[DannyBee]

To be clear: This is a random googler's open source project, not anything official from Google.

The only reason it's part of the Google org is so that they didn't have to pay for a private project for staging.

Normally, in situations like this, they are supposed to have a disclaimer in the README that points out it's not official google anything (to avoid exactly the confusion that seems to have occurred here).

[gohrt]

The source code says "Copyright 2013 Google"...?

[packetslave]

By default, Google holds the copyright to open-source projects released by Googlers. There's a review process for transferring copyright to the individual, but you don't have to go through it just to release something.

edit: See previous comments from DannyBee and cdibona here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4051325

[DannyBee]

Yes. The fact that we own some code doesn't mean it's officially supported. It just means we try to maintain accurate info.

I actually want to simply eliminate the copyright notices since they are legally pointless, but any time we've done it at scale it just generates lots of questions about ownership, even with clear info in README files, etc.