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It's an awful feeling. It has been done to one of my open source projects before. Here's my thought on why they did it. 1. Exclusive ownership of IP has a lo

by ww520 12y ago

It's an awful feeling. It has been done to one of my open source projects before. Here's my thought on why they did it. 1. Exclusive ownership of IP has a lot of value to the investors. The IP can be licensed out and can be used as a competitive advantage. When the company is sold later, IP is an important part of it. Claiming IP ownership of your project increases their funding appealing to the investors. Otherwise, another group can just easily use your open source project to build a competing company. 2. Claiming ownership of the IP gives the appearance of their development prowess of building the project from scratch. It adds to their technical competency to the investors. In reality what they're really good at is taking credit of other people work. Now what do you want to do? It has been a hurtful experience and you are probably pretty emotional. I would. But time to check emotion at the door and start to play ball. You being the exclusive ownership of IP has tremendous advantage. See 1. Tell the investor you own the IP. You were just being philanthropic to open source it; however, you still own and control the IP. Investors really try to avoid tangled IP so they can sell the company in a clean bundle later. As for the startup, you can sell them a license for a large fee to allow them to close-source their new modification. This essentially let them buy off control of a branching of the project. And investors like it since it gives them control over future IP addition. You can consult for them, but I think it's a bad idea given how these people have behaved unethically. You can tell them to stop claiming ownership of the IP and give attribution, and remind them any future changes they make have to be open source as well. Or if you want to play the long game, you can sit back. Let them develop the company. Later have your lawyer sent them notice that you want to audit all their code to make sure any derivation of the project is properly open sourced.

throwawayvictim 12y ago
Do you mind going into more details? What happened and how did you react?
- sethrin 12y ago
  Why don't you offer your services to the startup as a consultant? Edit: Thanks for the downmod. Let's be clear, this is a legal situation that is ambiguous at best. If the startup has preserved the attribution (which seems to be the case or he wouldn't have been contacted) then it's entirely likely that they have not done anything wrong. These guys just got a bunch of money to work with this software; clearly having the person who wrote it would be a big help to their team. I'm not even suggesting joining said startup, presumably the author has other means of income. Consulting seems like the way to make the best of this situation, assuming that you can get over the idea that someone has "stolen" your code. I readily admit the notion that I could be mistaken; if you feel that I am, please comment instead of downmodding.
zerocrates 12y ago
> remind them any future changes they make have to be open source as well Unlike GPL, the Apache license isn't "copyleft" or "viral," so derivative works and modifications don't have to be Apache-licensed or open sourced at all.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  Apache 2 does have have an attribution clause, though (4.c and 4.d). It seems like this implies that if the startup is removing the attribution link or license text from source code files, they're in violation of the license. (BTW, the author should clarify what exactly the investor means by "claiming the work as their own". Are they claiming they have a right to use the work, which they do? Or are they claiming they are the copyright owners, which they are not? Investors are often non-technical and non-legal, so it's quite possible something has been lost in translation.)
mcherm 12y ago
Your analysis of why they might have this seems insightful, but your advice on what to do doesn't sound quite right to me. In my mind, it all depends on which sort of "open source" license you used: a "viral" one like the GPL or a "free" one like BSD or Apache. You wrote "remind them any future changes they make have to be open source as well" and "have your lawyer sent them notice that you want to audit all their code to make sure any derivation of the project is properly open sourced"; both of these apply only if you used a "viral" style of license. And the original poster didn't... she used the Apache license. By using that license, she already gave this startup (and anyone else) permission to use the code, and to build a whole business on the code, without ever paying the original poster one cent or even giving credit. We (those of use who release under open licenses) do this because on the whole, everyone benefits when we all use open licenses. I would venture to say that there is no developer anywhere who has not GAINED more benefit from the use of open source software than they have given up by releasing things they wrote. But occasionally there is an asshole like (apparently) this startup. And one right that the original poster did NOT give up by using the Apache license is the right to speak honestly. The advice "Tell the investor you own the IP" seems dead on. It may turn out that there was a miscommunication -- that the startup founders were explaining that the features THEY added were theirs and the investor misunderstood and thought they were claiming the underlying code that the OP wrote. If so, sort out the communication mixup and then perhaps you and this startup have a future together. Or perhaps (and this DOES happen) the startup founders were simply lying to investors. In that case, telling the investors about it won't win you any friends, but it might make the world a tiny bit better.

by ww520 12y ago

throwawayvictim 12y ago

Do you mind going into more details? What happened and how did you react?

sethrin 12y ago
Why don't you offer your services to the startup as a consultant? Edit: Thanks for the downmod. Let's be clear, this is a legal situation that is ambiguous at best. If the startup has preserved the attribution (which seems to be the case or he wouldn't have been contacted) then it's entirely likely that they have not done anything wrong. These guys just got a bunch of money to work with this software; clearly having the person who wrote it would be a big help to their team. I'm not even suggesting joining said startup, presumably the author has other means of income. Consulting seems like the way to make the best of this situation, assuming that you can get over the idea that someone has "stolen" your code. I readily admit the notion that I could be mistaken; if you feel that I am, please comment instead of downmodding.

zerocrates 12y ago

> remind them any future changes they make have to be open source as well Unlike GPL, the Apache license isn't "copyleft" or "viral," so derivative works and modifications don't have to be Apache-licensed or open sourced at all.

nostrademons 12y ago
Apache 2 does have have an attribution clause, though (4.c and 4.d). It seems like this implies that if the startup is removing the attribution link or license text from source code files, they're in violation of the license. (BTW, the author should clarify what exactly the investor means by "claiming the work as their own". Are they claiming they have a right to use the work, which they do? Or are they claiming they are the copyright owners, which they are not? Investors are often non-technical and non-legal, so it's quite possible something has been lost in translation.)

mcherm 12y ago

Your analysis of why they might have this seems insightful, but your advice on what to do doesn't sound quite right to me. In my mind, it all depends on which sort of "open source" license you used: a "viral" one like the GPL or a "free" one like BSD or Apache. You wrote "remind them any future changes they make have to be open source as well" and "have your lawyer sent them notice that you want to audit all their code to make sure any derivation of the project is properly open sourced"; both of these apply only if you used a "viral" style of license. And the original poster didn't... she used the Apache license. By using that license, she already gave this startup (and anyone else) permission to use the code, and to build a whole business on the code, without ever paying the original poster one cent or even giving credit. We (those of use who release under open licenses) do this because on the whole, everyone benefits when we all use open licenses. I would venture to say that there is no developer anywhere who has not GAINED more benefit from the use of open source software than they have given up by releasing things they wrote. But occasionally there is an asshole like (apparently) this startup. And one right that the original poster did NOT give up by using the Apache license is the right to speak honestly. The advice "Tell the investor you own the IP" seems dead on. It may turn out that there was a miscommunication -- that the startup founders were explaining that the features THEY added were theirs and the investor misunderstood and thought they were claiming the underlying code that the OP wrote. If so, sort out the communication mixup and then perhaps you and this startup have a future together. Or perhaps (and this DOES happen) the startup founders were simply lying to investors. In that case, telling the investors about it won't win you any friends, but it might make the world a tiny bit better.