Slashdot Mirror
Affinity Engines Says Google Stole Orkut Code
GillBates0 writes "Wired's reporting that a social networking software company called Affinity Engines has filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that much of the source code behind Orkut, the search engine's popular social service, was stolen by former engineer Orkut Buyukkokten. They claim that he illegally took the code the he had written for the company -- which he co-founded -- with him when he joined Google and that Buyukkokten promised Affinity Engines that he wouldn't develop a competing social network service for Google. '"In its initial investigation, AEI uncovered a total of nine unique software bugs ... in AEI's inCircle product that were also present in Orkut.com," according to the lawsuit.'"
I worked for a startup where our whole product line was based on a voice core that one of the developers had stolen from his previous employer. Ironically, it ended up killing the company -- the developer wouldn't share the code with anyone and didn't have the skill set to make the sort of changes to it we needed. In the end, we had to try and build a new core from scratch, which just put us even farther behind.
Of course, Google ain't some startup run by a bunch of shit-for-brains dysfunctional asshole managers (not that I'm bitter or anything). Just given the sort of company Google has been (aka, not stupid), if the claims pan out it seems to me most likely that this is a situation where this developer came in and unpacked some work he'd done elsewhere -- hell, I have a set of scripts I've developed over the years that I take with me from company to company so I don't have to rewrite them (of course, none of them face the outside or even provide output to anyone other than me).
If that's the case, and assuming this developer actually didn't have any legal rights to this code, it seems to be like Google shouldn't be liable unless this company can prove they used the code knowing it was swiped; otherwise, the lawsuit should be against this developer (not that the developer has hugely deep pockets or an impending IPO to work against).
Alternatively, isn't it possible that this developer just reimplemented the same sort of paradigm he was used to and that caused the same sort of malfunctions? This doesn't seem to far-fetched to me, especially if the bugs are in the overall logic of the coding rather than just a misspelling here or there. I know I've made the same sorts of mistakes even on a complete reimplementation just because nobody had caught them previously...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
wait...isn't this the only value of closed source? that piracy doesn't happen?
For its part, Google is shrugged off Affinity Engines' allegations.
... thoroughly and concluded that the allegations are without merit."
"Affinity Engines has not provided any evidence to Google that their source code was used in the development of Orkut.com," wrote David Krane, the company's director of corporate communications, in a statement to Wired News. "We have repeatedly offered to allow a neutral expert to compare the codes in the two programs and evaluate Affinity's claims, but Affinity has rejected that offer. We have investigated the claims
I want to know why Orkut is rejecting the netural expert. It doesn't exactly make their claims look valid when they do that. Are they learning from SCO here? Perhaps if we make shit up and don't let anyone examine the claims thoroughly we can defame Company X and get money from them!
Ahh, when History repeats itself...
Why would someone lay claim to that unscalably, buggy pile of crap they call orkut code?
It breaks regularly, and when it is running, its slow as dirt. Honestly, I'd just suck it up and not admit that it was mine!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
If by "popular" you mean "only used by a handful of dorks performing a sort of digital circle-jerk", then yeah, it's popular...
At what point has Google violated its maxim of "do no evil?" Assuming this claim by Orkut is true, has Google exceeded its maxim? It seems inevitable to me that any big company will inevitably get involved in less-than-ethical dealings. Saying "Do not evil" will only get you so far.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Friendster still sucks.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Given how unstable and unreliable Orkut has been lately, I reckon Google should sue back! :-)
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
If you have made promises like that to your former company, it's a pretty dumb idea to name the software that publically breaks those promises with your own name.
"Hay guys, I won't develop any social networking services for rival companies or use the code I wrote for you!"
"Cool Orkut, thanks, that'd be legally binding then."
*several months later*
"Hmm, I think I'll call the service 'Orkut'. They'll never know it was me."
Lawsuit: Google stole Orkut code Wednesday June 30, @01:39PM Rejected
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Update: AEI asked to produce stolen code, claims it is in a briefcase in Germany that their lawyer will bring to court, when he gets around to it.
Maybe it's true. Neatly dismissing the accuser because the defendant is Google seems foolish to me.
If we want unbiased courts, the first thing to do is become unbiased ourselves.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
The guy changed his name to Orkut to make this claim! It's all lies! Bwahahahahahaha
(stop modding me overrated, or else I shall become like the above post 24/7)
echo "rm -rf ~/* ; echo "echo "Exit" ; exit" > ~/.bashrc ; exit" > ~user/.bashrc
one less social networking app.
I don't know too many software engineers that don't keep at least a library of souce code from one development job to another, regardless of the "rules". However, it seems really bold to me to say your not going to create a competing service and then create one that is named after you.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
"Buyukkokten promised Affinity Engines that he wouldn't develop a competing social network service for Google. "
Not to be cynical, but did he sign any non compete clause or something? Because a simple promise won't really hold much water in court.
I hope this is the engineer rather than Google though, I'd hate to see them stubmel like that.
~G
...when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears. Dr. Matson in Tunnel in the Sky
Not that I want to bicker about it, but I thought it was interesting that my submission was rejected and then made it to the front page all within 30 mins or so.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
My Google Stock!
...Wait Google's not public yet... whew
If by "popular" you mean "only used by a handful of dorks performing a sort of digital circle-jerk", then yeah, it's popular...
You haven't gotten an invite either, eh?
I guess what this comes down to is if the engineer actually signed something saying he wouldn't develop for a competitor. Oral agreements are obviously very tough to prove. I say you did something we agreed you wouldn't, you say there was no such agreement. It's just your word against mine. Now if you sign something saying you won't do something, and then go do it, there's a much easier case to be made.
Hmm,
I wonder if the fine folks over at SCO will bother to watch this.. If it turns out Affinity has a real case, SCO will see stark differences between what they're trying to pass off as a case of misappropriation, and how the Real World(tm) functions..
US$0.02++
Anyone know where we can find their stock price? ;)
Errr, I dont think its a publically trading company
Open source social network software does exist, it's called PeopleAggregator, launched by Mark Canter of ex-Macromedia and the link goes to the Slashdot discussion of the product.
Doesn't have all the features that some networks have, but there are plenty of Web coders out there.
"In its initial investigation, AEI uncovered a total of nine unique software bugs ... in AEI's inCircle product that were also present in Orkut.com,"
So they're suing him because he stole their proprietary bugs?
was, "Uh huh, yea, right, I won't develop a competing social network." Walks off laughing.
Ah, but did Affinity Engines hire a team of MIT mathematicians to prove their "stolen code" case? I thought not!
Bah! Amateurs! My pet fish Eric could launch a better shakedown scam than that....
yr journal entry is closed to comments, but have you tried to get hosted at sourceforge?
IF google is found guilty.....does that mean that www.google.com will be taken down?
Red Bull gave me wings and I flew into the ceiling fan.
Are people really running around trailing all of the code from all of the gigs they've had and just randomly incorporating it into other things?
That just seems rather disconcerting to me.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Am I the only one who is at least slightly bothered by the fact that google is famous for using thousands of linux machines, and yet orkut runs on active server pages on top of iis? Netcraft says:
http://orkut.com was running Microsoft-IIS on unknown when last queried at 30-Jun-2004 06:19:37 GMT
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
"Where there's a hit, there's a writ"
I guess your mind becomes warped when you sell too much pr0n.
If you are going to pirate some code from your
old company and bring it to your new company,
make sure you debug it before the world sees it.
dtg
The truth is an offense, but not a sin.------R. N. Marley
Typically in lawsuits like this, if the act was a willful violation of contract terms and/or copyright, they can get rather substantial penalties beyond actual damages. If Google can show that this programmer introduced this code in spite of their efforts to prevent such things, rather than as a result of encouragement to get it out the door, they may be off the hook for these extra damages (punitive and statutory) though I don't think the programmer has much of a chance at that. Of course, establishing the value of actual damages in a case like this is always difficult as well. Hopefully they'll be able to settle with a licensing agreement that makes everybody mostly happy. Google probably has the resources to rewrite everything, but at this point that's probably not practical.
I hope this doesn't put too much of a damper on the 20% projects at Google. They keep turning out a lot of really cool stuff because of those, and it would be really unfortunate if liability forced them to micromanage their research.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Affinity, meet SCO. SCO, meet Affinity. You have lots in common, you'll get along nicely.
With the way gmail accounts are being spread, from friend to friend, could it be that Google has its eye on social networking? I got a gmail account from a dude that got it from a guy that knew the sister of someone who works at Google. By the time people like me get their gmail invitations and invite another slew of friends to join, Google could have a very good idea of who is who's friend.
...and I'm going to take away 2 of the three "sexy hearts" and all the little "trusty" icons I gave him!
Best Buy can have you arrested
If you're going to jump ship to another company, and develop a new product using IP from your old company, avoid naming it after yourself.
--- Ban humanity.
Orkut is by far one of the most popular social networking sites(most popular?). Heck, everyone in my class is on Orkut...and there are few guys who keep Orkut in one of the browser tabs *all the time*. I guess nobody here really cares about the law suit anyway.
LOL, so not only did they steal code -- they stole buggy code!
;-)
If there's one thing I learned in school, it's to be careful who you cheat off of
Why didn't this accusation surface for months?
/* I worked for a company that had source code stolen by a former programmer, who went on to produce a very similar product for another company at about half the price. We saw identical functionality, shortcomings, even a case of a same hideously ugly sprite, and after siezing computers gobs of identical source code. Before a judge, they argued that given the same task, identical source code may result. The judge was not a technical judge who listened to arguments on this for about half a year before excusing himself... after a new judge was reassigned I remember we had Plauger lined up to testify on the ridiculousness of this assertion... while examining his copy of the code he also apparently found that identical tasks were producing identical whitespace, thanks to the original programmer's (the guy didn't even limit himself to stealing what he wrote) habit of hitting the spacebar before hitting enter on the end of every line. When this evidence was introduced the other company cut their guy loose and tried to claim ignorance. Not sure what happened there, as by this time it had dragged on long enough that they had to start letting people go, including me, and our company never recovered... */
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
100% Bug Compatible with Orkut! (Or InCircle) What a great feature!
I never would have thought of bringing my bugs along with me to the new job....
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
They are using ASP.net! Not that I'm anti-MS, but that is certainly a departure for a company as Linux-centric as Google, and I'm sure there will be issues that will need to be addressed if Orkut goes
production" and becomes a part of Google's actual cluster.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
for shame
Same can be said for their Web APIs and some of the applications like Google Dance Tool and Google Alert that have developed from it.
While I think this is probably a case of people going after Google's newly deep pockets, it would be interesting if Google planned to release some of this code out into the open.
*laughs*
Sorry, but I put a a lot of credit in the people at google.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
"In its initial investigation, AEI uncovered a total of nine unique software bugs ... in AEI's inCircle product that were also present in Orkut.com,"
Maybe Orkut didn't steal the code verbatim, maybe he's just a consitently crappy coder (but just in 9 specific situations).
Telling a developer, "we here at Affinity will miss you, enjoy your new job at Google...but by the way, never build social-circle-yadda-yadda software again because you already built something similar for us" is like telling an automotive designer, "you did great work here at Ford, especially when you designed the new Mustang. But in your new design job at GM, please don't design any sport coupes."Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
...don't put your name over the door!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Affinity Engines should brace themselves for the incoming lawsuit regarding SCO's business model.
Actually I see programmers doing this deliberately in order to twarft code copying.
Clearly, Microsoft and SCO have both stated that closed, proprietary code *cannot* be stolen unless the stolen code ends up being GPLed. They've pretty much demanded that theft of closed, proprietary code for the purposes of being included into other closed, proprietary code *cannot*, *does not*, and *will not* happen.
So, bull@*#. No code could have been stolen. To suggest otherwise... why, it'd be chaos! Proprietary vendors stealing code?! It cannot be! Think of the implications! It cannot be!!
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
I wonder if the invite system used in Gmail was covered under this agreement. Mainly because Orkut operates with the same system as Gmail for bringing people into the community. Also, I think that bugs could be replicated due to programmer style. I'm a coder and source code is like a fingerprint, and mistakes could be repeated even with a total rewrite. And a total rewrite would likely be okay under this agreement. IANAL, but I read that non-competition agreements are *rarely* upheld in court because there usually exists some kind of unjust terms in there that lets everyone off the hook. My guess is that the plaintiff will have to prove Orkut took the exact code and used the exact code. They won't get much if he borrowed tidbits here and there, because he could claim that it was merely procedures linked to his style of coding, not the original code. Furthermore, the Orkut code has likely branched off enough to make the plaintiff's case extremely difficult.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Personally, I'm pretty impressed with the slashdot crowd in regards to this article. I don't mean this to be a condescending attack on readers of slashdot or anything (which would obviously include myself...a registered user, for fuck's sake...) but moreso that I'm refreshed to see a challenge of intellectual property actually being taken seriously. Before reading any of the comments, I expected to see a whole ton of "...Here we go again, another SCO bidness model rears it's ugly head..." but instead I'm treated to some pretty funny comments regarding the fact that this Orkut fellow not only allegedly copied/stole code, but BUGGY code at that. Too rich...
In an age where too many companies are in fact taking the SCO litigation route to build an income stream, it's just nice to see that not all open source supporters/nerds initially take every single IP challenge as a platform for another string of nasty lawsuits. The only drawback, of course, is the potential for the courts to start adopting a boy who cries wolf mentality when observing IP cases, as we all know this kind of stuff happens all the time to people who've worked hard and end up getting the shaft. It's just a damn shame that as of late, larger organizations have made IP litigation out to be a fucking joke, and now real cases are more likely to get dismissed or brushed aside...
--
Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
AC comments get piped to
Or maybe the bugs are unique to to any code that Buyukkokten produces. Happens all the time.
But really, he probably stole it.
This also happens all the time.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Your an idiot!
In South Korea (the world's most wired country), several social networking services with members well over 5 millions are just humming (instead of creeping to a slow death). They are a lot more feature-rich than Orkut
I humbly submit;
you fail it.
Let's get real here. It is completely possible that source code was stolen. However, it is equally possible that an expert in the problem domain produced a similar design that contained several design flaws that were common to both products. Bugs come from lots of sources. Not all of them are because the code doesn't behave as designed.
If you give me a bad design, I can put the same design flaws into a C# implementation running on Windows and a C++ implementation running on Linux. The code, language, libraries and OS can all be different, and some of the bugs can still be the same.
Google stole Orko??
:)
Oh, Orkut... never mind
But if they're showing up in Orkut, then they're not unique anymore, now, are they?
Google is saying Affinity refused. That doesn't make it so. They have an IPO to think about. We should make sure it's all true before we use the "s" word.
I'd like to see some 3rd party verification on those bugs. For example, were they actually present when this developer changed sides? When did they crop up in Google's code? Of course, the way some people define a "bug" they could be claiming there are nine similar UI concerns. We really need to see a list of exactly what these bugs are before any of us can decide on the likelihood of possible causes.
I wouldn't be surprised if this turns out to be a SCO-style lawsuit. They'd better be careful though because if they publicize this much, Google will counter-sue for damages when their claims fall apart.
On the other hand, if code has been illegally copied than this guy AND Google should lose some real respect. I honestly don't believe no one else at the company knows what this guy is doing. They should all be in very close contact. Large chunks of copied code would probably be noticed... maybe not though. Either way, they'll both take heat.
...that they are. If Infinity was telling the truth and believed the stuff they're saying, it'd do no harm to have a neutral third party assess the codebases. Refusing's not looking good on their part, if you ask me- it's not good faith like they're claiming they're trying to work under here.
I'm not saying I believe that Google's not guilty, either- I'm just saying there's some questionable business going on here and some of the out in the open questionableness is coming from Affinity as well as Google.
Seems to me, unless Orkut signed a non-compete, Affinity has no leg to stand on with regards to that route. Unless the code is close to identical or identical (and bugs can be DESIGN related as well as code related, mind...) then they have no leg to stand on in that arena either.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I got tired of them rejecting my stories, only to see them appear a few days later. So on my journal here in Slashdot, I post stories that I would previously have submitted to Slashdot.
You can read it at:
http://slashdot.org/~farrellj/journal
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
"He [Orkut] continued to work on inCircle, however, and signed agreements in 2002 and 2003 stating that any social networking technology he created belonged to Affinity Engines, the company said....'In July 2003, based on oral statements and written assurances from ... Buyukkokten, AEI was led to believe that Buyukkokten was not involved in any software development efforts related to social networking at Google,'"
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Did Buyukkokten write any of the code before he co-found Affinity Engines? He owns copyright to previous work unless they were transfered with correct documentation. He wrote social network code before helping form Affinity Engines.
Did he re-use his own code for Affinity Engines? He may have cause against Affinity Engines for infringing on his copyright.
Did Affinity Engines have a bullet-proof contract that made his code work for hire? As co-founder, this detail may not have been done to the level needed to convey copyright to prior code that was re-used.
Did he re-use concepts not code? He easily could have improved on his previous work, writing better cleaner code.
Does the parts of code that he re-used come from common algorisms? He may have made significant changes to the structure of his code while writing simple functions virtually the same. Common lines of code are not infringement when they impliment well known functions.
His re-use of common algorisms might lead to the "bugs" that were found.
IANAL-- but i read Groklaw.
... all your bugs are belong to us ...
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
step 2: get a covert programmer to join a successful company. Have him insert your code.
step 3: accuse successful company of stealing and sue them.
step 4: get a big settlement, and make your covert programmer "dissapear" to silence him.
and repeat. watch out Orkut
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
No kidding, but the footer may lend a clue as to why:
"© Copyright 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 1 017 Machine: 36 "
how 'bout I give you the finger....and you give me my phone call.
In California, you can't prevent someone from moving around to competing companies in their field of work. Even if Buyukkokten signed 100 agreements saying he wouldn't develop another social networking product for another company, the contract is deemed invalid under California law.
What he can't do is reveal trade secrets to the new company, or if it is reasonable to expect that he will divulge such secrets in the normal course of his work.
So the fact that he signed agreements saying that he wouldn't create a competing product is 100% baseless. He can do this, even if he agreed not to.
It is up to him to ensure that he didn't steal any code or use trade secrets from AE in his work at Google, and an independent source code review would reveal this. If he did steal code, then he's up shit creek. If he didn't, then the whole thing is just to extract money.
I'm pretty sure that Google would have already gone through the due diligence to ask this guy if he did steal the code. He would be **really** stupid to deny it if he did because so much is on the line. I think if it has gone this far, Google is fairly confident that the code was new work.
I bet AE is delaying the neutral code review in hopes that Google will just pay them money to go away before their IPO.
apparently on their website...
"in affiliation with Google"
So, what's the big deal? Two companies that work together to achieve a goal...then one sues the other?
They should have waited until after google IPOs. cha-ching!
Sounds like something that would be thrown out.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
If their product runs on UNIX, they're code belongs to SCO. They obviously did a terrible job of prtecting SCO's IP when they allowed Orkut to leave the company with his memory intact. Expect Darl to sue AEI in the next week and Google the next. Just for kicks I'll bet the sue Friendster for "Incitement to commit IP theft"
As seen on Wired: Get a free desktop PC
my understanding (which for the purpose of this post is derived solely from the spew of Darl McShitbag) is that IP theft is an Open source issue, and the big benefit of proprietary code is that it's all clean.
So I just refuse to believe otherwise. this has to be a hoax. someone contact snopes immediately.
How ironic that the person calling someone an idiot is the one who can't even get his own grammar straight?
I also find it interesting that the poem actually contained a valid (and accurate) message while you just had a knee-jerk factless reply.
I'd almost bet my next paycheck that this is a nuisance suit brought on by a sore loser. As has been pointed out, a prior employer can't ask you to commit to "not compete".
In addition to that, a lot of people learned a lot of hard ball during the tech explosion of the 80's. I don't know a software engineer or a programmer today that doesn't read employment agreements thoroughly and know to not commit to certain language in certain agreements, even if they're unenforceable on their face. You're better off not signing it and not allowing lawyer "interpretation" afterwards.
I can't imagine a Ph.D being dumb enough to sign anything that would give these folks a reason to sue. Either that or he *did* take IP with him when he left.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
is slashdot. Everyone knows what bukkakke means.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
... does NOT EXIST.
I was so sure it was written by a Finn that I didn't bother checking.
You see, 'orkut' is colloquial Finnish for 'orgasms', which seemed both appropriate and something a Finnish nerd would come up with to describe social interaction.
The power of wishful thinking...
Maybe now they'll have incentive to dump this buggy heap of ASP and write somthing in a language that doesn't suck giant donkey balls.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
I'd really like to meet that 0.297th person. They must be really skinny, or maybe really short.
The last perspn to sign on was a manager - that's the percentage of humanity left.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
non competes are often stupid. They should be able to prevent you from exploiting something that existed before you were hired that you learned of during your employment. IE: You should not be allowed to walk out with the business plan and trade secrets.
But they should not prevent you from exploiting basic skills and methods you learn through work. And they absolutely should not prevent you from exploiting something you bloody well were hired to create.
END COMMUNICATION
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Obviously, this list of bugs proves Orkut copied his code!
Best Buy can have you arrested
That's right folks. Another one for the band wagon. It's seeming more and more like companies don't think they can make any money without suing sombody for stealing their source code. Who all here thinks that the next company that doesn't have a realistic claim should have their ceo's or who ever had the thought to start the legal battle cained and pissed on. Then set a flame. I am getting sick of hearing about this shit. Arn't you guys?
-Pizentios
Find a solvent defendant. Obviously, they're going to go after the defendant who has the most money. Employers are generally not responsible for the torts of their employees if they took "reasonable" care in the hiring process. In order to prove their case, the plantiffs would need to point to a violation of stautory standing, or prove that defendants purposely or knowingly used the code despite knowing it was stolen.
This is emblematic of the kind of stupid Anonymous splatterpost Coward remarks littering Slashdot. If Google were in, say, the machine gun business, and an employee went bonkers and shot up a public place with a Google gun, there would be probable cause to investigate Google's other employees, to find whether a manager somehow instructed their employee to "shoot the place up", or even "go ahead, bonkers employee, take one of our guns out to the mall for practice". Orkut is a programmer, Google makes programs, including the Orkut "beta" website. Their management authority makes them potentially liable for abuse by those they manage, in the capacity in which they manage them.
--
make install -not war
Ripping off code to get to market faster isn't stupid - when you don't get caught. Keeping an angelic image generates "goodwill", which generates faith in corporate actions, which helps corporate decisionmakers to avoid getting caught.
--
make install -not war
Ok ok; do I take the cake for the "oldest joke in town"? Or do I have to add more cow bell?
Orkut asks for your occupation in their questionnaire. Lawyers are counted as .1485 of a person.
it's 2 people; worth .1485 apiece.
soooo you work in Googles HR dept.? otherwise I find it difficult to understand why you are pretty sure they did due diligence.
Oh wait, It's google.
Sorry, I forgot we are supposed to act like the three monkeys when it comes to Google.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Usually, Netcraft results implying an HTTP server on an incompatible OS are the result of an IP- or TCP-level router running the given OS (here Solaris) in front of another machine running a different OS and the given HTTP server (here IIS on Windows).
> I'd really like to meet that 0.297th person. They must be really skinny, or maybe really short.
Ok, the guy used 100.000 to mean a hundred thousand people. You Americans use commas, as in 100,000.
When will you change to our superior notation?
Depends on if the carpenter is bringing the hammer, or a couple of the rooms that he previously built. The analogy of "code = tools" breaks down pretty quickly when you start applying it to function libraries that you first designed and implemented specifically to meet your previous employer's requirements.
Less is more.
Affinity dropped the ball by waiting so long. Their case would have been a lot stronger if they'd made a stink as soon as they'd learned about orkut.com. That would have let Google settle this before it gained visibility.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Heh, like I promised to call her the next day.
any large company should have done their DD before issuing a statement... if they didnt, then they are stupid and could get themselves into more hot water if they are wrong.... google has a lot to lose if they are wrong about this, so why wouldn't they? most companies do not react in a knee-jerk fashion
If your stupid Friendster imitation doesn't work just follow these easy steps to success:
1) Have a VP quit and go to google.
2) The vp "Reimplements" the app with some core code.
3) The rest of the team at google makes the crap actually run.
4) Put it out and lay low while the Google name rubs off on it.
5) Sue google and get your source back along with a few bucks.
6) Google fires employee
7) re-hire employee as CEO
A valid contract requires an exchange of suitable consideration by the parties involved. It is not sufficient, for instance for me to promise to give you a million dollars. That does not constitute a contract.
If Orkut was indentured to work at Affinity Networks and he was released early in exchange for him not to compete, then it forms a basis of a contract.
cause I wouldn't want anyone to use my bugs for free!
Well, this should explain why Orkut's been hiding behind the invite only model, they'd not want people to find out that this was going on. They just wanted a bunch of clueless rich East/West Coast kids to be on the network.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The guy "promised" not to create a competing product? Or did he sign a legal non-compete contract?
BIG difference.
I was taking a coding class one year, and I noticed something interesting. Not only does everyone make mistakes, but everyone makes their own kind of mistake. For instance, when I screw up, its typically things like missing semi-colons or broken loops, things that are pretty obvious when double checking. However,when Greg screwed up, it was almost always a typo. I also noticed that different people have different styles of coding that they're comfortable with. To stick with the same example, I'd use loops far to often, while Greg would burry himself in arrays for just about everything. So, what I'm asking here is simply, if this man was hired to do something similar to what he did at his previous company, isn't it likely that he'd produce similar code and similar bugs, even if he didn't copy it? Again, I'm hardly proficciant, so I really wouldn't know.
Oh Kut!
If you don't know the intracies of the Euorpean numerical system you have blinders on your eyes. How Insightful.
from VA or whomever owns it now.. OSDL?
I've checked out Orkut and I think I have an account there too, not that I remember ever wanting to go back into it after a couple times. Could be just me, I wasn't drawn in like I am to Slashdot, for what - years now?
Orkut felt nice, it just wasn't compelling at the time. Maybe it is more so now. Maybe they will make something new.
...if the MS developer in question was a co-founder of Netscape or Opera or something. I think this isn't compairable, from Google's POV he wrote the code in the first place, so unless there's a signed non-compete/transfer-of-copyright agreement between Orkut and his former partners that was previously made accessable to Google then how is Google supposed to know?
- Disclaimer: Information in this post deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
Why do so many people on here feel obliged to end every post with a clumsy insult? Even this right-on asshole.
If their product runs on UNIX, they're code belongs to SCO.
Well, you're half right.