After reading more closely, it appears both repos are derivative works of pojects that Bumble (aka Badoo) owns. It says so in the README.md. They were also written while the author was employed by Badoo/Bumble.
I don't think this is as clear-cut in favor of the developer as the comments would suggest.
That is how Open Source is supposed to work, I don't understand why everyone is thinking that this is some kind of huge discovery. Since both the MVICore and MVIKotlin repos are Apache 2.0, Badoo could simply pull in any improvements from MVIKotlin in if they wanted. They could ask their ex-employee if there was any interest in Badoo officially maintaining the project.
There are about ten other paths I could suggest that go with how OSS projects can and should work. None of them involve sending legal notices to your former employees to "transfer" the repos.
All I'm seeing here is that some person at Badoo/Bumble with little knowledge of how OSS works and a lot of lawyer time to throw around has made this move, and lost them a lot of goodwill from potential future employees.
i dont know if you can claim this - OSS is not supposed to be unsanctioned derivative works of commercial software that is private. The company _could_ make it OSS, but an employee cannot, since they do not actually own the rights to make this decision.
Perhaps Bumble was a bit heavy handed, but from the point of view of the law, they are acting within their rights to demand ownership transfer, or removal etc.
Commercial and OSS are orthogonal.
> ... that is private
It seems to have been released under Apache 2.0: https://github.com/badoo/MVICore/blob/master/LICENSE
> The company _could_ make it OSS
They _did_
Which Baboo has released under an Apache 2 license from what I can tell. Your comment makes it sound like they were proprietary libraries.
You can't develop something "inspired by" your day job, while working the day job in parallel, and then claim it isn't related to the day job.
And even if it is allowed, can your employer claim ownership on the basis that your work is derived from employer/company work.
However, I think this is unprecedented (I can't think of any similar cases regarding reclamation of IP), and we'd have to be actual lawyers to know the answer. I'm curious to see where this case will go.
I wonder what the implications are, and what else there will be to know on this case later.