worked for a startup once in which our CEO was a really smart guy, but the kind of smart guy that got overly worked up over tiny details and edge cases. We'd…

I was talking to an SBA advisor yesterday (great resource for entrepreneurs; look up the SCORE program) and he mentioned that our local law university will do contract review/editing for free (apparently they give the contract to their students as homework, and then the professor firms it up when it's returned to you.) So if it's not time sensitive (and overly confidential) it may well be worth your time finding your nearest law professor.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#86

Post by smalltalk »

EarthLaunch wrote: post #77
benihana wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you fully appreciate how expensive it is to go to court.

He knows more about court expenses, than you know about what he knows. Just say "It's expensive to go to court", or better, just don't comment.

No, if he knew anything at all about legal expenses, he wouldn't have implied it made sense to sue someone with maybe $500,000 in assets.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#87

Post by jonnathanson »

DanBC wrote: post #76
jonnathanson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify: this was $50k prior to the trademark filing process.

If it means that trademark filing goes ahead smoothly without the trademark being contested I guess some people would see that as useful spend of money.

It really depends on the stage of the company, IMO. The cost of switching out the name of a company with no in-market traction is pretty minimal, when you think about it. In our case, we went through this whole naming process on Day 1, with all hands allocated to the task. Product development was, if not entirely halted during this process, than certainly placed on the backburner.

If we'd had an MVP out in testing, people were loving it, and we'd been preparing to go big with a launch of some sort, sure, $50k in exploration toward securing an awesome name would have made a lot more sense. But $50k, right off the bat, felt pretty absurd at the time.

And to reiterate, this was just one symptom of a much more insidious disease: the need to consult lawyers about everything. I'm using only the mildest of hyperbole here. We did not make a single decision without a legal weigh-in. Eventually we were able to convince the CEO of our financial and strategic inability to sustain this approach. But a lot of damage had been done before we got to that point. It was a very expensive lesson.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#89

Post by mindcrime »

niuzeta wrote: post #75
ksmiley wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing the devil's advocate here: if contractors self-select themselves out of being hired because they're not sure they can get the job done, then all the better! The remaining applicant pool will be stronger on average.

seconded. I wouldn't even have to quote Machiavelli to say that it's important to show your future contractors(or your peers) what you are capable of, to force them to think twice before arranging anything with you. Will it reduce the number of incoming contractors? Probably. Will the contractors who'll still chime in be more likely reliable, after considering what they're agreeing with? Very likely.

Probably. Will the contractors who'll still chime in be more likely reliable, after considering what they're agreeing with?

I doubt it. They're just as likely to be selecting for future contractors who are overly confident / cocky by nature, and/or ones who don't understand how to estimate software projects, and who don't have a good feel/understanding for the risks involved.

Re: Fucking Sue Me (2011)

#90

Post by philbarr »

jonmrodriguez wrote: post #25
jonnathanson wrote: post #10

"I'm not sure what the lesson is here." I'm not sure, and furthermore, I'm not sure I agree with being overly 'fuck-it' about legal matters. But I can tell you what it's like having been where you were with the "endless lawyering," and why it sucked so badly. I worked for a startup once in which our CEO was a really smart guy, but the kind of smart guy that got overly worked up over tiny details and edge cases. We'd…

Jesus Christ, $50k to pick the company name?? You could launch a whole new product for that much.

Maybe it was worth it. I once worked for a company that wanted to launch a new product called whose initials were A.I.D.S.

I was lead dev of the Technical Information Team System too.

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