17 ms·

Avow-CI Is No More

260 points by campuscodi 13y ago

mjolk 13y ago
This isn't what I have in mind when I think "open-source bullying." This is standard corporate lawyer sending of C&D orders.
- rubiquity 13y ago
  Agreed. This should be renamed to "Employer bullying open source now-former-employee." It's an incredibly crappy situation and the former employee is doing exactly what the Employer wants, not defending themselves due to the expense of doing so.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    It's an incredibly crappy situation and the former employee is doing exactly what the Employer wants, not defending themselves due to the expense of doing so. ... and protecting (rather than naming) the employer, something the employer also wants, out of fear of causing a reputation issue for "bad-mouthing" an ex-- in this case, an objectively deserving ex. We need representation, agents and collective bargaining, like actors and writers in Hollywood. This event just proves that, because we (as tech workers) fail to fight for our own, employers can get away with far too much shit.
tokenrove 13y ago
It's one thing to work on unrelated open source software while working somewhere. It's a much more tenuous situation when you're working on OSS in the same domain as your commercial software, even if the entire technology stack is completely different. Unfortunately it sounds like the employer's claim might have some legs in this case.
- cones688 13y ago
  Also when nearly all mid-sized corps and above have in their employment contract that all knowledge/output etc whether on company time or not, is property of the company.
  - rubiquity 13y ago
    Does that really hold up in court? I suppose it depends on the state you live in. I hope someday a developer stands up to this, wins in court and scares the crap out of employers all across the country from trying the same. We need a Rackspace/NewEgg of Employer Intellectual Property trolls.
    - Argorak 13y ago
      Never sign this unless you have a lawyer, money and breath to invalidate a clause you thought "does not hold up in court".
  - Nursie 13y ago
    Never sign these. They have no right. None at all. It's fair enough to get people to sign something that says they won't leak IP, and even that they won't do other projects that compete with company business. But a catch-all "All your code belongs to us?" No. Way.
    - Xylakant 13y ago
      > They have no right. None at all. Depends on where you are. In germany this is actually enshrined in the Arbeitnehmererfindungsgesetz. The employer has the right, even without the contract clause. Good luck opting out.
      - Nursie 13y ago
        Wow. Remind me never to work in Germany! (It comes up once in a while. I probably wasn't going to anyway, but this is further reason not to)
- rjknight 13y ago
  I would like to know the precise mechanism here. What is the harm that the employer is claiming to experience?
  - frankydp 13y ago
    Most likely they would claim a reduction in competitive advantage if the employer CI was internal.
- Fuxy 13y ago
  I would disagree. What you do in your personal time is none of your employers business he is not paying for that time and he does not own whatever you create in that time. Not unless you signed a ridiculous contract saying something like that which in my opinion should not be enforceable anyway. It's like a construction company saying it owns the house you built for your family just because you happen to work for them and you gained experience by working for them. They certainly didn't supply the raw material which in programming would be time and effort so they shouldn't have any claim on it.
  - deong 13y ago
    > They certainly didn't supply the raw material which in programming would be time and effort so they shouldn't have any claim on it. It's this last point where you might well run into legitimate disagreement. What is the "raw material" for a piece of software? If it's the knowledge that goes into writing it, then arguably the employer did supply that. I can pretty much remember what code I wrote during a day. Not verbatim of course, but if I solved a problem at 10:00 AM, I'll be able to figure it out again at 6:00 PM. What is to prevent me from going to work for a small software company, working on their product during the day, cashing their paychecks, and duplicating my work at night? When I'm done, I just quit and sell my version as a competitor?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - ufmace 13y ago
      If doing that is really practical, I would tend to wonder if the employer has a practical business plan. Shouldn't your employer be adding enough value to your code and work processes that you couldn't make the same product without them? At the job I currently work, our product is for a very specialized domain. I can remember the problems that I've solved, but there's no way I could build or sell a product in the same market without the domain expertise that my employer brings to the table. Maybe your employer is providing capital to fund the salaries of a team of developers to build a product that has no guarantee of any market success, saving you the trouble of risking that kind of money, or convincing somebody else to risk it for you. Maybe you don't like sales, and your employer is going out to potential customers and convincing them to use your product, so you can keep working on the stuff you're really good at. Point is, if you legitimately can't think of some value that your employer adds to your work, maybe you really should take off and do the same thing for yourself.
- hyp0 13y ago
  He's at least safe from IP infringement because it utilized a completely different approach. I guess it's understandable the legal dept would be upset, because this different approach would be hard for them to see. It's also understandable that some pitch-forks might come out. Perhaps a resoluion is to get independent confirmation of his claim that it is a "completely different approach". Of course, the legal dept's concern might be more on stopping a potential competitor/alternative.
  - awda 13y ago
    I'm not sure of that, simply because many employment contracts have a term something like "any employee output of value, even in off hours, is the property of the employer." So even if it was in his spare time, he might not own the IP rights to his creation.
    - hyp0 13y ago
      This may seem like semantics, but I deliberately omitted that case by addressing "IP infringement", and not the contractual issue (of ownership). sigh I guess it's arguable, that the contractual scenario is technically "IP infringement", but I would say it's just a part of it, and not the issue that it turns on. But this argument is not important enough to go into. I could have also addressed the contractual issue, if only in passing, to armour-plate my comment, but it wasn't the point I wanted to make, and thought it would complicate, dilute and confuse it. Also, defensive commenting is not fun. sigh this regularly happens to me online, I wonder if there's any way to prevent it (or accept it, once it happens)? It really bugs me. I may be seeing it from my own point of view too exclusively... Any suggestions?
- f0nd004u 13y ago
  That would imply that they own the ideas that give birth to the code you write, rather than the code itself, right?
- berkut 13y ago
  I would have thought so too (and did), but at my previous employer they took over another company which broadened the scope of the products (VFX software) they offered, which then came into conflict with work I'd been doing in my own time. I ended up signing a specific non-compete and agreeing not to open-source my stuff for a year for the opportunely to work on something I wanted to there, but it turned out that up to that point, the managers' interpretation of the contract that I thought would have prevented working on open-source competitors (i.e. blender or something) meant that they wouldn't have been able or had the right to. Which I found surprising, but I guess wasn't really put to the test. So I guess it varies.
deleted 13y ago
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octo_t 13y ago
This seems less like bullying and more like a company enforcing a 'do not compete' clause in the programmer's contract. Even if its a different stack, they would have had access to things like A/B testing, client feedback and client names if he wanted to try selling his version!
- nraynaud 13y ago
  I don't know how you can create a better mousetrap if you can't use your knowledge of the industry gained on the field to build it.
  - ambrice 13y ago
    So quit your job at MouseTrap Enterprises before you go off and build your better mouse trap. If you have a job as a MouseTrap inventor at MouseTrap Enterprises and you have a great idea for a mouse trap, it does seem kind of sketchy to go off and create your better mouse trap at home on the weekends while you're cashing your MTE checks. That is what they're paying you for..
fredgrott 13y ago
ah..am I missing something?..source is still up in release download section
- rubiquity 13y ago
  The README states that the entire repo will be deleted on April 18th.
  - mcv 13y ago
    Presumably, lots of people will fork it before that time.
    - rubiquity 13y ago
      I wasn't going to out right say that :) I don't want the repo owner to be held accountable for that.
      - zanny 13y ago
        He isn't accountable, he is complying with the C&D. His company can go ahead and try if they think they can censor the entire Internet of his work. Information freedom is a wonderful thing.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
werid 13y ago
The company is AppendTo. "In appendTo, we’ve constructed our business model to encourage our staff to keep an effective and balanced schedule. The definition of work-life balance is unique for each person, but we’ve built our organization with the features and tools that empowers our employees to customize their interaction with appendTo to their needs. This manifests itself many ways, from flex time to giving our engineers time to work on personal growth or open source projects." -- http://appendto.com/company/values/ http://appendto.com/company/values/
- trhway 13y ago
  today's winner in BS bingo. Basically, manager can push you in any way and you'd not have any structure to hold for.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rubiquity 13y ago
  Shame on them. They used to be a front runner in web development tutorials and it seems they have built a company out of that. A quick pro-tip for appendTo: if your company's business model is in building things for developers, don't do scummy things to your developer employees.
  - Twirrim 13y ago
    Shame on them for not wanting an employee to take what they've learned at work (on a monetised product) and release it open source? The tech stack is largely irrelevant, the products are in the exact same domain. I think any company would be rightly pissed off if their employees did that. Can you imagine github, for example, being happy for one of their employees to be working on a complete web front-end / issues tracking system for git, in their spare time and releasing it open source, provided it was written in Java? Or Atlassian being happy for one of their employees writing a complete ticketing system in their spare time, and releasing it open source provided it was written in javascript? Really?
jrochkind1 13y ago
If it was legally released under an open source license, someone can and should grab it before he deletes it, put it somewhere else, and people other than him can certainly legally keep using it or working on it, right? I guess the employer could try cease-and-desisting others and claiming it is their IP and the open source license was not legal.
- staticelf 13y ago
  Yes. At least in my country. That's why I forked the repo and perhaps see if it is useful maybe I'll even commit something. I think they will have a hard time tracking down me and then fight a legal battle overseas. If they were to send me a C&D letter I would simply not comply, answer or do anything. First they have to find my address though. A lot of people already has forked it, the code is available in a ta, maybe even in the history. Because of the seemingly bad communication now it will never go down.
- keithpeter 13y ago
  I was wondering if anyone has simply forked and reissued the code.
romanovcode 13y ago
Open-source bullying is when someone says "your code sucks and you should kill yourself!". This is more of a company enforcing that you do not copy the systems they are doing to minimize competition. Many times when people leave they try to create same product that previous company created.
deleted 13y ago
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hapless 13y ago
This is a sad story, but it could have been seen coming from a mile away: - He worked on a personal project during company time. Edit: Oops. I misread this one as the inverse of what the author was saying. He only worked on it while employed. Still very ugly given the field of his work. - His personal project is directly related to his work. - His personal project conceivably competes with his employer's products. - The company does not have staff in NY or CA, so the author lacks even the minimal limitations on non-competes imposed by state law (http://newappendto.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/100-Remote.png http://newappendto.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1...) All of these things are typically barred by completely reasonable non-competes. As the author, I would absolutely expect to receive a C&D. As his former employer, I would feel (personally) hurt, even betrayed, by this behavior.
- voidlogic 13y ago
  >>He worked on a personal project during company time. Doesn't he claim this is not true? "I did not do so on company time (as proven by the git commit logs), I worked on it in the evenings after I had completed my work for the day."
  - Hovertruck 13y ago
    To be fair, you can work on something and wait until the evening to commit it.
    - Gigablah 13y ago
      You can also modify the commit timestamps. ... which means that there is no way to prove that you worked on something in your personal time, I guess?
  - johnfactorial 13y ago
    Time isn't the only corporate asset he could have utilized to create his competing code. He might have utilized corporate-funded computers, LAN hardware, Internet access/bandwidth, etc. When I worked for a major Internet corporation I signed a contract specifically stating that anything I created using any corporate resources belonged to the company. Thus, when I worked on open source stuff, I did it from home using my own computer on my own time. Did the author sign such a contract, or violate such a contract by using company assets other than business hours? We just don't know.
artellectual 13y ago
Another 'big guy bully small guy' story, there seems to be a lot of these nowadays. Again, the law doesn't protect the small guys at all does it. Shame Really. appendTo on the blacklist of companies to work for, someone should make a site with a collection of companies with these kinds of behaviour, so people are aware. last one I read about was Goldman Sachs.
stefek99 13y ago
Welcome to my world :) 14. Intellectual Property and Related Rights 14.1 All records, documents, papers, databases (including copies and summaries thereof) and other original matter, work or creation (collectively “Creations”) made or acquired by the Employee in the course of the Employment shall, together with all copyright, database rights and design rights both registerable and unregisterable that subsist in all such Creations worldwide, be and at all times remain the absolute property of the Company. 14.2 The Employee hereby irrevocably and unconditionally waives all rights granted by Chapter IV of Part I of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that vest in the Employee (whether before, on or after the date hereof) in connection with the authorship of any copyright works in the course of the Employment with the Company, wherever in the world enforceable, including without limitation the right to be identified as the author of any such works and the right not to have any such works subjected to derogatory treatment. I wonder if I can teach my 2yo daughter alphabet or counting 1-2-3 or would she become property of the company?
- guan 13y ago
  I think the key here is how “in the course of the Employment” should be interpreted. Is it anything that happens during the dates you are employed, or is there a requirement of some connection to the employment?
- lrem 13y ago
  It gets even funnier. The contract of my wife effectively bars her from getting any software developer job in the same country for a year after cessation. Now, this makes you think about enforceability, doesn't it? That's exactly why you should ask prospective employer about their stance on open source/unrelated side projects before signing a contract.
- Rizz 13y ago
  "Course of employment" has a legal definition, it's the things you do because you have to for your work, so the actual work in the office, required education, travel to customers, that sort of stuff.
AustinW 13y ago
I get that this can be generic, and we can discuss this as a open source issue with an employer asserting their rights, but I want to take a more direct approach to the specific situation. Does a company really think they are able to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage from controlling a continuous integration system? What is the business rationale here?
- frankydp 13y ago
  If they do a lot of consulting, they could have heavy third party approval processes or some other consulting workflow structure in the CI that "greatly" improves their customer experience or engagement in the dev process. I am not sure that there would be a burden on the employer to even prove value though.
reuven 13y ago
As is often the case, the problem here could have been avoided if there had been clearer and more open communication. All this guy had to do was go to his employer and say, "Listen, you should know that I'm working on an open-source project that is in the same ballpark as what I'm doing at work. However, there is no shared code, a different architecture, and the two don't even compete against one another. Plus, what I'm doing is open source." If his employer had said, "Yeah, go ahead -- no problem," then there wouldn't have been a problem. If his employer had said, "We're all in favor of open-source contributions and projects, but not when they compete against our core products, from which we make money," then they could have worked out a deal. Or not. But at least it wouldn't have been left up in the air like this. I definitely see a problem with an employee creating an open-source project in the same space as his commercial, day job. While a cease-and-desist order is pretty unpleasant, all they're saying is that he has to stop work on the project. It could have been much worse, and much more expensive. It also seems weird to me that while the former employee is saying he needs to stop, he's letting others fork the code and keep going with it. If I were interested in picking up an open-source project, I'd be hesitant to join one in which there had been explicit legal threats against the original author.
- tptacek 13y ago
  I think that as a descriptive (and not normative) explanation, this is right on the money.
- pvg 13y ago
  This is pretty standardized in many US-based software jobs - the employer gives you an Assignment of Inventions bit of paper in which you agree they own a chunk of your brain, you add additional bits of paper where you and the employer agree to exclude specific things, say, your personal open-source groupon for kittens. It's usually routine and painless.
  - mikeryan 13y ago
    It should be noted that many states, including CA puts limits on what can be covered by this language. Under California law, an employee cannot be required to assign any of his or her rights in an invention he or she develops “entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information” There are exceptions, see the whole article. This case even if in CA may be marred by the "Trade Secrets" restriction. http://www.intellectualpropertylawfirms.com/resources/intellectual-property/patents/is-your-pre-inve http://www.intellectualpropertylawfirms.com/resources/intell...
ChuckMcM 13y ago
If he is based in California then the court systems will put the onus on they company for proving his project infringed. There are three things I've learned to remember in California about moonlighting; Don't work on any project that has the same goals as one of your employers project, get clearance in writing when you start, and keep good notes. Early in my career doing hardware design on my own was 'easy' since I was always employed as a software engineer, and number two (get clearance) really helped me understand both how cool NetApp was and how bogus Google was in what they consider 'their space'. Number three helped early on, keeping a notebook I found was helpful for me to keep from not bringing things from work home into my projects.
nullz 13y ago
Shouldn't we name names in this case? This behaviour should be part of the company's public image. Or does that just greatly increase the legal risk for the author?
- keithpeter 13y ago
  I personally would not do business with or purchase products from a company that decided to threaten an ex-employee in this way. But then, I am not an important person.
FD3SA 13y ago
Another reason to work for an employer as a consultant, so that you control your own IP and time. I'll keep saying this until one day talented programmers get the message. If you're creating open source frameworks, you're talented enough to not have to take any bullshit from employers. Offer them your services, and nothing else. Sadly, the state of health insurance in the US makes this somewhat difficult.
EGreg 13y ago
Could have been worse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov
pawelkomarnicki 13y ago
It's sad, but a rule of thumb is: "never EVER open source anything that is close to your employer", because people don't care how different your open source project is. They see what they monetize on, so they sue. Unless you really do something generic, like "yet another social network for kitten owners having foot fetish" ;-)
cordite 13y ago
Wow, the repository is really gutted out. In the case I needed to do something like this, how would I?
ephidias 13y ago
His former employer is claiming that he worked on it on their time and that he stole code. He denies these claims and even offers some evidence to prove it. So HN says he should have discussed it with them, he probably had a non-compete clause, he probably conferred his intellectual property to his employer in his contract, or that his actions are just in general bad form. BULL - The companies claims are pretty specific and if they are false as he claims then their behaviour is indefensible. I'm shocked that the HN community is in favour of this.
kabdib 13y ago
Depends on your employee agreement, and where you live. Most of the companies I've worked at said that anything related to any of their business was theirs, regardless of the times that I worked on it. Since a large company does a lot of things, you're pretty much down to selling fruit or watercolor paintings of stuffed animals, if that. (I believe that Microsoft has a blanket "No moonlighting" that they want to apply to all jobs; makes those paying hobbies interesting). My current employer doesn't care at all, and gives explicit permission in the employee contract. I can even write stuff that is in their business space, as long as I do it on my own time and equipment. Very enlightened.
staticelf 13y ago
I forked the repo, but I think I will actually see if I can put it up in a non-forked repo so it'll be a tiny bit harder to take down. Also I am starting a private repo as backup on another git service. They will never be able to shut it down now lol. I think the communication of the employer was really bad even if it's not that good to do the same at home as you are doing at work.
briantakita 13y ago
Is this a case to use a personal corporation and submit open source code? To limit liability...
cfqycwz 13y ago
Shouldn't the title of this submission be that on the page, "Avow-CI Is No More?" The submission title was previously highly editorialized, now changed to "Open-source bullying or just the company's right?" but I think that's still pretty slanted and limits the discussion to only two viewpoints.
- dang 13y ago
  Yes, the title was against the rules and we changed it. I didn't see the previous one, but if it was worse it must have been really bad. All: Please don't editorialize titles, especially not to make them more linkbaity.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
markbnj 13y ago
A lot of good comments here, and I think the OP stepped in it a little bit. It should have been a wee bit more obvious that the overlap was likely to cause some concern, so chalk this one up to a professional learning experience, which as others have pointed out could have been a lot more costly. Another factor, imo, is that regardless of how supportive of open source your employer is, human jealousy and possessiveness still comes into play. Nobody is getting as much work done as they would like, and they never will. When a manager hears about an open source project I guarantee you some little corner of his or her brain feels like they want those hours for themselves. I've seen this emotion inadvertently aired on more than one occasion. If the project in question is truly a side project and truly unrelated then the manager's best course is obviously a held tongue. But it if is potentially competitive? Now the reaction has legitimacy, and for that reason alone it's best to steer well clear of anything that might be a conflict.
d_theorist 13y ago
Doesn't it just come down to what's in his contract? Many contracts now do include a clause assigning copyright to all employee code (even that written outside work) to the company. I would never sign such a contract, but it's a perfectly reasonable thing to put in one. In the absence of such an explicit clause I am pretty sure that copyright automatically belongs to the author of the code.
georgeecollins 13y ago
I would have preferred it if he had included “what was practically a cease and desist letter”. It would be easier to judge the case if you knew what his employer was asking him to do in their own words. I have worked in the game industry for a long time and it used to be said that code walks with programmers. The use of open source repositories may end up making this more visible.
filmgirlcw 13y ago
This whole situation is really sad. I don't know if he violated any terms of his contract or not (and I take him at his word that he didn't reuse code), but I certainly understand his position that his family and livelihood are more important than fighting some lawsuit. That said, I think this highlights and important point -- when you work on outside projects that are even tangentially related to your full-time job (and by that, I mean, if you are an engineer, any software you write, not just stuff associated with what you write at work), it's important to get that cleared and approved in your contract. Preferably at the time of hiring. I'm a writer and reporter. I can't make money or even contribute articles for free to a publication that could be considered a competitor -- that's obviously clear. But when I was hired, I was working on a few freelance projects that were not directly related to my main employer. I got it in writing that those projects (including things like podcasts or magazine work) are clear. Every year when I review my contract, I make sure those points remain intact, along with the new names of other projects I work on. But if I were to start another creative project, even one that on the surface didn't intersect or compete with my employer, and I didn't get that cleared (or I didn't already have the ability t do so in my contract), that would absolutely be a problem.
nsfyn55 13y ago
This is why I don't have kids. So I can irresponsibly and irrationally fight the good fight. Sorry for your loss.
lucb1e 13y ago
Not sure it won't get deleted along with the original repos that I forked it from, but at least here is the repos reverted to the last useful commit: https://github.com/lucb1e/avow-ci/ https://github.com/lucb1e/avow-ci/ And if it gets deleted, I have the code locally.
gcb0 13y ago
That's why the easiest way to improve the world by open source is to only commit anonymously. sad, but true.

260 points by campuscodi 13y ago

mjolk 13y ago

This isn't what I have in mind when I think "open-source bullying." This is standard corporate lawyer sending of C&D orders.

rubiquity 13y ago
Agreed. This should be renamed to "Employer bullying open source now-former-employee." It's an incredibly crappy situation and the former employee is doing exactly what the Employer wants, not defending themselves due to the expense of doing so.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  It's an incredibly crappy situation and the former employee is doing exactly what the Employer wants, not defending themselves due to the expense of doing so. ... and protecting (rather than naming) the employer, something the employer also wants, out of fear of causing a reputation issue for "bad-mouthing" an ex-- in this case, an objectively deserving ex. We need representation, agents and collective bargaining, like actors and writers in Hollywood. This event just proves that, because we (as tech workers) fail to fight for our own, employers can get away with far too much shit.

tokenrove 13y ago

It's one thing to work on unrelated open source software while working somewhere. It's a much more tenuous situation when you're working on OSS in the same domain as your commercial software, even if the entire technology stack is completely different. Unfortunately it sounds like the employer's claim might have some legs in this case.

cones688 13y ago
Also when nearly all mid-sized corps and above have in their employment contract that all knowledge/output etc whether on company time or not, is property of the company.
- rubiquity 13y ago
  Does that really hold up in court? I suppose it depends on the state you live in. I hope someday a developer stands up to this, wins in court and scares the crap out of employers all across the country from trying the same. We need a Rackspace/NewEgg of Employer Intellectual Property trolls.
  - Argorak 13y ago
    Never sign this unless you have a lawyer, money and breath to invalidate a clause you thought "does not hold up in court".
- Nursie 13y ago
  Never sign these. They have no right. None at all. It's fair enough to get people to sign something that says they won't leak IP, and even that they won't do other projects that compete with company business. But a catch-all "All your code belongs to us?" No. Way.
  - Xylakant 13y ago
    > They have no right. None at all. Depends on where you are. In germany this is actually enshrined in the Arbeitnehmererfindungsgesetz. The employer has the right, even without the contract clause. Good luck opting out.
    - Nursie 13y ago
      Wow. Remind me never to work in Germany! (It comes up once in a while. I probably wasn't going to anyway, but this is further reason not to)
rjknight 13y ago
I would like to know the precise mechanism here. What is the harm that the employer is claiming to experience?
- frankydp 13y ago
  Most likely they would claim a reduction in competitive advantage if the employer CI was internal.
Fuxy 13y ago
I would disagree. What you do in your personal time is none of your employers business he is not paying for that time and he does not own whatever you create in that time. Not unless you signed a ridiculous contract saying something like that which in my opinion should not be enforceable anyway. It's like a construction company saying it owns the house you built for your family just because you happen to work for them and you gained experience by working for them. They certainly didn't supply the raw material which in programming would be time and effort so they shouldn't have any claim on it.
- deong 13y ago
  > They certainly didn't supply the raw material which in programming would be time and effort so they shouldn't have any claim on it. It's this last point where you might well run into legitimate disagreement. What is the "raw material" for a piece of software? If it's the knowledge that goes into writing it, then arguably the employer did supply that. I can pretty much remember what code I wrote during a day. Not verbatim of course, but if I solved a problem at 10:00 AM, I'll be able to figure it out again at 6:00 PM. What is to prevent me from going to work for a small software company, working on their product during the day, cashing their paychecks, and duplicating my work at night? When I'm done, I just quit and sell my version as a competitor?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - ufmace 13y ago
    If doing that is really practical, I would tend to wonder if the employer has a practical business plan. Shouldn't your employer be adding enough value to your code and work processes that you couldn't make the same product without them? At the job I currently work, our product is for a very specialized domain. I can remember the problems that I've solved, but there's no way I could build or sell a product in the same market without the domain expertise that my employer brings to the table. Maybe your employer is providing capital to fund the salaries of a team of developers to build a product that has no guarantee of any market success, saving you the trouble of risking that kind of money, or convincing somebody else to risk it for you. Maybe you don't like sales, and your employer is going out to potential customers and convincing them to use your product, so you can keep working on the stuff you're really good at. Point is, if you legitimately can't think of some value that your employer adds to your work, maybe you really should take off and do the same thing for yourself.
hyp0 13y ago
He's at least safe from IP infringement because it utilized a completely different approach. I guess it's understandable the legal dept would be upset, because this different approach would be hard for them to see. It's also understandable that some pitch-forks might come out. Perhaps a resoluion is to get independent confirmation of his claim that it is a "completely different approach". Of course, the legal dept's concern might be more on stopping a potential competitor/alternative.
- awda 13y ago
  I'm not sure of that, simply because many employment contracts have a term something like "any employee output of value, even in off hours, is the property of the employer." So even if it was in his spare time, he might not own the IP rights to his creation.
  - hyp0 13y ago
    This may seem like semantics, but I deliberately omitted that case by addressing "IP infringement", and not the contractual issue (of ownership). sigh I guess it's arguable, that the contractual scenario is technically "IP infringement", but I would say it's just a part of it, and not the issue that it turns on. But this argument is not important enough to go into. I could have also addressed the contractual issue, if only in passing, to armour-plate my comment, but it wasn't the point I wanted to make, and thought it would complicate, dilute and confuse it. Also, defensive commenting is not fun. sigh this regularly happens to me online, I wonder if there's any way to prevent it (or accept it, once it happens)? It really bugs me. I may be seeing it from my own point of view too exclusively... Any suggestions?
f0nd004u 13y ago
That would imply that they own the ideas that give birth to the code you write, rather than the code itself, right?
berkut 13y ago
I would have thought so too (and did), but at my previous employer they took over another company which broadened the scope of the products (VFX software) they offered, which then came into conflict with work I'd been doing in my own time. I ended up signing a specific non-compete and agreeing not to open-source my stuff for a year for the opportunely to work on something I wanted to there, but it turned out that up to that point, the managers' interpretation of the contract that I thought would have prevented working on open-source competitors (i.e. blender or something) meant that they wouldn't have been able or had the right to. Which I found surprising, but I guess wasn't really put to the test. So I guess it varies.

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octo_t 13y ago

This seems less like bullying and more like a company enforcing a 'do not compete' clause in the programmer's contract. Even if its a different stack, they would have had access to things like A/B testing, client feedback and client names if he wanted to try selling his version!

nraynaud 13y ago
I don't know how you can create a better mousetrap if you can't use your knowledge of the industry gained on the field to build it.
- ambrice 13y ago
  So quit your job at MouseTrap Enterprises before you go off and build your better mouse trap. If you have a job as a MouseTrap inventor at MouseTrap Enterprises and you have a great idea for a mouse trap, it does seem kind of sketchy to go off and create your better mouse trap at home on the weekends while you're cashing your MTE checks. That is what they're paying you for..

fredgrott 13y ago

ah..am I missing something?..source is still up in release download section

rubiquity 13y ago
The README states that the entire repo will be deleted on April 18th.
- mcv 13y ago
  Presumably, lots of people will fork it before that time.
  - rubiquity 13y ago
    I wasn't going to out right say that :) I don't want the repo owner to be held accountable for that.
    - zanny 13y ago
      He isn't accountable, he is complying with the C&D. His company can go ahead and try if they think they can censor the entire Internet of his work. Information freedom is a wonderful thing.
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werid 13y ago

The company is AppendTo. "In appendTo, we’ve constructed our business model to encourage our staff to keep an effective and balanced schedule. The definition of work-life balance is unique for each person, but we’ve built our organization with the features and tools that empowers our employees to customize their interaction with appendTo to their needs. This manifests itself many ways, from flex time to giving our engineers time to work on personal growth or open source projects." -- http://appendto.com/company/values/ http://appendto.com/company/values/

trhway 13y ago
today's winner in BS bingo. Basically, manager can push you in any way and you'd not have any structure to hold for.
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rubiquity 13y ago
Shame on them. They used to be a front runner in web development tutorials and it seems they have built a company out of that. A quick pro-tip for appendTo: if your company's business model is in building things for developers, don't do scummy things to your developer employees.
- Twirrim 13y ago
  Shame on them for not wanting an employee to take what they've learned at work (on a monetised product) and release it open source? The tech stack is largely irrelevant, the products are in the exact same domain. I think any company would be rightly pissed off if their employees did that. Can you imagine github, for example, being happy for one of their employees to be working on a complete web front-end / issues tracking system for git, in their spare time and releasing it open source, provided it was written in Java? Or Atlassian being happy for one of their employees writing a complete ticketing system in their spare time, and releasing it open source provided it was written in javascript? Really?

jrochkind1 13y ago

If it was legally released under an open source license, someone can and should grab it before he deletes it, put it somewhere else, and people other than him can certainly legally keep using it or working on it, right? I guess the employer could try cease-and-desisting others and claiming it is their IP and the open source license was not legal.

staticelf 13y ago
Yes. At least in my country. That's why I forked the repo and perhaps see if it is useful maybe I'll even commit something. I think they will have a hard time tracking down me and then fight a legal battle overseas. If they were to send me a C&D letter I would simply not comply, answer or do anything. First they have to find my address though. A lot of people already has forked it, the code is available in a ta, maybe even in the history. Because of the seemingly bad communication now it will never go down.
keithpeter 13y ago
I was wondering if anyone has simply forked and reissued the code.

romanovcode 13y ago

Open-source bullying is when someone says "your code sucks and you should kill yourself!". This is more of a company enforcing that you do not copy the systems they are doing to minimize competition. Many times when people leave they try to create same product that previous company created.

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hapless 13y ago

This is a sad story, but it could have been seen coming from a mile away: - He worked on a personal project during company time. Edit: Oops. I misread this one as the inverse of what the author was saying. He only worked on it while employed. Still very ugly given the field of his work. - His personal project is directly related to his work. - His personal project conceivably competes with his employer's products. - The company does not have staff in NY or CA, so the author lacks even the minimal limitations on non-competes imposed by state law (http://newappendto.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/100-Remote.png http://newappendto.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1...) All of these things are typically barred by completely reasonable non-competes. As the author, I would absolutely expect to receive a C&D. As his former employer, I would feel (personally) hurt, even betrayed, by this behavior.

voidlogic 13y ago
>>He worked on a personal project during company time. Doesn't he claim this is not true? "I did not do so on company time (as proven by the git commit logs), I worked on it in the evenings after I had completed my work for the day."
- Hovertruck 13y ago
  To be fair, you can work on something and wait until the evening to commit it.
  - Gigablah 13y ago
    You can also modify the commit timestamps. ... which means that there is no way to prove that you worked on something in your personal time, I guess?
- johnfactorial 13y ago
  Time isn't the only corporate asset he could have utilized to create his competing code. He might have utilized corporate-funded computers, LAN hardware, Internet access/bandwidth, etc. When I worked for a major Internet corporation I signed a contract specifically stating that anything I created using any corporate resources belonged to the company. Thus, when I worked on open source stuff, I did it from home using my own computer on my own time. Did the author sign such a contract, or violate such a contract by using company assets other than business hours? We just don't know.

artellectual 13y ago

Another 'big guy bully small guy' story, there seems to be a lot of these nowadays. Again, the law doesn't protect the small guys at all does it. Shame Really. appendTo on the blacklist of companies to work for, someone should make a site with a collection of companies with these kinds of behaviour, so people are aware. last one I read about was Goldman Sachs.

stefek99 13y ago

Welcome to my world :) 14. Intellectual Property and Related Rights 14.1 All records, documents, papers, databases (including copies and summaries thereof) and other original matter, work or creation (collectively “Creations”) made or acquired by the Employee in the course of the Employment shall, together with all copyright, database rights and design rights both registerable and unregisterable that subsist in all such Creations worldwide, be and at all times remain the absolute property of the Company. 14.2 The Employee hereby irrevocably and unconditionally waives all rights granted by Chapter IV of Part I of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that vest in the Employee (whether before, on or after the date hereof) in connection with the authorship of any copyright works in the course of the Employment with the Company, wherever in the world enforceable, including without limitation the right to be identified as the author of any such works and the right not to have any such works subjected to derogatory treatment. I wonder if I can teach my 2yo daughter alphabet or counting 1-2-3 or would she become property of the company?

guan 13y ago
I think the key here is how “in the course of the Employment” should be interpreted. Is it anything that happens during the dates you are employed, or is there a requirement of some connection to the employment?
lrem 13y ago
It gets even funnier. The contract of my wife effectively bars her from getting any software developer job in the same country for a year after cessation. Now, this makes you think about enforceability, doesn't it? That's exactly why you should ask prospective employer about their stance on open source/unrelated side projects before signing a contract.
Rizz 13y ago
"Course of employment" has a legal definition, it's the things you do because you have to for your work, so the actual work in the office, required education, travel to customers, that sort of stuff.

AustinW 13y ago

I get that this can be generic, and we can discuss this as a open source issue with an employer asserting their rights, but I want to take a more direct approach to the specific situation. Does a company really think they are able to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage from controlling a continuous integration system? What is the business rationale here?

frankydp 13y ago
If they do a lot of consulting, they could have heavy third party approval processes or some other consulting workflow structure in the CI that "greatly" improves their customer experience or engagement in the dev process. I am not sure that there would be a burden on the employer to even prove value though.

reuven 13y ago

As is often the case, the problem here could have been avoided if there had been clearer and more open communication. All this guy had to do was go to his employer and say, "Listen, you should know that I'm working on an open-source project that is in the same ballpark as what I'm doing at work. However, there is no shared code, a different architecture, and the two don't even compete against one another. Plus, what I'm doing is open source." If his employer had said, "Yeah, go ahead -- no problem," then there wouldn't have been a problem. If his employer had said, "We're all in favor of open-source contributions and projects, but not when they compete against our core products, from which we make money," then they could have worked out a deal. Or not. But at least it wouldn't have been left up in the air like this. I definitely see a problem with an employee creating an open-source project in the same space as his commercial, day job. While a cease-and-desist order is pretty unpleasant, all they're saying is that he has to stop work on the project. It could have been much worse, and much more expensive. It also seems weird to me that while the former employee is saying he needs to stop, he's letting others fork the code and keep going with it. If I were interested in picking up an open-source project, I'd be hesitant to join one in which there had been explicit legal threats against the original author.

tptacek 13y ago
I think that as a descriptive (and not normative) explanation, this is right on the money.
pvg 13y ago
This is pretty standardized in many US-based software jobs - the employer gives you an Assignment of Inventions bit of paper in which you agree they own a chunk of your brain, you add additional bits of paper where you and the employer agree to exclude specific things, say, your personal open-source groupon for kittens. It's usually routine and painless.
- mikeryan 13y ago
  It should be noted that many states, including CA puts limits on what can be covered by this language. Under California law, an employee cannot be required to assign any of his or her rights in an invention he or she develops “entirely on his or her own time without using the employer’s equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information” There are exceptions, see the whole article. This case even if in CA may be marred by the "Trade Secrets" restriction. http://www.intellectualpropertylawfirms.com/resources/intellectual-property/patents/is-your-pre-inve http://www.intellectualpropertylawfirms.com/resources/intell...

ChuckMcM 13y ago

If he is based in California then the court systems will put the onus on they company for proving his project infringed. There are three things I've learned to remember in California about moonlighting; Don't work on any project that has the same goals as one of your employers project, get clearance in writing when you start, and keep good notes. Early in my career doing hardware design on my own was 'easy' since I was always employed as a software engineer, and number two (get clearance) really helped me understand both how cool NetApp was and how bogus Google was in what they consider 'their space'. Number three helped early on, keeping a notebook I found was helpful for me to keep from not bringing things from work home into my projects.

nullz 13y ago

Shouldn't we name names in this case? This behaviour should be part of the company's public image. Or does that just greatly increase the legal risk for the author?

keithpeter 13y ago
I personally would not do business with or purchase products from a company that decided to threaten an ex-employee in this way. But then, I am not an important person.

FD3SA 13y ago

Another reason to work for an employer as a consultant, so that you control your own IP and time. I'll keep saying this until one day talented programmers get the message. If you're creating open source frameworks, you're talented enough to not have to take any bullshit from employers. Offer them your services, and nothing else. Sadly, the state of health insurance in the US makes this somewhat difficult.

EGreg 13y ago

Could have been worse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov

pawelkomarnicki 13y ago

It's sad, but a rule of thumb is: "never EVER open source anything that is close to your employer", because people don't care how different your open source project is. They see what they monetize on, so they sue. Unless you really do something generic, like "yet another social network for kitten owners having foot fetish" ;-)

cordite 13y ago

Wow, the repository is really gutted out. In the case I needed to do something like this, how would I?

ephidias 13y ago

His former employer is claiming that he worked on it on their time and that he stole code. He denies these claims and even offers some evidence to prove it. So HN says he should have discussed it with them, he probably had a non-compete clause, he probably conferred his intellectual property to his employer in his contract, or that his actions are just in general bad form. BULL - The companies claims are pretty specific and if they are false as he claims then their behaviour is indefensible. I'm shocked that the HN community is in favour of this.

kabdib 13y ago

Depends on your employee agreement, and where you live. Most of the companies I've worked at said that anything related to any of their business was theirs, regardless of the times that I worked on it. Since a large company does a lot of things, you're pretty much down to selling fruit or watercolor paintings of stuffed animals, if that. (I believe that Microsoft has a blanket "No moonlighting" that they want to apply to all jobs; makes those paying hobbies interesting). My current employer doesn't care at all, and gives explicit permission in the employee contract. I can even write stuff that is in their business space, as long as I do it on my own time and equipment. Very enlightened.

staticelf 13y ago

I forked the repo, but I think I will actually see if I can put it up in a non-forked repo so it'll be a tiny bit harder to take down. Also I am starting a private repo as backup on another git service. They will never be able to shut it down now lol. I think the communication of the employer was really bad even if it's not that good to do the same at home as you are doing at work.

briantakita 13y ago

Is this a case to use a personal corporation and submit open source code? To limit liability...

cfqycwz 13y ago

Shouldn't the title of this submission be that on the page, "Avow-CI Is No More?" The submission title was previously highly editorialized, now changed to "Open-source bullying or just the company's right?" but I think that's still pretty slanted and limits the discussion to only two viewpoints.

dang 13y ago
Yes, the title was against the rules and we changed it. I didn't see the previous one, but if it was worse it must have been really bad. All: Please don't editorialize titles, especially not to make them more linkbaity.

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markbnj 13y ago

A lot of good comments here, and I think the OP stepped in it a little bit. It should have been a wee bit more obvious that the overlap was likely to cause some concern, so chalk this one up to a professional learning experience, which as others have pointed out could have been a lot more costly. Another factor, imo, is that regardless of how supportive of open source your employer is, human jealousy and possessiveness still comes into play. Nobody is getting as much work done as they would like, and they never will. When a manager hears about an open source project I guarantee you some little corner of his or her brain feels like they want those hours for themselves. I've seen this emotion inadvertently aired on more than one occasion. If the project in question is truly a side project and truly unrelated then the manager's best course is obviously a held tongue. But it if is potentially competitive? Now the reaction has legitimacy, and for that reason alone it's best to steer well clear of anything that might be a conflict.

d_theorist 13y ago

Doesn't it just come down to what's in his contract? Many contracts now do include a clause assigning copyright to all employee code (even that written outside work) to the company. I would never sign such a contract, but it's a perfectly reasonable thing to put in one. In the absence of such an explicit clause I am pretty sure that copyright automatically belongs to the author of the code.

georgeecollins 13y ago

I would have preferred it if he had included “what was practically a cease and desist letter”. It would be easier to judge the case if you knew what his employer was asking him to do in their own words. I have worked in the game industry for a long time and it used to be said that code walks with programmers. The use of open source repositories may end up making this more visible.

filmgirlcw 13y ago

This whole situation is really sad. I don't know if he violated any terms of his contract or not (and I take him at his word that he didn't reuse code), but I certainly understand his position that his family and livelihood are more important than fighting some lawsuit. That said, I think this highlights and important point -- when you work on outside projects that are even tangentially related to your full-time job (and by that, I mean, if you are an engineer, any software you write, not just stuff associated with what you write at work), it's important to get that cleared and approved in your contract. Preferably at the time of hiring. I'm a writer and reporter. I can't make money or even contribute articles for free to a publication that could be considered a competitor -- that's obviously clear. But when I was hired, I was working on a few freelance projects that were not directly related to my main employer. I got it in writing that those projects (including things like podcasts or magazine work) are clear. Every year when I review my contract, I make sure those points remain intact, along with the new names of other projects I work on. But if I were to start another creative project, even one that on the surface didn't intersect or compete with my employer, and I didn't get that cleared (or I didn't already have the ability t do so in my contract), that would absolutely be a problem.

nsfyn55 13y ago

This is why I don't have kids. So I can irresponsibly and irrationally fight the good fight. Sorry for your loss.

lucb1e 13y ago

Not sure it won't get deleted along with the original repos that I forked it from, but at least here is the repos reverted to the last useful commit: https://github.com/lucb1e/avow-ci/ https://github.com/lucb1e/avow-ci/ And if it gets deleted, I have the code locally.

gcb0 13y ago

That's why the easiest way to improve the world by open source is to only commit anonymously. sad, but true.