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Here in Russia Rambler tried to do the same with nginx, and they failed to achieve their goals. I don't know, it creates nothing but bad publicity without givin

by kgeist 5y ago

Here in Russia Rambler tried to do the same with nginx, and they failed to achieve their goals. I don't know, it creates nothing but bad publicity without giving anything in return considering they won't maintain it anyway if the core devs leave (and nothing stops them from forking and creating their commercial solution right now). The image of Rambler before: "Igor Sysoev created nginx while working at Rambler" (positive association). The image now: "Igor Sysoev created nginx in his spare time and he just happened to work for Rambler at the time and Rambler tried to take away his project by SWATing their office". It's like some pointless greed ("it's mine!!") above all pragmatism.

ainar-g 5y ago
It seems like at a certain level, when a company achieves an unfortunate combination of buttloads of money and incompetent leadership, that company starts to think that it is above puny human concepts like reputation. Compare it with the behaviour of A Certain Database Company, Whose Name Is Similar To “Oral Care”.
- znpy 5y ago
  I know a company whose name is similar to that, and many people say claim that company has no customers, only hostages.
noduerme 5y ago
I don't know how copyright laws work in Russia, but it's a bit of a gray area in America when you write code for someone unless it's explicitly spelled out in the contract. The end product (compiled binary or whatever they're paying for to "just work") belongs to them, but the source code does not belong to them unless it's explicitly stated in a work-for-hire contract that all of your intellectual property goes to them while you're hired. I always make it clear in my contracts that I am not re-selling rights to anything I build that's derived from FOSS or, even my own code if it's part of my own open source projects; the client cannot own something that is not for sale, just by hiring me on an hourly basis. I make sure to communicate that with them verbally as well beforehand, in case they mistakenly have the idea that they are buying the rights to something that I can't legally sell them. Usually I present them a list of modules and files that will be used in their project which (a) are FOSS, (b) belong to me, and (c) which I will write for them that they can reuse/rewrite/resell the source code for.
kungito 5y ago
Isn't it so that if the employee published the code under lets say gpl license but the company acquired the rights, the company can reserve the rights and the code cannot be forked
- jen20 5y ago
  That largely depends whether others contributed, and whether they assigned copyright.
questioning-oss 5y ago
The story gets more interesting if you consider that Bumble is also developing two libraries under their official name, badoo/MVICore and badoo/RIBs, which are conceptually the same as MVIKotlin and Decompose respectively. What do you do, if a framework/library is effectively a rewrite of something developed by another team at the same company, but also released officially under the brand of same company?
andi999 5y ago
If the company owns it, the the (gpl or whatever) licensing was not legal, so the core devs cannot 'fork it', since that would be illegal. They can rewrite the project from scratch though.
- Thiez 5y ago
  The company would have to remove all contributions of external developers though. If the project was not licensed under the GPL, but external contributors did contribute to the project under the GPL, then it seems to me that either the company has to release the project under the GPL, or remove all the third-party contributions and any code that might be derived from those contributions (since it would be a derived work). Realistically they would have to revert the project to where it was before the first external contributor contributed and rewrite all subsequent development from scratch.
  - mmis1000 5y ago
    That is basically what caused the minecraft craftbukkit server drama. Their distribution contains modified priority code from mojang. And contributions are in GPL. Some contributor decides to use GPL to claim server source code (while obviously they can't). And there is obviously no way to fix the situation. Ends up as the craftbukkit server repo dead forever.
  - Buttons840 5y ago
    This makes me think, you could have a friend develop a MVP which you use as a starting point for your project. For example, if you want to create a game, I could write a simple event loop and render a couple triangles on the screen, then give this to you as an example, and with an agreement that you can build upon it. Thus, everything you do will be a derivative work of what I started. If your company tries to take it, I can come in and cause problems for them.
    - andi999 5y ago
      Company might still lock it away.
some-more-info 5y ago
But in this case, while the image is "Arkadii Ivanov created MVIKotlin/Decompose while working at Badoo/Bumble"... The full story is that Badoo/Bumble had already been working on badoo/MVICore and badoo/RIBs, with other employees working on those products full-time.

by kgeist 5y ago

ainar-g 5y ago

It seems like at a certain level, when a company achieves an unfortunate combination of buttloads of money and incompetent leadership, that company starts to think that it is above puny human concepts like reputation. Compare it with the behaviour of A Certain Database Company, Whose Name Is Similar To “Oral Care”.

znpy 5y ago
I know a company whose name is similar to that, and many people say claim that company has no customers, only hostages.

noduerme 5y ago

I don't know how copyright laws work in Russia, but it's a bit of a gray area in America when you write code for someone unless it's explicitly spelled out in the contract. The end product (compiled binary or whatever they're paying for to "just work") belongs to them, but the source code does not belong to them unless it's explicitly stated in a work-for-hire contract that all of your intellectual property goes to them while you're hired. I always make it clear in my contracts that I am not re-selling rights to anything I build that's derived from FOSS or, even my own code if it's part of my own open source projects; the client cannot own something that is not for sale, just by hiring me on an hourly basis. I make sure to communicate that with them verbally as well beforehand, in case they mistakenly have the idea that they are buying the rights to something that I can't legally sell them. Usually I present them a list of modules and files that will be used in their project which (a) are FOSS, (b) belong to me, and (c) which I will write for them that they can reuse/rewrite/resell the source code for.

kungito 5y ago

Isn't it so that if the employee published the code under lets say gpl license but the company acquired the rights, the company can reserve the rights and the code cannot be forked

jen20 5y ago
That largely depends whether others contributed, and whether they assigned copyright.

questioning-oss 5y ago

The story gets more interesting if you consider that Bumble is also developing two libraries under their official name, badoo/MVICore and badoo/RIBs, which are conceptually the same as MVIKotlin and Decompose respectively. What do you do, if a framework/library is effectively a rewrite of something developed by another team at the same company, but also released officially under the brand of same company?

andi999 5y ago

If the company owns it, the the (gpl or whatever) licensing was not legal, so the core devs cannot 'fork it', since that would be illegal. They can rewrite the project from scratch though.

Thiez 5y ago
The company would have to remove all contributions of external developers though. If the project was not licensed under the GPL, but external contributors did contribute to the project under the GPL, then it seems to me that either the company has to release the project under the GPL, or remove all the third-party contributions and any code that might be derived from those contributions (since it would be a derived work). Realistically they would have to revert the project to where it was before the first external contributor contributed and rewrite all subsequent development from scratch.
- mmis1000 5y ago
  That is basically what caused the minecraft craftbukkit server drama. Their distribution contains modified priority code from mojang. And contributions are in GPL. Some contributor decides to use GPL to claim server source code (while obviously they can't). And there is obviously no way to fix the situation. Ends up as the craftbukkit server repo dead forever.
- Buttons840 5y ago
  This makes me think, you could have a friend develop a MVP which you use as a starting point for your project. For example, if you want to create a game, I could write a simple event loop and render a couple triangles on the screen, then give this to you as an example, and with an agreement that you can build upon it. Thus, everything you do will be a derivative work of what I started. If your company tries to take it, I can come in and cause problems for them.
  - andi999 5y ago
    Company might still lock it away.

some-more-info 5y ago

But in this case, while the image is "Arkadii Ivanov created MVIKotlin/Decompose while working at Badoo/Bumble"... The full story is that Badoo/Bumble had already been working on badoo/MVICore and badoo/RIBs, with other employees working on those products full-time.