[Znafon]

"Nothing came of it, but I took the code and shoved it into my back pocket for a rainy day.

My idea was to take this code and spruce it up for Uber’s use case."

"My first reaction was to publish the code on Github."

I’m very surprised by this, isn’t the code property of Box, or Uber? The author does not mention their authorisation before releasing it under MIT license.

[bastawhiz]

Author here. The code was originally written outside of work hours. I offered the code to Box and they didn't want it.

If Uber wants a few thousand lines of JavaScript from over half a decade ago that didn't originate with them and that they used for less than a month, they can send me a letter.

[tempaway85751]

... Nothing came of it, but I took the code and shoved it into my back pocket for a rainy day ...

You can't really do this. Depends on your employment contract but code you write for an employer is usually copyright to them

... My first reaction was to publish the code on Github ...

You can't really do that either.

[bastawhiz]

I mean, I asked at the time, and I did it. If either company wants to start a legal fight over a pile of code that neither of them wanted that's old enough to be in elementary school, they know how to reach me.

[lowbloodsugar]

The problem is that you are claiming ownership of this code and by making it available on GitHub under an MIT license you are claiming that you have the right to do so.

If I take that code and make a billion dollar business out of it, Box or Uber could then claim a share of it. That's the kind of things that companies do with the lawyers on retainer.

I then sue you for falsely claiming that you own it. You are particularly fucked because, thanks to this thread, you can't claim that you didn't know.

Even in California the "I wrote it on my own time" doesn't apply to software that relates to an employer's core business. In other places, like Washington State, you could be employed to write TPS reports and write a video game at home, and your employer would own that too.

IANAL but I have paid for advice on this very topic. I suggest you pay one too.

[burner420042]

Long time ago my employer at the time had this in-house deployment system written by a guy that worked there. It worked well and we used it well after he had moved on. He left suddenly and started a company based on the idea. Employer went to sue him and discovered the ‘all your code belongs to us’ form was missing from his permanent file so they didn’t pursue it. That company is called Chef.

[kyleee]

A small victory for the underdog

[geoelectric]

A spreadsheet UI didn’t relate to Box’s core business because Box didn’t sell spreadsheet UIs. Box could have had the author’s hobby project been adopted as a feature but explicitly chose not to. The author clearly owned that bit if they did it on their own resources and own time.

In other words, you can write generally useful components and utilities on your own time, network, and equipment; license them to your employer if everyone agrees; and either way you still own them. You just can’t write something directly related to or competitive with the products or processes that make your employer money.

The spreadsheet formulae and enhancements the author wrote during work hours at Uber, though, no. But even just their direct boss as an agent of their employer saying it’s ok to throw it on GitHub would probably cut them loose, especially since it’d be a derivative work with joint ownership.

All IMO of course, but that’s how I would have seen it in their shoes.

[adastra22]

Well, you are not a lawyer. OP specifically wrote the code to help Box with its business. That's cut and dry within the scope of an employment contract, under California law. This doesn't get a safe harbor exception.

[bastawhiz]

I built a side business that makes five figures of MRR that started while I was at Box and continued through my tenure at Uber. It's still going. If anyone was going to sue anyone about anything, it wouldn't be my shitty spreadsheet library.

[Aeolun]

Excel does not relate to Ubers’ core business.

I’m nearly 100% certain we can look back at this comment in 20 years and find that absolutely nothing happened.

[lowbloodsugar]

The author explains how analyzing and presenting data was worth millions of dollars. The author documents how a senior executive instructed him to write excel. It is clearly their core business. Also, and this comes back to the fantasy/denial/wishful-thinking aspect here, neither I nor the law says core business. That's a word that you added. If you did it as part of your job, then it is, by definition, part of their business.

I am also nearly 100% certain we can look back at this comment in 20 years and find nothing happened, but only because nobody will take this code and make a billion dollar business. If they did, I guarantee there would be a law suit.

[acjohnson55]

Literally today I was in a fireside chat where the speaker told us the IP law department at a previous employer brought in a couple billions in revenue by suing for infringement.

[report-to-trees]

Is there any other industry where workers are so beholden to their employers that they cannot simply create something of their own without fear of legal action?

How did we get to this point as an industry and how do we change this destopia?

[yeahwhatever10]

Can you source the claim about Washington State?

[lowbloodsugar]

Kinda the other way around. California has a law that states such contract clauses are unenforceable. I could show you that. Washington State does not.

[grepfru_it]

Big facts

[wodenokoto]

I’d recommend you update the article on those two points, because because as it is now, the article makes it sound like you stole code from both Box and Uber.

[tempaway85751]

Fair enough. But I'll leave my comment there as general advice for other readers

enjoyed the article, the bit about Excel circular ref linear regression was wild

[benjaminwootton]

I don’t think its relevant that the code is old. The code is owned by the entity that’s paid for it. I also found that party of the essay really surprising.

[delusional]

This seems like a reasonable amount of pragmatism. As with most things in contract law, it's not meaningfully illegal unless some claimant is actually going to enforce it. You give enough context in the post to alert at reader that they should be careful of using it.

Thanks for sharing a cool story.

[migf]

I was also absolutely gob smacked at this. Will they care? Probably not. Are you putting yourself at the absolute mercy of them deciding not to care? Absolutely.

I would have a hard time sleeping... like this would be like being in IT and knowing the backups were bullshit.

[sebzim4500]

Is this a thing in the US? Here, if the code was written of your own volition outside of work hours then it's yours.

[dragonwriter]

“Work hours” are less clear for salaried workers who may or may not take work home: if it was written to solve a problem for the employer, reviewed with other workers at work, but ultimately not further pursued the status seems murky.

The later derivative that was actively used by and updated for the requirements of another employer during the coarse of work seems to more clearly their property as a derivative (but also murky because it is potentially an illegal derivative of the earlier work, if that was owned by the earlier employer.)

[adastra22]

That's not what happened here though. For salaried workers everything you do that is related to your job is owned by your job. That's the default even if your contract doesn't state it. He may not have been directed by his boss to make the code for Box, but he did it with the intent of helping Box's business, as a salaried worker. That makes it Box's property.

But even if you are unconvinced of that, work was clearly done on it on company time at Uber, where it was deployed as part of Uber China's business infrastructure. That work is absolutely owned by Uber (with maybe also some claim by Box). Not owned by OP.

[migf]

It depends on your employment agreement or contract. Most contracts I have seen say that any IP you develop related to what you're doing at work is the employers.

[adastra22]

It only depends on your employment agreement in the other direction. Work done for hire is by default owned by your employer under federal law. For salaried employees it doesn't matter if it is done during working hours.

The employment agreement can give up this right for things not related to the company's core business, and I usually insist on that in my agreements. But that is not the default behavior.

[santoshalper]

That story just doesn't seem plausible. Maybe for Box, but it feels like a stretch, and definitely not for Uber.

[mkii]

The real liability is sharing publicly that you did this. But hey, people have done far worse for attention and fake internet points, right?

[zarzavat]

It’s pointless to worry about being sued by a large corporation. If they want to bankrupt you, they always can, regardless of whether you did anything wrong or not.

We are like ants to them, they can squash us at any time, but most of the time we are too small to worry about.

[xpe]

> If they want to bankrupt you, they always can, regardless of whether you did anything wrong or not.

Misses the point, which is: the likelihood of being sued increases when you break contracts or appear to do so

[thebradbain]

Cool -- if one of the companies wants to issue a takedown request, they're free to make the case for it.

It's funny there's this idea that a company _might_ be potentially injured over code they do not want or know they had being made open source by its actual author, even though many of those companies will gladly use open-source tooling without ever contributing anything back.

Perhaps more soundly, though, in California – where Uber is headquartered – IP/Copyright for code is a huge legal question that the state and federal Supreme Court has no clear answer to. Sure, you obviously can't secretly clone Uber's entire stack, slap a new company logo on it, and start up as a competitor. But if you, as an author, wrote some code for a company under an IP agreement, then no-longer worked at said company, and then later adapted and expanded upon that code (or even started over, with the knowledge of what you learned from others' work): are you, at the originator, not legally allowed to be inspired by your past work? That's not something you, me, or even the company could decide.

[andrewxdiamond]

There are gray areas but I do not think you are in one.

> and then later adapted and expanded upon that code (or even started over, with the knowledge of what you learned from others' work)

These are extremely different scenarios. Starting with a copyrighted material and modifying it is not at all the same as reading material and starting over. The first is violating copyright, the second is a derivative work.

If I read everything correctly, what you describe doing is taking code owned by the first company and modifying it for the second company. That’s not at all a gray area. It’s a copyright violation. You the engineer sign away your rights to the code when you built it for company 1 while employed by them. Their employment contract for-sure states they own any work produced by you during your employment, and you agreed to this.

If the first project was done off of company time, posted publicly on a private account, you might have a claim to the rights.

I know you’ve dug your trench too deeply to change your mind at this point, but anyone reading your comments should know what you did was technically illegal and can get people in legal hot water.

[thebradbain]

I wrote the comment above, though I'm not the author of the code that you appear to think I am. But I am in agreement with him.

> Their employment contract for-sure states they own any work produced by you during your employment, and you agreed to this.

There are many open legal questions as to where this line is drawn. Surely the line falls somewhere between "every character I've ever typed on a keyboard" and "the verbatim code". I personally don't think he's crossed it. IP ownership is much more complex than portrayed in HBO's Silicon Valley. That is my opinion.

Furthermore, when I worked at GitHub (now acquired by Microsoft, so I'm sure things have changed drastically) -- there were very lax IP ownership agreements in the employment contracts around code ownership, because the legal department was worried that if found in any way conflicting with California law it would render the entire IP claims null and void (which does have precedent in California).

The point is we don't know, and I think OP would know better than us if it was disallowed or not.

[ryandrake]

Like many things in this area, the answer is usually "You'll find out if you want to go up against an army of lawyers". The last three companies I worked for all claimed ownership of any IP I create, on or off the job, using company's equipment or using my own equipment. One of them explicitly called it out during the interview: You will have to stop working on open source or publishing side projects when working here. Can they do that? Maybe, probably not. It doesn't matter because I do not plan to bankrupt myself fighting their lawyers.

[lowbloodsugar]

IANAL but I understand the distinction is:

1. I copied this to disk, and I've iterated on it. Derivative work. Company owns it.

2. I created a new original work from scratch, based on my experiencing doing it once or twice before. Independent work. Author owns it.

[fragmede]

> IP ownership is much more complex than portrayed in HBO's Silicon Valley.

IANAL; ut's not quite that simple, but it's in the right general direction. If you need specific advice, talk to an actual lawyer tho.

[kqr]

I agree this seems fairly clearly illegal.

That said, I think OP is morally in the right here, and I wish I had the guts to do similar things.

Sharing code is a good thing. Helping one company innovate using code that another company chose to ignore is also a good thing.

[egwor]

I'm not sure how we weigh up the morals here. If you've done something using a companies resources (laptop, desk, chair etc.) and they're paying you and the contract says they own it I don't see how you can have a moral high ground. Maybe there should be some way to allow these ownership concepts to expire so that society benefits overall but right now we don't have that.

[bastawhiz]

> If you've done something using a companies resources (laptop, desk, chair etc.)

You're making a huge assumption that this is what happened.

[paustint]

At one point in the article there is a photograph of a chair in the uber hallway and a caption indicating that the couch in the picture (or one similar to it) was where most of the work was done for this project.

[thecodedmessage]

When property does not serve its purpose it is no longer morally binding, just legally. And that’s if you convince me proprietary code ownership has any moral standing at all. Sometimes, I follow the law not because it’s particularly the right thing to do but because I don’t want to get in any trouble.

[Aeolun]

Different person, but when I asked if I could publish code as open source (where appropriate), I was told that that’s fine, as long as I don’t associate it with the company in any way (e.g. non-company specific stuff is ok).

[sushiburps]

Well, he just... did

[xwdv]

It’s trivial to tell ChatGPT to rewrite the code base so it not longer resembles the original and then publish as a new thing. So yea, you can.

[xpe]

Trivial to ask for a ChatGPT rewrite. Not trivial to make sure it works.

[HPsquared]

Derived work

[continuitylimit]

So come on man, let’s be honest here. I got serious sacred masterpiece vibes from this story.

This reminds me of some Hindu parable about people who let go of possessions and head out to become ascetics. So there is this wealthy man and wife and the wife is all upset because her brother keeps insinuating that he’s gonna go ascetic and cut loose. The husband tells her to stop her crying and don’t worry about it, he ain’t going to do it. The wife asks him: ‘but how can you be so sure?’ Because, the husband says, this is how you do it, and then and there he rips open his shirt, tells her “you’re my mother” and heads out to the woods.

[cowthulhu]

I want to know what GPT model was used to generate this comment so I can make sure to avoid it

[cpursley]

You won an internet, needed the laugh - thanks.

[bastawhiz]

I just like telling fun stories from a long time ago

[hitekker]

I might be dumb today but I think this parable is incomprehensible. Do you have a link to another version?

[deodar]

It's almost as incomprehensible as a Zen koan. I think the husband is showing the difference between talking and doing by, well, doing it. A radical way to demonstrate it.

[mock-possum]

What an utterly bizarre story. What’s the point of it? Why is the wife upset about her brother? Why is the husband so sure the brother won’t do it? What’s the significance of his little performance at the end? Why is the wife the husband’s mother, what does that have to do with anything, considering the issue is with the wife’s brother? Why don’t we get to see what the wife’s reaction to the husband’s stunt is - is she convinced by his actions, or is she as baffled as i am?

Did I just fall for a chat gpt generated nonsense fable?

What is going on here!

[julianeon]

It's a simple twist ending. The twist is that the wife was worried her brother would become an ascetic - but the person she should have worried about, the person who was planning to and did become an ascetic, was her husband. The performance is his declaration of asceticism, and the "you're my mother" line is a stock part of it, essentially meaning I renounce sexual attraction when said to your (former) partner.

[deodar]

I put one (possibly wrong) interpretation in an earlier comment.

As for the mother part, in many Hindu traditions monks and voluntary celibates are encouraged to see all women the same as their mothers, to remove temptation. Now he's an ascetic ergo his ex-wife is like a mother to him.

The cryptic yet amusing tone is much like a Zen koan, not a Hindu parable.

[plagiarist]

I think the wife is upset because "going ascetic" means cutting off contact. The husband is sure he won't do it because the brother is talking about it instead of doing it, which he demonstrates.

It feels like there should be more to the lesson learned than, "people who have decided will act, people who haven't only talk," but I am not quite grasping it. Maybe the other part is, "and worrying about things you cannot change harms yourself," or something?

[dclowd9901]

That’s really not how it works. Ostensibly by showing it to box, it was written for box, and they would be well within a standard of legal standing to make your life a living hell for taking it elsewhere. You should really be more careful with what you say.

Why would you wontonly open yourself to legal liability? You say “they’re free to come after you” but you really _really_ don’t want that. Ive seen that happen to friends and the stress almost killed them.

[bastawhiz]

You know, you're totally correct that they're well within their right to do... something. But why? What damages could they collect? It would take far less cash to rewrite the library I made from scratch than it would to pay lawyers to write some scary letters. There's no trade secrets. It's not even a novel idea. It would be terribly expensive and embarrassing for either Box or Uber to try to juice this even if they were motivated to. Hell, I'm technically still an active contributor to one of the OSS projects Box uses and maintains—absolutely treacherous ignorance that doesn't make me lose a second of sleep.

[dclowd9901]

It’s not really about trying to figure out why they would do it. Think about pointing a loaded gun at your face. No one else is around and your hands are nowhere near the trigger. Would it be a good idea to do it? Most people would say no, because _why risk it_?

You had no good reason to tell us the origin of this other code, and could just as well have told us you threw it together a while back for shits and giggles. Or said nothing about it at all! But by writing out precisely why (in a very legally damning way) on your website, you’ve completely exposed yourself to litigation. You’re pointing the proverbial loaded gun at your face. And as far as consequences go, facing down a vindictive or irrational former employer in court is pretty close to that metaphor.

[mihaaly]

Depends on the contract but the most I seen stipulate not working hour but context of the work. If it was made by instructions of the company for the company and you got remunerated for that then it is not yours to do whatever you please with it. Better check your contract in details.

Example: "All Intellectual Property Rights with regard to Developed Materials will be exclusively vested in and owned by the Company." (with additional data protection and confidentiality clause protecting company property)

[brtkdotse]

> they can send me a letter.

Why am I reminded of this meme?

https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/what-are-you-gonna-do-sta...

[slim]

I just want to say I am sorry you have to cope with people trying to convince you you are not free for no reason

[gberger]

Sergey Aleynikov (born 1970) is a former Goldman Sachs computer programmer. Between 2009 and 2016, he was prosecuted by NY Federal and State jurisdictions for the same conduct of allegedly copying proprietary computer source code from his employer, Goldman Sachs, before joining a competing firm.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov

[bastawhiz]

"the same conduct" is doing a lot of work here

[treesknees]

“half a decade” is practically yesterday in most codebases.

[sidewndr46]

I believe this kind of story is the kind that gives most legal counsel nightmares.

[pc86]

Especially the brazenness with which the author basically says "if they want to sue me for this verified and admitted IP theft, they can."

Sure, they probably won't. But they might. And if they do, you'll lose immediately. Seems like a pretty high risk no reward scenario.

[sokoloff]

And if you lose immediately, you likely owe damages. Those damages, even if trebled, appear to be $0 here.

[akozak]

Pretty sure that's not how copyright damages work. Don't take legal advice on HN folks.

[concordDance]

What makes you think that's not how it works?

[akozak]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504

[pc86]

Which would be a great solace to someone who just spent $10k or more like 2-3x that responding to a lawsuit. But that's also why I agree the odds of actually getting sued are near-zero.

[Alupis]

Some companies, armed with floors of attorneys and retained outside counsel, do that sort of thing just for the message alone. It costs them next to nothing, relatively, ruins the defendant regardless of outcome, and makes it clear for others to not mess around with IP.

[Aeolun]

Why would you spend any money on a suit you intend to lose?

[IshKebab]

Because you intend to lose it with 0 damages.

[m00x]

I'm sure they could find damages amounting to a large enough amount that OP would regret.

[kopecs]

Except there are statutory damages for copyright infringement.

[concordDance]

Not all rewards are monetary, in this case the reward is thinking his tool might be used by others at some point.

[michael1999]

Uber and the people they hired never struck me as particularly concerned by things like "laws" and "property".

[pavlov]

Oh, you’re missing a few qualifiers. They’re not concerned with laws applied to them, and other people’s property. But in all other cases they’re big believers in law and using it to protect their property.

[PNWChris]

The Levandowski lawsuit comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski#Civil_laws...

---

Edit:

Since I enjoyed OP's story, I thought I should clarify a bit.

I'm speaking broadly of how I remember (from the outside) Uber's fast-and-loose IP attitudes in the 2010s.

I don't think OP did anything of a similar sort. From comments here it sounds like they used some code they built in their free time that a previous employer didn't want.

At Uber it sounds like they asked and were permitted to post their no-longer-needed code to GitHub. It's got its own GH org and everything.

This whole chain is legally risky (I wouldn't do it and would strongly advise others not to do it).

I feel OPs actions are not Ethically Wrong, though. I wouldn't enjoy living in a world where OP gets sued for this, since it sounds like nobody at work wanted the work and it's not giving competitors an advantage. I won't claim the world isn't like that, though.

I really wish I could share OP's attitude and sense of ownership. I built something really cool (entirely in my free time) for a previous employer's hackathon. That code lives on some server they own now, possibly deleted. I deleted my copy after submitting it to the hackathon because I didn't want to risk anything. Company lawyers make just building things for fun feel so risky! It takes the soul out of our work.

[_lvbh]

I find it seriously disgusting that we have given rights to corporations so that they can sue someone over work they did in their own free time.

[kgilpin]

Right. This is so risky. Having to use your personal resources to defend yourself against a lawsuit brought by a large corporation - really sucks.