7 ms·

It's written by a Google employee, and therefore Google owns all rights to it. However, in all other respects it's just an open source project written and suppo

• stepik777 9y ago
  How could Google own something written and supported in the authors' free time?
  • hayksaakian 9y ago
    Oppressive employment agreements
  • corobo 9y ago
    The Google employee thought the contract terms were worth the job so signed it
  • mattnewton 9y ago
    If Google resources were used to create it (machines, the author's 20% time, google tools, etc), or if the author lives in a state/country without moonlighting protections. I guess the former, and the author might be doing it as a 20% project owned by Google in the hopes of making it a larger, more successful project.
    • kuschku 9y ago
      That depends on jurisdiction, obviously. If you do it during your break time, even if it’s produced on company machines, it remains yours, the company has no right to it. (in Germany).
  • vinceguidry 9y ago
    "Free time" can mean time spent on the job not contributing to his delegated tasks, such as 20% time.
  • polk 9y ago
    If you work at Google everything you make, even in your spare time, belongs to them. That's how the contracts work, unfortunately.
    • TulliusCicero 9y ago
      That's not true, at least not in California. But if you made it with Google resources then yes they own it.
      • DannyBee 9y ago
        "That's not true, at least not in California." People, for the most part, very badly misunderstand what california law says. For most large diversified corporations, the corporation will own all of it, because it will "Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer’s business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development of the employer;" Note that it's completely irrelevant what the employee is doing for them. Also note that most employees rarely have any idea of all the things their employer does. By numbers, employees lose the vast majority of lawsuits under 2870 in california. (I believe that the fact that people think it is so great is one of the things that holds us back from making it actually great)
        • Terribledactyl 9y ago
          > By numbers, employees lose the vast majority of lawsuits under 2870 in california. Do you happen to know if this is because only very strong cases materialize?
          • DannyBee 9y ago
            I don't, but it's certainly possible. Most employers have no desire to sue employees, so most of these settle or get ignored, AFAIK. At least in the case of Google (literally, i have no concept of other Alphabet companies), the only cases i'm aware of where Google has claimed it owned something was when the employee sued Google first. example: A former employee suing Google over a patent developed while employed by Google, google counterclaims it owns that patent under the IP agreement.
  • mkishi 9y ago
    It's worth noting that depending on your location this is actually _the default_. As in, if it isn't in your contract, your side projects belong to your employer.
    • lucb1e 9y ago
      Yeah I was very surprised to read this in my current contract (first employer, the Netherlands). It basically says: "as is the default, we own products/code/whatever that is relevant to our business, even if you made it in spare time, but we make the exemption that contributions to pre-existing open source projects can be under an open license, because we are so benevolent and don't want to discourage this". I asked about it, but without raising a formal complaint, I didn't get more than the general logic, which is "because you also learn from experiences on the job, it's unfair if you can can put stuff together and then sell it or even give it away for free to potential competitors". I'm still considering whether or not to make a big deal out of it in future contracts; but next month I'm going to do a master's anyway, so it was a temporary limitation (and I accepted with that in mind).