Edit: Updated “can actually own code” to “can’t actually own code”
I worked with a few people who were successfully sued by our employer when those people left and brought a “spare time” project/tool with them and tried to publish it. It wasn’t even code we sold or ended up using internally, but was still IP of the company because they wrote it during business hours on a work machine.
Any reasonable person can expect that the MIT license on this code is valid and authorized by the rightsholder.
Did Uber or Box explicitly agree to release it under an foss license? Is it the author's personal individual copyright made on personal hardware outside of work location/time? Does it predate their employment? Nothing in the article linked indicates clearly that it was written for an employer.
If I am expected to research this for every foss library published on GitHub by someone who works for Big Tech, then we are all capital-f fucked.
It's easiest and sanest to assume that people are not lying.
> I demoed Box Sums to the Box Notes team at some point, and they nitpicked the UI and implementation details (“What if two people type in the same cell at the same time? They’ll just overwrite each other.” ). Nothing came of it, but I took the code and shoved it into my back pocket for a rainy day.
emphasis mine
