This is the reason I left Amazon. Google has IARC, at least, which provides a path for employees to retain copyright. Amazon has no such avenue, and they furthermore restrict who you can work with -- want to make a game in your spare time? You cannot do it with people who are not Amazon employees.
Google claims copyright on employee side projects
231–240 of 399 posts
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can confirm from my experience (~10 years in the industry). I've never even heard of this practice until I applied to Google. None of the EU companies I've worked at before had anything like this. None of the EU companies I've worked at since had anything like this. It's US imperialism, nothing less.
That's nonsense. In Germany the default for contracts is that you need your employers permission to do side projects. Germany is in the EU.
No, that's nonsense. Just because Germany does it doesn't mean the parent commenter's experience in other EU countries is invalid.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Has Google or any other company actually used this for "evil" though? From the original Twitter thread: > usbmuxd was rejected without an explanation. My follow-up email asking for clarification was ignored. > I ended up having to hand over maintainership of usbmuxd. Different people have different thresholds for evil, but I consider that to be at least unethical. OP was working on usbmuxd before they joined Google…
I mean. You can just always ignore what lawyers say, and just work on open source projects under a pseudonym while you're employed there, which is what the OP did anyways. The worst thing that happened to the OP is that he pissed off some lawyers, and got into an argument with a guy. Also, Google can't own any of your code you did before you're employed there, just any new code from when you're employed by them.
> The worst thing that happened to the OP is that he pissed off some lawyers, and got into an argument with a guy
The worst thing that happened to OP was that he lost control of his project.
> I ended up having to hand over maintainership of usbmuxd.
----
> You can just always ignore what lawyers say, and just work on open source projects under a pseudonym while you're employed there
I am not a lawyer, but this seems like very bad advice. Even ignoring the potential legal risks, many Open Source maintainers like to be able to talk openly about their projects using their real names, especially at conferences, to friends, and to future potential employers.
Even ignoring that, some side projects aren't Open Source. I'm working on commercial, proprietary software outside of work. My company knows it. Even if I wanted to keep it a secret from them, there's no real good way I could do so -- at a certain point, most commercial software gets linked to real people. You're taking on a lot of extra risk that could potentially turn into a nightmare during a discovery process later.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Has Google or any other company actually used this for "evil" though? From the original Twitter thread: > usbmuxd was rejected without an explanation. My follow-up email asking for clarification was ignored. > I ended up having to hand over maintainership of usbmuxd. Different people have different thresholds for evil, but I consider that to be at least unethical. OP was working on usbmuxd before they joined Google…
I mean. You can just always ignore what lawyers say, and just work on open source projects under a pseudonym while you're employed there, which is what the OP did anyways. The worst thing that happened to the OP is that he pissed off some lawyers, and got into an argument with a guy. Also, Google can't own any of your code you did before you're employed there, just any new code from when you're employed by them.
I actually didn't piss off the lawyers; the lawyer working under cdibona was a nice guy, and his contributions to the email thread reasonable. cdibona alone flamed me, and then personally banned me from the process.
I hear he's not in charge of that department any more. Maybe that's why the policy is less onerous now.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has Google or any other company actually used this for "evil" though? It sounds like it's just a necessary part of doing business in the US. Don't hate the player. Hate the game. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm sure rules like these make it easier to sue someone if they steal your source code like with Levandowski.
In the original Twitter thread, Google stole ownership of a pre-existing side project when the maintainer filed for approval. That's evil. It may not have been a personal evil, but bureaucratic evil is very real.
Do you have the text of where he says this? It sounds like it's just the work that you do while you're employed there. Even then, it seems like it's just a formality that they don't really bother enforcing.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#236Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time". The problem is it's extremely difficult to say, figure out when someone might have invented some super clever idea which can be pantented "on their own time". This was true when I worked for MIT, VA Linux, IBM, and Google. At VA Linux it was the VC's which insisted on…
I'm a googler, I've got side projects, most of them are open-source. While I'd prefer not to think about all this and just code, I appreciate that there is an existing policy instead of a bad surprise in a few years. The current policy, which is 100% public ( https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/ ), is basically "let's assume that we own everything except what we don't, and let's figure things out before it's too late…
There's some open source projects Google won't let me contribute to because they don't like the project's CLA.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#237Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time". The problem is it's extremely difficult to say, figure out when someone might have invented some super clever idea which can be pantented "on their own time". This was true when I worked for MIT, VA Linux, IBM, and Google. At VA Linux it was the VC's which insisted on…
You can call it industry standard but it is blatant exploitation of workers and their rights. It is also breaking one of basic human rights, right to work, putting them into situation where they are slaves to the company.
Someone in EU should bring this to the EU court for human rights, I am sure they would win the case and stop this practice, at least for EU.
For my country this is completely unenforcable and every judge would just drop the case.
IT workers should form union. Seriously. We have huge power, a week of strike can bring a company down, or even internet. And based on such contracts, I wouldnt be surprised if joining union is also forbiden in states (can someone at google please check his contract?)
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can confirm from my experience (~10 years in the industry). I've never even heard of this practice until I applied to Google. None of the EU companies I've worked at before had anything like this. None of the EU companies I've worked at since had anything like this. It's US imperialism, nothing less.
I work in the US and have always had side-projects, and have never signed anything which would give my employer the rights to them. I think this isn't just a US thing, but a US mega-corporate thing, maybe?
I think it depends on how tech-focused your company is. Things like Google, Amazon and Bell Labs, sure, things like J.B Hunt and JG Wentworth (It's my patent and I want it NOW!) not so much.
Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#239Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects
#240Oh, please. It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time". The problem is it's extremely difficult to say, figure out when someone might have invented some super clever idea which can be pantented "on their own time". This was true when I worked for MIT, VA Linux, IBM, and Google. At VA Linux it was the VC's which insisted on…
This does seem to be an industry standard practice when it comes to employment contracts. However, you are well within your rights to scrub this out before you commit to signing the contract. I've scrubbed this clause out of every contract. My intellectual thoughts that are outside and unrelated to this project are mine and mine alone. No employer in my mind has the right to that.