[yegortimoshenko]

CEO of the company, James Donaldson, wants to boot off Daniel Micay, CTO of Copperhead and the main developer behind CopperheadOS project. Both have 50% shareholder stake. As of now, Daniel Micay can't use Copperhead branding anymore, and is locked out of his own work (because copyright has been assigned to the company), and can only use CopperheadOS under CC-BY-NC-SA.

[craftyguy]

I remember when they picked that shitty CC-BY-NC-SA license, and Micay was defending that decision. Slightly amusing that it turned around to bite him in the ass (though sad at the same time).

[strcat]

Copyright was never assigned to the company so it doesn't own code written outside of work hours.

[_jayy]

[deleted]

[yegortimoshenko]

I'm basing my gross over-simplification off this letter: https://gitlab.com/yegortimoshenko/copperhead-takeover/blob/...

It says quite clearly that you a) believe copyright belongs to the company, b) want him to give all access to infrastructure, c) revoke his access to Copperhead branding.

What exactly have I got wrong or over-simplified?

[geofft]

I don't think "wants to boot" is an accurate conclusion from a, b, and c; someone working in a company (as opposed to someone working on a personal project alone) should assign copyright to the company and share infrastructure / account access with other people in the company.

(Also I think it's super weird for you to use HN as a forum to push this dispute.)

[handbanana]

It's weird to me. Because on the one hand I can see your point of view, on the other hand - if the CTO of a company is withholding access to things from the CEO that's strange. Is that a recent development, or is that just to prevent the CEO taking control? I don't know.

It seems possible one of them is a bad egg. Or perhaps they have just had a very bad falling out. It does appear to be the case that because one guy is a/the coder, everyone is being more sympathetic to him. I haven't chosen a side yet - and I'm still reading through everything.

Hopefully this gets resolved and after it the bad egg (if one exists) leaves the company.

[AdamM12]

This is kinda how building business around tech & IP works. The IP (copyright, patents, etc.) is assigned to the company so when they seek investment the investors know what they are getting. That or the IP is licensed which doesn't appear to be the case. The guy assigning the IP still owns it given he is a 50% shareholder. IMO this bike shredding of an issue is more detrimental to the going concern of the project than anything. The guy wrote the majority of the code it would be moronic for him to get booted which is why I highly doubt the other dude is trying to get rid of him and this is a misunderstanding of how this process works.

[craftyguy]

Why is _jayy allowed to delete his posts after folks respond to him, but the rest of us aren't?

[monocasa]

You can always ask the mods to delete a comment. They care more in cases like this were there's a legal dispute going on.

[mark_edward]

Special treatment for tech CEOs on the social media/PR front of an incubator.