Google Launches New Website To Showcase Its Open Source Projects and Processes (betanews.com)

BrianFagioli writes: Google is an essential member of the open source community. The search giant contributes some really great projects, offering code to be used many -- it claims more than 2,000 such contributions! Heck, the company even hosts the annual Summer of Code program, where it pairs students with open source projects teams. In other words, Google is helping to get young folks excited about open source. Today, Google announced that it is launching an all-new website to focus on open source. It is not a general open source site, but a destination to learn more about the search-giant's relationship with it. "Today, we're launching opensource.google.com, a new website for Google Open Source that ties together all of our initiatives with information on how we use, release, and support open source. This new site showcases the breadth and depth of our love for open source. It will contain the expected things: our programs, organizations we support, and a comprehensive list of open source projects we've released. But it also contains something unexpected: a look under the hood at how we 'do' open source," says Will Norris, Open Source Programs Office, Google.

Comments

Re:How Google does Open Source

[trawg]

While I don't disagree with you (I hate fancy pants websites as much as the next nerd that just wants a plain text list of things), I'd note two things:

1) There's a 'grid view' option at the top right of the list of projects that provides a simple interface to view the list. It's still not as good as a simple table list but it's better than the weird mess that you get by default.

2) I have to wonder if part of the reason for this is to intentionally make it the sort of flashy shit that appeals to less nerdy more mainstream types (CxOs who want to see pretty colours and animations). Open source still has a reputation as ugly, scruffy, immature, etc (we can argue about whether that is deserved or not all day), and this approach makes it a little more slick.

Perfectly willing to agree this is annoying. I want a table list. But if it helps people take a look at open source with fresh new eyes maybe it isn't all bad?

Re:Say one thing, do another

[wnorris]

Our process for patching external projects is pretty straightforward (https://opensource.google.com/docs/patching/). Tell your buddies to contact me (they can look me up in our internal directory) and I can try to help address their concerns. -Will Norris