[joerichey]

As a current Google employee, the OSS contribution process has gotten way better. Basically, anything that is BSD/MIT/Apache/LGPL/GPL/EPL/MPL no longer needs approval.

AGPL and the non-commercial licenses are still banned.

Edit: The Google OSS contribution guidelines are actually public, if anyone wants to take a look: https://opensource.google/docs/patching/

[corobo]

Is this only referring to in-work hours or are are they telling you what you can and can't do outside work?

E: Oh it's the latter, this is pretty gross. A noncompete sure but what is this..

> 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.

Disgusting amount of control over people's lives. Y'all need a union.

[joerichey]

So the issue isn't in-work hours vs off-work hours (as that line is fuzzy), but who owns the copyright.

The above link [1] is for the automatic process where Google still owns the copyright (hence no AGPL or non-Commercial stuff). This works for 99% of stuff and is easy.

There's a second process called IARC [2] which lets the employee retain the copyright. It's not automatic but allows for AGPL, non-commercial, or proprietary contributions.

We also have a few AGPL projects that were whitelisted due to COVID-19 [3].

[1]: https://opensource.google/docs/patching/ [2]: https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/ [3]: https://opensource.google/docs/patching/#no-review

[corobo]

> The IARC process is only open to full time employees in good standing.

I wonder who Google considers to be in bad standing while also not fired. Flight risks? Maybe people who want to work on side projects?

Still pretty greasy

[malisper]

> Disgusting amount of control over people's lives. Y'all need a union.

FWIW this is more Google being risk adverse than Google being evil. If a Google employee in their free time contributes to an AGPL project, that employee needs to open source all IP related to their contribution to the project. Depending on the specifics and how the AGPL is interpreted in court, Google could be forced to open source their internal IP.

FWIW, I believe all large companies take a similar stance on the AGPL.

[joerichey]

> If a Google employee in their free time contributes to an AGPL project, that employee needs to open source all IP related to their contribution to the project.

This isn't the problem. The reason for contribution bans is stated in [1]:

"Our general philosophy is that we do not allow patches to projects that Google cannot use."

[1]: https://opensource.google/docs/patching/#forbidden

[eeZah7Ux]

> If a Google employee in their free time contributes to an AGPL project, that employee needs to open source all IP related to their contribution to the project

Absolutely false. This is simply not how copyright works!

[malisper]

> Absolutely false. This is simply not how copyright works!

How so? Here's what section 5 of the AGPL says[0]:

> You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

> c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.

As for patents which is covered in section 11:

> If you convey a covered work, knowingly relying on a patent license, and the Corresponding Source of the work is not available for anyone to copy, free of charge and under the terms of this License, through a publicly available network server or other readily accessible means, then you must either (1) cause the Corresponding Source to be so available, or (2) arrange to deprive yourself of the benefit of the patent license for this particular work, or (3) arrange, in a manner consistent with the requirements of this License, to extend the patent license to downstream recipients.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html

[eeZah7Ux]

First of all "that employee needs to open source all IP related to their contribution to the project" is false.

The contribution of a chunk of code to an external project is just that. Anything else that belongs to google that you called "related" is not automatically subject to AGPL.

Second, in your example you are not describing where (if) any license violation happened.

Third, GPL cannot force an author to release something under threat of being arrested or something.

In case of GPL license violation, the worst thing that can happen is the termination of the license, which means that google can freely choose between not using that software, or using the original version, or using any modified version that is AGPL compliant, either developed internally or externally.

The terms of license violation are incredibly lenient compared to closed software/movies/music piracy.

(And yet we hear all this FUD around *GPL while nobody screams at the risk of a google employee using some a picture of some celebrity in a meme in a weekend project)

[timv]

The GPLv3 has exactly the same clauses (both 5c and 11) yet Google explicitly allows its engineers to contribute to such projects.

Why? Because this isn't about IP risk, it's about trying to kill the AGPL.

[ric2b]

> How so?

That employee doesn't even own the copyright to Google's code. If Google itself violates the license you can go after them, that's when it becomes a problem for them.

[Aeolun]

How is AGPL noncommercial? You can definitely still sell the service as long as you publish the source.

[est31]

GP said "AGPL and the noncommercial licenses". Means they are two separate categories.

[Doctor_Fegg]

Your periodic reminder: as the Google rules demonstrate, WTFPL works really well as a permissive-except-for-bigcos licence.

[joerichey]

Personally, I would use an explicit non-commercial license in this case. WTFPL isn't a real license (and isn't considered open-source by OSI).

Things like the AGPL and CC-BY-NC-* are actually written by lawyers and make it clear what you actually want.

[Doctor_Fegg]

I don’t want non-commercial. I want non-bigco.

[boogies]

(deeper link: https://opensource.google/docs/patching/#forbidden)

[SSLy]

Which projects require SVP sign-off?

[mtlynch]

Oh, cool. That's good news!