title: Go code contribution: license and patent implications?
body: <p>I've been <a href="http://golang.org/pkg/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">reviewing the contributions documentation for Google new language</a>, and was curious about the idea of contributing a new package.  It states that this should be included at the top of contributed source code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>// Copyright 2009 The Go Authors. All rights reserved.
  // Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style
  // license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My understanding of a BSD-style license <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/236699/what-open-source-license-to-choose">is that it essentially means that the user needs to attribute the code to you, but can do whatever else they want</a>.</p>
  
  <p>Further down it says: </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>If you are the copyright holder, you will need to agree to the individual contributor license agreement...</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>In the <a href="http://code.google.com/legal/individual-cla-v1.0.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">"individual contributor license agreement"</a>, it says that Google has patentable rights to the contributed code:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>You hereby grant to Google and to recipients of software distributed by Google a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by You that are necessarily infringed by Your Contribution(s) alone or by combination of Your Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>To what extent does Google own any Go contributions?  Do they have full rights to profit from these contributions?</p>