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

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?"

Comments

Re:Lawyer

[beelsebob]

Huh... the poster is asserting that they're distributing his GPLed code as proprietary. That certainly is a violation. But it rests on the fact that it actually is his code to GPL. If he did it while he was at the company, it's theirs. If he did it at home, and then he integrated it into their code without them having a license for it, then they have a pretty good case for saying "either you were screwing the company over or you implicitly licensed this to us".

Re:Lawyer

[TheGratefulNet]

this. 100% this.

most employment contracts let the company OWN YOUR ASS, even outside of work hours and using your own equipment, even doing work not related to the core business of the company.

I had to turn away job offers (in this economy!) due to their 'we own your ass' language.

during the last year or so, I have been working on my own opensource (both hardware and software; its arduino-based) project. I was also interviewing at various networking companies (my background is network management) and while my DIY audio projects have *nothing* at all to do with netmgt, all the contracts the companies would have me sign allow them to own or take over my projects if there is overlap in employment time and my project time!

believe it. I was somewhat sharp about noticing this (I have no background in legal matters but the contract terms seemed fishy to me) and when I mentioned this to the recruiter I was going thru, he agreed and we tried FOR A MONTH to negotiate some contracts that would allow me to work on my DIY audio hw/sw/fw stuff and not have them own it. we tried being a w2 fulltime employee; and we got a 5 page contract. most items were not acceptable to us. we tried being a direct contractor, that had more pages to it! we tried my working for the recruiter and having him be the actual contractor to the employer. neither side could agree on the other's proposed contract terms.

this went on for a month and finally I was advised to just walk away.

and I did. I still have not found work in quite a long time but at least I do have ownership of my (now shipping) hardware and firmware. I released it, its ftp-able, its copyrighted with headers and my name on it, and at least there wasnt' employer 'time overlap' on any part - ANY - of this project.

but you better believe that any contract that an employer attempts me to sign will TRY to take that project away from me if I even mention I'm working on it.

I have been harping a lot, lately, about software guys needing to unionize, like the turn of the century america. if we DID have a large software workers union, we'd at least have someone on our side to bargain for fair contracts.

right now, you and I have zero 'pull' when it comes to crossing out line items or making revisions on contracts for employment. companies both large and small try to steal your work.

be careful, guys! these days, you are smart to have a laywer look over your employment contract. not that you can alter it, but you can either accept it or walk away. sometimes walking away is the best move (sad to say).