Popular startup stole my code – now what?
I went on an interview at flipps.com and wrote some "sample" code to fix their horrible, memory-hungry iOS app. I only improved a single view of the app(because I suspected something like this might happen).
The company didn't wish to move forward and hire me to fix the rest of the app. I didn't think much of it and thought that was the end of that.
But to my surprise they immediately shipped my sample code to production! Now, I am aware of the legal status of code written as a "sample" and they probably don't owe me money for it.
I'm not looking for vengeance, and I'm not really all that angry. There's more code where that came from and I won't starve without their business. But this an unethical way to go about software development.
And it is especially dishonest toward their investors(who think they've made an investment in a technologically-savvy company, not just software thieves).
If you wish to drop them a line, the site is flipps.com, and their main investor is http://launchhub.com.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 97.3 ms ] thread* Our initial email communication.
* The description of my task.
* The schedule for our meeting (in-office, where the code was written)
* The bill that my consulting company sent them, including a detailed description of the issue and the applied fix.
* Their refusal to continue working with my company.
* Their shipping of a new version two days after the interview.
I know it's all circumstantial. That's why the title doesn't say "I'm starting legal action against a popular startup".
Again, I'm not out for blood. But I do want to spread the word and raise awareness.
That position existed at my company several years ago before being acquired. Rumor was it used to be a more popular position back in the day. The company was over 100 years old.
In fact, if you use their iOS app(especially on the more memory-consuming devices like an iPad Retina)you'll notice that the app reproducibly crashes on all screens. Except one.
This reminds me of the story about a large telecom company in North America and one in China. They were able to show that their code was stolen because they had the same bug.
God says... ouch manufacturing failure_to_communicate to_infinity_and_beyond oh_come_on bye it's_hopeless you_don't_say surprise_surprise computers
I had a similar experience. I founded a company 3 years ago where we open source the majority of what we do. We entered into a discussion with a well funded (>$40M) "startup" about how they could use our service as a whitelabeled SaaS offering to their customers.
After a few promising exchanges including a Skype call with their Founder and VP of Engineering they stopped returning all of my attempts to see what the next steps should be. Turns out the reason was because they forked a private repository of the work we did - web, iOS and Android.
We found out they're using our code because they didn't even bother taking out our Crashalytics code and we started to get a bunch of pings. To this day their iOS app still uses our "yellow" color for toggle buttons.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dcpbbnbltm2bmq6/Photo%20Mar%2026%2...
They didn't violate any terms of our license (MIT) but I lost some faith in humanity because of what they did :).
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My company is Trovebox - code @ https://github.com/photo
As this changed your mind about open sourcing the code or how you open source code now?
That question deserves an entire blog post.
Ultimately, no. But along the way it's made me much more cautious. Their use of our code didn't impact our business at all. It's mainly principle - they used our code and didn't contribute back any work they did.
> our license (MIT)
Why did you MIT your code if you didn't want this to happen?
GPL exists for the exact reason you're bringing up here.
Sorry I don't mean this to be negative in anyway, I just don't get the thought pattern here.
Disclaimer: fan of bsd/mit/asl style licenses, feel gpl is better suited for things which need protection from the big players and enforce participation.
While I can understand your pain I feel it is a necessary pain for the greater good to have unrestrictive open source. (companies can always donate/contribute in other ways after the fact etc)
No one else that I know of has engaged in a conversation and then refused to reply to any further correspondence while at the same time asking questions to the community under pseudonyms.
Like the OP what the other company did was probably legal. That doesn't make something okay or right. Likewise (as I admitted) this other company didn't break any laws. But that wasn't the point.
You know what would have been okay? If they said, "look, we have some engineers that are going to have a go with the code - let's keep in touch" or "we are going to fork the code but will submit patches back". That is the spirit of the MIT license. Be civil.
Hope that doesn't come off as negative either :).
Of course, only do it if you're actually in the right, so check with a lawyer first.
I've seen this strategy used on a fairly large company about to be acquired by a public company, when there were already rumors going around before the acquisition. It caused the management there an enormous amount of stress, and they settled for a significant amount of money, even when they believed a court would rule in their favor.
You're an awful person if you use this, so better make sure the company you use it on is even worse.
Why?
Proof. You say they took your code but whats to say they already had something similar in development. Without actually seeing the code changes you are just making assumptions (although it does sound suspicious).
Personally I would say take the moral high ground. Just forget it and move on. A lawyer will take you money and you will probably be worse off than before.
Yes. In times of stress, I too often seek solace in mollusc husbandry.