6 ms·

>> overly expansive ownership claim Yeah, that particular clause gave me a looong pause before signing their contract, in fact I even seriously considered taki

by m0zg 8y ago

>> overly expansive ownership claim Yeah, that particular clause gave me a looong pause before signing their contract, in fact I even seriously considered taking one of the other offers I had. This is why you see all those "happens to be owned by Google" disclaimers on open source projects. This means the person wrote this code on their own time, yet it's owned by Google anyway, which IMO is total employee-hostile bullshit. I would not sign something like that contract today. At the time, though, the money differential and the allure of having Google on my resume outweighed the concerns. I have since discovered other companies can be a lot less possessive of the stuff I build on my own time and dime.

dekhn 8y ago
I agreed to that contract and open sourced many thousands of lines of code owned by Google, but still available to me and the rest of the world via github. I don't see the problem. If you could demonstrate your project didn't overlap google business then you could do your own project.
- m0zg 8y ago
  People seem to not quite get this, so I'll try to be as clear as I can. Google should not have the ability to claim ownership on unrelated work that does not use company time or resources unless _I_ _voluntarily_ relinquish such ownership. Google should have no business whatsoever interfering with what I do on my own personal time. Nor should I have to make anything open source. Nor should I need to ask anyone's _permission_ to utilize my own time as I see fit. You can get these terms with other companies, if you ask for them. The only exception I think is reasonable is if my project discloses Google proprietary information in any way, or directly competes with Google, in which case Google should be able to terminate my employment. This would be fair. What Google is doing now is slimy AF.
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    The key point is "if you can demonstrate that your project doesn't compete with Google's business" IARC is really easy. I was approved for a couple projects, including one that absolutely could be considered to be competing with Google's business if they wanted, in like a week. You aren't actually legally required to go through IARC. The contract isn't enforcible in CA if you really don't compete, but I have prewritten verification of that now, and it was painless. IME, Google's earned the benefit of the doubt in this context.
    - m0zg 8y ago
      I take issue with the very idea that anything I do in my personal, uncompensated time is required to be vetted or approved by anybody. Google's "earned" a swift kick in the rear in this context.
    - throwaway2048 8y ago
      If it's not enforceable, why is it in the contract? They obviously intend to try to enforce it in cases where they can, which makes claims about "don't worry about it, its not enforceable" even more shady.
  - aiiane 8y ago
    What is "company time" for a salaried employee that doesn't have required working hours?
    - icebraining 8y ago
      It's the time spent working for the company.
    - ovi256 8y ago
      Come on, then it's a straight down slope to the company owns all intelectual output. Write a sonnet for a lover ? Bam, it owns it. If it wasn't planned through the usual company command-and-control chain of command, it obviously should be outside company time when you're at home.
      - C1sc0cat 8y ago
        That would not be related :_) - though the court case would be awesome.
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    You might "think" but that's how Anglo Saxon employment law (UK USA Some Commonwealth countries) works. There is literally hundreds of years of case law on this - you may not know that modern employment law descends from acts like the "masters and servants act" - guess which one we are.
    - m0zg 8y ago
      There were hundreds of years of "case law" on not letting black people drink from the same water fountains as white people. And yet, here we are.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mike_hearn 8y ago
  That's not really correct. I wrote a project at Google that had nothing to do with Google's business, in fact, they explicitly had chosen to not get involved with that whole area at all (Bitcoin). I applied for ability to open source it under the Google name and was denied, I asked for a copyright release back to me and was also denied. The open source programmes office had decided they wanted my project dead and preventing me from doing anything with it was their tool. Eventually I was able to get these decisions overridden by escalating up (way up) the management chain, but it was a huge pain and the OSPO decided that the exemption applied only to me, not other Googlers, so of course the moment the company hired someone else who happened to be involved with writing the "Bitcoin Core" software already, they tried to force him to exit the project and the same fight had to happen all over again (with more escalations to top management). The whole nonsense with someone in middle management (who shall remain nameless) deciding to kill spare time projects because they personally didn't like the idea really turned me off to these clauses. Google doesn't need them, they aren't threatened by side projects of employees and the whole thing causes far, far more drama than it can possibly ever avoid.
  - delroth 8y ago
    Note that the OSPO policies have largely changed since you've left Google. What you describe was definitely the situation as of 3-4 years ago, but don't describe how open sourcing code or contributing to FOSS projects works these days.
everdev 8y ago
> "happens to be owned by Google" disclaimers on open source projects Not sure I've seen this before, do you have examples?
- fooker 8y ago
  https://github.com/google/souper https://github.com/google/souper
- Datenstrom 8y ago
  Don't have one on hand but I have seen quite a few. I have heard that they are mostly 20% time projects though I'm not sure if they try to take code written on your own time but it looks like they do (and anything else you have written before working there) from this: https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/ https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/
  - everdev 8y ago
    > As part of your employment agreement, Google most likely owns intellectual property (IP) you create while at the company. Because Google’s business interests are so wide and varied, this likely applies to any personal project you have. That includes new development on personal projects you created prior to employment at Google. Just to be clear, it says "new" development while you're employed by Google, they don't claim to retroactively own your prior works pre-employment. I'm sure they ask you to declare it though so it's clear what you built before joining.
- rrix2 8y ago
  Perkeep is written/founded by Brad Fitzpatrick (google/golang engineer) and you have to sign a google CLA to contribute to it: https://perkeep.org/code#contributing https://perkeep.org/code#contributing
Datenstrom 8y ago
Doesn't California law protect people from employers stealing code you write on your own time? I recently turned down an offer in CA despite thinking I read something along those lines taking it as a sign of toxic culture. Another place had such a policy but gladly agreed to drop it.
- jonas21 8y ago
  This is the relevant California law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=2870 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... It says that if you do the work on your own time, with your own equipment, and without using any of your employer's trade secrets, the employer can't claim ownership of it unless it relates to the their business or R&D. I think the issue is that large companies like Google do so many things that almost anything involving software or the internet would relate to their business and not be covered by the law.
- ww520 8y ago
  The clause in CA 2870(a)(1), "relate ... to the employer’s business," gives an exception to the protection when it's related to the Company's business. The problem is Google is doing so many things that some area will overlap with your idea ever if you were not directly working on it in Google, and Google can go after that. I had a conversation with a CEO once on this very topic and he said, "Remember, it doesn't matter whether the suit has merit or not as long as the company is willing to sue you. The company has the money and resource to drag it out in the court to force you to sign over the IP."
JohnFen 8y ago
> I would not sign something like that contract today. I've been seeing wording to that effect in nearly every contract I've been presented with for years now. Every time, I speak up and suggest replacing it with wording that is much more restrictive (they can own anything I make using their resources or intellectual property, otherwise I own it). I have yet to have a company not agree to this change.
- m0zg 8y ago
  Google will flat out refuse. In their view they own the entirety of your intellectual output for the duration, whether or not it's done on your own time and resources, and whether or not it's in any way related to your day job. I mean I get it (sort of), early on there wasn't really any "moat" to protect the business, so they had to put shit like this in their contracts lest someone goes off and upends their entire business model. But that's no longer the case. Their moat is _insanely_ wide. They don't have to worry about employees' side projects anymore, and they haven't had to worry about that for about a decade and a half now. Likewise, their trading windows for RSUs are bullshit. There aren't (or at least weren't when I was there) any trading windows for employees below director level at MS, and I knew more about what's going on there than I ever did at Google. There's this illusion of internal transparency (created mostly by weekly TGIF where people get to pat themselves on the back for projects that will soon be canceled, but in the meanwhile can be used to get a promo), but nobody really knows anything material for real. The only exception I can recall is the TPU which was announced internally about 1.5 years before anybody outside Google knew anything about it. And it didn't move the stock one bit as far as I can tell. In fact, TechCrunch had the "internal" announcements before TGIF 90% of the time.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    > Google will flat out refuse. Fair enough, they can decide their terms. Honestly, I wouldn't be interested in working for Google in the first place, but if I were, that would put an immediate end to my interest.
    - m0zg 8y ago
dragonwriter 8y ago
> This means the person wrote this code on their own time What is “your own time” as a salaried employee payed for work product not hours on the job site?
- JohnFen 8y ago
  That would be the time when I am not doing company work.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    But that is absolutely useless rule to use when the whole point of determining if work is done on your own time is to determine if the work done is legally your work or company work, since it becomes a circular argument.
- m0zg 8y ago
  You don't understand. Google claims ownership even on the stuff that you do on _your own_ time, like nights and weekends, without using _any_ Google resources. Even if this stuff is in no way related to what you do at work.
  - eropple 8y ago
    There is an argument (and 'dragonwriter, if I have the measure of him, is illustrating it rather than advocating it) that a salaried employee has no "own time" except insofar as their time is not required by the employer. They can quit if they want time that the employer does not deign to grant them. In my more cynical moments I think this is the prevailing view in American tech.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      Well, I'm somewhere in between illustrating and advocating (EDIT: “advocating” here as “advocating as legally true” rather than “advocating as desirable”); I'm generally dubious that there is a meaningful legally cognizable boundary of “own time vs. work time” as opposed to “own activity vs. work activity” for salaried employees paid for work product, as opposed to employees paid for hours of work. If you are working on something within the scope of what you are contracted to do for your employer, it would seem to be, ipso facto, work time. EDIT: Moreover, I think that essentially what Google is doing here is having you sign away things which they otherwise could, and would were the assignment provision not permitted to them, simply prohibit outright via a during-employment non-compete, which even California (with it's unusually firm stance against post-employment non-compete) is generally fine with.
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
Imagine if Google Reader or Wave had been your personal side project and one day it just happened to catch the eye of the wrong businessperson

by m0zg 8y ago

dekhn 8y ago

I agreed to that contract and open sourced many thousands of lines of code owned by Google, but still available to me and the rest of the world via github. I don't see the problem. If you could demonstrate your project didn't overlap google business then you could do your own project.

m0zg 8y ago
People seem to not quite get this, so I'll try to be as clear as I can. Google should not have the ability to claim ownership on unrelated work that does not use company time or resources unless _I_ _voluntarily_ relinquish such ownership. Google should have no business whatsoever interfering with what I do on my own personal time. Nor should I have to make anything open source. Nor should I need to ask anyone's _permission_ to utilize my own time as I see fit. You can get these terms with other companies, if you ask for them. The only exception I think is reasonable is if my project discloses Google proprietary information in any way, or directly competes with Google, in which case Google should be able to terminate my employment. This would be fair. What Google is doing now is slimy AF.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  The key point is "if you can demonstrate that your project doesn't compete with Google's business" IARC is really easy. I was approved for a couple projects, including one that absolutely could be considered to be competing with Google's business if they wanted, in like a week. You aren't actually legally required to go through IARC. The contract isn't enforcible in CA if you really don't compete, but I have prewritten verification of that now, and it was painless. IME, Google's earned the benefit of the doubt in this context.
  - m0zg 8y ago
    I take issue with the very idea that anything I do in my personal, uncompensated time is required to be vetted or approved by anybody. Google's "earned" a swift kick in the rear in this context.
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    If it's not enforceable, why is it in the contract? They obviously intend to try to enforce it in cases where they can, which makes claims about "don't worry about it, its not enforceable" even more shady.
- aiiane 8y ago
  What is "company time" for a salaried employee that doesn't have required working hours?
  - icebraining 8y ago
    It's the time spent working for the company.
  - ovi256 8y ago
    Come on, then it's a straight down slope to the company owns all intelectual output. Write a sonnet for a lover ? Bam, it owns it. If it wasn't planned through the usual company command-and-control chain of command, it obviously should be outside company time when you're at home.
    - C1sc0cat 8y ago
      That would not be related :_) - though the court case would be awesome.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  You might "think" but that's how Anglo Saxon employment law (UK USA Some Commonwealth countries) works. There is literally hundreds of years of case law on this - you may not know that modern employment law descends from acts like the "masters and servants act" - guess which one we are.
  - m0zg 8y ago
    There were hundreds of years of "case law" on not letting black people drink from the same water fountains as white people. And yet, here we are.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mike_hearn 8y ago
That's not really correct. I wrote a project at Google that had nothing to do with Google's business, in fact, they explicitly had chosen to not get involved with that whole area at all (Bitcoin). I applied for ability to open source it under the Google name and was denied, I asked for a copyright release back to me and was also denied. The open source programmes office had decided they wanted my project dead and preventing me from doing anything with it was their tool. Eventually I was able to get these decisions overridden by escalating up (way up) the management chain, but it was a huge pain and the OSPO decided that the exemption applied only to me, not other Googlers, so of course the moment the company hired someone else who happened to be involved with writing the "Bitcoin Core" software already, they tried to force him to exit the project and the same fight had to happen all over again (with more escalations to top management). The whole nonsense with someone in middle management (who shall remain nameless) deciding to kill spare time projects because they personally didn't like the idea really turned me off to these clauses. Google doesn't need them, they aren't threatened by side projects of employees and the whole thing causes far, far more drama than it can possibly ever avoid.
- delroth 8y ago
  Note that the OSPO policies have largely changed since you've left Google. What you describe was definitely the situation as of 3-4 years ago, but don't describe how open sourcing code or contributing to FOSS projects works these days.

everdev 8y ago

> "happens to be owned by Google" disclaimers on open source projects Not sure I've seen this before, do you have examples?

fooker 8y ago
https://github.com/google/souper https://github.com/google/souper
Datenstrom 8y ago
Don't have one on hand but I have seen quite a few. I have heard that they are mostly 20% time projects though I'm not sure if they try to take code written on your own time but it looks like they do (and anything else you have written before working there) from this: https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/ https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/
- everdev 8y ago
  > As part of your employment agreement, Google most likely owns intellectual property (IP) you create while at the company. Because Google’s business interests are so wide and varied, this likely applies to any personal project you have. That includes new development on personal projects you created prior to employment at Google. Just to be clear, it says "new" development while you're employed by Google, they don't claim to retroactively own your prior works pre-employment. I'm sure they ask you to declare it though so it's clear what you built before joining.
rrix2 8y ago
Perkeep is written/founded by Brad Fitzpatrick (google/golang engineer) and you have to sign a google CLA to contribute to it: https://perkeep.org/code#contributing https://perkeep.org/code#contributing

Datenstrom 8y ago

Doesn't California law protect people from employers stealing code you write on your own time? I recently turned down an offer in CA despite thinking I read something along those lines taking it as a sign of toxic culture. Another place had such a policy but gladly agreed to drop it.

jonas21 8y ago
This is the relevant California law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=2870 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... It says that if you do the work on your own time, with your own equipment, and without using any of your employer's trade secrets, the employer can't claim ownership of it unless it relates to the their business or R&D. I think the issue is that large companies like Google do so many things that almost anything involving software or the internet would relate to their business and not be covered by the law.
ww520 8y ago
The clause in CA 2870(a)(1), "relate ... to the employer’s business," gives an exception to the protection when it's related to the Company's business. The problem is Google is doing so many things that some area will overlap with your idea ever if you were not directly working on it in Google, and Google can go after that. I had a conversation with a CEO once on this very topic and he said, "Remember, it doesn't matter whether the suit has merit or not as long as the company is willing to sue you. The company has the money and resource to drag it out in the court to force you to sign over the IP."

JohnFen 8y ago

> I would not sign something like that contract today. I've been seeing wording to that effect in nearly every contract I've been presented with for years now. Every time, I speak up and suggest replacing it with wording that is much more restrictive (they can own anything I make using their resources or intellectual property, otherwise I own it). I have yet to have a company not agree to this change.

m0zg 8y ago
Google will flat out refuse. In their view they own the entirety of your intellectual output for the duration, whether or not it's done on your own time and resources, and whether or not it's in any way related to your day job. I mean I get it (sort of), early on there wasn't really any "moat" to protect the business, so they had to put shit like this in their contracts lest someone goes off and upends their entire business model. But that's no longer the case. Their moat is _insanely_ wide. They don't have to worry about employees' side projects anymore, and they haven't had to worry about that for about a decade and a half now. Likewise, their trading windows for RSUs are bullshit. There aren't (or at least weren't when I was there) any trading windows for employees below director level at MS, and I knew more about what's going on there than I ever did at Google. There's this illusion of internal transparency (created mostly by weekly TGIF where people get to pat themselves on the back for projects that will soon be canceled, but in the meanwhile can be used to get a promo), but nobody really knows anything material for real. The only exception I can recall is the TPU which was announced internally about 1.5 years before anybody outside Google knew anything about it. And it didn't move the stock one bit as far as I can tell. In fact, TechCrunch had the "internal" announcements before TGIF 90% of the time.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > Google will flat out refuse. Fair enough, they can decide their terms. Honestly, I wouldn't be interested in working for Google in the first place, but if I were, that would put an immediate end to my interest.
  - m0zg 8y ago

dragonwriter 8y ago

> This means the person wrote this code on their own time What is “your own time” as a salaried employee payed for work product not hours on the job site?

JohnFen 8y ago
That would be the time when I am not doing company work.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  But that is absolutely useless rule to use when the whole point of determining if work is done on your own time is to determine if the work done is legally your work or company work, since it becomes a circular argument.
m0zg 8y ago
You don't understand. Google claims ownership even on the stuff that you do on _your own_ time, like nights and weekends, without using _any_ Google resources. Even if this stuff is in no way related to what you do at work.
- eropple 8y ago
  There is an argument (and 'dragonwriter, if I have the measure of him, is illustrating it rather than advocating it) that a salaried employee has no "own time" except insofar as their time is not required by the employer. They can quit if they want time that the employer does not deign to grant them. In my more cynical moments I think this is the prevailing view in American tech.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Well, I'm somewhere in between illustrating and advocating (EDIT: “advocating” here as “advocating as legally true” rather than “advocating as desirable”); I'm generally dubious that there is a meaningful legally cognizable boundary of “own time vs. work time” as opposed to “own activity vs. work activity” for salaried employees paid for work product, as opposed to employees paid for hours of work. If you are working on something within the scope of what you are contracted to do for your employer, it would seem to be, ipso facto, work time. EDIT: Moreover, I think that essentially what Google is doing here is having you sign away things which they otherwise could, and would were the assignment provision not permitted to them, simply prohibit outright via a during-employment non-compete, which even California (with it's unusually firm stance against post-employment non-compete) is generally fine with.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

Imagine if Google Reader or Wave had been your personal side project and one day it just happened to catch the eye of the wrong businessperson