Commit snafu slapped an irrevocable Apache 2.0 license on confidential API Docs.
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Bleh, yeah I really hate to side with Google, especially when releasing this documentation benefits users and hiding it benefits Google.
It seems weird for this new license to be legally binding. If someone committed this to the wrong repo, and that person didn’t have legal authority over the original content, then how can they have legally relicensed it? I would think that it would be necessary for them to have ownership of the content in the first place.
Not sure, if this is precisely the same in the US, but here in Germany, employees act on behalf of their company. So, if you write such a documentation, your copyright is assigned to the company, but just as much, you’re allowed to license this copyrighted work.
In many cases, this is absolutely necessary to do for your daily work. Like, maybe your job is to work with external contractors that implement changes to these search ranking parameters.
There is some things, like entering a contract, which require a signature to be legally valid. And signing things, that is something that not everyone can do. But yeah, you don’t need a signature for licensing.
I‘m not sure of the legal implications but I would assume that a third party must not have to question the validity of a written license and therefore an action like this makes the person who did it responsible to google and the licensee. Just my impression though, IANAL.