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Pretty sure I heard on HN relatively recently that your contract with Google basically explicitly states that any code you write while you work there is conside

Pretty sure I heard on HN relatively recently that your contract with Google basically explicitly states that any code you write while you work there is considered theirs and they don't distinguish between personal and professional projects. I was surprised to hear this as well (so I'm not asserting that I know this for a fact) but the person who posted this was very explicit that it was true. So if it is true, then maybe any software engineer that writes some interesting web app trinket who works for Google could have this happen to them. I'm sure the coder who made the above app will show up in these comments in the next couple hours or so lol. EDIT: Omg it's the cartoonist guy!

jimmy2020 5y ago
is it just Google that owns any code you write while working there or it's just the usual requirement for FAANG
- KETpXDDzR 5y ago
  It's the same in most companies. It's mostly hidden in some company rule book you agree to when signing your contract.
  - Stratoscope 5y ago
    > It's mostly hidden in some company rule book In every employment contract I've ever seen, IP assignment is right there in the dozen or so pages of the contract. It is far too critical to just hide it away in "some company rule book" that the contract references. The contract itself will spell it out in great detail.
iamcreasy 5y ago
Just to double check, if you are developing a project in the evening at your own - Google still owns it(How does it work under CA law)? How about other FAANGs?
- mjg59 5y ago
  If you're in the US, Google claims that they own it (even in California, where local law means they can only do so if it "Relate[s] 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" - they asserted ownership of a Linux driver I wrote on my own time for hardware produced by a company that went out of business before Google even existed). Google's actually better than many though - there's a process to release your code under an open source license (although with Google's copyright), you can contribute patches to third party open source projects without additional permission (again, under Google's copyright), and you can request that Google assign copyright for a personal project back to you. My understanding is that Apple basically forbid all of this outright. I'm not sure what the situation is at Amazon or Netflix.
  - why_only_15 5y ago
    two years ago at an apple all hands someone asked craig federighi about this and he more or less said "i know you all hate this {we get a lot of questions about this issue}... but for legal reasons we're not going to change it."
  - tylerhou 5y ago
    There is also an IARC process that grants you the copyright if you get approval. https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/ https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/
  - OJFord 5y ago
    What does it mean to contribute to third party OSS (that has whatever X licence) under Google's copyright? That the project owners couldn't change licence (and keep that code) without Google's consent? Is this why some (/all of a certain size or commerce) worry about CLAs?
    - mjg59 5y ago
      Google remains the copyright holder of the submitted patch. There's nothing special in this from the project's perspective - in the absence of copyright assignment as a required part of patch submission, the default is that the submitter retains copyright. In this case, it's just Google claiming ownership of their employee's patch rather than the employee holding the copyright.
dv_dt 5y ago
In general to claim personal projects as your own, in California anyway, I’ve been told it has to be on your own time and on your own equipment. (and probably a non-conflicting subject matter) By offering hosting for the personal time projects on their infrastructure, Google would make it their equipment.
yongjik 5y ago
That's the default, not just in Google but it pretty much any US company (and probably elsewhere). If you think that's draconian, here's a very good explanation: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr... A caveat is that, in California, you own your project provided that (1) you didn't use any company resource, (2) you didn't do it on work hours, and (3) your project is not related to anything that the company does. Of course, in case of Google, it does pretty much everything, which means Google can easily claim anything you do as its own. (IANAL, don't quote me on this.)
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  obviously you should read the contract before signing with $MEGACORP_THAT_PAYS_YOUR_BILLS, and I agree with (1) and (2) and (3) kinda sorta not really since it basically just implies you are a work machine, but it just seems so rife with the potential for abuse. Thankfully I haven't heard of many other cases of this getting people in too much trouble other than Serge Aleynikov and his case with GS (and honestly, it was stupid of him to upload even open source code from work computer to a remote server). I worked at GS and it was the most locked down development environment ever, so it wouldn't even be feasible/productive for you to "accidentally" work on side projects on these machines. Most security/audit trainings were around "Really - if you do this, you will instantly be teleported into the center of the nearest neutron star"
  - yongjik 5y ago
    > Serge Aleynikov IIRC, he saw some open source code used in Goldman Sachs, believed that they should be open (whether right or wrong, I don't know), and uploaded it public. Right? I remember HN discussion from years ago. I don't think his story is related to developers' side projects. If you work for Company X and knowingly upload some of its internal repository to a public place, of course you're going to be fired. Would you expect anything else?
    - arthurcolle 5y ago
      from my understanding it was more nuanced than that - the code was already open source but he then made some changes to the source and wanted to keep those changes. Obviously this is pretty bad too, but eventually all charges were dropped and this might have just been because how aggressive the plaintiffs and the FBI goons were in pursuing this guy, especially after considering the accusations of "stealing code" that is so dangerous it could manipulate the fabric of financial markets. In any case, I just pulled up my GS NDA and I probably shouldn't comment any further. Funny side note though: GS realtime risk/lazily loaded object graph database is called SecDB, and @saleyn has a repo on GitHub called secdb which has to do with having an efficient data store for financial data... I guess he was feeling invulnerable after getting off of the previous charges haha
noduerme 5y ago
Just to add to the other comments here, from a more freelance perspective: Most work for large corporations is done under a "work for hire" agreement which means the company owns the copyright to the source you write. Additionally, many big companies will pressure you to accept employment clauses that claim ownership of anything you create in your free time, 24/7. This is not just for code, it's also standard for contract employees in the TV and film industry. Note I'm distinguishing here between "employee" and "freelancer". I refuse to sign work-for-hire agreements, which means when hired, I still own the copyright to the source. I grant the company hiring me free use and modification and in some cases, right to resell. I had a case of a startup where I was the sole coder, who turned around and sold their app to [Fortune 100 company] who didn't realize that I still owned this source. This company then asked me to consult - offering half what I'd been paid to write it - and further, asked me to sign a contract stating that they owned the code and everything else I made while I was consulting with them. Oh and also, without my help, they were missing some major assets they needed to recompile it. I told them where to stick it, so they hired a bunch of people to try to reverse engineer it rather than agreeing to my terms. That didn't work (not least because I had trapped the fuck out of the code they did have, in ways that made it crash the compiler) so they ended up down a couple million bucks and shuttering the site. If they had only been nice, and hadn't come at me with the aggressive attitude, it could've been a nice little asset. If you do not sign a work-for-hire agreement, and you're an independent contractor - not an employee - you own the source code unless otherwise stated in a contract. Beware that some jurisdictions will view you as a de facto employee in some cases (for better or worse). And my advice to anyone listening is, never, ever sign a contract with one of these companies that stipulates that they own your off-time work product. It's completely abusive and unnecessary. It's not worth taking a job with such a company.
- eloisius 5y ago
  So you wasted their time and money writing “traps” in the code? Sounds really unethical.
  - arthurcolle 5y ago
    You sound like someone that owns a lot of equity at the place you work at - congratulations! Bellum omnium contra omnes
beardyw 5y ago
Here in the UK I worked for a small company in 2001. Each person recorded time spent on projects on one spreadsheet on a shared drive, a nightmare. I had a free website with uklinux (now no more) and in my spare time quickly knocked together a web based solution. Over a year or two I enhanced it, in my own time, and everyone liked it. But the company started losing money and one day the finance director came up to me and said my contract said that the system belonged to the company and I should hand it over. Well it was on my web site - I said no. Next day people complained they couldn't log in. I sent them to the finance director! Oh, and I had explained to the systems guys how to do a daily download of their data, so that was OK wasn't it? Next day finance director changed his mind. The company did go bust, and only then did I open it up as a paid service. I ran it as a side project, but got a steady profit from it. Closed it when I retired.

jimmy2020 5y ago

is it just Google that owns any code you write while working there or it's just the usual requirement for FAANG

KETpXDDzR 5y ago
It's the same in most companies. It's mostly hidden in some company rule book you agree to when signing your contract.
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  > It's mostly hidden in some company rule book In every employment contract I've ever seen, IP assignment is right there in the dozen or so pages of the contract. It is far too critical to just hide it away in "some company rule book" that the contract references. The contract itself will spell it out in great detail.

iamcreasy 5y ago

Just to double check, if you are developing a project in the evening at your own - Google still owns it(How does it work under CA law)? How about other FAANGs?

mjg59 5y ago
If you're in the US, Google claims that they own it (even in California, where local law means they can only do so if it "Relate[s] 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" - they asserted ownership of a Linux driver I wrote on my own time for hardware produced by a company that went out of business before Google even existed). Google's actually better than many though - there's a process to release your code under an open source license (although with Google's copyright), you can contribute patches to third party open source projects without additional permission (again, under Google's copyright), and you can request that Google assign copyright for a personal project back to you. My understanding is that Apple basically forbid all of this outright. I'm not sure what the situation is at Amazon or Netflix.
- why_only_15 5y ago
  two years ago at an apple all hands someone asked craig federighi about this and he more or less said "i know you all hate this {we get a lot of questions about this issue}... but for legal reasons we're not going to change it."
- tylerhou 5y ago
  There is also an IARC process that grants you the copyright if you get approval. https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/ https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/
- OJFord 5y ago
  What does it mean to contribute to third party OSS (that has whatever X licence) under Google's copyright? That the project owners couldn't change licence (and keep that code) without Google's consent? Is this why some (/all of a certain size or commerce) worry about CLAs?
  - mjg59 5y ago
    Google remains the copyright holder of the submitted patch. There's nothing special in this from the project's perspective - in the absence of copyright assignment as a required part of patch submission, the default is that the submitter retains copyright. In this case, it's just Google claiming ownership of their employee's patch rather than the employee holding the copyright.

dv_dt 5y ago

In general to claim personal projects as your own, in California anyway, I’ve been told it has to be on your own time and on your own equipment. (and probably a non-conflicting subject matter) By offering hosting for the personal time projects on their infrastructure, Google would make it their equipment.

yongjik 5y ago

That's the default, not just in Google but it pretty much any US company (and probably elsewhere). If you think that's draconian, here's a very good explanation: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-pr... A caveat is that, in California, you own your project provided that (1) you didn't use any company resource, (2) you didn't do it on work hours, and (3) your project is not related to anything that the company does. Of course, in case of Google, it does pretty much everything, which means Google can easily claim anything you do as its own. (IANAL, don't quote me on this.)

arthurcolle 5y ago
obviously you should read the contract before signing with $MEGACORP_THAT_PAYS_YOUR_BILLS, and I agree with (1) and (2) and (3) kinda sorta not really since it basically just implies you are a work machine, but it just seems so rife with the potential for abuse. Thankfully I haven't heard of many other cases of this getting people in too much trouble other than Serge Aleynikov and his case with GS (and honestly, it was stupid of him to upload even open source code from work computer to a remote server). I worked at GS and it was the most locked down development environment ever, so it wouldn't even be feasible/productive for you to "accidentally" work on side projects on these machines. Most security/audit trainings were around "Really - if you do this, you will instantly be teleported into the center of the nearest neutron star"
- yongjik 5y ago
  > Serge Aleynikov IIRC, he saw some open source code used in Goldman Sachs, believed that they should be open (whether right or wrong, I don't know), and uploaded it public. Right? I remember HN discussion from years ago. I don't think his story is related to developers' side projects. If you work for Company X and knowingly upload some of its internal repository to a public place, of course you're going to be fired. Would you expect anything else?
  - arthurcolle 5y ago
    from my understanding it was more nuanced than that - the code was already open source but he then made some changes to the source and wanted to keep those changes. Obviously this is pretty bad too, but eventually all charges were dropped and this might have just been because how aggressive the plaintiffs and the FBI goons were in pursuing this guy, especially after considering the accusations of "stealing code" that is so dangerous it could manipulate the fabric of financial markets. In any case, I just pulled up my GS NDA and I probably shouldn't comment any further. Funny side note though: GS realtime risk/lazily loaded object graph database is called SecDB, and @saleyn has a repo on GitHub called secdb which has to do with having an efficient data store for financial data... I guess he was feeling invulnerable after getting off of the previous charges haha

noduerme 5y ago

Just to add to the other comments here, from a more freelance perspective: Most work for large corporations is done under a "work for hire" agreement which means the company owns the copyright to the source you write. Additionally, many big companies will pressure you to accept employment clauses that claim ownership of anything you create in your free time, 24/7. This is not just for code, it's also standard for contract employees in the TV and film industry. Note I'm distinguishing here between "employee" and "freelancer". I refuse to sign work-for-hire agreements, which means when hired, I still own the copyright to the source. I grant the company hiring me free use and modification and in some cases, right to resell. I had a case of a startup where I was the sole coder, who turned around and sold their app to [Fortune 100 company] who didn't realize that I still owned this source. This company then asked me to consult - offering half what I'd been paid to write it - and further, asked me to sign a contract stating that they owned the code and everything else I made while I was consulting with them. Oh and also, without my help, they were missing some major assets they needed to recompile it. I told them where to stick it, so they hired a bunch of people to try to reverse engineer it rather than agreeing to my terms. That didn't work (not least because I had trapped the fuck out of the code they did have, in ways that made it crash the compiler) so they ended up down a couple million bucks and shuttering the site. If they had only been nice, and hadn't come at me with the aggressive attitude, it could've been a nice little asset. If you do not sign a work-for-hire agreement, and you're an independent contractor - not an employee - you own the source code unless otherwise stated in a contract. Beware that some jurisdictions will view you as a de facto employee in some cases (for better or worse). And my advice to anyone listening is, never, ever sign a contract with one of these companies that stipulates that they own your off-time work product. It's completely abusive and unnecessary. It's not worth taking a job with such a company.

eloisius 5y ago
So you wasted their time and money writing “traps” in the code? Sounds really unethical.
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  You sound like someone that owns a lot of equity at the place you work at - congratulations! Bellum omnium contra omnes

beardyw 5y ago

Here in the UK I worked for a small company in 2001. Each person recorded time spent on projects on one spreadsheet on a shared drive, a nightmare. I had a free website with uklinux (now no more) and in my spare time quickly knocked together a web based solution. Over a year or two I enhanced it, in my own time, and everyone liked it. But the company started losing money and one day the finance director came up to me and said my contract said that the system belonged to the company and I should hand it over. Well it was on my web site - I said no. Next day people complained they couldn't log in. I sent them to the finance director! Oh, and I had explained to the systems guys how to do a daily download of their data, so that was OK wasn't it? Next day finance director changed his mind. The company did go bust, and only then did I open it up as a paid service. I ran it as a side project, but got a steady profit from it. Closed it when I retired.