Re:Ask HN: Can I fork my open-source project I created under...
by brudgers on Thursday September 24, 2020 @01:18PM
(#24580980)
If the OP created the entire project, it is possible they chose the MIT license. There's the potential for the employer to claim bad faith. Particularly if the OP was not an agent of the company.
This is licenses and contracts, not theory. It's lawyers and cowboying up.
Re:Ask HN: Can I fork my open-source project I created under...
by WesolyKubeczek on Thursday September 24, 2020 @02:03PM
(#24581502)
Wait, if OP themselves added a MIT license without getting a yes on it from their superior, they are already in hot water.
If it were me, I'd say that the license files should be _authored_ by someone in the company who has a say on such matters. Come on, if it's work for hire, the copyrights by default don't belong to you, so you don't go licensing it left and right, it's your employer's prerogative!
Re:Ask HN: Can I fork my open-source project I created under...
by brudgers on Thursday September 24, 2020 @04:02PM
(#24582946)
It doesn’t matter if the employee acted in good faith. The former employer can still lawyer up and create a problem. And there is a reasonable probability that no one with executive authority signed off on the code repository simply because of the way software development happens and the standards In industry.
To put it another way, the legality matters less than the relationship. A lawyer can communicate with the former employer in a way that mitigates potential problems. Or say it is unlikely to be a problem.
You wrote a piece of code while employed. The rights went automatically to the employer, because work for hire.
The employer releases the code under a permissive license on their Github. To everyone.
You don't see any exceptions in the text of the license. The license says that as long as the license and copyright notices are preserved, any rando in the world can do whatever they please with that code. "Any rando" includes but is not limited to: their competitors, the maniac next block who's out to get them, the police, ICE, Hamas terrorists, maybe even their own mothers-in-law. But they don't care, they released it. Period.
Yet somehow you (and a good half of the commenters) imply that there's maybe some unwritten clause that specifically denies the license grant to you, the freaking author of said code, specifically, even though it's not there in the license text.
The mere existence of such thought, and the number of people who subscribe to it, is sickening me to no end. I loathe their filthy minds.