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My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me

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Re: My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me

#101

Post by coldtea »

laureny wrote: post #82
doktrin wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in principle, but I have to admit I'm not sure what justification Opera could have for this type of vendetta-esque suit. Frankly, I'm surprised all around. Lawsuits in Norway are, by and large, less frivolous and for appreciably lower sums of money than in the US. I have no idea what they hope to gain from what is already a PR disaster, nor what court will entertain this suit.

> I'm not sure what justification Opera could have for this type of vendetta-esque suit. The simplest justification there is: they think they're right. Is it so hard to conceive? And until this thing goes to court, everybody should abstain from passing judgment on either party.

>And until this thing goes to court, everybody should abstain from passing judgment on either party.

Why? I won't abstain from passing judgement to the party I think is in the wrong even AFTER this goes to court.

I don't think court decisions are necessarily the truth, and that I should agree with them. I only care about facts to make my personal judgment. If what he says is true, then even if the guy is convinced, I will still believe he is in the right.

(Heck, I don't even find all laws to be ethical. Segregation was law too at some point, for example).

Re: My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me

#102

Post by coldtea »

DannyBee wrote: post #55
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be uncommon for a lawyer to allow him to say anything at all? As far as the lawyer's job is concerned, letting the client talk can never help, it can only hurt. I know this is the case for criminal cases, but I'm not sure if it applies to civil cases.

What do you mean "allow him"? Lawyers do not make decisions (or at least, should not). We exist to assess risk, analyze liabilities, advise clients, and hopefully, present options and strategies to minimize risk while still accomplishing a given goal. Any smart lawyer in this case knows part of him still being hirable is going to be not having his entire reputation destroyed. Depending on the accusations, "say nothin…

>What do you mean "allow him"? Lawyers do not make decisions (or at least, should not).

He means the obvious "strongly advise him not to do it", in effect stopping him saying anything.

You over-thought that response too much!

Re: My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me

#103

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

wpietri wrote: post #74
Osiris wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Opera on the desktop and on my mobile devices. So does my wife. I'm not going to stop using it because of a lawsuit, let alone for one that has not had any facts proven in a court. I really don't understand why people who don't know the facts of cases like this (i.e., you don't have an inside knowledge of the nitty-gritty), jump to conclusions to readily. Aren't we supposed to be a community of rational, though…

What I know from this and the news articles is that Opera has sued a former employee for $3.4 million because they think he gave secret information to a nonprofit. The guy hasn't worked there full time since 2006, but Opera has decided to seriously fuck up his life. What more do I need to know? Google has a thousand times as many employees, but when's the last time they sued one of them like this? Were I in Opera's s…

> The guy hasn't worked there full time since 2006, but Opera has decided to seriously fuck up his life.

That's an interesting reading of the former employee's story. According to his post, he entered into a consulting agreement with Opera in 2009 and between 2009 and the time his agreement was terminated in late 2010, "some of my design proposals will naturally be based on some of my older GB concepts."

I don't think anyone has enough information at this point to pass judgement on the merits of the case, but at a minimum, this looks like a pretty good example of what can go wrong when you involve ideas you've developed on your own in a consulting relationship, particularly when there's a chance you may want to further explore those ideas after the relationship ends.

Re: My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me

#104

Post by Jam0864 »

coldtea wrote: post #98
Osiris wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Opera on the desktop and on my mobile devices. So does my wife. I'm not going to stop using it because of a lawsuit, let alone for one that has not had any facts proven in a court. I really don't understand why people who don't know the facts of cases like this (i.e., you don't have an inside knowledge of the nitty-gritty), jump to conclusions to readily. Aren't we supposed to be a community of rational, though…

> I use Opera on the desktop and on my mobile devices. So does my wife. OK. We just need to find the other 10. Why do people get out of their way to use some marginal browser when there better both proprietary and open source options available? Just to add to the web another slightly incompatible rendering engine? Or do they really like the gimmicky extras that Opera offers that much?

Opera Mini has a proxy server it uses to compress data before it reaches your device. This is extremely useful when using mobile data because it's both faster and cheaper. (At least, in Australia, where mobile Internet is both slow and expensive)

Re: My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me

#105

Post by Sakes »

coldtea wrote: post #102
DannyBee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "allow him"? Lawyers do not make decisions (or at least, should not). We exist to assess risk, analyze liabilities, advise clients, and hopefully, present options and strategies to minimize risk while still accomplishing a given goal. Any smart lawyer in this case knows part of him still being hirable is going to be not having his entire reputation destroyed. Depending on the accusations, "say nothin…

> What do you mean "allow him"? Lawyers do not make decisions (or at least, should not). He means the obvious "strongly advise him not to do it", in effect stopping him saying anything. You over-thought that response too much!

Even if that was an over thought response, and I'm not saying it was, I'm glad he did it. It was my favorite comment on this page. DannyBee! Thanks for the very well informed, clear, and interesting perspective.

Re: My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me

#106

Post by [deleted] »

niggler wrote: post #99
wpietri wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I know from this and the news articles is that Opera has sued a former employee for $3.4 million because they think he gave secret information to a nonprofit. The guy hasn't worked there full time since 2006, but Opera has decided to seriously fuck up his life. What more do I need to know? Google has a thousand times as many employees, but when's the last time they sued one of them like this? Were I in Opera's s…

Isn't Mozilla corporation (not foundation) for-profit? Edit: according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation it is for-profit

[deleted]

Re: My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me

#107

Post by DannyBee »

coldtea wrote: post #102
DannyBee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "allow him"? Lawyers do not make decisions (or at least, should not). We exist to assess risk, analyze liabilities, advise clients, and hopefully, present options and strategies to minimize risk while still accomplishing a given goal. Any smart lawyer in this case knows part of him still being hirable is going to be not having his entire reputation destroyed. Depending on the accusations, "say nothin…

> What do you mean "allow him"? Lawyers do not make decisions (or at least, should not). He means the obvious "strongly advise him not to do it", in effect stopping him saying anything. You over-thought that response too much!

If strongly advising people not to do something stopped them from doing it, lawyers wouldn't have jobs :)

Re: My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me

#108

Post by bzbarsky »

niggler wrote: post #99
wpietri wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I know from this and the news articles is that Opera has sued a former employee for $3.4 million because they think he gave secret information to a nonprofit. The guy hasn't worked there full time since 2006, but Opera has decided to seriously fuck up his life. What more do I need to know? Google has a thousand times as many employees, but when's the last time they sued one of them like this? Were I in Opera's s…

Isn't Mozilla corporation (not foundation) for-profit? Edit: according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation it is for-profit

The Mozilla Corporation is a "for-profit" entity, which mostly means it pays taxes on its profits, if any.

The Mozilla Foundation, which owns the Mozilla Corporation, is a non-profit (which means several things in this instance, like the fact that it does not pay corporate income taxes and donations to it are tax-deductible).

Every so often, the Mozilla Corporation, pays dividends to its sole owner (the Foundation).

So one flow of money is as follows: The Mozilla Corporation has revenue, spends some of it on things like salaries, rent for offices, etc, pays taxes on what's left, then saves some of the rest for future capital expenditures and pays the rest out as dividends to the Mozilla Foundation.

Another flow of money is people donating directly to the Mozilla Foundation.

The Mozilla Foundation then spends the money it has on various things that futher its mission, including grants to various open-source projects and whatnot.

The reason the setup is what it is, as I understand, is that there were some questions as to whether some of Mozilla's revenue sources were OK for a legal nonprofit, precisely because nonprofits do not pay taxes on any excess of revenue over expenses. So this dual structure was set up to make sure that taxes were paid on anything that looked like profit from operations, just in case.

Note that in all cases there are no individuals who are getting paid the profits as there would be in a privately held company, nor are there shareholders involved apart from the Foundation.

All of which is to say that the term "for-profit" doesn't necessarily mean the entity's sole purpose is to maximize profit, or indeed to make one at all; it's simply a classification for tax law purposes...

As always, I am not a corporate tax lawyer (nor any kind of lawyer), and this is not legal advice. ;)

Re: My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me

#110

Post by DannyBee »

hkmurakami wrote: post #17
jamesaguilar wrote: post #4

I hope he has checked this with a lawyer and that he is not giving his adversary ammunition. Good luck.

I am honestly surprised that Mozilla's legal counsel has not stepped in already to offer advice and guidance. (this post is something that such an intervention most likely would have stopped)

They probably are, just not directly to him, but to his lawyers.

At least, for the US-side lawyers (I'm presuming Mozilla's US lawyers are on this one) due to conflict-of-interest rules, they would not be able to step in to offer advice and guidance to him directly, because the representation would probably be adverse to Mozilla's interests.

The rule in most states (based on the ABA model rules) is " A concurrent conflict of interest exists if: (1) the representation of one client will be directly adverse to another client; or (2) there is a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited by the lawyer's responsibilities to another client , a former client or a third person or by a personal interest of the lawyer."

Even if you don't believe #1 applies, #2 definitely applies.

Norway may have different rules, but the local Mozilla lawyers are bound by their local state bars, where this rule (or some variant) would apply. I've avoided discussion of whether this conflict could be consented to by him, etc, as it varies from state state

This of course, only applies directly. They can and probably are talking with his lawyers, just not advising him directly.

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