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I agree this seems fairly clearly illegal.

That said, I think OP is morally in the right here, and I wish I had the guts to do similar things.

Sharing code is a good thing. Helping one company innovate using code that another company chose to ignore is also a good thing.

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I'm not sure how we weigh up the morals here. If you've done something using a companies resources (laptop, desk, chair etc.) and they're paying you and the contract says they own it I don't see how you can have a moral high ground. Maybe there should be some way to allow these ownership concepts to expire so that society benefits overall but right now we don't have that.

When property does not serve its purpose it is no longer morally binding, just legally. And that’s if you convince me proprietary code ownership has any moral standing at all. Sometimes, I follow the law not because it’s particularly the right thing to do but because I don’t want to get in any trouble.

> If you've done something using a companies resources (laptop, desk, chair etc.)

You're making a huge assumption that this is what happened.

At one point in the article there is a photograph of a chair in the uber hallway and a caption indicating that the couch in the picture (or one similar to it) was where most of the work was done for this project.

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