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Digging into Chrome's Licensing

There's been a great foofooraw in the press the last few days over the license terms for Google's new Chrome browser. Various folks were concerned that the EULA for Chrome would give Google ownership of their web postings; Google has admitted that was a mistake, and they fixed the offending clause. But of course, from the open source side of things, our interest in licenses is a bit different.

The original PR for Chrome only said vaguely that the code would be released under an open-source license, without being more specific. Now that the source code is available, it's easy to dig in and find out more. Chrome's source codel is licensed under a BSD license, which is nice from the point of view of anyone who wants to reuse the code.

But it seems like that may not quite be the end of the story. If you actually installed Chrome directly from Google's site, you had to agree to a EULA.  And although the provision about content owneship has been removed, some of the other language in the EULA is troubling for an open-source project. Here's the bothersome part:

9.1 You acknowledge and agree that Google (or Google’s licensors) own all legal right, title and interest in and to the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in the Services (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). You further acknowledge that the Services may contain information which is designated confidential by Google and that you shall not disclose such information without Google’s prior written consent.

("Services" is an odd word in this context, but in the EULA it applies to the Chrome browser). Agreeing that there is confidential information in the browser seems to conflict with the notion that the browser is BSD-licensed source code.There's also this part:

12.1 The Software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google. These updates are designed to improve, enhance and further develop the Services and may take the form of bug fixes, enhanced functions, new software modules and completely new versions. You agree to receive such updates (and permit Google to deliver these to you) as part of your use of the Services.

What does this mean if I've forked the project and am running my own custom Chrome install? Is Google maintaining the right to overwrite my changes?

To their credit, Google recognizes that the EULA and the source code license may conflict, and they say "To the limited extent that the open source software licenses expressly supersede these Universal Terms, the open source licenses govern your agreement with Google for the use of Google Chrome or specific included components of Google Chrome." 

Still, personally, I would hate to get caught in a dispute about what that limited extent is and which parts of the source license trumps the EULA. Fortunately, for anyone who actually wants to work with the Chrome code, there's a simple way to manage this: don't agree to the EULA. Just download the source, build your own copy, and do what you want with it.

In the future, though, it would be nice if the Google lawyers didn't feel it necessary to reuse boilerplate language they had laying around, or slap an additional EULA on an open-source project. Apparently the browser was in development for years - why did no one think about this before release?

• license
• Chrome

by David Gerard on Sep. 04, 2008

Google's new browser will do everything including making you a cup of tea. This is all paid for by personally-directed text ads in your tea leaves, based on analysing a DNA sample taken when you sip the tea and sending your genetic code back to Google for future targeting. Your confidential business data, porn tastes and DNA code is completely between you and Google's marketing department.

http://notnews.today.com/?p=57

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by Ross Gardler on Sep. 04, 2008

if you are concerned then don't download the compiled Chrome. Get the open source Chromium and compile it. Or get your IT guys to do it or wait till someone provides a binary without the Google EULA. Chromium is open source.

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by DiabolicEdict on Sep. 06, 2008

How come Chrome license is BSD, which requires distribution of both the binary and source codes, has a binary Term Of Service (section 10.2) which prohibits the binary from being reverse engineered?

Call me crazy but i think that prohibition is counter-intuitive, if one is to expect that the binaries are compiled from the same source codes.

The Chrome license can be found here, http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html A separate Terms of Service for the binary a.k.a. executable can be found, http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html

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by an anonymous user on Sep. 08, 2008

The BSD license does NOT require distribution of both the binary and source codes. To the contrary, you can rip up the source code and use pieces however you want. See http://intelligententerprise.com/blog/archives/2008/09/bsd_licensing_p.h...

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