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by ranger_danger
669 days ago
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> We hear that the fimware developer had no contract with anyone. I see this occasionally with small companies, usually it's more of a personal request from one of the employees to provide some code on a volunteer basis, perhaps solely because they are passionate about that sort of thing and someone knew that about them. In the end, if the favor is upheld and they provide the code/binary/whatever to the company (who has a contract to deliver such code), then that company's upstream contract is still fulfilled, technically it doesn't matter that the coder was not an employee or contractor. The only real downside I see for this is legal liability for the company if they end up unable to provide for their customer, but that's between the two of them and their contract, the coder is basically not on the hook for any problems. |
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That is not the only legal liability. If EE has a contract with DEFCON saying that they will give DEFCON the firmware and the rights to distribute it. But EE does not have those rights (because they haven't signed a thing with the developer) that can go very wrong for EE.
Basically the developer can sue DEFCON, since they are distributing his code. DEFCON believes they have the rights to do so, because of their contract with EE, but basically EE is giving away something they don't have. That can be a lot worse than just failing to deliver the contracted firmware. In my opinion.