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Google claims copyright on employee side projects

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Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#341
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not imagine a ridiculous hypothetical where someone gets a job without knowing how to read. That doesn't make any sense as an analogy. Learning how to read is not any domain specific skill anyway, if you work for a pharmaceutical company they don't give a shit if you write, unless you are spilling company secrets.

I don't know. Lots of people learn to write different kinds of code at work. I also think writing code isn't domain specific as I've never worked in the same industry twice over 6+ jobs. Seems pretty comparable

Yea but writing code that is unrelated to your industry is not an issue, like writing a book unrelated to your industry is not an issue. I don't see where the problem is here, you learn to code in language X and make an unrelated project in language X, there is no conflict there is no issue.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#342
post #33

I do software consulting sleeved through various contracting or consulting companies. All of the paperwork I have to sign tries to have a claim to any IP created at the job. I immediately red line this unless there is some sort of reasonableness to it. I don’t mind giving some percentage of IP to a company that kept me busy somewhere for a year and the Resultant IP isn’t the main focus of the engagement. They are rig…

i follow a similar approach. i don't generally mind employers owning copyright for work they pay me for, but i am concerned that i might need to solve a problem that i already solved at a previous job and unintentionally recreate it in a way that it looks like a copy of the old solution.

to avoid this, where possible i ask that all code i write is released under a FOSS license giving me explicit permission to reuse it.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would never, ever join a company that didn't (in writing) allow me to retain ownership of my side projects. OK that's fine, but doesn't everyone have this choice? Apparently google attracts thousands of top engineers with this clause. Lots of people agree to it, just because you won't doesn't mean it's absurd. Maybe you are absurd for calling google and their ideas absurd.

Companies like Google are an exception; they pay their engineers so ridiculously much that people are willing to ignore the clause under the assumption that they'll work 2-3 years and quit. Google is also broad enough that they can basically hire passion project employees -- people like tytso who are being paid to spend upwards of 50% of their time working on a side project like the Linux kernel. If you're a startup…

[deleted]

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#344
post #116

"usbmuxd was rejected without an explanation. My follow-up email asking for clarification was ignored." Isn't it funny that Google employees themselves at least sometimes can taste how other Google "products" feel when their accounts are banned, deleted and there is zero ways to appeal such decisions?

What's really funny to me is Google trying to claim copyright on a GPL project.

Downvoted for facts?

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would never, ever join a company that didn't (in writing) allow me to retain ownership of my side projects. OK that's fine, but doesn't everyone have this choice? Apparently google attracts thousands of top engineers with this clause. Lots of people agree to it, just because you won't doesn't mean it's absurd. Maybe you are absurd for calling google and their ideas absurd.

Companies like Google are an exception; they pay their engineers so ridiculously much that people are willing to ignore the clause under the assumption that they'll work 2-3 years and quit. Google is also broad enough that they can basically hire passion project employees -- people like tytso who are being paid to spend upwards of 50% of their time working on a side project like the Linux kernel. If you're a startup…

OK, so the policy isn't actually absurd at Google, just other places that try to copy them?

The parent didn't mention anything about other companies. You said Google was absurd and you wouldn't work there, Parent said great then don't apply there they have plenty of qualified applicants. Doesn't sound absurd to me.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't heard about this because it's illegal in many (most?) places outside US.

It's not illegal in Europe except maybe Germany and that's more because of not being able to assign moral rights in work for hire than anything to do with at work/not at work. I work in Europe and every company I've ever worked for has had a substantially similar clause.

It's legal and automatic that the company has rights to invetions you came up with at work (if invention is associated in any way with your tasks) but company has no right to anything you do, think or create outside of your working hours with your own equipment.

That's the way it is in Poland.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#347
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

marcan_42, I will have been at Google for 10 years in January, and even back then the Open Source policies were part of the Noogler training, and the fact that Google would own everything you did, even on your own time, was clearly in the stated in the employement document, as well as a place for you list everything that you had worked on before you started work at Google and so was your Intellectual Property (IP). G…

> most have not complained the OSS releasing process is heavyweight Citation needed. I have been at Google for 6 years and I have seen many people either 1. quit in frustration at our OSS policy; 2. stop contributing to OSS projects on their free time because of frustration with our policy; 3. just ignore the OSS policy at the risk of getting fired because the precedent is that most people ignore the policy. Most peo…

> I'm right now waiting for an IARC approval for a small HTML+Typescript that took me 6h

Why do you want IARC and not patching approval for that? Unless your intent is to make money from it in the future, there's really no need to engage in the IARC process.

Patching approval is painless, and the easiest process for something that you want to be considered to exist outside of Google (its owned by you in your personal capacity, but google maintains copyright to your while-employed-by-google contributions), and doesn't require IARC or any approval other than a quick self-approval process for the first few commits. Then it requires nothing.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most have not complained the OSS releasing process is heavyweight Citation needed. I have been at Google for 6 years and I have seen many people either 1. quit in frustration at our OSS policy; 2. stop contributing to OSS projects on their free time because of frustration with our policy; 3. just ignore the OSS policy at the risk of getting fired because the precedent is that most people ignore the policy. Most peo…

> I'm right now waiting for an IARC approval for a small HTML+Typescript that took me 6h Why do you want IARC and not patching approval for that? Unless your intent is to make money from it in the future, there's really no need to engage in the IARC process. Patching approval is painless, and the easiest process for something that you want to be considered to exist outside of Google (its owned by you in your personal…

For example, because I don't want people to have to sign a CLA to contribute patches to my weekend side projects? That's incredibly dev hostile.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#349
post #114

Earlier 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 did a group project in my senior year of college, working with a US division of a German company, and they needed us to sign an NDA, which was far more egregious than anything Google requires. One part of it was: >The Undersigned agrees that any inventions or ideas in whole or part conceived or made by the undersigned during or after the term of their relationship with $COMPANY [...] shall be considered part of the…

It is highly questionable whether such an agreement would be enforceable in Germany.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#350
post #200
post #95

Oh, 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…

> It's standard industry practice for companies to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up with, even "on their own time" No, it's standard industry practice to claim ownership of everything a software engineer comes up to that relates to the company's business . It's certainly not standard practice to claim ownership of, like, a young-adult fiction novel you write on weekends. The unusual thing he…

Thank you. "We own everything you do" is absolutely not standard practice, even in the US, and we shouldn't do Google's work for them by pretending it is. The linked Twitter thread says Google "tries to appropriate" everything you do, which is a very different claim.

I've seen "we own everything" asserted exactly once, in a laughably bad "Whartonite seeks code monkey" contract. Meanwhile, "you own unrelated work done on your own time, without company resources" is not at all unique to Google; it's been in every other IP ownership clause I've ever read. Many of them don't even require "a process by which you can get permission". They might require disclosure, or encourage you to talk to Legal if there's an appearance of overlap, but if you write thermostat software at work you can go make Flappy Bird at home without asking anyone for permission.

What's actually common, and what Google does, is claiming ownership of anything touching not only resources but the company's business. In the narrowest cases this is completely understandable: Mongo/10gen doesn't want employees to notice a Mongo pain point at work, then instead of mentioning it go home and build a product they know will have eager customers. And a bit more broadly, companies don't want their staff punching the clock, then going home and building a competitor with the experience they gained at work. But of course, companies have no real incentive to stop at what's reasonable: they'd like to own what you make, or capture all of your creative energy, so they commonly say "you can't make anything in our same industry". Amazon is infamous for attempting to claim "a connection with a cofounder" as a company resource and so claim anything made by ex-Amazon teams. (Which is only infamous because "we own everything" isn't common - if it were then Amazon's policy would look lenient.)

As you say, Google is doing the same thing, it's just that they do everything and they're just limiting ownership to the employee's scope of business. Maybe you work on Gmail, but Google owns Nest, so they can claim your smart home project. It's not a standard level of restriction, it's aggressive and probably unenforceable.

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