In the post, he says the deal was going to be getting hired and getting a bonus as compensation in exchange for him bringing AppGet's code into Microsoft and leading the project. That's a very simple deal in which no ownership of other projects is being transferred.
I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure that hiring someone doesn't mean that you grandfather their liabilities. If that were the case the world would be chaos.
If Sonarr was the reason to reject him then it was done out of complete pettiness.
Large corporations often have more to fear from the liability of bad PR than they do from lawsuits. Most CEOs hate bad PR more than paying out a billion dollar fine — the billion dollar fine isn’t their money, and doesn’t cost them any status at the country club.
I'm actually having a hard time imagining something like Sonarr making much of a negative pr splash.
It doesn't download pirated shows, nor does it play them. It just organizes and renames and creates lists of missing episodes for files that may or may not be pirated content.
Mmmm... There is a certain segment of the tech industry that is morally opposed to piracy, and actively pursue those people. I know because I've seen the negative connotations they've received. Had a candidate with a homelab, peer inferred it was for piracy, didn't want to hire him because of that.
I've also seen it in the weebs and also brainwashing Japanese Corp culture.
I have a feeling because its m$ their cture dictates that they at least appear they were disgusted with his sonarr authorship.
No, they're not. That's the point. The problem is that nobody cares outside of here. If it shows up on a prominent Windows news site/blog, then I would consider it a PR disaster. But that hasn't yet happened.
I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure that hiring someone doesn't mean that you grandfather their liabilities. If that were the case the world would be chaos.
If Sonarr was the reason to reject him then it was done out of complete pettiness.