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I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

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Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#481

Post by School-Cotton »

sublinear wrote: post #414
School-Cotton wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any contract attempting to gain such ownership is unenforceable I highly doubt that this is true, at least in the US. Can you cite case law? You can write a contract granting ownership of all the songs a musician performs, or all the books a writer writes during a specified time period. Why shouldn't the same be true of programmers and code?

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc... > This is an even stronger case than anything being discussed in this thread. Oracle claimed to own code written by their own employees on their clock and still lost this case. Google won their claim of fair use. That's exactly and explicitly what an MIT licensed open source project would fall under: fair use by the employer and nobody owns it despite th…

This has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. Whether Oracle owns the copyright to that code is independent of whether Google’s use of it qualifies as fair use.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#482

Post by iancmceachern »

Lex-2008 wrote: post #423
iancmceachern wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've watched this happen. I've watched key, core engineers and technical leaders work for US and European companies, develop their next generation products, then turn around and design and develop essentially the exact same thing for the Chinese market. They then build a company, in China, that makes essentially the same product, but for the Chinese Market, and with Chinese investors, etc. Examples: Thoratec/Abbot He…

> some of these companies after success in China are working to sell and be competitive in the US and Europe. Just out of curiosity: can't these companies be sued by the IP holding company when they try to sell outside of China, and be forbidden to sell their products in US and Europe?

Yes, but by the time all that happens the patent protection is likely to have run out.

Basically what I've seen is new tech is designed and released here, owns the market for 10 or so years, by then one of these companies in question has started to get momentum I the Chinese market, then 15 or so years after they start to think about coming back to this market, and by then the IP protection has run out.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#483

Post by ttfkam »

xmcqdpt2 wrote: post #445
aragonite wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Suppose the OP did not take the source code files, but memorized the source code and later recalled it from memory. Would that be theft? 2. Suppose the OP neither took the file nor memorized the code, but had photographic memory and replayed the exact visual scenes during their creation of the utility functions and copied down the code from what they saw in their mind's eye. Would that be theft? 3. Suppose the OP…

> 1. Suppose the OP did not take the source code files, but memorized the source code and later recalled it from memory. Would that be theft? It is copyright infringement, yes. That's why clean room implementations are done by someone who hasn't seen the original source code, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design For the other examples, it depends but I'm pretty sure a copyright infringement case for eith…

Suppose the OP wrote the original source code files and recreated them from their own intuition of the problem. Would that be theft?

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#484

Post by sneak »

austhrow743 wrote: post #433
sneak wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about this code in particular - I am talking about all code presumably written by individuals and posted on GitHub with a LICENSE file saying it's free software. It is standard, reasonable person practice to use foss-labeled code on GitHub under the presumption that the license is not a lie. This case is no different. Nothing in the author's linked story suggests this code is not MIT licensed as the r…

>Nothing in the author's linked story suggests this code is not MIT licensed as the repo claims. The lack of him saying he went to the effort of having Box or Uber license their code MIT suggests it.

You seem to be using an absence of evidence as evidence of absence.

There's nothing to explicitly suggest that either is the rightsholder; that is another assumption, which is directly counter to the fact that the person who wrote the code posted it alongside an MIT license.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#485

Post by somsak2 »

mkii wrote: post #177
ipython wrote: post #144

Best quote: "People working for Didi apply for intern jobs at Uber China and then exfiltrate our data. We can’t let them see the formulas or they’ll just copy what we do!” This is so true. People in the US just don't understand the level of economic and industrial espionage that happens in China on a daily basis. I was responding to an unrelated breach at an unnamed tech company back in mid-2000s time frame and had a…

And yet, when the author takes code from one company to use for another, or releases company code on Github, nobody bats an eyelid.

what are you talking about? there's a huge comment thread on here exactly about this issue.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#486

Post by the-dude »

iancmceachern wrote: post #465
berniedurfee wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s my understanding as well; that the Industrial Revolution in the US was very much based on IP from outside the US.

But was it state sponsored? My understanding is that it was mostly robber barrons doing their thing, which isn't really "The US", its more "People in the US".

Pretty much : https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#487

Post by aidansmith »

concordDance wrote: post #473
troupe wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are situations where developers emailed/cloud uploaded/took hard drive of code they had been working on when he left the organization and were looking at prison sentences for theft...not copyright infringement. They didn't even give it to someone or reuse it somewhere. Just the fact of trying to keep it when they left as illegal. All that to say that in some circumstances taking source code is considered theft.

Got a link?

Look up Sergey Aleynikov.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#488

Post by peteradio »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #470
prox wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did this become a thing on a cultural scale? Like that everyone does it and it is almost expected as it were?

Information wants to be free. If it's not, it's your duty to liberate it.

This is so obnoxiously wrong. You could add qualifications to your statement to be less wrong but your statement as is is stupid. When I'm banging my wife is it my duty to start banging on the walls and bellow at my sleeping kids to let them know what I'm up to?

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#489

Post by iancmceachern »

the-dude wrote: post #486
iancmceachern wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But was it state sponsored? My understanding is that it was mostly robber barrons doing their thing, which isn't really "The US", its more "People in the US".

Pretty much : https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...

Slavery was once legal here as well.

Just because it was once legal when the world was far different doesn't justify actions today.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#490

Post by the-dude »

iancmceachern wrote: post #489
the-dude wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much : https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...

Slavery was once legal here as well. Just because it was once legal when the world was far different doesn't justify actions today.

China and the US are different today.
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