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My bad translation of a related part from Sysoev's interview to a russian journal "Hacker"[0] made in 2012: - Interesting: you were working at Rambler while de

My bad translation of a related part from Sysoev's interview to a russian journal "Hacker"[0] made in 2012: - Interesting: you were working at Rambler while developing nginx. Did Rambler had any rights? That's a subtle question. How did you manage to keep the rights for project? Yes, that is a subtle question. It interests others beside you, and we thoroughly worked on that. Russian law works this way: the company has the right on anything which was in employee's field of work or by it's own contract. So there has to be a contract with someone with purpose "to make a software product". In Rambler I was a system administrator, I'd developed in my free time, product was distributed under BSD license since the beginning, as an open-source software. Rambler started using it after the main features were ready. More than that, even the first usage was outside of Rambler, it were Rate.ee and zvuki.ru websites. [0] https://habr.com/ru/company/xakep/blog/136354/ https://habr.com/ru/company/xakep/blog/136354/

chupasaurus 7y ago
And the same quality translation of a commentary by Lynwood Investments CY Ltd, the company which initiated the case, given to the online magazine The Bell [0]: The Rambler Internet Holding (edit: it's legal name is Rambler Group LLC) company found that it's exclusive rights on NGINX web server, which was developed by it's employees with use of corporate resources, were violated by third parties. The company gave the right for infringment claims to Lynwood Investments CY Ltd (named A&NN Holdings Limited at the time of the deal), which has a competence in this type of cases. Lynwood Investments CY Ltd had appealed to law enforcement bodies for the evalution of this situation. They recognized Rambler Internet Holding as victim of actions by unidentified violators (sic!) and initiated a criminal case. Lynwood Investments CY Ltd would not comment the case until the court's decision. Wherein we would try to restore the justice with all ways possible and we reserve right to file lawsuits in any jurisdiction where it's needed to protect our interests. [0]https://t.me/thebell_io/4315 https://t.me/thebell_io/4315 (NB: yes, Telegram)
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  The commentary[0] of Igor Ashmanov, who was CEO of Rambler when they hired Sysoev, on the document in tweet: Sysoev was developing in his work time, in the office, with company's equipment. (quote from the order: edit) 1. Bullshit. There isn't anything on that in our laws. You have to very accurately prove that there was an assignment on that. "In his work time" or "with company's equipment" - doesn't work. Everything's allowed - and IP is within authors. 2. Besides, when I hired Sysoev - it was in 2000 - we have talk specifically that he had his pet project and he'd have the right to work on it. It was called "mod_accel" or something, he renamed it in 2001-2002. I can make a statement about that in court, if needed. And my partner in my companies, Dmitriy Pashko, then-CTO of Rambler, could, I think. 3. He had worked as a system administrator. Software development wasn't in his responsibilities at all. 4. I think, Rambler cannot provide any paper, more so an assignment, on development of a web server. I asked our advocate, ..., to look what's going on. The lawyers of Runa Capital (edit: early investors of Nginx Inc.) already work in the case, so probably our help wouldn't be necessary. I think, skunks would fail. [0]https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292045 https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292... edit: link to the source
  - dunkelheit 7y ago
    Thanks for providing some actual information in a thread rife with speculation.
  - walshemj 7y ago
    Not sure I would buy that system administrator's don't write code and writing a webserver which is closely related to a sysads job.
    - dunkelheit 7y ago
      Ironic thing here is that it probably doesn't matter because Russian law regarding copyright assignment is very different and much more employee-friendly than the US law. It will be interesting to see how the case develops but my understanding is that unless there was a very specific and documented work assignment from his boss to write nginx code, the copyright still belongs to Igor even if it was developed on the company equipment and on company time.

chupasaurus 7y ago

And the same quality translation of a commentary by Lynwood Investments CY Ltd, the company which initiated the case, given to the online magazine The Bell [0]: The Rambler Internet Holding (edit: it's legal name is Rambler Group LLC) company found that it's exclusive rights on NGINX web server, which was developed by it's employees with use of corporate resources, were violated by third parties. The company gave the right for infringment claims to Lynwood Investments CY Ltd (named A&NN Holdings Limited at the time of the deal), which has a competence in this type of cases. Lynwood Investments CY Ltd had appealed to law enforcement bodies for the evalution of this situation. They recognized Rambler Internet Holding as victim of actions by unidentified violators (sic!) and initiated a criminal case. Lynwood Investments CY Ltd would not comment the case until the court's decision. Wherein we would try to restore the justice with all ways possible and we reserve right to file lawsuits in any jurisdiction where it's needed to protect our interests. [0]https://t.me/thebell_io/4315 https://t.me/thebell_io/4315 (NB: yes, Telegram)

chupasaurus 7y ago
The commentary[0] of Igor Ashmanov, who was CEO of Rambler when they hired Sysoev, on the document in tweet: Sysoev was developing in his work time, in the office, with company's equipment. (quote from the order: edit) 1. Bullshit. There isn't anything on that in our laws. You have to very accurately prove that there was an assignment on that. "In his work time" or "with company's equipment" - doesn't work. Everything's allowed - and IP is within authors. 2. Besides, when I hired Sysoev - it was in 2000 - we have talk specifically that he had his pet project and he'd have the right to work on it. It was called "mod_accel" or something, he renamed it in 2001-2002. I can make a statement about that in court, if needed. And my partner in my companies, Dmitriy Pashko, then-CTO of Rambler, could, I think. 3. He had worked as a system administrator. Software development wasn't in his responsibilities at all. 4. I think, Rambler cannot provide any paper, more so an assignment, on development of a web server. I asked our advocate, ..., to look what's going on. The lawyers of Runa Capital (edit: early investors of Nginx Inc.) already work in the case, so probably our help wouldn't be necessary. I think, skunks would fail. [0]https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292045 https://roem.ru/12-12-2019/281134/rambler-nginx/#comment-292... edit: link to the source
- dunkelheit 7y ago
  Thanks for providing some actual information in a thread rife with speculation.
- walshemj 7y ago
  Not sure I would buy that system administrator's don't write code and writing a webserver which is closely related to a sysads job.
  - dunkelheit 7y ago
    Ironic thing here is that it probably doesn't matter because Russian law regarding copyright assignment is very different and much more employee-friendly than the US law. It will be interesting to see how the case develops but my understanding is that unless there was a very specific and documented work assignment from his boss to write nginx code, the copyright still belongs to Igor even if it was developed on the company equipment and on company time.