Open-sourcing A 200+ Hour Project - The Story Behind It

No great mystery really - a not-atypical early startup experience. No funding, recruiting talent, promising the pot of gold. Funding never appears - string everyone along as long as possible, become evasive, harsh words are exchanged, recriminations, breakup.<p>It can go differently but with the average startup virgin running the show, they don't know any better, don't understand how important it is to be totally transparent with what were essentially founding partners.

"The transfer of exclusive rights is not valid unless that transfer is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed" [1]<p>Therefore, if no papers were signed, then the developer retains rights to license their work to others.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/license.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/license.html</a>

"We have no contracts or any paper signed whatsoever, despite I requesting them repeatedly - hence why I could release the source code at my will."<p>Either you do have a contract, he owes you money for the work and he owns the IP; or you don't have a contract, he doesn't owe you anything, he hasn't shafted you and you are libelling[1] him. Legally, you can't have it both ways. A contract can exist without there having been any signed paper.<p>[1] IANAL; maybe you need to have named him or make his name inferable to do that.

Hi guys, if the link appears to be down, it's due to Tumblr's connectivity issue. Hopefully it'll get fixed soon.

<i>I was approached and asked to become the then to-be-set-up company’s first employee (yes, an employee, not a technical co-founder).</i><p>I think if you were an employee, you should have been paid. If you were brought in to work on spec in the hopes that the company would land some investment, you should have pushed for an ownership stake in the company.

I think you made a good move by releasing the code and, please, do ask for upfront cash, or don't take the job. Nothing good can come out of not doing so.

"Just the fact that he chose to shaft me is a strong enough indication that he will not succeed."<p>Very well put!

<i>To this day I still do not know what the actual investment situation is. It seems to be a sensitive topic whenever I brought it up during our conversations.</i><p>Should've suggested him to get funded on AngelList to make it more transparent.