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.
"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
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.
If by "only" you mean 613.297 people, then yeah, only that few.
(They gained over 100.000 members in just a week, the server is creeping to a slow death, the ASP.NET code just doesn't seem to cope.)
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
I think we need to be clear in the understanding that there's a potential disconnect between the intended actions of Orkut the programmer (as opposed to the service) and Google the company. It may well be that Google believed they were getting something written for them from scratch, when in fact the programmer was re-using a ridiculous (and legally actionable) amount of his old code. I tend to believe that if any infringement did occur, that this is the story behind it, rather than Google willfully and knowingly infringing.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Just to clear this up for the non-techies who might not see the humor - while features are easy to copy, and therefore aren't really proof of code-copying, similar bugs that wind up in two different products are often a mark of code-copying because noone is intentionally copying the bugs. The likelihood that the error was made in the same way by two independent coders is unlikely (although it has happened before).
Engineering and the Ultimate
/* 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
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.
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.
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...
isn't the Friendster social network bullshit thing over yet?
Nope, looks like the idea has caught on. Take a look at Verizon's new 'are you in yet?' ad campaign for an example. Just hasn't morphed into a real usable form yet. There's a good glimpse of where this might be going in a short story about gift economies in Bruce Sterling's book 'A Fine and Pleasant Future' (title correct?)
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
I've been involved in multiple situations in previous jobs where we contracted for companies who turned out to have extremely dubious codebases, generally provided by external companies, acquired with small acquisitions and so on.
The most notable one was Sonix (then bought by 3Com). Both Sonix and 3Com had definite policies and good practices but they had ended up with code, stripped of headers that came from Phil Karn's KA9Q.
I've also had a case where a companiy had reference code/windows drivers and wouldn't release it to help a Linux driver not because they didnt want Linux drivers but because their own engineers worked from an internal source pool that they thought was very unlikely not to contain large amounts of 'acquired' code.
On the whole it has been the smaller companies that cause the most problem - but not always. A look at Harald Welte's list of people who settled GPL violations contains some very large and reputable computer companies.