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Comment by raphlinus | Hacker News Reader

I saw this on Twitter yesterday. As a datapoint, Google's policies on this stuff are quite enlightened by comparison. There are two paths people can take. One is to create an open source project. I started a game (then got distracted by other things), and A/B Street[1] also took that path.

The other major route is the IARC program[2], in which the game author owns the copyright. A friend of mine did The Shepherds Rock under that policy.

All this is to say that the policies around these things vary widely even within FAANG.

[1]: https://github.com/a-b-street/abstreet

[2]: https://opensource.google/docs/iarc/

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Google IARC is _not_ enlightened. The only way in which Google is enlightened is they have perfected the art of PR and selling employees that pro-employer policies are really pro-employee policies.

If you are in California, which is where the majority of Google employees live and where Google has their HQ, if you work on something outside of work hours and without work equipment or resources, then you own it, full stop. That's California law.

Google lawyercats will show up and say "well unless it's related to what Google does, and Google does everything', which is an incredibly flimsy argument with zero legal precedent that only a lawyer on Google payroll would accept. A company can't in good faith say "we work on literally everything therefore the law doesn't apply to us."

IARC is a trap. If you just didn't say a word to Google and worked on something off hours, you own it. With IARC, now you've created a paper trail and a chance for Google to say we discussed it and we clearly said the employee could not work on this, so now if it does go to court you've just massively complicated your life, all to accomplish something that the state law guaranteed you in the first place! There's literally zero upside to IARC.

I've unfortunately witnessed the head of OSS approvals at Google, mislead people on this issue and go as far as to vaguely threaten that employees who continue to debate the topic on internal company mailing lists will be terminated.

Google IARC is a scam and it should not be held up as a gold standard. CA Labor Code Section 2780 is the gold standard.

CA Labor Code Section 2780 includes a fairly broad exception: "except for the inventions which: Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice of the invention to the employer's business, or actual or anticipated research or development of the employer"

For a company like Google or Amazon, I'm not sure that there's very much that falls within 2780.

"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."

So, a "we actually own all your stuff but we might be nice enough to agree to let you keep it" policy?

"The IARC process is only open to full time employees in good standing. The IARC only assigns the copyright in your project upon approval—it does not assign any patent rights or other IP rights Google may own. ... IARC review is a voluntary service Google provides to employees and it is not required either by the employment agreement or local labor laws."

"Enlightened."

This is my interpretation, yes. The language you are quoting is largely legal boilerplate. In practice, how it works out is that (a) if you want to do a game, there's a very good chance (though not a guarantee) the answer is simply "yes", and (b) the questions of who owns what IP are all very clear, and often in favor of the individual. For example, if you go the Apache 2 license, that actually comes with a patent grant as well.

In any case, the specific claim I made is that it's more enlightened than the Amazon policy, and I don't think that can really be questioned. Just the fact that large parts of the policy is public is itself relevant here - other discussion threads are arguing whether the posted text is authentic.

Does Google even make games? This policy only applies to developers under the games division. Non-games developers have significantly more freedom.

Jumping T Rex can answer this. Also, probably one of the most popular titles in existence.

They used to (for Stadia), but recently laid off their entire game development studio before they could release a single game.

Yes; Google's IARC Official Policy has a section on guidance for gaming personal projects, which boils down to "don't spam us about low-tech games, but high-tech stuff is very much on the plate". According to rumors, historically it was also used to curb on googlers working on private android games when android was young.

Nianticlabs.com used to be part of Google. And stadia is still a thing, even if the games studio isn't.

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