Hector Martin

Like many Googlers, I had projects I worked on in my spare time. Some of those I carried over from before joining. I also upstream random open source contributions. Google, like most tech companies, tries to appropriate any and all rights to everything you do in your spare time.

This is, of course, completely ridiculous, but has become standard practice. Google's policy is based on CA Labor Code § 2870, which gives them ownership over anything that "relates to Google's business". SInce Google does everything, they get to claim everything.

When I joined, I submitted two projects that I was actively working on at the time, largely just maintaining: AsbestOS (yes, those were the PS3 Linux days) and usbmuxd (iPhone USB comms daemon, you probably have it if you have Ubuntu!).

A long wait later, AsbestOS was approved with a "we don't want to have anything to do with this project" disclaimer. usbmuxd was rejected without an explanation. My follow-up email asking for clarification was ignored. I ended up having to hand over maintainership of usbmuxd.

At that point I concluded that the IARC process was broken. It seemed there was no real recourse if you get rejected, and no explanation. So I just resolved to quietly work on whatever I want, which seems to be what most Googlers do anyway.

Although Google may *legally* be able to claim practically anything you do under some "we have a related product" technicality, in *practice* their lawyers aren't going to go after you for pet projects or random commits. It's not safe, but it's *probably* okay.