Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by px43 1057 days ago
> Google's open source projects are open in name only.

The link at the top of the page is pointing to the GitHub repo, where you can see literally over a million contributions from thousands of people working at hundreds of companies: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commits/main

I've worked on both Chrome and Android (Chromium and AOSP) professionally, and never worked at Google.
3 comments
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1057 days ago
There is the OSS vs FOSS distinction which may have been unwittingly invoked. Certainly there is nothing “free” about Chromium except its price. Google is not about to switch to a fork for Chrome and any changes to Chromium which are not approved by Google are unlikely to be in any release builds.
link
troupo 1057 days ago
Well, true :)

What I should've written is that: yes, they are open source, but there's no way to influence the direction they are going. These projects are 100% Google-run, and very few (if any) decisions are public.

For most projects there's also a significant proprietary part in the actual final product

link
jsjohnst 1057 days ago
You and GP both can be right depending on definition used for “open source”.
link