Adam Hinkley's IP Hindsights 231
spam-it-to-me-baby writes: "Adam Hinkley started out as a bright 17-year-old Australian software hack with a good idea. Now he's 22, broke, and has lost all his intellectual property after being crushed by the multinational software company that first took him into its folds and then dragged him through the courts in an at-times bitter and protracted battle. He has a few words of warning for any other young mind thinking of starting off down the same path." Sobering, but it looks like Adam has been able to shrug off the ruling with admirable ease. Learn from what he says.
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:1)
I know what you are saying but I don't think it is completely so. A person who has had significant wealth, for whatever reason, will be at an advantage over someone who has never had wealth. This may only be because of social connections but it is an important advantage the poor man does not have.
I have some friends whose parents are fairly well off (a million isn't what it used to be!). Naturally, I also have some friends whose parents aren't as well off. I have observed that the well-off discuss the generation of wealth in practical, almost mechanical, terms. The less well-off talk about "hitting the jackpot" or "lucking out".
To leap to a conclusion: the wealthy think about money as the outcome of executing a plan while the poor think about money as something that just happens to you. Children absorb these ideas from their parents and their financial lives are the result.
What you need is a lawyer (Score:1)
Each engagement may have unique issues so you can't have some blanket agreement that encompasses every employment situation. You'll at least have to have the clause reviewed when you change jobs.
Total cost: $300. That's less than some video cards
Re:Thoughts upon Adam Hinkley & his actions (Score:1)
What is your "unique perspective"? How did Hotline Communications misbehave?
Maggard posted in another thread:
Do you have something new to add or you just another "'cause I was told so" syncophant?
Absolutely (Score:1)
There are lessons to be learned from this case, but they are not the ones being promoted by many of the other comments, or the tone of the article ("businesses suck, they always try to screw the little guy", etc..)
The lesson here is simple: don't steal. Adam Hinks stole the property that these businesses rightfully paid for, and has been found guilty of such in a court of law.
Him making these apparently honest businesspeople out to be 'con artists' in his little rant is totally unfair. Adam Hinks is the con-artist.
And he was caught. Good.
In the future, I'm sure he will be much more careful about the contracts he should sign (as we all should be), as well as what he does when the deal 'sours'.
[This is an honest opinion, and well-justified by the facts of the case. It's not flamebait.]
+2 cents (Score:1)
Quote from Salon: "His younger sister had been kidnapped and murdered just a few months before he signed the shareholder agreements. Hinks was, his lawyers have alleged in court, put into a situation that was almost abusive: They describe him as a young boy, far from home, forced to put in grueling hours and pressured into signing a shareholder agreement that he didn't understand. They have also argued that an oral agreement gave Adam Hinkley independent ownership of the AppWarrior code." http://www.salon.com/21st/feature/1999/02/25featu
It's pretty hard to find any of the other stories dealing with this time period in more depth. But I remember other stories talking about semi-questionable tactics by Hotline to get what they wanted.
Re:Insightful, but impractical (Score:1)
It's correct in that anything You write may belong to the employer. Incorrect in that it might not belong to the employer.
Correct answer would be to get it written from the employer, either in employment contract or (actually preferable even if mentioned in contract) for each project.
In my contract there is a specific mention regarding working for other parties. And, for each project, I get an agreement from my boss.
This, however, covers only working, not writing software for any other purpose.
Of course the legalese differs from country to country, but I try to get agreement for whatever I decide to do that might coincide with my employers business. For me it's pretty easy, because we've agreed what's mine and what's theirs, in general terms, and thus specifics are easy to handle.
Ooops, will he be moderated as "flamebait"???? (Score:1)
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Re:Young enough to start again (Score:1)
Not to mention the scammers that come out of the woodwork and attack these people (who since they were playing the lotto, probably weren't the brightest bulbs to begin with). After they get into debt, they are often forced to sell the remaining prize money at pennies on the dollar to someone.
California switched to a pay-up-front system (where you get less money), and most winners take it. It's supposedly been pretty successful at preventing the total bankrupcy explosion that most lottery winners face.
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Re:More Info... (Score:1)
(The biggest 'media' app hotline site for example, there was a slashdot article on it, but the search function here sucks).
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Re:To summarize on employment (Score:1)
Shift consist of setup (15-45mins), waiting, and cleanup. For instance, a lunch shift. You get there at 10:45. Setup for 11:00 lunch, and get off work at about 3:00-4:00.
So, you work from 10:45 - 4:00. You miss most of the road traffic. You get the whole rest of the time off.
I'd say that, other than the pay, it's a great job if time is what you want most.
Pan
Re:To summarize on employment (Score:1)
I recommend working at a car wash - there's absolutely no thought involved in the work (well, unless you're learning to drive a manual transmission on the customers' cars :) and you can get really buff (for most readers, this will be the most buff you'll ever be).
Of course, most of your deep thoughts involve how you'll never trash your car as much as the customers have, but you could probably think about other stuff too.
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:1)
What libertarians? (Score:1)
No, there are no libertarians here... Just people that hate corperations more than anything (including the government).
Well golly, I say! (Score:1)
Oh poor old would-be-capitalist. Only 22 and already he's bereft of all his precious intellectual property.
Let this be a lesson to the rest of you: GPL it and this won't happen.
Re:We need a unified front (Score:1)
So the situation looks pretty simple: make sure that they're not the ones who hold all the cards. Don't go in pleading "please suh, could I have this job". Have an attitude. They may not hire you, but you'll leave the interview remembering that you didn't want to work there anyway.
(this strategy requires obviously that you have a couple of months' rent and food worth of money in your bank account and that you compensate for surprises.)
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:1)
Of course, you'll have to remember that ninety percent of everything is crud. That includes the people, so 90% of everyone are foolish.
Re:writting software.... (Score:1)
The issue is, are they paying you to do something? If they are, it's theirs. If they arent, they have no claim. It usually hard to claim that an invention related to your job was not thought out or inspired during work. But those 25000 lines of code at home are another matter.
Re:Better links ?? (Score:1)
You want me to startup a company with you; and you want me to allow you, whenever you feel like it, to walk away with the IP used to start the company and expect me to NOT sue?
Get Real.
If he had done this because they wouldn't let him put banner ads in NOBODY on Slashdot would be agreeing with him.
If he wanted to control it he should have made sure he had controlling interest in the company at all times.
Re:Better links ?? (Score:1)
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
Re:Two Alternatives (Score:1)
background info link. (Score:1)
Aussie youth bailed on Toronto partners. [findarticles.com]
It looks like Hotline didn't have much choice but to sue for the IP. At any rate it is a particularly strange story.
What is said does count! (Score:2)
have a solution.
Some years ago I was working for a company that would ask you to work 12 hours but only report 8.
"It was for the company." They would have you work 12 hour shifts and from time to time give you a call
and say "We can not get any one to relieve you. Do you mind working the next shift?" say no and you are out, accept
and keep your job.
I began carrying a micro cassette recorder on me with a tie pin mike from radio shack. I would set it to voice activate
and record any conversation with my employer. When I did loose the job they gave me all my pay and a nice
severance package. I began carrying it to interviews. It really came in handy when I would interview, get the job, note
something was not in the contract and play the promise of the HR person. Needless to say it became a great tool. It
seems that here a recording is a verbal contract and very binding!
One word. (Score:2)
Blackmail. Work at any corporation and you will immediately find out that they do something terribly illegal. In fact, if you're in IT, you're definitely going to find out. You manage their information. You see everything. You know all. When the time comes you can truly make them pay.
Of course, plenty of companies are 100% law biding, but chances are if they'd ever want to sue you when they first considered you a friend, they'd have just the right kind of greedy mentality to do plenty of illegal stuff.
Re:So this is why Hotline started sucking... (Score:2)
As far as I understand it, there are two components to a Hotline system. Two different software programs. They even go so far as to call one the "Hotline client," and then they call the other the "Hotline server." Does this not sound more like... dare I say it, in this we're-way-past-all-that 21st Century... the Client-Server model??
It seems to me that the only reason they refer to Hotline as a peer-to-peer app is that peer-to-peer gets a lot of snazzy media attention these days, and since Hotline is now owned by some kind of corporation, they like that sort of thing. That, and it seemed like the upcoming Hotline2 was going to more resemble a true peer-to-peer app.
I'm actually surprised Microsoft hasn't started calling itself the "world leader in peer-to-peer file sharing," or something of the kind. Cuz after all, peer-to-peer is built right in to every Windows box.
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Re:+2 cents (Score:2)
It's sad what happened in Adam Hinkleys life; however when it's all said & done he's responsible for his own decisions. To date he's refused any & all of that responsibility and indeed seems incapable of recognizing cause & effect, ownership & obligation.
It's all about Adam, all about what he wants, all about how he believes things should be run, never anything about anyone else.
Frankly while he may be a good coder he seems a tremendously (almost scarily) immature person and certainly not someone I can ever imagine wanting to be involved with professionally. Indeed I expect he has little to fear from investors & other such folks, he's clearly poison.
Re:+2 cents (Score:2)
However we only have Adam Hinkley's word that HE was under these conditions.
I'm asked to believe this bright young man, 17 years old, with a family & lawyers & the skills to found a company is now unable to speak in his own defense.
At no point does he express concerns, speak to his father (who was closely involved in the business,) raise issues with his lawyers. He was online every night speaking with his pals, many of whom had been involved in Hotline themselves & were passioniate supporters yet he doesn't run reality-checks past them, express his concerns, ask for advice or assistance.
Instead he signs a set of contracts *very* advantagous to him and we don't hear anything negative until he wants to set terms.
It all sounds very self-serving to me.
It could be true but neither you nor I actually know. Clearly he wasn't able to convince authorities in Canada (where they're very concerned about this sort of thing) nor Australia (I have no idea - I live in Canada & the US, not Australia.)
You are so sure he's the victim & everyone else was a crook & a swindler. From what I've seen Adam Hinkley has presented no compelling evidence of this, just his childish accusations & the sycophantic repeating by his fans.
To me it looks the opposite - a young man who got greedy & attempted to walk off with stolen goods, twice.
I could be completely off-base. Indeed I openly acknowledge I likely am in many ways. However yours & others repeating how Adam Hinkley was screwed doesn't make it so & until something more substantive is presented your assertions don't mean much, however passionately repeated.
In the meantime it looks like it is all-moot - the legal systems of two countries have investigated & made their determinations: Adam Hinkley is responsible for the contracts he signed & thus was found in fault.
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:2)
Indeed, I need several *billion* dollars.
Because, dammit, I need to give it away. I think I could do a bang-up job of helping a *lot* of people if I had a lot of money.
(Sure, I can help even without the money -- but the money would mean I could do so much more!)
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Re:Insightful, but impractical (Score:2)
If you're writing software purely for the love of doing so, just release it anonymously as public domain... in later years, after getting a better contract or deciding to strike out on your own, you can just pretend to discover it on the internet and use it in GPL/BSD/proprietary software with your name on it.
Re:Shruging off my ass (Score:2)
Wow, this sounds exactly like me about two years ago ... oh, right, right before I got screwed over by the nice employer I was working for "on the side" as I finished college.
Not to sound too bitter or paranoid, but the bottom line is that unless you have it in writing, odds are they will try to screw you over. And even if the people you trust don't screw you over, what happens if the company changes hands or hires new management? The new owners have no obligations to you that aren't in writing, and the old owners can (and probably will) take a very hands-off approach to your problems.
I loved my workplace, I was working with friends who trusted the company, too, etc, etc. I left for 8 weeks to write my thesis, and everyone at the company knew this and told me (but didn't write down and sign anything) it was ok; when I got back I found that I had all but lost my job (they were about a week away from firing me), had lost my stock options -- which were verbal agreement only -- and got paid $500 to finish my project, basically as a going away payoff.
Side note: a family member who is an accountant said the $500 was suspicious; for amounts $600 or higher (at least in my state) the employer has various obligations to the contractor. Less than that, it's just money thrown to the wind, essentially.
Bottom line: I was naive and stupid enough not to get it in writing, and got screwed over. When money is involved (especially now that the dot-com economy is going through a harsh Darwinian stage) you're just another number in the end. Are you 100% sure that your bottom line is that important to the employer?
-jdm
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:2)
Lisa introduced him to recycling things to get change. Before long, he'd opened up a recycling plant and was again the richest man in town. Of course, he also turned sinister and devised a contraption to "sweep the sea clean" by catching fish in a huge net of six pack rings.
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Re:So this is why Hotline started sucking... (Score:2)
If Hotline isn't "peer to peer", then nothing is, including Napster and 'Doze's file sharing.
P2P isn't the opposite of client-server. It's more about dynamic servers that come and go, such that no static database can keep track of them.
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Re:We need a unified front (Score:2)
Isn't that the whole point? Weed out the bad employers. If they aren't open to negotiation, then they're not people.
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Re:Young enough to start again (Score:2)
If you need any help for spending a few billions on *good* things, send me a mail!
/max
I'm a little confused. (Score:2)
He wrote Hotline, he worked for HCL, who he assigned all rights of hotline to, and then he left the company.....
and now he has no rights to Hotline, but the company does...
Re:We need a unified front (Score:2)
Take as one example (not to takes sides on this, but just to point out the kinds of things that would certainly happen in our industry), the 60 minutes story of one doctor who was removed from medical practice by the AMA....
His patients were the sort who suffered chronic, debilitating pain the likes of which you and I are not likely to be able to empathize with. He found that perscribing large doses of narcotics (e.g. opiates and the like) helped these people live normal lives, and according to his results and all of the research available, such patients were seemingly immune to the addictive properties that the recreational users of these drugs were subject to. Apparently, the feedback loop that causes addiction is somehow interfered with by the using the drugs to relieve chronic pain. Who knew.
Instead of holding this man on a pedistal for finding a way to let his patients live relatively normal lives, the doctor had his license revoked and at least one of his patients, unable to face the debilitating pain again, killed themselves.
No, paperwork standardization is one thing, but I don't want or need ethical oversight.
Re:We need a unified front (Score:2)
Unions have a whole lot of baggage that I don't think this industry needs. A stripped-down sort of union might be nice. The problem is, I don't want to be constrained to do business the way everyone else does, I just want to get some paperwork standardized so that companies don't get spooked every time I hand back their IP agreements with loads of red-marker.
If you want to call the organization that produces that document a union, fine, but I have no interest in standardized pay scales; time off; benefits; etc, because I'm in a position trade on my skillset for what I want. I'd have to step down in all of those areas in order to get standardization across the industry. Clearly not a win.
Re:We need a unified front (Score:2)
Re:The Hotline Saga, revised (Score:2)
Re:+2 cents (Score:2)
were you underage? were you forced to work long hours in isolated circumstances? were you separated from everybody you knew? were you pressured by your bosses? were you made promises? were you duped adn swindled? If so then yes you could take some leagal action (only if you are rich though in America only the rich win in court).
Paul Hinkly (Score:2)
Defense of IP? (Score:2)
No matter, I think that this kid made the same mistake that most large corporations make w.r.t. IP. He assumed that he could own an idea, and at the same time tell someone about it. The fact is that you get to do one or the other. Once an idea is shared, you can't ever take it back. In fact, the benefactor of this sharing can't give it back no matter how hard he tries.
I think that if Adam Hinkley really wanted to keep the code that he worked on, while employed by someone else, he should have released it under GPL. But because he tried to keep ownership of it w/out the resources to defend that ownership, he lost it completely.
Re:We need a unified front (Score:2)
This may be changing given the recent economic situation, but last I heard there were still more tech jobs open than qualified people to fill them. As a prospective employee, you do have leverage; just as the company can tell you to go away, you can seek employment at another company with more reasonable policies. Adopting the attitude that you have no negotiating power is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
TIme metaphors (Score:2)
That accurately describes the standard Western European time metaphor. The model that we use is that we're standing on a time line, walking forward as time elapses. That's why we say "it was a long way ahead" referring to a span of time, or we are "forward looking" if we think about the future and "backward looking" if we think about the past, and it's why we "face the future".
If you think about it, the time metaphor that we use doesn't make sense. You can't see into the future, but you can see into the past. That's why some cultures (from memory, and I could be wrong about this, Chinese and some Australian Aboriginal cultures do this) have as their metaphor that you're walking along a time line backwards. Presumably in their buzzword-laden corporate cultures, if they have them, someone who looks to the future is "backward-looking". :-)
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:2)
What a nasty unpleasant and largely untrue saying that is.
And what an unthinking reaction that is. One only has to look at the large number of lottery winners who end up deeply in debt after the money is gone, and the large number of entrepreneurs who bounce back after losing everything, to know that the saying is, in fact, quite true. Whether it's unpleasant and nasty might depend on whether you're a poor man who thinks getting a million dollars is going to make him rich.
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Re:We need a unified front (Score:2)
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I want that judge! (Score:2)
Wow! Amazing! A judge that considers intent, not just the hard line of the law. We see that even though Adam did violate the terms of employment, he had no intent to cause harm to the plaintiff, and probably minimal harm was done.
This case is not unlike the kid who brings a tin of Altoids to school and gets kicked out under the drugs "zero tolerance" (read: zero common sense) policy for having something that looks like the real thing.
Or, like the time I got pulled over for speeding, the state cop told me "you weren't doing anything dangerous, you were just breaking the law." Granted, I deserved the ticket and had no grounds to object, but it still burns me that he said that .
--Jon
Releasing software under GPL you may not own (Score:2)
Re:To summarize on employment (Score:2)
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Re:More Info... (Score:2)
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Re:More Info... (Score:2)
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Re:In Defense of Hotline (Score:2)
And the false promises that Roks and others made to Hinkley, LONG before your time at HLC, are quite relevant to this.
Ok, I have to get in one little dig - I hope you're looking for a new job, because it doesn't look like HLC has much of a business model these days!
Job Advice (Score:2)
In Defense of Hotline (Score:2)
I am very familiar with all of the issues in the case. I have met all the main players, except Adam Hinkley himself.
I find it hard to believe the bullshit that I have seen in these comments. Many of the "facts" cited here are entirely made up. For example, Hotline was ruined by the PC port. Most of the work on the pc port was done by Adam Hinkley himself. He did not leave because he was opposed to banner ads, or because he disagreed with the way the company was going, or because greedy investors threw him out, or even because he was homesick. The death of his sister, tragic though that may have been, was entirely irrelevant. He left, and took the source with him, because he wanted a better deal. He did not feel that anyone else should own any more of "his" product. Even if they were investing money in its development. He wanted complete control, in perpituity.
Keep this in mind. When he left, he was the President of the company and its majority shareholder. He had a seat on the board and a veto over any change in ownership structure. Nobody had the power to take anything away from Adam. He WAS the company.
Read the judgement. It confirms what I have always thought. Adam Hinkley screwed everyone he ever had a chance to screw. Including his own father.
Greed was indeed the problem here. But it was Adam Hinkley's greed, not that of his business partners' that was the real issue. Sorry, but if you want corporate bullys, you will have to look somewhere else.
Re:IP Assignment contracts (Score:2)
Quite right. I've just got my company to sign a waiver for a project I'm about to start coding for. They did remind me about a clause in my contract that says that I must not have any outside interests that interfere with the efficient running of the company, but that does at least make both our positions clear.
If you're thinking of writing some code outside of company hours, then ask for a waiver. Resist the temptation to code when you don't have one, especially if you've asked for a waiver and they've refused. They're almost certain to demand the IP later, especially if it's beginning to get somewhere.
Re:I feel his pain in this world.... (Score:2)
On the other hand, it's always a good idea to keep aware of your tax situation even if someone is supposed to pay for it. The IRS commandos don't care whose door they break down. Of course, you probably know this now.
Firstly, don't assume you cannot afford to fight them in court. Small claims court isn't terribly expensive (for either court fees or amount of lawyering needed). Even if small-claims has a $1500 or $2500 limit, you might could get them to settle out-of-court for more just to avoid the hassle. Even if you just get the small-claims limit, well, that's more money than you had. Secondly, if you are sure they owe you a debt (check with a lawyer first) there are other ways to attack them. For instance, a creditor can file a lien against the debtor's assets: land, buildings, bank accounts, and so forth. This would make them unable to, for instance, mortgage their property until the lien is resolved.I'd recommend to get all your tangible evidence together (notebooks, bank records showing deposited check, names of people you worked with), and go talk to a lawyer. It isn't that expensive, and even if you don't litigate, a good attorney can help you avoid this sort of situation in the future.
My interpretation... (Score:2)
1. Always give in to those that are accepted as more powerful and never fight the system. Let them win because they have the money, and money always wins! Don't attempt to change it because you can't. (Or, if you would rather, you can follow my personal philosophy, which is very similar to the Golden Rule, which is to act accordingly - trust until given a reason not to trust, like until given a reason not to like; it's that "live and let live" philosophy. Of course, you could always do it your way, which is what I really recommend. Use your own judgment. All businessmen aren't the same, no matter how many people try to convince you otherwise. There are honorable people in this world.)
2. Don't do it... Short-cuts or easy ways are like cheating, and you need to work to earn your keep, you know? (Honorable; I don't really disagree.)
3. Trust no one! Always trust no one! You cannot trust anyone! (Back to my "live and let live" philosophy - I'll trust someone until they give me a good reason not to trust them, and then I'll react accordingly.)
4. Very good advice. This can be backed up by words from John Stuart Mill in his political/philosophical essay, On Liberty, in which he asserted:
Though [one's] opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
In other words, no single source of information has the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Another quote from a good friend of mine - "There is only one absolute truth: this is absolutely true" - meaning there is no absolute truth to any situation. The only way you can go about finding the best "truth" for any situation is to vary your sources of information. Excellent advice, that #4 was, I say.
Hinckley then goes on to say how easy it is for someone to fall into those traps, "even after someone warned you." Judging by that statement, he would assume that I would be one of the first to fall into one of those traps. Maybe he's right. Maybe not. We know without the experience to back it up.
The best advice anyone can offer on any situation, really, is to research it well and use your best judgment, and use caution.
And finally... I wish the best of luck to anyone losing their own rights and freedoms simply because the big businesses have the resources to take them.
(Interestingly, this is one of those situations that I have seen organizations such as the ACLU playing both sides. One month the ACLU sides with a company suing an employee for the employee's off-the-clock work, and the next month the ACLU sides with an employee being sued by his company. I wonder how those standards work...)
Re:Your misinterpretation... (Score:2)
Yoru Nazi example may not be restricted unless it can be shown that this is an order to kill those Jews. Recently, there was an appeals court case that may be on point. This case ruled that putting the names of abortion doctors were could not be actionable. Even though this was linked to a death.
Your misinterpretation... (Score:2)
Re:We need a unified front (Score:2)
Re:Better links ?? (Score:2)
Re:never write software? (Score:2)
I noticed that too and was most unhappy with his statement: "Do not write other code, not even in your spare time." So I'm supposed to not scratch my itch until I quit? I don't think so. I'll just make sure that my contract says that any code I write in my time on my machines is mine. Any company that refuses to accept that isn't one I'd want to work for anyway.
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Re:To summarize on employment (Score:2)
Or at least buffed.
Sorry.
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Re:Posta Firsta (Score:2)
The point is, if you are making your income else where, then why the need to "make more money", rather than just share and "make people happy".
Perhaps our priorties are going askew? Just my $.02
Re:The Hotline Saga (Score:2)
It wasn't until a certain Canadian member *cough*jr*cough*, convinced Hinkley that if he were to come to Toronto, and sell his soul to the Devil, he would be made rich, rich, RICH! It was only later that "investors" were brought in (I put that in quotes because investors actually give you funds, and clearly these guys had not.)
In summary, Blame Canada!
Insightful, but impractical (Score:2)
1. Employment: NEVER write your own software while you are an employee of someone else, EVEN if you do it in your own time
Well when the hell are we supposed to do it then? I can't live without my job, how am I supposed to support myself? I can see this for students or people who still live with their parents, but for young programmers like me, just out of school, it's not possible to work for ourselves. We just don't have the resources.
What would solve this problem? Well, first of all, less draconian IP agreements with our employers. I don't see that happening for the majority of people, so how about some more applied schoolwork to help young people get a portfolio together. With a reasonable portfolio the young programmers could help negotiate better terms for themselves upon entry into the job market. I had something like this because of extensive involvement in outside projects at college and things on my resume like published papers which made me more attractive to my company so I could negotiate terms of employment. Very few other graduates have this, primarially because of lack of programs/encouragement on the part of educators.
Steven
Re:Posta Firsta: Business for Nerds (Score:2)
Sir, you are correct. The setting is under "Customize Homepage", and after hitting the save button, all dates were in the new format.
You can't change previous posts, but I'd like to change it to (I'm getting annoyed at only using the month and the day as a date stamp on Slashdot posts - how short sighted of me not to investigate all the customization options, before criticizing the editors. You can really make a fool out of yourself if you don't try hard enough.)
I only wish someone would have pointed this out yesterday, so more Slashdotters could have seen it...
Trust (Score:2)
Knowing the trustworthiness of the people you are dealing with is key. You should trust them and price yourself based on trustworthiness. Ask people who have done business with them before! Ask the boards! For expensive decisions, you need something in writing. In general, if the value of what you are trying to protect multiplied by the percentage expectation of getting screwed is less than the considerable cost of getting the legal-work done plus the intangible cost of the implicit "I don't trust you that much", then don't bother. Some of these work out, some don't.
Also note that almost all Fortune 500 executives demand written employment contracts from their firms. Even though these firms are reasonably trustworthy (due to reputation concerns), the amount at stake is so high that the executives need the protection. This same basic calculation applies to everyone.
Some agreements are so commonly documented that the failure to get a written agreement is cause for concern: consulting gigs and stock options spring to mind.
In response to the specific article, I would recommend that anyone taking on a partner in a business get a lawyer. A partner includes any other owner or creditor in a small business. There are way too many obscure ways to get screwed to not have a lawyer. A single innocuous-sounding word change in a vanilla document can effectively transfer all ownership in the company's assets from you to them (ie. the deletion of "to my knowledge"). Lawyers know these tricks and watch out for them.
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:2)
What a nasty unpleasant and largely untrue saying that is.
Phil
To summarize on employment (Score:2)
Either:
Hmmmm. Sounds a lot like being a writer or a musician. =)
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Re:Young enough to start again (Score:2)
I'm not so sure... My father and I have discussed this a couple of times, with regards to the lottery. Anecdotal evidence (and his professional experience as a bankruptcy accountant) suggests that not insignificant proportion of people who win a substantial lottery, ~$1e6, fairly rapidly lose most or all of it.
Our conjecture is that if they were in financial straits to start with, it may have been due to their inability to manage their finances. That doesn't change when given a large sum of money, it just takes a little bit longer to fritter it all away.
But, this is all hearsay, anecdotes and conjecture. I'd be very interested in solid stats on the finanical status of people >5 years after winning a lottery.
-----
D. Fischer
Form a Software Writer's Cooperative (Score:2)
Why not do what farmers in the 19th century did? They were an individualistic bunch, worked hard, believed they were the backbone of American society, and got screwed by railroad companies with a transport monopoly and banks with a finance monopoly.
They solution was to combine forces and form their own democratically owned distribution channel -- farmer's marketing cooperatives. Their combined financial resources and market clout were able to accomplish what they could not do individually. See www.cooperative.org [cooperative.org] for more info..
Writing software on your own time? (Score:2)
It is easy to decide to write software, but what is far more difficult to write quality software that your empoyers would not want. In the end, I chose technologies which I new to be unpopular in my workplace, and I got permission to do so in writing. The idea was to make it difficult to challenge my rights, and at the same time make them unlikely to want to do so.
Anyway, the lesson is always get permission in writing and, if possible write software which might be outstanding but which your employers won't see its quality.
never write software? (Score:2)
He does not really suggest any proper solution to the problem of writing your own software- don't do it for yourself, don't do it for the company you work for... one can only assume he expects us to all start our own companies. However the idea of a company is to join together a group of people so that (usually) a product is produced more effectively and quickly- it is a joint effort rather than one by yourself.
However his second point is against funding. How are we meant to start these companies of our own if we can't fund them? Unless we already have a large capital it is nearly impossible to start one's own business without it.
I understand that clearly what has happened is unfortunate, but the guidelines set seem somewhat irrational given the realities it is trying to overcome.
Re:So this is why Hotline started sucking... (Score:2)
While Hotline appears to work on the old 'client-server' rote, it's much more similiar to a BBS system. The only difference between Hotline and something like Napster is that the file and server are integrated in the Napster application. Both programs contain all the features we see in 'mature' P2P apps such as chat, file x-change, etc..
Some Balance to this old Story! (Score:2)
This is a very old story and not as cut and dried as this meta-post makes out.
IIRC he sold the software, got a job and a share otion from the purchaser, when the project came good, he wanted it his own way and left to start his own company & took the only copy of the source with him. And tried to claim he sold them something else. I think he got what he deserved.
If your really interested I suggest using your fav search engine to dig up the other side.
IP Assignment contracts (Score:2)
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:2)
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:2)
Re:I feel his pain in this world.... (Score:2)
Yes there is!
I couldn't recommend more the following series of books by Nolo Press. Check out these links from them:
http://www.nolopress.com/product/ic_sub85.html
http://www.nolopress.com/product/tc_sub8.html
Worth their weight in gold...and oh yes...corporations are (generally) soulless (and IMHO evil) entities run by people who put profit above the good of any one person other then themselves.
Re:I feel his pain in this world.... (Score:2)
You can get a general flavor by doing a search for 'findlaw' on google and opening up the cached versions.
Hope this helps,
Phoenix_SEC
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:2)
Nobody quote me, but based on my amateur opinion, I believe he is free to write anything he wants. He stated that there are no longer any noncompete agreements effective, so the only restriction that I think remains is that he can't start with any of his old source code. As long as the source is not duplicated, he should be ok.
Now the skeptic in my has to comment. If he chooses to write competing software, or participate in a similar effort, the companies that were party to this suite could choose to take him back to court, accusing him of copyright infringement. While we know that this kind of case would ultimately be dismissed, we have to remember that the companies have far more financial resources than he, and could therefore drag things through the legal muck enough to force him to comply due to lack of resources -- which is pretty much what happened in this ruling.
Two Alternatives (Score:2)
Re:Releasing software under GPL you may not own (Score:2)
The solutions I offered assume the more normal case where no agreement has been signed, but the employer may attempt to seize IP rights at some future date based on a legal theory other than a signed contract.
Re:One word. (Score:3)
Of course, the political party in question was not the one most of the employees voted for, so he blew the whistle on the unionized employees who, got pretty pissed-off at it. To make a story short, the company owner's got his Mecedes torched, his office was smeared with grease and other gooey disgusting stuff, his lawn sprinkled with pesticides and fertilizer at different places, and plenty of the employees who "gave" to the political party went to the political party to demand their money back, and my friend provided information about all this to the Elections Supervisor office, who promptly laid charges against the company and the political party (the candidate was later convincted of election fraud for paying people to vote several times for him).
The company, each director, the political party and the candidate were each fined six times the amount of the "contributions", it's directors and the candidate deprived of civic rights for 10 years (they can't vote and can't present themselves as candidates to elections),
Better yet, the insurance company didn't pay a cent for the torched Mecedes, as it was able to allege that the owner deliberately torched it himself to commit insurance fraud (the owner didn't bother fighting this as he was entangled with the bigger legal problems with the Elections Supervisor), and when my friend was fired for blowing the whistle, he successfully went to court and was reinstated with indexed back pay (the case took two years). And the company had to keep his replacement, too.
So, as you can see, in a Socialist country, democracy cannot be corrupted easily, and the workers cannot be screwed either.
(there. Score: 5: flamebait+3, troll+2)
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A few words of advice (Score:3)
Now I may sound like an old fart - which I guess I am at 30 - but from you comments it seems that most of you have a lot to learn about business in general and software publishing in particular.
I see a lot of misconceptions here, so let's start with the biggest one right away:
It seems that most of the people commenting on the story think that the "idea" is the main thing in getting a software company up and running. Not so! As a rule of thumb, the idea is 5% of the program. The program is 5% of the product. The product is 5% of the company. In other words: While it's certaintly true that without the idea there would be no company, it's AT LEAST as true to say that without a lot of (non-idea and programming related) work there would be no company either.
Coders tend to underestimate the importance of the supporting organization and the networking involved in getting a product to the shelves, not to mention selling it once it's in the stores. It's true that a lot of barriers have fallen in this area over the last years, but the main part of the job is still to get the software ready for the market, and actually getting it TO the market. In other words you (OK, we) tend to overestimate the value of ideas.
In the area of ideas: You do NOT need a brilliant idea (although it won't hurt). You need a good idea and a good plan. Without a plan you'll get exactly nowhere. Have you thought about distribution? PR? User segments? Competition? You NEED to think about those things, in order to find a way to package your IP in a product that will actually stand a chance of making money.
The last major misconception is in the area of the nature of business deals. It seems that a lot of people are outraged that he got "screwed over". Well guess what: People do not do business in order to be nice to eachother! They are out there to make money, and if you do not make sure that your ass is covered, the easiest way to make money will be to "screw you over". That would be your fault for not getting a good lawyer to check out the contract before you signed it, and not their fault for being evil capitalists. If you don't want to deal with capitalists, don't invite them in. If you don't want to deal with them, and your product needs financing to take off, your plan wasn't good enough :) In that case, bite the bullit and cross your fingers, 'cause there's no way to make sure that they can't screw you over somehow.
Finally you absolutely have to quit your day job in order to give your own idea the 110% attention it needs in order to become a moneymaker. You can NOT expect to make a fortune in your spare time. Actually your prospective investors expect that you spend at least half a year working on your idea ON YOUR OWN DIME... If you don't, well then you haven't shown sufficient confidence in your own ideas, right? They supply the resources, but you have to make them bellieve in you somehow.
To sum it up: Don't bitch - learn about the facts of business before you try to play in the big (or middle) leagues. Unfortunately the only reliable way to learn about business it to try it, so expect to get burnt once or twice. But it's no big deal.... You'll learn, and eventually (hopefully) you'll bag the big one some day.
Just don't count on doing it through amazing code alone, or expect that the venture capitalists are in the fairy godmother business.
Re:We need a unified front (Score:3)
Not true. I insisted on something very much like that in my most recent contract. It depends how much they want you, and for tech people with any skill at all, remember you're in the driver's seat. Think of this little freedom as a benefit the company can give you for free. If you had two equivalent offers but one of them explicitly acknowledged your rights to your off hours, non-company related work, which one would you choose? In my case, and I think this is a technique that will work generally, I said that I was involved in a number of open-source projects and I needed written assurance that my employer would not make any claim on the work I was doing there. Since your employer is most probably benefitting from the open source work you're doing you'll find it an easy argument to make, and it doesn't sound like you're planning to run off with the company's IP. Finally, if you don't ask, you won't get.
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Re:Young enough to start again (Score:3)
Re:Heed him (Score:3)
Not to say you can't trust them. The point is, the first time you suspect that you CAN'T trust them, you shouldn't ever trust them from that point on.
Sorry. I've been burned before.
Bittersweet advice...
Don't have good friends as roommates. Sure, you want to KNOW the person and you want to be able to get along with them, but nobody can get on your nerves quite like a GOOD friend, and they're a lot harder to kick out if things go sour for some reason.
Don't lend money to friends if you expect to be paid back. If they pay you back, thats an act of good faith on their part that shows their quality. If they don't, you have every excuse not to lend money to them again. Otherwise, that loan will become a tension point and you'd have been better off never lending it to them in the first place.
Don't go into business with anyone who doesn't seem to have a firm grasp on reality. Buisiness that boom overnight are rare, and even more rarely predictable. A friend might have some glorious plan for becoming a millionaire overnight and want you to quit your job and put in 80 hour weeks to help him realize his dream and reap the benefits. Don't hesitate to be the rational mind in the situation. Even if he believes what he's saying, you'll still end up throwing a lot of money and time at a black hole.
However, a sobering business plan, with modest investment, and a reasonable expectation of profits after a period of time that isn't based
on a quackjob theory, THAT might be something that interests me. Sure, it doesn't sound like its got the potential to turn me into an overnight millionaire, but at least I'd have better faith in the chances.
-Restil
Adam's comments (Score:3)
I am just sorry that he learned them the hard way. If you, (Mr/Ms) Slashdot reader, read no other story today, please read Adam's four warnings [hypermart.net]. Understanding or at least accepting them can literally change your life as a techie.
As somebody else once said, "This is no-shit serious".
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:3)
Give a poor man a million dollars, he will remain a poor man.
A scary number like 80%+ of all large-prize lottery winners go bankrupt within a few years. Most have no understanding of how to make that money work for them, or to turn it into a renewable resource through wise investment. They spend the $100k/year, even selling the future years' checks before they come in.
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:3)
Well this version is considerably less unpleasant than the first.
Although like that other US saying to be found in many bars "if you are so clever why ain't you rich", I would have to say that if a man was wise perhaps he would have no need for a million dollars.
Phil
Re:Some Balance to this old Story! (Score:3)
1) They didn't back up the source.
2) They left the source entirely in the control of one person. Say he skis head-first into a tree, then where are you?
3) They knew he thought he was being screwed over, and they still didn't back up the source!
Young enough to start again (Score:4)
It is just gutting when your sole vision in life for 5 years is cruelly crushed by large non-feeling corporate entities. But what do you do? Join them, or go against them?
Posta Firsta (Score:4)
when you are a kid, you would probably be more likely to share the profits a bit if it would enable you to act as an adult with your property through this corporation, rather than getting taken advantage of at a young age.
Thoughts upon Adam Hinkley & his actions (Score:5)
Next a few things to ponder upon:
Adam Hinkley sold the rights to his code. He did this without duress & in an apparently legal fashion. He took the money (ok, stock too.)
Later he disagreed with the direction the company who had bought his code was going. Fair enough, it's not unusual for an inventor/founder to become unhappy with the future course of their product, particularly when they've sold control of it.
However Hinkley's solution was to encrypt the source-code for the application & refuse to release it to those who had paid for it. Now I don't know about the rest of you but had I paid someone some large sum of money for the rights to a product then employed them under contract to extend the product I would expect it to be mine. Again Hinkley took the money.
Later (as I recall) it is discovered that Hinkley had apparently misappropriated OTHER code that he'd been previously hired to develop by a previous employer, renaming & reusing it without their permission.
I don't know how other folks view this but when most companies hire someone to write code they expect it to belong to them, not to wander out the door with the employee.
Generally this is clearly spelt out in the employment contract and yes generally the folks who paid for the code get to determine it's license, if any. Sure skills & techniques & code snippets & even architecture go with the employee but not the whole ball-of-wax, line by line to be used in another companies' product.
Yes Adam suffered some devastating personal events. However none of those have any direct bearing on his being compos mentis and signing contracts. At some point one has to take responsibility for one's decisions, for ill or for good.
Finally note that Adam did not do this all without advice. His father assisted him in the decisions, was involved in running his business, and they did hire lawyers to help write & review the legal instruments.
Adam had every opportunity to refuse to sign the paperwork, to demand things be put in writing, to simply not go ahead with the deal. However he didn't. He sold his product.
Frankly it all reads to me as a greedy young man who had a good idea, sold it, then when he realized he'd lost control regretted it & attempted to renege on his obligations. It's great that he was so committed to the product, a pity he'd sold away his control of it. That the courts have not backed him up is not surprising, he has shown little reason for them to do so.
What's the lesson to be learned from all of this?
- Be legally smart.
- Understand what one is getting into.
- Realize that when something is sold it no longer belongs to you.
- Understand that one can't later renounce contracts.
- Accept that there are no legal 'outs' for personal disaster; distraction & grief are not sufficient to invalidate one's commitments.
- Respect that if one is capable of signing a contract one is expected to honor that contract.
- Take responsabilty for one's actions and fulfill ones obligations.
After Adam Hinkley sold his product to Hotline he was no longer it's owner. This was trivially clear beforehand whether he recognized it himself or not. That the company may have different goals & directions for Adam's product should have occurred to him earlier & provisions been made. Without those he was simply another employee with a valued position, a paycheck & a block of stock. To attempt to then hold material hostage in order dictate terms to the new owners was stupid & illegal. To attempt to remove the materials to another jurisdiction was even more stupid. That the legitimate owners of the material were forced to bring in the law & have a search made to return their property was sad but justified - the code was theirs as much as any other corporate asset, physical or intellectual.Sob stories make for interesting reading but aren't particularly compelling. Perhaps next time Adam will have matured a bit & treat going into business with the seriousness it requires, respect the implications of signing a contract.
Finally, here's the only source-material I could find: HL Afterbirth [macrules.com].
The Hotline Saga (Score:5)
It's been a while, so I don't remember the particulars of this case exactly.
Adam was a kid who wrote hotline, a very sophisticated client/server filetransfer/chat app, which very quickly was picked up by the warez community. It was light years ahead of anything in the field (this was 3(?) years before Napster, to put things in perspective).
Due to the popularity, a group of businessmen decided to fund further development of the app...Adam joined them, signing over his code. He moved to canada and worked on the project. Eventually, though, he realized that the business people were screwing him over. After trying, naively, to get them to change their ways, they reminded him of the contracts he had signed regarding his code. Adam suddenly realized that he no longer 'owned' his code. To make a story short, he PGP encrypted everything on the computer he was using and flew back to .au.
The company was forced to reverse-engineer hl, resulting in version 1.6 (1.7?) or so, which included banner ads and a PC version. This was the death knell of the hotline community, which finally degenerated to the land of w4r3z kiddies it is today.
And now, at 22, Adam's ready to take on the business world again. Go Adam! Kick some ass!
We need a unified front (Score:5)
1. Information and inventions that you are exposed to at work are property of the company, and will not be disclosed without permission.
2. External projects will be performed only off-site unless you are instructed otherwise. No company resources will be used.
3. Off-hours work and inventions are your own.
4. If you're asked to deploy your own off-hours software for business, changes made will be contributed back to the project under the terms of that project's license.
5. In terms of non-competition, software that is used by a competitor, but which does not directly engage in the business of your company will not be considered to be a violation.
Having this, we could then present this to prospective businesses in order to take the pressure off of them to come up with a way to cover their asses. They get a document which the industry has had a chance to review an comment on so that they know what to expect.
Thoughts?
Re:Posta Firsta: Business for Nerds (Score:5)
This is true - your best ideas will probably come while you are young and in school, and working for a corporation will narrow your explorations, and probably steal your best ideas. If you want to make the big dough, and don't mind taking the big risk, start your own company.
Having said that, I still believe post-college is the way to go. If you fail, or the industry collaspes, you will have a degree to fall back on. If you suceed, you will have at least sat through the mandatory lectures, so that you won't get lectured on Slashdot on proper list creation, database design, or basic security.
Roblimo wrote an article earlier today that showed some real business knowledge in the minds behind Slashdot. They've been at this game for a while, and now do what they love for a living. It would be nice to have a series of articles, something like "Business for Nerds, Stuff that Doesn't Seem to Matter But Actually Does", and make it a linked column, rather than a Slashdot post, so that it doesn't get lost in the archives. Something like the FAQ, but updated, and with years (I'm getting annoyed at only using the month and the day as a date stamp on Slashdot posts - how short sighted).
So this is why Hotline started sucking... (Score:5)
It was great at the time, because you didn't have to do the hunt and peck thing with Hotline, or beg for rare tracks on usenet. You could find what you want, frequently by the server's name and/or theme, and then try to upload in response.
Of course, getting a stable version out for Win32 destroyed this rather friendly exchange for the same reason that all of AOL's millions of users make it difficult to use what would otherwise be a pretty good service. People began to use Hotline to try to make money and run scams. Most HL servers, I suspect, are fronts for banner schemes now. These schemes are probably seen by advertisers as part of the primary reasons why the banner market is so unsafe.
I find it ironic that the application's creator was screwed over for the same reason that it's users were: GREED.
I'm glad that he didn't pursue. I don't think it would have been worth his time. Personally, I hope he starts out and creates another great, innovative, killer app.
Re:Young enough to start again (Score:5)
Give a poor man a million dollars, he will remain a poor man.
Take away a million dollars from a rich man, he will make another million dollars.
The point is, this guy seems to be very intelligent, so I'm sure he can move on with his life and do quite well for himself. Looks as if youthful enthusiasm has now been tempered with the cold steel edge of the real world. Although his message is a little jaded, he seems to have adjusted well to the change, all things considered. Good luck, buddy!