12 ms·

An apology to open source

367 points by bergie 14y ago

yen223 14y ago
Does the company have any jurisdiction over what appears to be Nick's own project? This really sounds ridiculous.
- nevinera 14y ago
  If he's working in the US, then debatably yes. Though 'jurisdiction' isn't the right word. Work performed by an employee during the course of operations is considered 'work for hire', and is the intellectual property of the employer. If he then goes on to replicate a large quantity of that work 'on his own time', he is most likely infringing on that work that he previously did (unless he's very careful about it. Since he didn't seem aware that it was a potential issue, he probably was not). Now, it's not obvious that the employer would have won such a suit, but it's not a frivolous and un-winnable case either. It's generally best to talk to your employer about this sort of thing before releasing it - if they had been real jerks, they could have sued him for infringement despite his taking it back down when they asked.
  - scotty79 14y ago
    What if that's the other way around? He wrote something for himself and at later time was hired and did some work for company and that work was based on his previous work that he had all copyright for. Wouldn't company had no right to use the code that he wrote for them because it would mean infringing on his copyright, or copyright of his mom if he sold the rights to the original software to her?
    - nevinera 14y ago
      I'm not a lawyer, and the rules get messy - I'd need to do at least a few hours of research to answer you with any confidence. The type of stuff you're talking about is not addressed by the code itself, it's tangled up in case law, which is the reason that lawyers go to school forever. Personally, I would write that 'previous work' as a library, open-source it, and then use the library at the company later. That's clearly safe.
      - scotty79 14y ago
        Considering copyright law is like counting angels that could dance at the head of the pin. I hope people will ditch it some day altogether.
  - facorreia 14y ago
    As a non-American, that concept is very alien to me. Say, if a burger-flipping cook at a fast-food joint cooks burgers for himself and a few friends at home, is he infringing? Are those burgers company property? Baffled...
    - nevinera 14y ago
      No, burgers aren't "intellectual property". If he wrote the burger-flipping manual for work, and then wrote another one and published it online, he'd have more of a problem. And yes, the entire concept of IP is on the strange side and needs some dramatic revisions, I'd agree.
    - mcherm 14y ago
      Let me explain. My company's employee manual had a clause stating (and I paraphrase here) that any intellectual property (patentable invention, copyrightable materials, etc) created by the employee was owned by the employer. Technically, this means that they own the bedtime stories that I make up for my kids. And certainly any open-source code that I may write in my free time, even if I used absolutely NO company resources and worked only on evenings and weekends. But this story has a happy ending: I signed it (I like getting paid), then went to the company lawyers and raised the issue. I used the "you own my kid's bedtime stories" example and provided alternate language they could consider. (My alternate language said they owned it only if it was written using company time or company resources or if it related to the line of business the company was in.) The next year, they changed it to a variant of my proposed wording (actually, they used "only if written on company time or using company resources" which was an even more expansive exception). Of course then a few years later we got bought by a new company, and they had a different clause. So I started a conversation with THIS company's lawyers. . .
      - nevinera 14y ago
        Well... this strays into the territory of unenforceability and severability. You know how practically every contract you sign anymore has something to the effect of 'invalidating some portion of this contract does not invalidate the rest of it'? The courts have held that an unenforceable clause in a contract that is not indicated as 'severable' will make the entire contract unenforceable. Instead of doing the pleasant thing, and making contracts that stay within in the bounds they are allowed by law, companies started claiming that every portion of every contract was severable. What this means is that they can throw any kind of crap in there, whether they could actually invoke it or not. Add that to the fact that the majority of the population of the US doesn't even read the contracts they sign (seriously, they don't), and companies are incentivized to throw the kitchen sink into their documents, and leave the decisions about what is enforceable until later. Specifically, the region of your work that they can claim ip rights over is tightly limited by the definition of 'work for hire', regardless of what they try to claim in your contract.
  - retrogradeorbit 14y ago
    This is one side of the argument. The other side is that attempts to own the code the employee does outside of work hours may constitute restraint of trade.
  - bargl 14y ago
    > If they'd been real jerks they could have sued him for infringement despite his taking it back down when they asked. That is a good point. I know we all want to get out the pitchforks and torches, but they may have a legit reason for needing him to take the project down. I can say that I could not open source ANYTHING that was remotely related to work right now, and my current employer has no say in the matter. Nick seemed to be sad, and disheartened, but not upset at his company and I think he is in the most informed person we have here, so lets take his advice and not form a mob.
- nness 14y ago
  Pretty much the run of the mill employment contract will claim ownership of an employees creations, most regardless of whether that creation has anything to do with their every day activities. Some go so far as to claim all creations related to their discipline, even if conducted outside work hours. The problem is simply that its too hard to challenge if such an issue ever arose. Any decent business wouldn't just claim everything under the sun. It is a worrying grey area though.
  - crazysaem 14y ago
    Well in the contract with my current employer, it pretty much states that every IP I create during my employment belongs to my employer. So if I wanted to create a project that I own, I would have to terminate my contract first. This is especially annoying being a Student and having many ideas all the time. Oh well.
    - arethuza 14y ago
      Even IP created outside of work?
      - aprescott 14y ago
        Unless an employee contract says otherwise, the default copyright position is that all work done is part of "work-for-hire".[1] There are a few reasons for this, and Joel Spolsky covered them pretty well.[2] [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire [2]: http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-at-a-company-do-they-have-intellectual-property-rights-to-the-st http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-...
        arethuza 14y ago
        Every employment contract I have had (I'm not in the US and, I think, neither is crazysaem) has had rather a lot to say about copyright and IP - not all of which might be enforceable in a court (I have had lawyers look at contracts).
danielsamuels 14y ago
I made a backup of it for personal use. https://github.com/danielsamuels/chart-js https://github.com/danielsamuels/chart-js Documentation (basic, no CSS): http://danielsamuels.github.com/chart-js/ http://danielsamuels.github.com/chart-js/
- arcosdev 14y ago
  forked and cloned
  - danielsamuels 14y ago
    I just added the original documentation to the master repo, you may want to grab that too.
    - daemon13 14y ago
      many thanks... the fork docs point to the original site, which was taken down :-( Edit: docs are in index.html, but w/o css
  - hoektoe 14y ago
    Was looking for this. Thanx
- keefe 14y ago
  it's almost like the internet has no delete button
  - duiker101 14y ago
    It doesn't.
    - keithpeter 14y ago
      Which is a fact a lot of us have to get used to, including but not limited to companies.
jqueryin 14y ago
So the real question remains: Who is going to hire this guy away from his current employer?
philjackson 14y ago
Ugh, why? Would a better move not have been to ask the employee to move it to a company affiliated site? Get your name out there and in to developers minds as good guys?
meerita 14y ago
Oh Jesus... does anyone forked that?
- tzaman 14y ago
  I downloaded javascripts
- vs4vijay 14y ago
  I have chart.js downloaded.
  - tracerTres 14y ago
    can u provide a download link for chartjs please?
noonespecial 14y ago
Don't just take it down. Destroy it. Make sure that any benefit your employer was receiving from it vanishes. If they claim ownership, despite the work having been done in your free time, demand the overtime pay. Make it clear that OSHA will be involved if they decline. Hardline dickery deservers to be repaid in kind. Ah: Edit still available: Destroy was the wrong word. Make inaccessible to everyone, including the employer as if erased. If the employer claims exclusive ownership you have a bargaining chip. They may own it, but they should pay for it.
- nevinera 14y ago
  That's not 'hardline dickery'. The company didn't get a lawyer involved and force him to take it down, they expressed concern - the author apparently agrees that it's related or similar to work he did while an employee, or there would have been a bit more argument than "oh, ok". What you're proposing would of course be fine - the company isn't claiming 'ownership' of that code, just suggesting that it might be infringing. But I don't get the impression that they're using that charting library, just similar code written by the same author. They wouldn't be hurt by that at all.
  - noonespecial 14y ago
    ...my fault, should of A-OK'ed everything before putting it online. Didn't expect anywhere near that sort of reaction though. (from the author's twitter feed) Sounds kinda fierce to me. I suspect if he'd refused, lawyers wouldn't be far behind. Perhaps I'm just jaded. I've seen some pretty egregious overstepping by companies in my time. I'm still calling it a dick move. A great deal of what makes him valuable to them, he likely learned at home doing this sort of thing. He may even be driving the product's direction somewhat with his personal exploration.
    - bcj 14y ago
      Didn't Expect anywhere near that sort of reaction though I read that as reaction to the project by the public (i.e., tons of page views), not as the reaction of his employer. It's quite possible that his company was quite friendly about the issue. While it's unfortunate to lose an open-source project, there is not enough information to know whether Nick or his employer is the overstepping their bounds.
Kiro 14y ago
What's the name of the company?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
frankblizzard 14y ago
Very sad to see this happening. I liked the project a lot... Good luck with your job though and you will sure have more opportunities in life to do open-source projects. :)
jbrooksuk 14y ago
Damn, I only got the minified version.
- BaconJuice 14y ago
  https://github.com/danielsamuels/chart-js https://github.com/danielsamuels/chart-js
Matsta 14y ago
Mirror?
- martey 14y ago
  I was able to find at least 3 extant forks on Github, but the fact that the project author's employer was concerned about IP rights would make me wary about using such code. If the author "borrowed" similar code from work he previously did from the employer, it is likely that the MIT license of chart.js is invalid.
  - nnnnni 14y ago
    Odds are that it was a Disney-like situation: anything that you create while employed by Disney automatically becomes property of Disney.
- spellboots 14y ago
  https://github.com/umaar/Chart.js https://github.com/umaar/Chart.js
  - daemon13 14y ago
    many thanks... docs no? :-(
    - umaar 14y ago
      Added in some documentation here: https://github.com/umaar/Chart.js/tree/master/docs https://github.com/umaar/Chart.js/tree/master/docs (there's no CSS however)
  - mrhonza 14y ago
    Perfect. I cloned it. It says that it's under MIT. Good enough for me.
manmal 14y ago
The real question is, what kind of employer shuts down a project like this, cutting themselves off from useful contributions by other people?
- tzaman 14y ago
  And not only that, they could benefit from it immensely - by adding a 'sponsored by' link on the project pages.
- porker 14y ago
  A normal employer with a normal-world mindset. This is their competitive advantage and they're keeping it for themselves - even though they didn't (in his reading) buy the original code he wrote. Sad, but a fact of life if you deal with businesses.
  - nnnnni 14y ago
    and dinosaurs will die
  - chii 14y ago
    if a charting library was their only competitive advantage such that they'd worry if it was opensourced, i'd start looking for another job soon...
- slantyyz 14y ago
  "Employer" is not quite so simple. Organizations are multilayered and complex. In some cases, your whole department (i.e., bosses and bosses' bosses) could be in open support of this project, but the legal department could shut it down. Hell, the CEO could be even in support of it, but still be overridden by the legal dept for a bunch of valid reasons.
wooptoo 14y ago
This shows the shitty policy that most companies have. They use open source internally and give nothing back.
- kawsper 14y ago
  Yeah, I have been working for Rails shop that did exactly this. I wasn't able to do anything, not even in my spare time, to contribute to open-source projects or do other work. The other work I can understand, because I could help a competitor for an example. But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration.
  - nevinera 14y ago
    >But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration. Where were you working? That's definitely not how US ip-law operates.
    - kawsper 14y ago
      Working in Denmark. I took it up with my Union, and they said that I couldn't do anything about it. The rule initially was made to own rights to images and articles from photographers and journalists, so they couldn't sell to third parties, but was extended to also include code.
      - nevinera 14y ago
        We do have a similar rule (with similar origins), but it has to be contractually asserted, and it would only apply to portions of code integrated into a larger 'visual work' - mostly it doesn't come into play outside of contracting.
    - modoc 14y ago
      That is OFTEN how US employment contracts work though... Perhaps not in CA, but the rest of the US... Every employment contract I've been asked to sign has had some level of owning stuff I do off-hours (up to everything you do any time on your own computers, everything you've done in the past, etc...). I've always pushed back and gotten it changed to meet my needs.
inuhj 14y ago
Link to original thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391814
offdrey 14y ago
Its a shame, I was looking forward to trying it !
nickporter 14y ago
You could try to convince your boss to create a free Github organization account for the business, and then open-source the code there.
hamorim 14y ago
Sad, I don't have time to try.
daGrevis 14y ago
This is so disappointing. I planned to use it for my project and I really liked...
- jasonm23 14y ago
  There's several forks under MIT, don't fret.
phpnode 14y ago
That's a shame. This serves as a reminder to us all to be very careful when signing employment contracts. We're fortunate enough to be in an industry with huge demand for talent at the moment, so in addition to salary / benefits, things like having the right to open source your work should be included in your negotiations. In my experience, most good companies are OK with it.
- nevinera 14y ago
  >This serves as a reminder to us all to be very careful when signing employment contracts. If he was a full-time employee in the US, a contract wouldn't be necessary for this to be an issue. All work done by an employee on company time or using company resources is 'work for hire' (a term often misused in the software contracting industry, where it rarely applies), and that IP belongs to the company. >In my experience, most good companies are OK with it. Most good companies are sometimes 'OK with it'. It depends on how much it will affect their competitive advantages in their field. My employer would probably sign off on open-sourcing a charting library, but not a graph layout library, for example - displaying complex data as graphs is near the core of our business. Certainly most companies will not grant you a blanket right to open source all of your work for them.
  - porker 14y ago
    I'd like to know about your business - if only because I'm interested in working in this field. Can you share any info about your employer?
    - nevinera 14y ago
      Definitely! Emcien (from mCn - we deal with a lot of combinatoric problems) is focused on analysis of large-scale data by constructing and operating on relationship graphs of tokens within that data. We use Rails pretty heavily for presentation, though our apps have been leaning more and more on Backbone.js, and most of the core science is performed in some C code largely written by one of the founders, O.R. prof Roy Marsten. The business/marketing site is at emcien.com, and the (fairly new) engineering blog is at engineering.emcien.com. Management sadly isn't interested in long-term remote devs yet - we're in Atlanta, GA. It's a great environment though, in the sweet-spot between risky startup and heavy corporate work.
mattfieldy 14y ago
This is such a shame. Companies that shut down projects like this are completely ignorant as to the benefits of open-sourcing such a useful tool.
- frankblizzard 14y ago
  but I bet that their business heavily relies on other open-source projects. uncool.
ayanb 14y ago
An open note to Nick's Employers - 1) If you are a technology company, this is Harakiri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku). You are alienating every developer who is worth her salt. If you have a recruiting arm, and they are trying to recruit, god be with them. Ofcourse, you think people will never come to know, but this has the potential to be a good story and press will pick it up. I will not be surprised if Techcrunch or Wired Enterprise picks this up first. 2) Strategically, this is so uncool. You could have leveraged this open sourcing in several ways. Made the codebase part of your official Github ( ever heard of Bootstrap?) and drummed up participation. If THIS was the product, you could leverage the free PR to accelerate user-acquisition. Nick had some amazing documentation, and he even got SUCH a cool domain for you guys. 3) Eventually, you will lose Nick, who seems quite competent, who will move on to do better things under the umbrella of better employers. Pretty lame, on several counts.
- iambibhas 14y ago
  They have already lost Nick. It's just matter of time now.
- MrScruff 14y ago
  From the OP 'Sadly though, due to concerns from my employer regarding intellectual property and similarities in projects I've worked on, I've been asked to take down the site.' We have no way of assessing the validity of these concerns from what has been said. If the company feels the open source project contains work they have funded, and don't want to release, then it is their right to ask him to withdraw it. Also, unless Nick is primarily driven by open source participation there's nothing to say they will eventually lose him.
  - manmal 14y ago
    Nobody argued that it is not their right. Of course it is, or Nick would have left it up at Github. It's their right, but it's not "right".
    - MrScruff 14y ago
delinka 14y ago
Get some advice on how to handle this. I know plenty of lawyers who'd gladly spend a few minutes listening to your story and giving you some "unofficial" advice (by that I mean that unless you actually pay them, they won't write a letter or represent you - you're stuck implementing that advice yourself.) I'd wager this was a threat from an immediate manager. Go over his head. Explain you did this as coursework. Have someone explain the company's view of these "similarities" - Just because their app sorts entries in a table on an iPad doesn't mean publishing that sort.js you built in class is an IP problem. See if they'd be willing to generate some goodwill amongst the OSS community by allowing you to put chart.js back online. DO NOT SIMPLY ROLL OVER. And if you get stonewalled, these are probably not the kind of people you want to work with. Start looking for a new job. Don't fear for this one. Programmers, developers, software engineers (pick your flavor) are in high demand.
nness 14y ago
Its worth remembering that the conflict might not be to the company's activities, but rather, to activities performed for a client. Some clients may be substantially upset if they feel that they have paid for development, to have that development later released as open-source. Of course there would be no reason to assume Chart.js reuses client's code, and the developer not have even worked on any projects with the company yet, but the challenges of convincing a client might not be worth the stress.
mseebach 14y ago
There are a lot of knee-jerk reactions here that may very well be completely justified - but the facts are that we don't know where Nick works and in what capacity. We can't know if there is legitimate concern over IP or competitive advantage here? It's unlikely, but for the sake of a thought experiment: What if Nick's employers sell a JS component that does the same+10% as chart.js? EDIT: Apparently he made it before starting his job. Yes, that makes it quite a bit more fishy.
- analog 14y ago
  He built it during University, so before he started working for the employer. They may have a legitimate business concern, but that doesn't change the fact that it's Nick's IP and he can do what he wants with it.
  - shadowmint 14y ago
    That's true if and only if he didn't continue to refine and contribute to the code after entering employment, and specifically, didn't use it at his place of employment. Many places have terrible and unhealthy, but legally binding contracts regarding work done in your own time while employed. :( Without more information we can't know, but its far from given that their position is legally ambiguous.
    - analog 14y ago
      Agreed, but he's based in the UK, so the 'we own all your IP' thing doesn't apply here. On company time yes, in your own time I believe not. Your own time would not be "in the course of his or her employment." http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-ownership/c-employer.htm http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-ownership/c-employer.htm
      - arethuza 14y ago
        I've seen employment contracts in the UK that try the "own time" thing - these are probably not enforceable, but you probably wouldn't want to go through the process of putting that to the test.
anoncoward0 14y ago
Looks like this is his employer: http://www.radweb.co.uk http://www.radweb.co.uk Source: https://twitter.com/_nnnick/status/98344434948771840 https://twitter.com/_nnnick/status/98344434948771840
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/radweb.co.uk https://www.facebook.com/radweb.co.uk
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- peterclary 14y ago
  From their "About" page: "Our success has been down to reputation"
- ikt 14y ago
  https://twitter.com/_nnnick https://twitter.com/_nnnick @masukomi @radweb I don't work at Radweb. Lets not turn into an angry mob please, Internet.
- highpixels 14y ago
  I work for Radweb, Nick no longer works with us. He left around a year ago or so. I've made a few open-source contributions through the company (https://github.com/danharper https://github.com/danharper and https://github.com/radweb https://github.com/radweb). Chart.js looked like an awesome library, it's a shame what happened.
oscilloscope 14y ago
NVD3, a d3.js reusable chart library, was taken down by Novus several months ago. At first they asked all the GitHub forks to close down. Eventually, after an outcry on the d3-js Google Group, Hacker News, and other forums, Novus relented and re-released the library with this statement: http://nvd3.org/statement.html http://nvd3.org/statement.html
- mcherm 14y ago
  Yes, this is EXACTLY the response that we are looking for. Not that the company is necessarily in the wrong to ask that the open source code be taken down, but that the community should persuade that company that it is in their interest to keep the code available. (For reputational reasons AS WELL AS all the other benefits of supporting open source.)
grabeh 14y ago
I suppose the key question is what came first - was code that the creator was exposed to whilst in employment incorporated into Chart.js, or was code created by the creator incorporated into projects at work. Clearly in the former case, the employer would have a more legitimate reason to express concern than the latter. However, in any event, as other posters have identified, there could be very positive PR benefits from supporting the open sourcing of the project. In any event, the main justification for retaining the secrecy of a project would be to maintain a competitive advantage however, the extent of the competitive advantage is dependent on the complexity of the code and the ease with which equivalent functionality could be reproduced independently. That's a subject which I would be interested to hear more on.
kodisha 14y ago
This will be NVD3 scenario all over again. (if the product in question has the same level of quality/community engagement)
slashdotdash 14y ago
Some alternative JavaScript charting libraries... * Highcharts JS (http://www.highcharts.com/ http://www.highcharts.com/) * Flot (http://www.flotcharts.org/ http://www.flotcharts.org/) * NVD3 (http://nvd3.org/ http://nvd3.org/) * morris.js (http://www.oesmith.co.uk/morris.js/ http://www.oesmith.co.uk/morris.js/) * Rickshaw (http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/ http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/) * jqPlot (http://www.jqplot.com/ http://www.jqplot.com/) * gRaphaël (http://g.raphaeljs.com/ http://g.raphaeljs.com/) * YUI charts (http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/charts/ http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/charts/) * Polychart.js (http://polychartjs.com/ http://polychartjs.com/)
- sdfjkl 14y ago
  I've used Highcharts in a commercial inhouse project and can confirm it's awesome, well documented, with a ton of examples and the guy is very responsive to support queries. Well worth the few quid asked for commercial use. Also, it uses SVG and is therefore suitable for PDF conversion (which Canvas is not). Have a play: http://www.highcharts.com/demo/ http://www.highcharts.com/demo/
  - richardlblair 14y ago
    I can also confirm that highcharts is awesome.
    - Uchikoma 14y ago
      I can also confirm that highcharts is awesome (support, documentation,..)
  - noodle 14y ago
    I've used Highcharts in two different production level projects and I think its only okay. In trying to heavily style the graphs and such, there were tons of difficulties, errors, and such. IF what you need is out of the box, though, it does go a long way.
- yen223 14y ago
  Impressive list! Is there any charting library out there which still supports IE6/IE7?
retrogradeorbit 14y ago
This happened to me, once. I can't go into details but I know from experience what you should do now. Start looking for another job, immediately. Don't hesitate. Don't think these guys are 'ok'. As soon as you find another job, resign. There is more and worse coming down the line. You need to get out of there as soon as you can.
chris_gogreen 14y ago
Find a new job. This is just a little taste of what is to come from your employer.
BaconJuice 14y ago
Does anyone know any good alternatives to this?
dmacedo 14y ago
Let me see if I get it: Someone exposes code, FOS'ing it (apparently MIT), here comes "the internets", it likes what it sees, exposes to both forks and HN positive comments, along comes employee's manager and cuts the story short, IP issues and whatnot (for JS, really?!)... The internets will either rename it; rewrite it, use it anyways and ignore the anonymous business, maybe keep the Nick name either associated/thanked or a part of it anyways... Now the company can either get ready to start some bound-to-loose IP fight over this, which I'm sure has a great ca-ching sound on some poor manager's brain; along with zero chances. Or the business can capitalize on the positive feedback, maybe become a part of a greater good. I don't get what's so complicated
- marcosdumay 14y ago
  Let me see... Ca-ching sound vs. boring rationality... How can rationality work if nobody can know how those weard hackers think? Ca-ching for the world! (Yeah, in case you are wondering, I know what is wrong with that, you don't need to point out.) Anyway, the most likely explanation is that Legal is following their procedures, and as usual for procedures, there can be no exception (or rationality).
kemofo 14y ago
What a great lesson Nick has been offered by working there. He got the opportunity to learn what kind of employers aren't worth HIS time at a young age.
tracerTres 14y ago
For all those that downloaded chartjs, can anyone of you provide a download link please?
everestx 14y ago
Pretty sure you'll be able to find a new employer with Chart.js under your belt.
skizm 14y ago
so... if I have this cloned can I still use it?
robmclarty 14y ago
This is exactly why intellectual property systems (as they exist today) hinder, more than help, innovation. Chart.js was a good step forward for web data visualization tools. It deserves to exist.
merinid 14y ago
How could this happen to Chart.js and http://nvd3.org/ http://nvd3.org/ . hopefully chart.js employer will come to his senses just as http://nvd3.org/ http://nvd3.org/ eventually did.
demnior 14y ago
This is really, really sad! I enjoyed it very much! Thanks for your work! What about the used copies out there? Do we need to delete them from our servers aswell?
grey-area 14y ago
Let's not turn into an angry mob please, Internet. - Nick Downie (chart.js author) on twitter just now. This is between Nick and his employer at this point, and trying to enact swift internet revenge on his employer is not going to help Nick, particularly when we've only heard one side of the story, it's hard to draw any meaningful conclusion.
- wagnerpinheiro 14y ago
  the site is online again.
saintx 14y ago
Perhaps the reason this resonates so strongly is that it's a painful reminder that, after all of the enthusiasm and excitement of living in the information age, we still live in a world where ideas can be bought and sold. Nothing, not even a good idea, is immune to the corrosive influence of money.
eweise 14y ago
It's Back!
paperwork 14y ago
Somewhat related, I released the first version of http://datafa.me http://datafa.me . It is a web app where you can paste data and generate a chart. Not exactly a charting library, but it will certainly evolve to provide some of the same functionality. I actually submitted a 'Show HN' at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5401057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5401057 but it seems to have not picked up.
jessaustin 14y ago
Where's the apology? I'm just seeing general info about chartjs. Maybe there has been a change of heart?
- paupino_masano 14y ago
  I get the same - may be because of this https://twitter.com/_nnnick/status/314049798502248448 https://twitter.com/_nnnick/status/314049798502248448 :)
- alttag 14y ago
  I've having the same issue. Has the OP been removed?
- napoleond 14y ago
  Hooray! It would appear so. An hour ago, Nick was apologising for removing the project, as there was apparently an ownership conflict with his employer.
  - joeblau 14y ago
    Thank you for clearing that up. I was wondering what the apology was for as well.
- chengiz 14y ago
  Yeah exactly. Anyone screenshot the apology?
  - hellerbarde 14y ago
    Quote for historical purposes: An apology to open source At midnight on the 18th March 2013 I posted Chart.js online. On the morning of the 19th March, I've had to take it down due to IP concerns with my current employer. It had been my final year university project I had been working on for a couple of months. I had intended it to be an open source project for the web design and development community. Since posting it online, I've been completely overwhelmed and hugely grateful for all the support and kind words. Sadly though, due to concerns from my employer regarding intellectual property and similarities in projects I've worked on, I've been asked to take down the site. My job and livelihood have to be my primary concern. With this in mind, I have closed down the site, and removed my master branch from Github. I'd like to personally apologise for taking this away, I'm just as disappointed as you. Nick
jodi 14y ago
It looks like it is back up.
nnnnnick 14y ago
I'd misunderstood some of the issues I wrote about earlier in regard to the library. It is now back online for good, licensed under MIT. Sorry for all this kerfuffle.
- jbrooksuk 14y ago
  I don't intend to be rude or anything, but how can you misunderstand your employer asking you to remove the library? They either did or they didn't?
jbrooksuk 14y ago
Nick has re-released Chart.js under an MIT license. https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js#license https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js#license
shared4you 14y ago
It's back online! Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5401828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5401828
antihero 14y ago
Has anyone mirrored the original text? Just looks like the normal site to me.
sunnybunny 14y ago
Looks like it's back up under an MIT license?
UtahDave 14y ago
https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js and http://www.chartjs.org/ http://www.chartjs.org/ both appear to be back up!
kastephens 14y ago
I give employers/customers a copy of all my pre-existing open-source or private work on a DVD and have them sign a document stating "This code/IP existed before our work agreement and have no claim to any of it, now or in the future, including derivative works." They sign it before I sign any contract of theirs. This can be hard to demand from larger droid-run companies. The more entrepreneurial businesses understand: they want solutions to immediate problems, and don't care about collecting vague legal hammers that are only useful in the future.
JoeAltmaier 14y ago
Strange that all the charts shown are the worthless kind. Time series, pie-style, all are the lowest common denominator of graphic information. No scatterplot, no multivariate analysis of any kind. Yesterday we saw Hans Rosling show the developing world's progress in 30 seconds of brilliant graphics. Today: pie charts.

367 points by bergie 14y ago

yen223 14y ago

Does the company have any jurisdiction over what appears to be Nick's own project? This really sounds ridiculous.

nevinera 14y ago
If he's working in the US, then debatably yes. Though 'jurisdiction' isn't the right word. Work performed by an employee during the course of operations is considered 'work for hire', and is the intellectual property of the employer. If he then goes on to replicate a large quantity of that work 'on his own time', he is most likely infringing on that work that he previously did (unless he's very careful about it. Since he didn't seem aware that it was a potential issue, he probably was not). Now, it's not obvious that the employer would have won such a suit, but it's not a frivolous and un-winnable case either. It's generally best to talk to your employer about this sort of thing before releasing it - if they had been real jerks, they could have sued him for infringement despite his taking it back down when they asked.
- scotty79 14y ago
  What if that's the other way around? He wrote something for himself and at later time was hired and did some work for company and that work was based on his previous work that he had all copyright for. Wouldn't company had no right to use the code that he wrote for them because it would mean infringing on his copyright, or copyright of his mom if he sold the rights to the original software to her?
  - nevinera 14y ago
    I'm not a lawyer, and the rules get messy - I'd need to do at least a few hours of research to answer you with any confidence. The type of stuff you're talking about is not addressed by the code itself, it's tangled up in case law, which is the reason that lawyers go to school forever. Personally, I would write that 'previous work' as a library, open-source it, and then use the library at the company later. That's clearly safe.
    - scotty79 14y ago
      Considering copyright law is like counting angels that could dance at the head of the pin. I hope people will ditch it some day altogether.
- facorreia 14y ago
  As a non-American, that concept is very alien to me. Say, if a burger-flipping cook at a fast-food joint cooks burgers for himself and a few friends at home, is he infringing? Are those burgers company property? Baffled...
  - nevinera 14y ago
    No, burgers aren't "intellectual property". If he wrote the burger-flipping manual for work, and then wrote another one and published it online, he'd have more of a problem. And yes, the entire concept of IP is on the strange side and needs some dramatic revisions, I'd agree.
  - mcherm 14y ago
    Let me explain. My company's employee manual had a clause stating (and I paraphrase here) that any intellectual property (patentable invention, copyrightable materials, etc) created by the employee was owned by the employer. Technically, this means that they own the bedtime stories that I make up for my kids. And certainly any open-source code that I may write in my free time, even if I used absolutely NO company resources and worked only on evenings and weekends. But this story has a happy ending: I signed it (I like getting paid), then went to the company lawyers and raised the issue. I used the "you own my kid's bedtime stories" example and provided alternate language they could consider. (My alternate language said they owned it only if it was written using company time or company resources or if it related to the line of business the company was in.) The next year, they changed it to a variant of my proposed wording (actually, they used "only if written on company time or using company resources" which was an even more expansive exception). Of course then a few years later we got bought by a new company, and they had a different clause. So I started a conversation with THIS company's lawyers. . .
    - nevinera 14y ago
      Well... this strays into the territory of unenforceability and severability. You know how practically every contract you sign anymore has something to the effect of 'invalidating some portion of this contract does not invalidate the rest of it'? The courts have held that an unenforceable clause in a contract that is not indicated as 'severable' will make the entire contract unenforceable. Instead of doing the pleasant thing, and making contracts that stay within in the bounds they are allowed by law, companies started claiming that every portion of every contract was severable. What this means is that they can throw any kind of crap in there, whether they could actually invoke it or not. Add that to the fact that the majority of the population of the US doesn't even read the contracts they sign (seriously, they don't), and companies are incentivized to throw the kitchen sink into their documents, and leave the decisions about what is enforceable until later. Specifically, the region of your work that they can claim ip rights over is tightly limited by the definition of 'work for hire', regardless of what they try to claim in your contract.
- retrogradeorbit 14y ago
  This is one side of the argument. The other side is that attempts to own the code the employee does outside of work hours may constitute restraint of trade.
- bargl 14y ago
  > If they'd been real jerks they could have sued him for infringement despite his taking it back down when they asked. That is a good point. I know we all want to get out the pitchforks and torches, but they may have a legit reason for needing him to take the project down. I can say that I could not open source ANYTHING that was remotely related to work right now, and my current employer has no say in the matter. Nick seemed to be sad, and disheartened, but not upset at his company and I think he is in the most informed person we have here, so lets take his advice and not form a mob.
nness 14y ago
Pretty much the run of the mill employment contract will claim ownership of an employees creations, most regardless of whether that creation has anything to do with their every day activities. Some go so far as to claim all creations related to their discipline, even if conducted outside work hours. The problem is simply that its too hard to challenge if such an issue ever arose. Any decent business wouldn't just claim everything under the sun. It is a worrying grey area though.
- crazysaem 14y ago
  Well in the contract with my current employer, it pretty much states that every IP I create during my employment belongs to my employer. So if I wanted to create a project that I own, I would have to terminate my contract first. This is especially annoying being a Student and having many ideas all the time. Oh well.
  - arethuza 14y ago
    Even IP created outside of work?
    - aprescott 14y ago
      Unless an employee contract says otherwise, the default copyright position is that all work done is part of "work-for-hire".[1] There are a few reasons for this, and Joel Spolsky covered them pretty well.[2] [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire [2]: http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-at-a-company-do-they-have-intellectual-property-rights-to-the-st http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/19422/if-im-working-...
      - arethuza 14y ago
        Every employment contract I have had (I'm not in the US and, I think, neither is crazysaem) has had rather a lot to say about copyright and IP - not all of which might be enforceable in a court (I have had lawyers look at contracts).

danielsamuels 14y ago

I made a backup of it for personal use. https://github.com/danielsamuels/chart-js https://github.com/danielsamuels/chart-js Documentation (basic, no CSS): http://danielsamuels.github.com/chart-js/ http://danielsamuels.github.com/chart-js/

arcosdev 14y ago
forked and cloned
- danielsamuels 14y ago
  I just added the original documentation to the master repo, you may want to grab that too.
  - daemon13 14y ago
    many thanks... the fork docs point to the original site, which was taken down :-( Edit: docs are in index.html, but w/o css
- hoektoe 14y ago
  Was looking for this. Thanx
keefe 14y ago
it's almost like the internet has no delete button
- duiker101 14y ago
  It doesn't.
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    Which is a fact a lot of us have to get used to, including but not limited to companies.

jqueryin 14y ago

So the real question remains: Who is going to hire this guy away from his current employer?

philjackson 14y ago

Ugh, why? Would a better move not have been to ask the employee to move it to a company affiliated site? Get your name out there and in to developers minds as good guys?

meerita 14y ago

Oh Jesus... does anyone forked that?

tzaman 14y ago
I downloaded javascripts
vs4vijay 14y ago
I have chart.js downloaded.
- tracerTres 14y ago
  can u provide a download link for chartjs please?

noonespecial 14y ago

Don't just take it down. Destroy it. Make sure that any benefit your employer was receiving from it vanishes. If they claim ownership, despite the work having been done in your free time, demand the overtime pay. Make it clear that OSHA will be involved if they decline. Hardline dickery deservers to be repaid in kind. Ah: Edit still available: Destroy was the wrong word. Make inaccessible to everyone, including the employer as if erased. If the employer claims exclusive ownership you have a bargaining chip. They may own it, but they should pay for it.

nevinera 14y ago
That's not 'hardline dickery'. The company didn't get a lawyer involved and force him to take it down, they expressed concern - the author apparently agrees that it's related or similar to work he did while an employee, or there would have been a bit more argument than "oh, ok". What you're proposing would of course be fine - the company isn't claiming 'ownership' of that code, just suggesting that it might be infringing. But I don't get the impression that they're using that charting library, just similar code written by the same author. They wouldn't be hurt by that at all.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  ...my fault, should of A-OK'ed everything before putting it online. Didn't expect anywhere near that sort of reaction though. (from the author's twitter feed) Sounds kinda fierce to me. I suspect if he'd refused, lawyers wouldn't be far behind. Perhaps I'm just jaded. I've seen some pretty egregious overstepping by companies in my time. I'm still calling it a dick move. A great deal of what makes him valuable to them, he likely learned at home doing this sort of thing. He may even be driving the product's direction somewhat with his personal exploration.
  - bcj 14y ago
    Didn't Expect anywhere near that sort of reaction though I read that as reaction to the project by the public (i.e., tons of page views), not as the reaction of his employer. It's quite possible that his company was quite friendly about the issue. While it's unfortunate to lose an open-source project, there is not enough information to know whether Nick or his employer is the overstepping their bounds.

Kiro 14y ago

What's the name of the company?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

frankblizzard 14y ago

Very sad to see this happening. I liked the project a lot... Good luck with your job though and you will sure have more opportunities in life to do open-source projects. :)

jbrooksuk 14y ago

Damn, I only got the minified version.

BaconJuice 14y ago
https://github.com/danielsamuels/chart-js https://github.com/danielsamuels/chart-js

Matsta 14y ago

Mirror?

martey 14y ago
I was able to find at least 3 extant forks on Github, but the fact that the project author's employer was concerned about IP rights would make me wary about using such code. If the author "borrowed" similar code from work he previously did from the employer, it is likely that the MIT license of chart.js is invalid.
- nnnnni 14y ago
  Odds are that it was a Disney-like situation: anything that you create while employed by Disney automatically becomes property of Disney.
spellboots 14y ago
https://github.com/umaar/Chart.js https://github.com/umaar/Chart.js
- daemon13 14y ago
  many thanks... docs no? :-(
  - umaar 14y ago
    Added in some documentation here: https://github.com/umaar/Chart.js/tree/master/docs https://github.com/umaar/Chart.js/tree/master/docs (there's no CSS however)
- mrhonza 14y ago
  Perfect. I cloned it. It says that it's under MIT. Good enough for me.

manmal 14y ago

The real question is, what kind of employer shuts down a project like this, cutting themselves off from useful contributions by other people?

tzaman 14y ago
And not only that, they could benefit from it immensely - by adding a 'sponsored by' link on the project pages.
porker 14y ago
A normal employer with a normal-world mindset. This is their competitive advantage and they're keeping it for themselves - even though they didn't (in his reading) buy the original code he wrote. Sad, but a fact of life if you deal with businesses.
- nnnnni 14y ago
  and dinosaurs will die
- chii 14y ago
  if a charting library was their only competitive advantage such that they'd worry if it was opensourced, i'd start looking for another job soon...
slantyyz 14y ago
"Employer" is not quite so simple. Organizations are multilayered and complex. In some cases, your whole department (i.e., bosses and bosses' bosses) could be in open support of this project, but the legal department could shut it down. Hell, the CEO could be even in support of it, but still be overridden by the legal dept for a bunch of valid reasons.

wooptoo 14y ago

This shows the shitty policy that most companies have. They use open source internally and give nothing back.

kawsper 14y ago
Yeah, I have been working for Rails shop that did exactly this. I wasn't able to do anything, not even in my spare time, to contribute to open-source projects or do other work. The other work I can understand, because I could help a competitor for an example. But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration.
- nevinera 14y ago
  >But that they owned ownership for every line of code written by me, even on my time off, was killing my inspiration. Where were you working? That's definitely not how US ip-law operates.
  - kawsper 14y ago
    Working in Denmark. I took it up with my Union, and they said that I couldn't do anything about it. The rule initially was made to own rights to images and articles from photographers and journalists, so they couldn't sell to third parties, but was extended to also include code.
    - nevinera 14y ago
      We do have a similar rule (with similar origins), but it has to be contractually asserted, and it would only apply to portions of code integrated into a larger 'visual work' - mostly it doesn't come into play outside of contracting.
  - modoc 14y ago
    That is OFTEN how US employment contracts work though... Perhaps not in CA, but the rest of the US... Every employment contract I've been asked to sign has had some level of owning stuff I do off-hours (up to everything you do any time on your own computers, everything you've done in the past, etc...). I've always pushed back and gotten it changed to meet my needs.

inuhj 14y ago

Link to original thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391814

offdrey 14y ago

Its a shame, I was looking forward to trying it !

nickporter 14y ago

You could try to convince your boss to create a free Github organization account for the business, and then open-source the code there.

hamorim 14y ago

Sad, I don't have time to try.

daGrevis 14y ago

This is so disappointing. I planned to use it for my project and I really liked...

jasonm23 14y ago
There's several forks under MIT, don't fret.

phpnode 14y ago

That's a shame. This serves as a reminder to us all to be very careful when signing employment contracts. We're fortunate enough to be in an industry with huge demand for talent at the moment, so in addition to salary / benefits, things like having the right to open source your work should be included in your negotiations. In my experience, most good companies are OK with it.

nevinera 14y ago
>This serves as a reminder to us all to be very careful when signing employment contracts. If he was a full-time employee in the US, a contract wouldn't be necessary for this to be an issue. All work done by an employee on company time or using company resources is 'work for hire' (a term often misused in the software contracting industry, where it rarely applies), and that IP belongs to the company. >In my experience, most good companies are OK with it. Most good companies are sometimes 'OK with it'. It depends on how much it will affect their competitive advantages in their field. My employer would probably sign off on open-sourcing a charting library, but not a graph layout library, for example - displaying complex data as graphs is near the core of our business. Certainly most companies will not grant you a blanket right to open source all of your work for them.
- porker 14y ago
  I'd like to know about your business - if only because I'm interested in working in this field. Can you share any info about your employer?
  - nevinera 14y ago
    Definitely! Emcien (from mCn - we deal with a lot of combinatoric problems) is focused on analysis of large-scale data by constructing and operating on relationship graphs of tokens within that data. We use Rails pretty heavily for presentation, though our apps have been leaning more and more on Backbone.js, and most of the core science is performed in some C code largely written by one of the founders, O.R. prof Roy Marsten. The business/marketing site is at emcien.com, and the (fairly new) engineering blog is at engineering.emcien.com. Management sadly isn't interested in long-term remote devs yet - we're in Atlanta, GA. It's a great environment though, in the sweet-spot between risky startup and heavy corporate work.

mattfieldy 14y ago

This is such a shame. Companies that shut down projects like this are completely ignorant as to the benefits of open-sourcing such a useful tool.

frankblizzard 14y ago
but I bet that their business heavily relies on other open-source projects. uncool.

ayanb 14y ago

An open note to Nick's Employers - 1) If you are a technology company, this is Harakiri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku). You are alienating every developer who is worth her salt. If you have a recruiting arm, and they are trying to recruit, god be with them. Ofcourse, you think people will never come to know, but this has the potential to be a good story and press will pick it up. I will not be surprised if Techcrunch or Wired Enterprise picks this up first. 2) Strategically, this is so uncool. You could have leveraged this open sourcing in several ways. Made the codebase part of your official Github ( ever heard of Bootstrap?) and drummed up participation. If THIS was the product, you could leverage the free PR to accelerate user-acquisition. Nick had some amazing documentation, and he even got SUCH a cool domain for you guys. 3) Eventually, you will lose Nick, who seems quite competent, who will move on to do better things under the umbrella of better employers. Pretty lame, on several counts.

iambibhas 14y ago
They have already lost Nick. It's just matter of time now.
MrScruff 14y ago
From the OP 'Sadly though, due to concerns from my employer regarding intellectual property and similarities in projects I've worked on, I've been asked to take down the site.' We have no way of assessing the validity of these concerns from what has been said. If the company feels the open source project contains work they have funded, and don't want to release, then it is their right to ask him to withdraw it. Also, unless Nick is primarily driven by open source participation there's nothing to say they will eventually lose him.
- manmal 14y ago
  Nobody argued that it is not their right. Of course it is, or Nick would have left it up at Github. It's their right, but it's not "right".
  - MrScruff 14y ago

delinka 14y ago

Get some advice on how to handle this. I know plenty of lawyers who'd gladly spend a few minutes listening to your story and giving you some "unofficial" advice (by that I mean that unless you actually pay them, they won't write a letter or represent you - you're stuck implementing that advice yourself.) I'd wager this was a threat from an immediate manager. Go over his head. Explain you did this as coursework. Have someone explain the company's view of these "similarities" - Just because their app sorts entries in a table on an iPad doesn't mean publishing that sort.js you built in class is an IP problem. See if they'd be willing to generate some goodwill amongst the OSS community by allowing you to put chart.js back online. DO NOT SIMPLY ROLL OVER. And if you get stonewalled, these are probably not the kind of people you want to work with. Start looking for a new job. Don't fear for this one. Programmers, developers, software engineers (pick your flavor) are in high demand.

nness 14y ago

Its worth remembering that the conflict might not be to the company's activities, but rather, to activities performed for a client. Some clients may be substantially upset if they feel that they have paid for development, to have that development later released as open-source. Of course there would be no reason to assume Chart.js reuses client's code, and the developer not have even worked on any projects with the company yet, but the challenges of convincing a client might not be worth the stress.

mseebach 14y ago

There are a lot of knee-jerk reactions here that may very well be completely justified - but the facts are that we don't know where Nick works and in what capacity. We can't know if there is legitimate concern over IP or competitive advantage here? It's unlikely, but for the sake of a thought experiment: What if Nick's employers sell a JS component that does the same+10% as chart.js? EDIT: Apparently he made it before starting his job. Yes, that makes it quite a bit more fishy.

analog 14y ago
He built it during University, so before he started working for the employer. They may have a legitimate business concern, but that doesn't change the fact that it's Nick's IP and he can do what he wants with it.
- shadowmint 14y ago
  That's true if and only if he didn't continue to refine and contribute to the code after entering employment, and specifically, didn't use it at his place of employment. Many places have terrible and unhealthy, but legally binding contracts regarding work done in your own time while employed. :( Without more information we can't know, but its far from given that their position is legally ambiguous.
  - analog 14y ago
    Agreed, but he's based in the UK, so the 'we own all your IP' thing doesn't apply here. On company time yes, in your own time I believe not. Your own time would not be "in the course of his or her employment." http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-ownership/c-employer.htm http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-ownership/c-employer.htm
    - arethuza 14y ago
      I've seen employment contracts in the UK that try the "own time" thing - these are probably not enforceable, but you probably wouldn't want to go through the process of putting that to the test.

anoncoward0 14y ago

Looks like this is his employer: http://www.radweb.co.uk http://www.radweb.co.uk Source: https://twitter.com/_nnnick/status/98344434948771840 https://twitter.com/_nnnick/status/98344434948771840

chris_wot 14y ago
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/radweb.co.uk https://www.facebook.com/radweb.co.uk
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
peterclary 14y ago
From their "About" page: "Our success has been down to reputation"
ikt 14y ago
https://twitter.com/_nnnick https://twitter.com/_nnnick @masukomi @radweb I don't work at Radweb. Lets not turn into an angry mob please, Internet.
highpixels 14y ago
I work for Radweb, Nick no longer works with us. He left around a year ago or so. I've made a few open-source contributions through the company (https://github.com/danharper https://github.com/danharper and https://github.com/radweb https://github.com/radweb). Chart.js looked like an awesome library, it's a shame what happened.

oscilloscope 14y ago

NVD3, a d3.js reusable chart library, was taken down by Novus several months ago. At first they asked all the GitHub forks to close down. Eventually, after an outcry on the d3-js Google Group, Hacker News, and other forums, Novus relented and re-released the library with this statement: http://nvd3.org/statement.html http://nvd3.org/statement.html

mcherm 14y ago
Yes, this is EXACTLY the response that we are looking for. Not that the company is necessarily in the wrong to ask that the open source code be taken down, but that the community should persuade that company that it is in their interest to keep the code available. (For reputational reasons AS WELL AS all the other benefits of supporting open source.)

grabeh 14y ago

I suppose the key question is what came first - was code that the creator was exposed to whilst in employment incorporated into Chart.js, or was code created by the creator incorporated into projects at work. Clearly in the former case, the employer would have a more legitimate reason to express concern than the latter. However, in any event, as other posters have identified, there could be very positive PR benefits from supporting the open sourcing of the project. In any event, the main justification for retaining the secrecy of a project would be to maintain a competitive advantage however, the extent of the competitive advantage is dependent on the complexity of the code and the ease with which equivalent functionality could be reproduced independently. That's a subject which I would be interested to hear more on.

kodisha 14y ago

This will be NVD3 scenario all over again. (if the product in question has the same level of quality/community engagement)

slashdotdash 14y ago

Some alternative JavaScript charting libraries... * Highcharts JS (http://www.highcharts.com/ http://www.highcharts.com/) * Flot (http://www.flotcharts.org/ http://www.flotcharts.org/) * NVD3 (http://nvd3.org/ http://nvd3.org/) * morris.js (http://www.oesmith.co.uk/morris.js/ http://www.oesmith.co.uk/morris.js/) * Rickshaw (http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/ http://code.shutterstock.com/rickshaw/) * jqPlot (http://www.jqplot.com/ http://www.jqplot.com/) * gRaphaël (http://g.raphaeljs.com/ http://g.raphaeljs.com/) * YUI charts (http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/charts/ http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/charts/) * Polychart.js (http://polychartjs.com/ http://polychartjs.com/)

sdfjkl 14y ago
I've used Highcharts in a commercial inhouse project and can confirm it's awesome, well documented, with a ton of examples and the guy is very responsive to support queries. Well worth the few quid asked for commercial use. Also, it uses SVG and is therefore suitable for PDF conversion (which Canvas is not). Have a play: http://www.highcharts.com/demo/ http://www.highcharts.com/demo/
- richardlblair 14y ago
  I can also confirm that highcharts is awesome.
  - Uchikoma 14y ago
    I can also confirm that highcharts is awesome (support, documentation,..)
- noodle 14y ago
  I've used Highcharts in two different production level projects and I think its only okay. In trying to heavily style the graphs and such, there were tons of difficulties, errors, and such. IF what you need is out of the box, though, it does go a long way.
yen223 14y ago
Impressive list! Is there any charting library out there which still supports IE6/IE7?

retrogradeorbit 14y ago

This happened to me, once. I can't go into details but I know from experience what you should do now. Start looking for another job, immediately. Don't hesitate. Don't think these guys are 'ok'. As soon as you find another job, resign. There is more and worse coming down the line. You need to get out of there as soon as you can.

chris_gogreen 14y ago

Find a new job. This is just a little taste of what is to come from your employer.

BaconJuice 14y ago

Does anyone know any good alternatives to this?

dmacedo 14y ago

Let me see if I get it: Someone exposes code, FOS'ing it (apparently MIT), here comes "the internets", it likes what it sees, exposes to both forks and HN positive comments, along comes employee's manager and cuts the story short, IP issues and whatnot (for JS, really?!)... The internets will either rename it; rewrite it, use it anyways and ignore the anonymous business, maybe keep the Nick name either associated/thanked or a part of it anyways... Now the company can either get ready to start some bound-to-loose IP fight over this, which I'm sure has a great ca-ching sound on some poor manager's brain; along with zero chances. Or the business can capitalize on the positive feedback, maybe become a part of a greater good. I don't get what's so complicated

marcosdumay 14y ago
Let me see... Ca-ching sound vs. boring rationality... How can rationality work if nobody can know how those weard hackers think? Ca-ching for the world! (Yeah, in case you are wondering, I know what is wrong with that, you don't need to point out.) Anyway, the most likely explanation is that Legal is following their procedures, and as usual for procedures, there can be no exception (or rationality).

kemofo 14y ago

What a great lesson Nick has been offered by working there. He got the opportunity to learn what kind of employers aren't worth HIS time at a young age.

tracerTres 14y ago

For all those that downloaded chartjs, can anyone of you provide a download link please?

everestx 14y ago

Pretty sure you'll be able to find a new employer with Chart.js under your belt.

skizm 14y ago

so... if I have this cloned can I still use it?

robmclarty 14y ago

This is exactly why intellectual property systems (as they exist today) hinder, more than help, innovation. Chart.js was a good step forward for web data visualization tools. It deserves to exist.

merinid 14y ago

How could this happen to Chart.js and http://nvd3.org/ http://nvd3.org/ . hopefully chart.js employer will come to his senses just as http://nvd3.org/ http://nvd3.org/ eventually did.

demnior 14y ago

This is really, really sad! I enjoyed it very much! Thanks for your work! What about the used copies out there? Do we need to delete them from our servers aswell?

grey-area 14y ago

Let's not turn into an angry mob please, Internet. - Nick Downie (chart.js author) on twitter just now. This is between Nick and his employer at this point, and trying to enact swift internet revenge on his employer is not going to help Nick, particularly when we've only heard one side of the story, it's hard to draw any meaningful conclusion.

wagnerpinheiro 14y ago
the site is online again.

saintx 14y ago

Perhaps the reason this resonates so strongly is that it's a painful reminder that, after all of the enthusiasm and excitement of living in the information age, we still live in a world where ideas can be bought and sold. Nothing, not even a good idea, is immune to the corrosive influence of money.

eweise 14y ago

It's Back!

paperwork 14y ago

Somewhat related, I released the first version of http://datafa.me http://datafa.me . It is a web app where you can paste data and generate a chart. Not exactly a charting library, but it will certainly evolve to provide some of the same functionality. I actually submitted a 'Show HN' at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5401057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5401057 but it seems to have not picked up.

jessaustin 14y ago

Where's the apology? I'm just seeing general info about chartjs. Maybe there has been a change of heart?

paupino_masano 14y ago
I get the same - may be because of this https://twitter.com/_nnnick/status/314049798502248448 https://twitter.com/_nnnick/status/314049798502248448 :)
alttag 14y ago
I've having the same issue. Has the OP been removed?
napoleond 14y ago
Hooray! It would appear so. An hour ago, Nick was apologising for removing the project, as there was apparently an ownership conflict with his employer.
- joeblau 14y ago
  Thank you for clearing that up. I was wondering what the apology was for as well.
chengiz 14y ago
Yeah exactly. Anyone screenshot the apology?
- hellerbarde 14y ago
  Quote for historical purposes: An apology to open source At midnight on the 18th March 2013 I posted Chart.js online. On the morning of the 19th March, I've had to take it down due to IP concerns with my current employer. It had been my final year university project I had been working on for a couple of months. I had intended it to be an open source project for the web design and development community. Since posting it online, I've been completely overwhelmed and hugely grateful for all the support and kind words. Sadly though, due to concerns from my employer regarding intellectual property and similarities in projects I've worked on, I've been asked to take down the site. My job and livelihood have to be my primary concern. With this in mind, I have closed down the site, and removed my master branch from Github. I'd like to personally apologise for taking this away, I'm just as disappointed as you. Nick

jodi 14y ago

It looks like it is back up.

nnnnnick 14y ago

I'd misunderstood some of the issues I wrote about earlier in regard to the library. It is now back online for good, licensed under MIT. Sorry for all this kerfuffle.

jbrooksuk 14y ago
I don't intend to be rude or anything, but how can you misunderstand your employer asking you to remove the library? They either did or they didn't?

jbrooksuk 14y ago

Nick has re-released Chart.js under an MIT license. https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js#license https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js#license

shared4you 14y ago

It's back online! Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5401828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5401828

antihero 14y ago

Has anyone mirrored the original text? Just looks like the normal site to me.

sunnybunny 14y ago

Looks like it's back up under an MIT license?

UtahDave 14y ago

https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js https://github.com/nnnick/Chart.js and http://www.chartjs.org/ http://www.chartjs.org/ both appear to be back up!

kastephens 14y ago

I give employers/customers a copy of all my pre-existing open-source or private work on a DVD and have them sign a document stating "This code/IP existed before our work agreement and have no claim to any of it, now or in the future, including derivative works." They sign it before I sign any contract of theirs. This can be hard to demand from larger droid-run companies. The more entrepreneurial businesses understand: they want solutions to immediate problems, and don't care about collecting vague legal hammers that are only useful in the future.

JoeAltmaier 14y ago

Strange that all the charts shown are the worthless kind. Time series, pie-style, all are the lowest common denominator of graphic information. No scatterplot, no multivariate analysis of any kind. Yesterday we saw Hans Rosling show the developing world's progress in 30 seconds of brilliant graphics. Today: pie charts.