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> but if you're willing to go after an employee for something this petty

After reading more closely, it appears both repos are derivative works of pojects that Bumble (aka Badoo) owns. It says so in the README.md. They were also written while the author was employed by Badoo/Bumble.

I don't think this is as clear-cut in favor of the developer as the comments would suggest.




> After reading more closely, it appears both repos are derivative works of pojects that Bumble (aka Badoo) owns. It says so in the README.md.

That is how Open Source is supposed to work, I don't understand why everyone is thinking that this is some kind of huge discovery. Since both the MVICore and MVIKotlin repos are Apache 2.0, Badoo could simply pull in any improvements from MVIKotlin in if they wanted. They could ask their ex-employee if there was any interest in Badoo officially maintaining the project.

There are about ten other paths I could suggest that go with how OSS projects can and should work. None of them involve sending legal notices to your former employees to "transfer" the repos.

All I'm seeing here is that some person at Badoo/Bumble with little knowledge of how OSS works and a lot of lawyer time to throw around has made this move, and lost them a lot of goodwill from potential future employees.


> That is how Open Source is supposed to work

i dont know if you can claim this - OSS is not supposed to be unsanctioned derivative works of commercial software that is private. The company _could_ make it OSS, but an employee cannot, since they do not actually own the rights to make this decision.

Perhaps Bumble was a bit heavy handed, but from the point of view of the law, they are acting within their rights to demand ownership transfer, or removal etc.


> ... commercial software ...

Commercial and OSS are orthogonal.

> ... that is private

It seems to have been released under Apache 2.0: https://github.com/badoo/MVICore/blob/master/LICENSE

> The company _could_ make it OSS

They _did_


>After reading more closely, it appears both repos are derivative works of pojects that Bumble (aka Badoo) owns.

Which Baboo has released under an Apache 2 license from what I can tell. Your comment makes it sound like they were proprietary libraries.


They say they're "inspired by" Badoo libraries. That's not enough to call them derivative works, at least for copyright purposes.


Right! But they were developed while the author was working for Badoo/Bumble.

You can't develop something "inspired by" your day job, while working the day job in parallel, and then claim it isn't related to the day job.


The question seems to be whether it is allowed to create what is effectively a competitor framework (on your own volition and without authorization from your employer, as in the case of MVIKotlin vs MVICore) under your own name (brand), potentially in your free time, but based on designs of an open-source framework managed/developed/maintained by your employer in employees' time.

And even if it is allowed, can your employer claim ownership on the basis that your work is derived from employer/company work.

However, I think this is unprecedented (I can't think of any similar cases regarding reclamation of IP), and we'd have to be actual lawyers to know the answer. I'm curious to see where this case will go.


You can, as long as what you are working on was already by management internally. Otherwise... you're right. Would only bring problems if/when someone is set on making your life hard.


Why would it be a problem if they were related to his day job? Keep in mind the libraries he was inspired by are open-source apache licensed code. Your argument only makes sense if you assume the code was related to proprietary tech and not just a piece of code you find on the internet.


That only works if he wrote them during work hours. If he didn't then why would the company own it? Anything you do off the clock is none of the company's business.


Generally the company has a claim to closely-related work even if done off-hours. You can't e.g. clone your company's product off-hours, or even make a closely-related product without the companty having a valid claim on that IP.


When the company releases that work under an Apache license, they do give explicit permission to everyone to do that.


This is correct, MVIKotlin is based on Badoo's MVICore, and Decompose is a mix of Badoo's RIBs (and zsoltk's Compose-Router which is also transitively a Badoo-owned codebase).


It also appears that the original tweet about Badoo asking for the repositories has since been deleted.

I wonder what the implications are, and what else there will be to know on this case later.




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