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 supported in the authors' free time.
You have the option of having Google own the code, and in return you can work on it using Google hardware, work on it while at work, use other google code or discuss it with your coworkers freely.
Or you can ask to retain ownership of your project, but then you don't get to do any of the above. This option is also sometimes (thanks DannyBee for correcting me) not available if your project is considered to be too similar to some critical Google interest. The basic idea is outlined here: https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/
"This option is also not available if your project is considered to be too similar to something Google's working on (due to obvious IP issues.)"
Speaking as an IARC committee member, this is not quite correct.
We have in fact, approved plenty of stuff that is close to what google is working on. For example, we've approved plenty of search engines.
(The overall approval rate is >96% last i looked).
It's not so simple that i can easily draw principled bright lines for you though :)
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)
Since some folks have trouble reading between the lines: Google considers all code possibly relevant to its business interests, and treats employees (in)appropriately.
> If you work at Google __everything you make__, even in your spare time, belongs to them.
Okay, google makes software and if you make software on your spare time maybe it's reasonable that company does not want to leak IP and thus produces these contracts.
But what about these stupid examples:
- Building a backyard deck for your house
- Taking pictures as a hobby
- Doing woodworking (e.g. making a chair and a table for your home office)
- etc..
So with this contract, Goggle owns my deck, desk, chair and a picture of these items, because I produced them on my spare time? Will horde of lawyers will come to my house and take my deck, desk, chair and picture of those items, because I used them while working remotely and bought tools to build them with the salary they payed me?
Even if those examples are completely rubbish and won't stand in court for Google, it's still absurd idea. You get payed salary for your time and work - that's it! That's where Google's power ends. After hours you go home and it's bullshit that they can own your personal work done on your own freetime at your private property with private tools and your own ideas. If they want to own everything then they should pay hourly average times 24hours , times 365 days per year as a salary, because I am giving all my time and work for them, while I am in contract with them.
EDIT: quote from Google's Personal Projects (IARC) [1]:
> 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.
Errr. Decks are not intellectual property, for starters.
"Even if those examples are completely rubbish and won't stand in court for Google, it's still absurd idea. You get payed salary for your time and work - that's it! That's where Google's power ends. After hours you go home and it's bullshit that they can own your personal work done on your own freetime at your private property with private tools and your own ideas. If they want to own everything then they should pay hourly average times 24hours , times 365 days per year as a salary, because I am giving all my time and work for them, while I am in contract with them.
"
You are sorely confused about the state of the law in the US. In the US, in most states, it doesn't even have to be written into an employment contract. The employer will simply own the IP, period.
At the end, he mentions that general statements never apply to everybody, and unique situations vary. Additionally, in California the law protects moreso than other states.
This is not true, and employees are explicitly told that this is not true.
There is an internal process to have google release any copyright they may hold on any project you produce on your own time without using corp resources. All it requires is going through a standard and a (mostly) boilerplate legal review.
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.
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.
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).
Usually these are 20% projects that googlers are allowed to make the MVP of the project. Those same people that created it will support it on their own time.
In addition to what other replies stated, you can read Google's documentation on how open source projects (official and unofficial are released) here: https://opensource.google.com/docs/
> "This project is in the initial research stage, please don't use it for any purpose."
So it's not a product at all, it's a research project. In particular, not being a product means that if you try to store or distribute images in this format, they'll probably be hard to recover a few years from now.