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0 pointskccqzy1y ago0 comments

> but they don't give a damn about contributions

Here is a concrete reason why Google open source sucks when it comes to contributions and I don't think it can be improved unless Google changes things drastically: (1) an external contributor makes a nice change and a PR on GitHub; (2) the change breaks internal use cases and their tests; (3) the team is unwilling to fix the PR or port the internal test (which may be a test several layers down the dependency tree) to open source.

> making it easy for you to use the projects

Google internally use Blaze, a version of Bazel. It's so ridiculously easy for one team to use another team's project that even just thinking about what the rest of us needs to do to use another project is unloved dreadful work. So people don't make that effort.

I do not see either of these two points changing. Sure there are individuals at Google that really care about open source community, but most don't, and so their project is forever a cathedral not a bazaar.

0 comments

DanielHB1y ago

It is not only that, but often when google uses an open source project not owned by them they either try to take ownership of the project or fork it instead of trying to contribute to the original.

ghosty1411y ago

That's pretty common though? I mean isn't that part of the idea of open source? Forking is a pretty central part.

I don't see a problem here. Why should google have to deal with the opinions of a maintainer if they can just maintain their own version. Yeah obviously it would be nice if they'd contribute their changes back to the upstream repo but from a business perspective it's often not worth it.

At my company the inverse of this problem happened way more often: We find a problem but the maintainer just doesn't care. For example the backward-cpp library is a good example where the maintainer just isn't that active in the issues. Why wait for him to respond if you can just fork it and keep on moving.

jsnell1y ago

Which cases did you have in mind? Seems like it should be easy to find half a dozen examples since you claim it happens often.

Create1y ago

KHTML, officially discontinued in 2023. -- "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE) also known as "embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice. It's also possible that President-elect Donald Trump may interfere with the DOJ's proposed remedies; he said on the campaign trail that a Google break-up may not be desirable since it could "destroy" a company that the US highly values.

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rahkiin1y ago

One could ask whether Google works ‘open source’ or more ‘source available’; the source is there but you cannot contribute, if you can build it at all

kccqzyOP1y ago

No, "open source" doesn't imply open contribution. The standard terminology is cathedral vs bazaar.

interroboink1y ago

Just to add a different perspective: sometimes people mean Open Source[1] when they say "open source," and sometimes they don't.

Personally, I take the cathedral/bazaar distinction to indicate different development cadences and philosophies, rather than whether contributions are allowed/encouraged.

Various cathedral-style projects (eg: FreeBSD, Emacs) still actively take contributions and encourage involvement.

There's something even further along the spectrum that's "we provide dumps of source code, but don't really want your patches." I'm not sure what the best term is for that, but "source [merely] available" sometimes has that connotation.

[1] https://opensource.org/osd

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scrubs1y ago

Google wants to be technically persuasive -- a player in an engineering space (ergo open source) -- without being beset with the roles and responsibilities of a 3rd party being a bonafide customer when push comes to shove.

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0 pointskccqzy1y ago0 comments

> but they don't give a damn about contributions

> making it easy for you to use the projects

0 comments

DanielHB1y ago

It is not only that, but often when google uses an open source project not owned by them they either try to take ownership of the project or fork it instead of trying to contribute to the original.

ghosty1411y ago

That's pretty common though? I mean isn't that part of the idea of open source? Forking is a pretty central part.

jsnell1y ago

Which cases did you have in mind? Seems like it should be easy to find half a dozen examples since you claim it happens often.

Create1y ago

2 more replies

rahkiin1y ago

One could ask whether Google works ‘open source’ or more ‘source available’; the source is there but you cannot contribute, if you can build it at all

kccqzyOP1y ago

No, "open source" doesn't imply open contribution. The standard terminology is cathedral vs bazaar.

interroboink1y ago

Just to add a different perspective: sometimes people mean Open Source[1] when they say "open source," and sometimes they don't.

Personally, I take the cathedral/bazaar distinction to indicate different development cadences and philosophies, rather than whether contributions are allowed/encouraged.

Various cathedral-style projects (eg: FreeBSD, Emacs) still actively take contributions and encourage involvement.

[1] https://opensource.org/osd

2 more replies

scrubs1y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse