Google Open Source Blog

The lingua franca for Google's building needs is (more or less) bazel, where you say target /a/b/c depends on /dep/v1_1, /dep/xyz, /common/foo, etc.). (There is a filesystem-like hierarchy parallel to, but not necessarily the same as the corresponding repository's directory layout.)

Bazel is extensible via rules [1], so if you really wanted to use NodeJS on your team, you might create a `nodejs_binary` rule that put everything in the right directory and ran some NodeJS packager on it. You'd probably not put it into production.

Also, third-party code lives in a single third-party directory, so yes, internal users could pull down code they wanted (and for which there wasn't a satisfactory internal version already) into that directory: https://opensource.google.com/docs/thirdparty/

[1]: https://docs.bazel.build/versions/0.29.0/skylark/rules.html

I am neither a Googler nor a laywer, but I think yes and yes - if you don't care about copyright ownership and only licensing (which most of the time is fine - you usually only care if you either want to commercialize it later or you want to make sure either you have standing to sue infringers or Google doesn't), there's an easy process for open-sourcing something and letting Google retain ownership, and a much more involved process for confirming that Google doesn't own it. So it's easier to let Google claim copyright and not argue about whether they really have had ownership.

Some relevant links are https://opensource.google.com/docs/releasing/ for the personal-project-with-Google-copyright flow and https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/ for the personal-copyright flow.

If there are engineers you highly respect on your team, their code is a great place to start.

Otherwise, many top tech companies now open source software that they've written internally, oftentimes with their own websites. And there is also a growing trend for them to actually maintain the software they open source as opposed to just throwing it over the fence.

Think of companies that have a strong engineering brand, and then just search for what open source software they're released. Pick whatever seems most aligned with your interests.

Some examples:

Google: https://opensource.google.com/projects/list/featured?language=python
Facebook: https://code.facebook.com/projects/#backend
Stripe: https://stripe.com/open-source
Airbnb: http://airbnb.io/projects/

So i'm the one who forbid WTFPL at Google, and we forbid it mainly because it's bad for developers, believe it or not.

We go over it in new googler training (and our reasoning is on the Google open source policy site we publish: https://opensource.google.com/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#wtfpl-not-allowed)

You are welcome to not (but if you go and look, it's completely consistent with my viewpoints and history in OSS so ...).

I would love to live in a world where WTFPL is a good license, but we don't live in that world, and wanting it to be so will not change that.

I can also tell you stories of companies we've acquired who had bad experiences, FWIW.

So the "small companies" you think are being served, aren't.

Oh google has many pages:

- https://arvr.google.com/

- https://bughunters.google.com/

- https://design.google.com/

- https://opensource.google.com/

- https://code.google.com/

- https://ai.google.com/

- https://mapsplatform.google.com/

- https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/

- https://privacy.google.com/

- https://lens.google.com/

- http://labs.google.com/

- https://jigsaw.google.com/

- https://datastudio.google.com/

- https://tagmanager.google.com/

- https://script.google.com/

There are some more scraped by me https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database

Disclosure: I work at Amazon, and from time to time I help out with open source policy.

There have been a number of changes to Amazon's policies over the years, and personal participation ("outside activity") is really straightforward now. For the vast majority of cases you just need to submit a ticket with details, and then it is auto-approved.

For comparison, you can have a look at Google's open source policy on personal projects here: https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/

If you are an employee and have questions, drop me a line at msw at amazon.com