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

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). Google's open source policies is now fully public (as of a few years ago), and I can affirm that they haven't changed substantially in the last ten years. It's all here[1], including the statement releasing code as open source under the Google copyright was very clearly documented in the IARC process[2]: [1] https://opensource.google/docs/ https://opensource.google/docs/ [2] https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/ https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/ So I have trouble taking your complaint that "Google didn't tell me that I had an alternative" seriously. Also, from your description, a huge portion of your contributions that you listed were in the Linux and associated projects (such as Pulse Audio). So all of this would have required one, or perhaps two, requests to release OSS patches; once you have done that for one or two contributions, it's no longer necessary to ask permission for subsequent patches to a OSS project. (This is true for all Googlers.) Asking for permission to release those under GPL is trivial, and is granted as a matter of course. Lots of other Googlers have done it, without problem, and most have not complained the OSS releasing process is heavyweight. IARC is more heavyweight, yes, but it's right there in the IARC process documentation that the OSS releasing process is the preferred option, and that it is lightweight. Before I started working at VA Linux Systems or at IBM, I had taken the class, "Law for an I/T Manager" at the MIT Sloan School. So I was very well aware of IP law issues (patents, copyright, and trade secrets), and how to read contracts, including employment contracts. So none of this took my surprise (either at VA Linux Systems or at IBM, both of which had similar provisions in the employment contract); perhaps you didn't bother to take the time to read the employment contract and perhaps you didn't bother to read the very clear web pages at Google's Open Source Program Office. I can't speak to what you experienced at your Noogler training, so it's unclear whether you weren't paying attention, or it's since been streamlined. But if you found the IARC documentation so you could submitted the IARC request, you should have found rest, and this shouldn't have been a surprise to you.