Startup Assembly Banks On Paid, Open-Source Style Development

enbody writes A year-old startup, Assembly, is built on the premise of creating products using open-source style development, but structured in a way that you get paid for your contributions. Open-source development is well-known in the Slashdot community, as are a variety of ways to earn a living around open-source, such as support. What is new here is being paid as part of the development, and not just for coding — your contribution might be as project manager or sales. A nice description with video showed up today on the Verge. Of course, the devil is in the details, but they have products so someone in Slashdot land may be interested. (Bias warning: I know one of these guys.)

Comments

Re:How much does it pay?

[BarbaraHudson]

Based on reading their terms of use, etc., in the majority of cases it will be zero.

Searching the whole site, I was unable to find a single example of a successful "assembly." Not good after "a year of operation."

Also, under their Terms, they can sell your project out from under you at any time:

selected App Ideas will further be developed by the Community and may ultimately be commercialized, produced and licensed or sold by Assembly

... and ,,,

THE COMPANY RESERVES THE RIGHT, FOR ANY OR NO REASON, TO .... (IV) SELL OR LICENSE A SOFTWARE PRODUCT, AND/OR ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RELATED THERETO, TO ANY THIRD PARTY.

There goes any illusion that you're in control.

Re:How much does it pay?

[Greyfox]

And if you write useful open source code, you can always negotiate alternate licensing and support terms with any company that might want to use your work without having to release their code back to the community. So really, releasing your copyright to a company for an ambiguous promise of future payment is doubly silly.

Re:Hard Headline to Parse

[martin-boundary]

Why you have difficulty? Easy reading I can do for you, look! Is bank for assembling startups get it? Is open, turned on electricity, and paid job for you lookers of career get it? Is source style development no funny business! Great opportunity! Do not miss ok? Good for you.

Re:Assembla

[znrt]

you got that wrong. searching for a company name is anecdotical. what you want is that people searching for *the stuff* your company provides lands on your site instead of the competitors'. odds are those people don't even know that your company exists in the first place.

Even "Donkey" would be better, could be trademark

[raymorris]

Even if you're going to pick a common word, it is another mistake to pick a word that has a commonly understood meaning specific to that industry. If the had picked any random word, such as Donkey, they could defend a trademark for Donkey programming or Donkey software. Can't quite claim a trademark for assembly programming - assembly programming has been around for decades.

Re:Open?

[BarbaraHudson]

You can bypass the sign-up by using this link, but it's not exactly obvious (bad UI design, or if it's "by design", they hope to collect your email address by making it non-obvious that there's a back door that doesn't require you to join first).

Remember, they want their ~10% "platform costs" (gross, not net revenue, so it comes off the top). So, you create an app, the app store takes 30%, Assembly takes 10%, and they can, as per their terms of service, sell the product out from under you at any time (so, you've worked to create a great product, they make some closed mods, close down your "Assembly", and sell the modded product to a third party. And since you gave them a copyright assignment, there's nothing you can do about it).

If Assembly terminates this Agreement with you in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, any unpaid amounts in your account will be forfeit.

.. and here's the poisoned term:

THE COMPANY RESERVES THE RIGHT, FOR ANY OR NO REASON, TO (I) REFUSE TO POST ANY SUBMITTED SOFTWARE PRODUCT TO THE SITE, (II) TERMINATE THE DEVELOPMENT OR ANY PHASE RELATED TO A SOFTWARE PRODUCT, (III) TERMINATE THE SALE OF ANY SOFTWARE PRODUCT RELATED TO ANY SOFTWARE PRODUCT, OR (IV) SELL OR LICENSE A SOFTWARE PRODUCT, AND/OR ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RELATED THERETO, TO ANY THIRD PARTY.

So they can pull the plug at any time, and since your license with them isn't under the AGPL or CC ...

While we believe that our Members should be able to freely use, modify and distribute the Contributions of other Members, we need a separate license from our Members in order to commercialize Software Products. Accordingly, you hereby grant Assembly a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, fully-paid up, sublicensable (through multiple levels), transferable license under all of your Intellectual Property Rights, to use, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, create derivative works of, distribute, digitally transmit, sell, offer to sell, make, have made, import and otherwise exploit your Member Content, including the right to enforce your Intellectual Property Rights in your Member Content.

What are those "Intellectual Property Rights>"

“Intellectual Property Rights” means all past, present and future rights of the following types, which may exist or be created under the laws of any jurisdiction in the world: (a) rights associated with works of authorship, including exploitation rights, copyrights, moral rights, and mask work rights; (b) trademark, and trade names rights and similar rights; (c) trade secret rights; (d) patent and industrial property rights; (e) other proprietary rights in intellectual property, including Inventions, of every kind and nature; and (f) rights in or relating to registrations, renewals, extensions, combinations, divisions and reissues of, and applications for, any of the rights referred to in clauses (a) through (e) of this sentence.

Wow. What a blanket loophole. Do you really want to give anyone else the rights to anything you've done in the past or may do in the future?

You agree that the Company has the absolute right and permission to use your name, voice, image, likeness, and your applicable Member compensation information, including for example any commissions paid, App Coins earned, and your Stake percentage in a Software Product, as well as representations made by you, in any media (including, without limitation, television, print, radio and the Internet), world-wide, for the purposes of advertising, promoting, reporting and disseminating information about the Company, the Company’s business or a Software Product.

Facebook only reuses crap you post on Facebook. These guys want the right to use anything you do ANYWHERE. That's a real over-reach. You should have some say in how your name, image, and words are used.