Google claims copyright on employee side projects • Hacker News Board

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#331

Post by Grimm1 » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

tytso wrote: 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…

I have either gotten that clause struck from my contract, ensured it is limited to direct competition or turned down the position. People really not need to take it for granted, we are in a hot hot hot tech market we have options and that affords leverage. Use it.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#332

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

pabs3 wrote: post #92

When I was renegotiating my contract, Software Freedom Conservancy reminded me that everything is negotiable, so I negotiated ownership of all open source code I produce for my employer in addition to the existing ownership of side projects. https://sfconservancy.org/contractpatch/ https://lists.sfconservancy.org/pipermail/contractpatch/2018...

[deleted]

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#333

Post by phendrenad2 » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:09 PM UTC

Eikon wrote: post #15

petjuh wrote: post #5

Were those side projects done during work hours or using Google's equipment?

It's crazy that the "using X company equipment" legal basis works at all in those disputes. Most of the time, "equipment" seems to mean "laptop". IHMO when "equipment" is such a commodity as a laptop, this should never even be an issue. That's like a newspaper that would claims the work of one of it's journalist who is writing books on his personal time on the basis that the book was written with a pencil he brought…

This. People need to understand that this isn't a McDonalds and it isn't an issue of making your own fries in the company oil. It's about "did I get my work done" and anything beyond that should be my own business.

But this is the way people think, and the way things are, so I assume that anything I make on company hardware or on company premises or while daydreaming about work or while wearing my company logo tshirt is the property of my employer, and I should probably consult them before selling or open-sourcing it...

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#334

Post by nyxxie » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

Idiotic policy. Side projects are one of the best way to learn new skills (they're the entire basis for my current skillset in this industry!). I often find that I import lessons and technologies learned in my freetime to my day job as opposed to stealing niche lessons from work. This fact basically makes my side projects akin to ongoing training that my employers aren't paying for but are reaping value from.

Not only is it unfair for these companies to leverage their power to try and claim ownership over side projects, but they're actively shooting themselves in the foot by discouraging a massive and free source of continuous education for their employees.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#335

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

masukomi wrote: post #174

I've been able to alter that "we own your crap" section of every employment contract I've needed to. Don't sign. speak up. Carefully write and submit a reasonable alternative. This may be harder with megacorps... With the prior company it was basically just altering it to say they don't own anything I created prior to my employment even if i continue to work on it and that I would give them notification for new proje…

Mind mentioning which companies? I’ve tried in all companies I’ve worked with (some FAANG, some medium sized companies) and none of them are willing to even touch terms including IP assignment clauses. Without exception it was “Sign it unmodified it GTFO!”

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#336

Post by delroth » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

tytso wrote: post #284

marcan_42 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others have already commented on how this isn't "standard" in places outside the US, so I'll focus on something else. Ted, you're a Big Deal. You maintain ext4, you're a major kernel contributor. Of course Google is going to keep you happy, give you plenty of time to work on FOSS, and provide you with resources for it. They are paying you to work on FOSS to a large extent. The deal is they give you all this time and…

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 people I talk with do (3), nobody will admit to it publicly though.

I'm right now waiting for an IARC approval for a small HTML+Typescript that took me 6h to build on a weekend and that I want to MIT-license. This has now been pending for 2 weeks. This is completely ridiculous and it means there is just no reasonable way for someone to follow the policy while doing small side projects on the weekend. Going through the releasing process would have taken roughly the same time, except that Google would also probably not be interested in owning that code for multiple reasons.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#337

Post by stiray » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

stiray wrote: post #237

tytso wrote: 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…

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…

Maybe just a detail for USA workers, a brief explanation how some things work in some EU states, as an alternative to union, much softer one, but it has teeth (as an extreme, it can get CEO to a jail).

I am 8 years (elected, 2 mandates, around 1200 workers) in workers council (Germans might be well aware of this). This is a "political body" which as its basic description, has to work in favor of workers AND company (distinction between union - union will defend the worker even if company goes down - workers council tries to do what is best for company and worker, sometimes annoying but beneficial at most times for both - and there is always a baseball bat that it can transform to a union. The definition can make a lot of decisions hard, but at least it does take the company into account). And as most important, it can break owners decisions that are harmfull to the company.

The company has obligation to get a conformation from the workers council for important decisions, like selling the company. And we can break a deal (the CEO goes to jail case).

The confirmation also needs to be given for any larger lay off of employees. No we wont allow that for short boost of cash to satisfy management bonus conditions (HP).

It can also effect the decisions where it can affect workers contract changes. It can veto them.

Monthly reports about company financials. We are still bound to NDA, but we hava enough informations to decide.

Selling a company. We can veto.

There is hell of a lot more legislation behind this, buf I think it can solve a lot of issues that USA has.

(I have a hell of a lot to say to this, but I dont want to translate hunderds of pages of legaslation for nothing. Please DO ask.)

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#338

Post by anaphor » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #280

anaphor wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please cite relevant statutes or case law. It's pretty easy to write a contract that only assigns copyright to the corporation for works that were created on company time. That is standard practice for pretty much every job, including non-tech ones.

When does company time start and end for a salaried employee? If I'm working on a side project and get paged to look at something for work, does work time start when I look at the alert? Am I on work time if I answer a work email on a work device with my personal laptop open doing side work at 3 am?

I mean, if it was done on non-Google hardware, off Google property, and using resources that you paid for / own, then I can't see any problems with that. They can still argue that it competes with their core business, but they would have to provide some justification if they wanted to fire you for cause or have the IP assigned to them. I guess they can just terminate you for no reason (I think?), but that's the risk you take.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#339

Post by em-bee » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

rs23296008n1 wrote: post #257

S_A_P wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont repeat yourself. IF you have code that solves a problem, dont rewrite it at every gig...

Now thats a philosophy I both agree and disagree with. Agree: omg do i need to write this form again? Seriously just write a library already! Disagree: this problem is subtly yet incompatibly different to what I've seen and dealt with before. The library would need x,y,z but their IP demands mean I'd lose rights to my closed-source library or be forced to open source it to keep using it elsewhere.

but that's exactly the case where things become an issue. if you were able to write a library, it would be worth the effort to write it once more from scratch and make sure that the copyright of the previous code is not infringed.

instead however, what happens is that you have a problem that looks similar to a previous problem, so you take the old code and modify it to fit the new problem.

NOW you have the additional problem of having reused code that's owned by employer A, for a project at employer B.

Re: Google claims copyright on employee side projects

#340

Post by danShumway » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

reroute1 wrote: post #309

danShumway wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absurd for any company to say they're going to attract passionate programmers, and then expect them to just roll over and give up projects that were started before they even joined at the company. If you're Google, you can get away with this because you just throw so much money at people that they're willing to temporarily put their life on hold for 3-4 years. But for any other company, people who are genuinely…

> 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 or a small company, you do not have enough money to do what Google is doing. You'll attract talent, but you won't attract industry veterans or people who have very wide skill sets, because what your company is doing is not interesting or broad enough to hold their entire attention -- and you're demanding their entire attention, both in and out of work. You're also not in a position to offer anyone like tytso their dream job, because you have a minimum viable product to build with specific requirements. So the industry talent you do have will leave quickly, because in order to do interesting things they'll have to.

I regularly see articles about how to hire good people and keep them, and a lot of them waste time talking about stuff like snacks in the office, or the company culture, or whatever. Very few of them acknowledge that good programmers are good because they like programming, and if you put them in an environment where they can't program without your permission, they'll leave because regardless of how many free sodas you're giving them, they'll still feel smothered. Similarly, the employees that stay will progressively have a harder and harder time keeping up with the industry, because there's no reason at all to explore new technologies when you can't do anything with them.

Take whatever position on the ethics you want, it's absurd to assume that you're going to hire someone who's genuinely passionate, and keep that person around for 10 (or even just 5) years if your company has policies like this. You have to give those people the ability to breathe, or they'll go somewhere else where they feel less strangled.

People look at Google and say, "it's fine, because it works for them." 99% of companies in the world aren't Google, and will not be able to pull this off without suppressing their hire quality and retention.