Code.org Tells Court Zuckerberg-Backed Byju's Undermines Mission To Teach Kids CS 14
theodp writes: Tech-backed nonprofit Code.org on Wednesday fired the latest salvo in its legal battle over $3 million in unpaid licensing fees for the use of Code.org's free [for non-commercial purposes] K-12 computer science curriculum by WhiteHat Jr., the learn-to-code edtech company with a controversial past that was bought for $300M in 2020 by Byju's, another edtech firm that received a $50M investment from Mark Zuckerberg's venture firm that still touts its ties to Zuckerberg on its Investors page.
In a filing in support of a motion for default judgement, Code.org founder and CEO Hadi Partovi wrote: "Whitehat's continued use of Code.org's platform and content without payment following Code.org's termination of the Agreement has caused, and is continuing to cause, irreparable injury to Code.org, because it undermines Code.org's charitable and nonprofit purpose of expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing participation by young women and students from other underrepresented groups and because it jeopardizes Code.org's status as an organization described in Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. As a Section 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization, Code.org may not use its assets to benefit for-profit entities without receiving fair compensation."
According to the [proposed] default judgement, "Code.org is awarded the principal amount sued for of $3,000,000, along with attorneys' fees, costs, and expenses in an amount to be determined following Code.org's submission of an application, together with pre-judgment interest of $216,001.16, from May 26, 2023 to March 13, 2024, and any additional pre-judgment interest that may accrue until the date of judgment, calculated at the rate of 9% per annum pursuant to CPLR 5001 and 5004, plus any post-judgment interest at the statutory rate, for a total judgment in the amount of $[TBD]."
In a filing in support of a motion for default judgement, Code.org founder and CEO Hadi Partovi wrote: "Whitehat's continued use of Code.org's platform and content without payment following Code.org's termination of the Agreement has caused, and is continuing to cause, irreparable injury to Code.org, because it undermines Code.org's charitable and nonprofit purpose of expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing participation by young women and students from other underrepresented groups and because it jeopardizes Code.org's status as an organization described in Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. As a Section 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization, Code.org may not use its assets to benefit for-profit entities without receiving fair compensation."
According to the [proposed] default judgement, "Code.org is awarded the principal amount sued for of $3,000,000, along with attorneys' fees, costs, and expenses in an amount to be determined following Code.org's submission of an application, together with pre-judgment interest of $216,001.16, from May 26, 2023 to March 13, 2024, and any additional pre-judgment interest that may accrue until the date of judgment, calculated at the rate of 9% per annum pursuant to CPLR 5001 and 5004, plus any post-judgment interest at the statutory rate, for a total judgment in the amount of $[TBD]."
Holy Run On Sentence!! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Tech-backed nonprofit Code.org on Wednesday fired the latest salvo in its legal battle over $3 million in unpaid licensing fees for the use of Code.org's free [for non-commercial purposes] K-12 computer science curriculum by WhiteHat Jr., the learn-to-code edtech company with a controversial past that was bought for $300M in 2020 by Byju's, another edtech firm that received a $50M investment from Mark Zuckerberg's venture firm that still touts its ties to Zuckerberg on its Investors page."
.
That hurt to read.
Re: (Score:2)
The headline was bad enough.
Byju's? (Score:2)
I had a hard time parsing it until I discovered that "Byju's" is the name of a company (including the apostrophe). Whoever picked that name needs to spend less time studying coding and more time studying English.
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Seriously, some of these contextless headlines really leave me scratching my head. I'm not sure "Zuckerberg" even needed to be anywhere in the headline nor the article. Just there for extra clicks/attention.
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I'm sure it's there because nobody's heard of Byju and they're trying to make it sound more significant than it is.
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Byju's: India's once most valuable start-up is fighting to survive [bbc.com]: "Once India's leading privately-held company valued at $22bn, it is now regarded by some as a cautionary tale for domestic start-ups, as investment company BlackRock recently slashed its valuation to $1bn."
Re: (Score:2)
"Last year, three of its board members - V Ravishankar of Sequoia Capital (now Peak XV Partners), Vivian Wu of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Russell Dreisenstock of Prosus - resigned [techcrunch.com], leaving just Mr Raveendran, his wife Divya Gokulnath and brother Riju Raveendran on the board."
Re: (Score:2)
I'm glad you can copy and paste. Yes, as the headline suggests, Mark Zuckerberg's firm invested a relatively small sum in it once 7+ years ago. It doesn't connote a whole lot of significance.
Re: (Score:2)
Oops, Copilot rewrite: "On Wednesday, the tech-backed nonprofit Code.org launched a legal offensive in its ongoing dispute over $3 million in outstanding licensing fees. These fees relate to the utilization of Code.org's free K-12 computer science curriculum by WhiteHat Jr., an edtech company specializing in coding education. Notably, WhiteHat Jr. has a controversial history and was acquired by Byju's for a staggering $300 million in 2020. Byju's, in turn, secured a $50 million investment from Mark Zuckerbe
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I fed that sentence into ChatGPT and asked it to summarize, and it blacked out a large chunk of the Bay Area.
Not Supprising (Score:4, Interesting)
I've long had issues with H1-B, because Indian contract firms have largely taken over and there is lots of fraud. I'm not anti-immigrant, but H1-B has become exactly what they said it would never be when they created it i.e. cheap replacement of American workers.
It's making IT a leader in professional gig work, with little or no benefits and the upper management keeping old expectations like in office work, even though your commute is much longer because you don't move all the time, for each short term job.
A bit off topic, but it does have relevance. I'm not an expert on India, but is the worlds second largest populous (under China, if that still holds), and it can't keep up with it's citizens much less keep more accurate records, and police these ultra-competitive companies.
In one I worked for, I couldn't contact HR. I had both email and phone number, but mostly never got a reply. I had to go through my manager (in the company) to push for any reply whats-so-ever. They were accessing a government db that they shouldn't have been (may have been why I was hired), and tried to walk back on that some. It was the lowest level of contractor security clearance, but they hadn't been in the U.S. long enough to pass that. Their on-call was 24/7 and not emergency, but normal business because they didn't want to hire another shift, that started at one weekend a month, so Friday after 8-10 hours of work, you started getting calls for the "on-call" and that continued throughout the night. After they added an extra 5 days, onto the that, I had to quit, I tried it but, I couldn't relax or even sleep as I expected the phone to ring. I'm in a "right to work" state, so I thought there wasn't away to get unemployment, but I tried because I read something about "if, ... hostile workplace..." as an exception. The person I was working with said, most likely I wound't get it. She called them, to talk to them, but they actually said I'd never worked there. I was given unemployment, because she had the tax records to prove that I did.
Beware Indian Companies... many are SHADY!
Also, as long as H1-B is being abused, I wouldn't recommend anyone go into IT (from my 20+years). Now with AI, ... just no. I'm not sure what the best careers would be but the old standards Doctor, Lawyer, maybe coming back around.
Re: (Score:3)
That's a real problem, but it doesn't mean you should advise someone to intentionally take on the task. Not if they have any better alternatives. (And frankly, I wouldn't advise ANYONE to take on a student loan to study IT.)
What you need to remember that that the "AI" systems are improving rapidly, and will probably work more cheaply than even the remote off-shore (whoever is cheapest at the moment) ones will. That they can't do it this year says nothing about 4 years from now, and you don't go from high