[kyrra]

I'm a Googler, opinions are my own.

A lot of the times engineers at Google will open source libraries or tools they have worked on, which go under the Google GitHub repo, but are attached with that language. This is basically saying that it is owned by Google but it is not something Google is officially supporting. It may continue to get updates, it may not. I've definitely seen some libraries open sourced from Google, that stopped being pushed externally once the primary driver behind it left Google or moved on to other projects.

You can actually read some of the process that a Googler will follow when open sourcing software here: https://opensource.google/docs/releasing/

[bmitc]

> It may continue to get updates, it may not.

That basically goes for Google's official products as well.

[neolog]

What is the significance to a user of whether Google is "officially supporting" a product or not?

[kyrra]

If it's not officially supported, it probably means it's just one or two people that open sourced it, and it would fall on them to keep it in sync with any internal work.

Officially supported means it's actually owned by some team. They'll dedicate resources to it, meaning it will be accounted for on any project planning or resource management the management needs to do.

Officially supported things tend to be bigger.

[B-Con]

"Official" is mostly about who they consider the customers of the product when making a decision.

If the project is officially open-sourced, that will be taken into consideration when project priorities, re-orgs, and direction occur at higher levels. "How does this effect our commitment to the community" is a question to address. If it isn't official, then is best-effort by the people who pushed for it to go open-source.

[azurezyq]

E.g., if google is obliged to address your bugs / issues. It matters a lot in enterprise.

This statement is more like a waiver you'd like to sign while using some entertainment equipements.

[closeparen]

An open source maintainer is never obligated to address your bugs / issues. However it is good open source citizenship to be clear about what level of support people can and can't expect.