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What Do I Do About My Ex-Employer Stealing My Free Code?

Posted by samzenpus on from the get-a-meeting-with-the-bobs dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I recently found out that the company I used to work for is removing all the open source licenses (GPL and MIT) from my work, distributing it as proprietary software and taking all the credit despite the fact that they contributed nothing to it. They are even renaming it something really silly. What should I do?"

13 of 545 comments (clear)

  1. Talk to Tom Hudson by gmhowell · · Score: 5, Informative

    Search out the journal of /. user TomHudson for one person's experience with this (ongoing, last I heard).

    --
    Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    1. Re:Talk to Tom Hudson by adycarter · · Score: 5, Informative

      http://slashdot.org/~tomhudson/journal/

      Sadly I had to resort to Google as slashdot doesnt like searching itself...

      Journal enteries related to this are all a fair bit back in his Journal.

      --
      Witty Comment Here
    2. Re:Talk to Tom Hudson by JackCroww · · Score: 3, Informative

      Prostitution in and of itself is a victimless crime. If two consenting adults decide to exchange money for sex, where is the crime? It is only when prostitution is considered a crime by society do the incentives to commit prosititution create situations where we end up with victims (pimps exploiting runaways, sex-trafficking, etc.) Legalize it and require certification (like plumbers) and suddenly the State will have a legitimate revenue stream.

      --
      "Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me." - Robert A. Heinlein
  2. Lawyer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Get one.

    1. Re:Lawyer by rbrausse · · Score: 5, Informative

      Get one.

      if you are honestly interested in claiming your copyrights this is the best (and arguable only) way to enforce the license. when you are "only" trying to get this known in the community you could describe the issue at the mailing list of gpl violations.

    2. Re:Lawyer by xelah · · Score: 3, Informative

      As for the GPL – yes, you need to get a lawyer there, that is indeed a violation. Of course – if you coded this GPL code on their time, it's their copyright anyway, and they're free to use it any way they see fit.

      Probably but not necessarily; it depends on contracts and jurisdictions. In the UK copyright transfers and exclusive licences can normally only be made in writing and if your employer doesn't get their paperwork sorted out you might find yourself the owner of the code. There would almost certainly be an implied licence to your employer to allow them to use it - you can't happily allow or assists someone in using your code and then complain later you didn't want them to - but those are determined by courts and supposed to be as small as possible as to legitimise the behaviour you allowed. It may be possible to revoke that licence and tell them they can't use it from now on. If it's like that here then I imagine there will be other places in the world where it's true.

      Contracts with employers seem to vary - some claim copyright on everything you do, technically including things like hobby projects or personal correspondence (no idea how enforceable that is, though). Others specify 'in the course of your employment' or somesuch.

      Even if the copyright IS owned by his employer it doesn't mean the GPL licence doesn't exist. The employer wouldn't be breaking it, of course, but they couldn't stop others using it. Not anyone prepared to see a case through to the end, anyway (which is quite possibly nobody). Did his boss agree to licensing them? Did he himself have the power to issue licences on behalf of the company? I'm a director where I work, so any contract I sign on behalf of the company is (almost) automatically legally valid whatever anyone else in the company thinks. AIUI, where I live contracts can be valid if someone who you'd expect to have the power to enter in to them on behalf of their employer has signed them...but if that employee was exceeding his powers it's possible he could be sued by the company. I don't know how it works for licences.

      Very very much lawyer territory. Certainly, at a minimum, do a lot of research on your local laws and how they're enforced territory.

    3. Re:Lawyer by Stellian · · Score: 5, Informative

      if you are honestly interested in claiming your copyrights this is the best (and arguable only) way to enforce the license.

      Assuming you actually own that copyright. 99% of the work contracts out there have a clause where you are ceding all intellectual property to the employer. It's so standard that you should always ask for permission from your employer before writing and releasing open source software - you might not have the right to do so, even if the software is not related to the business of your employer and even if developed in your spare time; the language in my contract is unambiguous about that.

      Assuming that in this case the permission to write and release open source software was implicit, it still does not mean the company has lost it's control of it's intellectual property - they can always dual-license it under a proprietary license. They can't "take back" the already released GPL software, and they can't grab any contribution of 3rd parties to that lineage, but they can chose to develop the original codebase in an entirely closed source fashion - it's theirs.

      So spending 10 minutes to read your contract might save a butt-load of lawyer fees.

    4. Re:Lawyer by Matheus · · Score: 5, Informative

      A company I worked for a while back was purchased shortly after I started working there. The original company had required no NDA/Non-Compete/etc but when the new management came in they distributed new paperwork for all of us to sign (whole company from HR to IT).

      I read over this paperwork and it did exactly as you describe. It gave the company complete ownership over anything we did at work or at home, during work hours or during free time. I told our management that I would be unable to sign such a document and my fellow developers and IT agreed.

      As it is, IANAL, but the company allowed me to enter into negotiations with the chief legal of the purchasing company. We hammered out a new version of the document that preserved our rights outside of the workplace and off hours. It was this revised version that roughly 30% of our company signed (Basically everyone tech related) and is a somewhat proud moment for yours truly. It is worthy of note: Neither company was inherently a technology company. The business cases actively pursued in no way coincided with any interests we had outside of work. When the negotiation process began I noticed the fairly internet form letter nature of the document and allowed that maybe they didn't intend to be so overly broad in their charge of ownership. I was told quite directly by their legal that the intent was clear and intentional.

      Long story short: It is possible to negotiate with a company to preserve your ownership of your own personal pursuits but you must be proactive and generally have leverage (In my case I was holding up a merger with an entire IT/dev department. Your average shmo only has the desire of the company to have them work there). Also expect that the/any company will do whatever they can to own everything you are and do so presume you are screwed and read any documentation you are asked to sign with that intent in mind.

  3. Not so obvious by perpenso · · Score: 5, Informative

    Obvious. Have a lawyer send them a lovely letter telling them to cease and desist. If they do neither... sue the fuckraping bitchpiss out of them. What else?

    It is not obvious. Who owns the copyright? He said he was an employee, so *IF* the code was "work product" he may only have had the right to GPL the code as an agent of the company. Since he is no longer with the company he no longer would have such authority. If the company is the copyright holder they are free to "fork" it and go proprietary. It is not clear if the code is employee work product so nothing is obvious.

  4. Re:Errm... what? by Ecuador · · Score: 4, Informative

    From the author's comments on his blog, he claims the GPL project was on his own time and not owned by the company, but known by his company.

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
  5. Re:Errm... what? by Splab · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, but from the same article and comments, he refers to the project as WE where working on.

    He also writes the last two years of his employment was spent on this project - by his own statements, he at least worked some of the time on company time on this project.

  6. Re:Work produced at home is mine by murdocj · · Score: 5, Informative

    The poster says "I was terminated from a company that I worked day and night for for about 5 years. During the last 2 years of that time, I created a simple web framework and contributed it to open source. " It doesn't sound like it's derivative of GPL, it sounds like he created some code for the company and put GPL on it. In which case the code belongs to the company, and they are free to take it in-house any time they want.

  7. Re:Give up - inappropriate by fnj · · Score: 3, Informative

    You didn't read the article, did you? Author was contracted, not employed; the work in question was done on his own time. Your condemnation is out of line.