That depends on whether there's documentation that Google legal did indeed approve the release of Google-owned code under the Apache licence as Steve Weis claims.
If not, Google can't claim to own the whole project, but they can claim they own bits of it and refuse to allow distribution of those bits, just as they could if someone had release core parts of the Google search algorithms without permission. In that case, the choices for the project are to either create a clean fork without any of the Google contributions, or cease distribution altogether. It also leaves downstream users in a somewhat awkward legal position. I certainly wouldn't want to depend on the project for something that directly competes with a Google service, for instance.
Still, more likely it's just a mistake by Google legal and furthermore, it's highly unlikely they would go around suing people, especially when it's not 100% clear that the IP was released without permission. Still a bit of a messy situation though.
Doesn't mean much, if you are a developer for company X and you have restriction in your contract which are fairly standard these days that grant full or partial ownership on any thing you do on or off the job while being employed sticking an open source license for it won't save you.
I've seen quite a bit of "open source" projects being pull off when the employer discovered them, and while it's true that you can't effectively pull anything off the internet, it also means that no one with a shred of common sense would ever touch them again with a 10 feet pole.
This is slightly more complicated since it's been released by the corporation under an OSS license.
It's also less about employees doing something on their own, and more about the company fearing that some one external will lay claims to parts of the cod from what i understand.
But there can be still internal legal complications that would result in this being pulled off completely or dropped.
Comments
That depends on whether there's documentation that Google legal did indeed approve the release of Google-owned code under the Apache licence as Steve Weis claims.
If not, Google can't claim to own the whole project, but they can claim they own bits of it and refuse to allow distribution of those bits, just as they could if someone had release core parts of the Google search algorithms without permission. In that case, the choices for the project are to either create a clean fork without any of the Google contributions, or cease distribution altogether. It also leaves downstream users in a somewhat awkward legal position. I certainly wouldn't want to depend on the project for something that directly competes with a Google service, for instance.
Still, more likely it's just a mistake by Google legal and furthermore, it's highly unlikely they would go around suing people, especially when it's not 100% clear that the IP was released without permission. Still a bit of a messy situation though.
Google is distributing this library under Apache license "as we speak". But I would not use OS lib if it has such question mark.
Doesn't mean much, if you are a developer for company X and you have restriction in your contract which are fairly standard these days that grant full or partial ownership on any thing you do on or off the job while being employed sticking an open source license for it won't save you.
I've seen quite a bit of "open source" projects being pull off when the employer discovered them, and while it's true that you can't effectively pull anything off the internet, it also means that no one with a shred of common sense would ever touch them again with a 10 feet pole.
This is slightly more complicated since it's been released by the corporation under an OSS license. It's also less about employees doing something on their own, and more about the company fearing that some one external will lay claims to parts of the cod from what i understand. But there can be still internal legal complications that would result in this being pulled off completely or dropped.
Well, Google can hardly sue you - but yes, don't expect much maintenance if they can't get this fixed.