3 ms·

Licenses don't work like that. Accidentally releasing something under a license doesn't mean it will forever carry that license.

Mathnerd314 2y ago
Regarding trade secrets, inadvertent or accidental disclosure means it is no longer a trade secret - no protection. And regarding copyright, there is Oracle vs. Google that copying APIs is fair use (Google's argument). So even if the copyright license grant in the leak is held to be invalid (the license states it is perpetual, if it is valid it does forever carry that license), it would be fair use anyway. I think the only IP protection is patents, Google has patents on various parts of the system so if you did actually want to build a Google clone by reverse-engineering their documentation you would run into trouble.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  I think serving the docs themselves is likely illegal, though. You don't actually have a right to distribute copies just because someone pushed a wrong button and they were made visible in a repo that has a top-level Apache 2 license. Sure, they can't stop people who received a copy from studying it and using or discussing the information in there. But I think they can almost certainly stop them from (legally) distributing that information to others.
  - winddude 2y ago
    Apache 2 is irrevocable, and you can redistribute it however you wish. I think it's safe to assume as soon as it was pushed public to the original google repo it's was covered under apache 2. that entire repo was distributed by google as Apache 2. So if you pull that commit, as far as I would be concerned everything in it is apache 2 since that's the license it's distributed with. We have no idea why that code was pushed, and it doesn't matter from a public perspective.
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      None of that matters if the company never intended to publish it as Apache 2, and can show they took immediate steps to correct their mistake. The law is not code, and intent matters.
      - winddude 2y ago
        source or relevant case? Because if someone pulls before it's another commit that removes it... you would have absolutely zero idea why they removed it, or you wouldn't even know it was removed. Or even if you still pull that commit that as of yesterday after over 1 month was still in the google repo, there's no info that it shouldn't be there... And I think pushing code to a public opensource repo, shows intent to publish it...
  - gowld 2y ago
    I wonder if anyone's ever tried to figure out if APIs are copyrightable... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/how-the-supreme-court-saved-the-software-industry-from-api-copyrights/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/how-the-supreme-...

Mathnerd314 2y ago

Regarding trade secrets, inadvertent or accidental disclosure means it is no longer a trade secret - no protection. And regarding copyright, there is Oracle vs. Google that copying APIs is fair use (Google's argument). So even if the copyright license grant in the leak is held to be invalid (the license states it is perpetual, if it is valid it does forever carry that license), it would be fair use anyway. I think the only IP protection is patents, Google has patents on various parts of the system so if you did actually want to build a Google clone by reverse-engineering their documentation you would run into trouble.

tsimionescu 2y ago
I think serving the docs themselves is likely illegal, though. You don't actually have a right to distribute copies just because someone pushed a wrong button and they were made visible in a repo that has a top-level Apache 2 license. Sure, they can't stop people who received a copy from studying it and using or discussing the information in there. But I think they can almost certainly stop them from (legally) distributing that information to others.
- winddude 2y ago
  Apache 2 is irrevocable, and you can redistribute it however you wish. I think it's safe to assume as soon as it was pushed public to the original google repo it's was covered under apache 2. that entire repo was distributed by google as Apache 2. So if you pull that commit, as far as I would be concerned everything in it is apache 2 since that's the license it's distributed with. We have no idea why that code was pushed, and it doesn't matter from a public perspective.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    None of that matters if the company never intended to publish it as Apache 2, and can show they took immediate steps to correct their mistake. The law is not code, and intent matters.
    - winddude 2y ago
      source or relevant case? Because if someone pulls before it's another commit that removes it... you would have absolutely zero idea why they removed it, or you wouldn't even know it was removed. Or even if you still pull that commit that as of yesterday after over 1 month was still in the google repo, there's no info that it shouldn't be there... And I think pushing code to a public opensource repo, shows intent to publish it...
- gowld 2y ago
  I wonder if anyone's ever tried to figure out if APIs are copyrightable... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/how-the-supreme-court-saved-the-software-industry-from-api-copyrights/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/how-the-supreme-...