[xnx]

Yikes. The lack of judgement involved in personally releasing something that could be confused for an official release (I was confused) by your employer is someone who has huge wildcard risk in the future. I would expect significant disciplinary action if they didn't follow procedure, and termination if they were directly warned at any point.

[gerdesj]

The real problem is that OP is or wants to be an old school disruptor working at what used to be an exciting and disruptive employer (but isn't any more - its just a boring old money maker).

OP crank out a pretty decent and well received, by the community, product and get absolutely canned because they are well out of touch of how Google now works. You don't do risk (without reward) at Google and you certainly don't show a bit of ankle or look exciting. Google are well out of the market for being interesting (outside of the balance sheet and P&L for those who fetishise in accountancy.

Unfortunately: going viral isn't always a good thing as anyone who has experienced a nasty virus will attest.

[sanderjd]

Yeah this is super weird to me, because the processes at Google for employees to release and attribute ownership of open source projects are extremely clear and well established. It's genuinely hard for me to imagine this happening in a way that confused or caught the author off guard.

It's totally fair to question the wisdom of those processes and policies!

But I'm pretty skeptical of the "I'm surprised I got in trouble for this" narrative.

[ingvay7]

Particularly for a company that possibly has to navigate high-volume, often frivolous litigation and brand attacks from trolls. I have been in similar situations having to partner with legal defending the most frivolous things on products released. You literally sign docs to not do such things when u onboard. Not sure what the point of broadcasting this is though.

[ktm5j]

Yeah that's kind of the impression that I had.. should have ran it past his superiors. Hope he learns something from this instead of deflecting like he seems to be doing.

[justinwp]

You are assuming that it was "personally" releasing something and that the process wasn't followed.

[cmeacham98]

You continue to dance around this question on this post - did you or did you not follow Google's open source approval process[1]? Did you have an approved Ariane/Launcher2 entry?

1: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/releasing/...

[free652]

Did you have your launch approved? So did you follow the process?

[busterarm]

Not only that but not clearing with your management that you're not working on something that is actually being worked on as a product.

Definitely they put some manager and/or team in a very uncomfortable position releasing this.

[jbm]

Your ships would have been sunk during the 2002 Millennial challenge and an entire bureaucracy would defend you for the next 20 years.