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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.'"
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.
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.
> 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.
Well said. I wonder how often this happens - a developer is hired in the hopes of bringing onboard magical knowledge, but it turns out to be more of an impediment than anything else.
Perhaps there are some domains that work better for this than others - maybe writing drivers, or algorithm-heavy applications. But it seems like most businesses would be better served by writing the code themselves so they understand what it does and how it got to where it is now.
The Army reading list
Because the employee isn't worth nearly as much money as the company is.
This is Orkut saying that HE offered a neutral party to look and Affinity (the one's sueing Google) have refused the offer.
The only one's trying to 'pull a SCO' here is Affinity...
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Did this Orkut guy sign an NDA or is there some sort of specific document that says he promised he wouldn't develop another social service?
It seems like a pretty weak case, and I agree with the parent, if the company should be going after anyone, it's the person who created the code. Google shouldn't be liable for someone ripping off or developing code based on work done for another company's engine unless Google knowingly did it; and I very highly doubt they would. Only of course they know they can't sue the person himself because there isn't any money in it - if nothing else they could be trying to pocket money from other competitors who want Google to lose, just like MS funded SCO.
No. That is one value of closed source. Another value is profit.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
It doesn't say that Google offered a specific neutral expert. I'm sure that either way the results might turn out, that Google wants it over quick. It's trivial to find a disinterested third party to look at code and decide if Google is in the wrong or not. If they are, they can settle, if not, then Affinity lays off.
Why spend hundreds of thousands or millions on lawyers when evidence can be obvious to a CS prof agreeable to both parties or something like that?
Unless it's an attempt to disrupt commerce, of course. While people can use your free service, I'm having difficulty selling mine. If I can make it difficult for you, I can take you out of the marketplace.
-PM
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Just to show how liability works...
My father is a plumber and was working for company X. Company X allowed him to use a company truck to take home (commute directly to jobs). One Saturday morning on his way to work, he had a medical problem (doctors were inconclusive if it was a heart attack, but they know something happened) that caused him to lose conciousness at the wheel. He went through a red light and killed a passenger in another vehicle. Now because he was in a company vehicle, the legal action was against company X rather than my father. Being that he was driving to a job site in the company vehicle, the company was liable. While financially I'm glad that my parents didn't have a direct cost to them (other than the legal side resulting in legal fees, probation, and court/probation cost), I don't believe it was really fair that the company bears the cost (insurance mostly, but still the rates are way up).
Being Orkut is acting as an agent of Google, unfortunately the company is liable. Logically though the blame should fall on the individual, but targeting the company and the individual seems to be the legal approach.
The company owns the copyright on the code your write for them under the legal concept of "works for hire". Unless they failed to pay you for it, they own it. You leaving the building, and letting someone else use it is a copyright violation. The employer you originally wrote it for should be able to successfully sue for copyright violation.
Now, I have plenty of ideas stuck in my head that I've ended up re-implementing in nearly exactly the same way at two different places. I can re-implement my C++ database independent access library in a little under two weeks. I can write the reference counting classes I like to use in a day. I can implement the interface wrapper classes in about 3-4 hours. I can write the socket stream libraries, and the various SSL varients in a day or two. I can write a simple logging scheme in about a day or two. They are written at different times. I can show them as they are constructed, and demonstrate that they are clean room implementations. So I should be in the clear according to what I've read and been advised about the law.
I ended up using the same names, and structuring the code the same way. Some one pointed out I might be breaking the NDA I signed at a former employer. So I ended up re-implementing it all again, this time going out and finding the functionality/API I wanted in publically accessable code (and implementing it from scratch to avoid licensing issues). I documented where each API/functionality idea came from, they we're strewn across several programs. This also showed that the ideas represented "current well known techniques", which no NDA can cover.
You can use exactly the same ideas, and you can implement them at home, and take them into work and let them use them (put in the copyright that you as an individual are the copyright owner, and they are fully licensed to do anything and everything they want with it in royalty free). At least then you'd be legally doing it.
Kirby