Google has opened a portal for its 2000 open source projects.

Free software is an integral part of Google’s business. In this company, projects literally are born and die with open source. Without Linux and open source software, Google wouldn't exist as we know it. Google not only uses open source software in its daily activities, but also constantly puts its own work into the open domain. For example, for three months of the current year, Google opened Chrome for iOS , Upspin (framework for global common namespace), E2EMail (experimental mail service with terminal encryption), perceptual JPEG Guetzli encoder . These are only the largest projects that Google shared with the community in 2017.

In total, during its work, Google published the code for more than 2000 projects. Just how to see them? Now, in addition to the repositories on GitHub, all open source Google projects are available at the same address Google Open Source . This is a new free software portal of the search company.

In a formal announcement, Will Norris, the developer of the Google Open Source Programs Office, writes: “Free and open source software has been our technical and organizational foundation since the very beginning of Google’s existence. From Linux servers to Google’s internal corporate culture, when anyone from another development team can release a patch for your code. Open source is part of everything we do. In exchange, we publish millions of lines of open source code, support programs like Google Summer of Code and Google Code-in , sponsor open source projects and communities through organizations like Software Freedom Conservancy , the Apache Software Foundation, and many others . ”
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And now, 18 years after its foundation, Google has opened the portal opensource.google.com , which integrates all open Google projects, with accompanying information about the use, release and support of free software.

Why does Google do this? If you believe the site, the company is confident that the open source software is a common good . When software is open and accessible to everyone, it encourages collaboration and technology promotion and "solves real world problems."

Probably the way it really is.

It should be noted that the Google portal is not a repository like GitHub, but rather an information and reference portal, with links to the corresponding GitHub repositories. Thus, you can hardly be afraid that Google will refuse to place code on GitHub, the most convenient collaboration site that has already become the de facto standard in its field.

Will Norris writes that the company does not know which projects will become popular and will be universally recognized, so they encourage their employees to publish all the code they can . Accordingly, here you can find different projects on the scale and level of support. There are large well-known projects like TensorFlow , Go and Kubernetes , there are also small “amateur” projects that employees probably created in their free time (20% of the time working Google programmers can work on projects at their discretion). For example, Light My Piano , Neuroglancer and Periph.io . Some of the projects are fully supported and developed by Google employees and the community, others are experimental, made just for fun.

There is something else. The new Google portal is not just a collection of open projects made in the company. Here the company also shares its experience and corporate practices in the development of open source software. The documentation section contains a copy of all of Google’s internal documentation for open source development (with the exception of a few documents). This is exactly what employees see and read. Here are a few sections. One of them is dedicated to writing code - including creating patches for large projects and writing your own small projects in 20% of free time. Another section explains the practice of using OSS within a company. It explains under which licenses you can take and use the code. For example, code under AGPL licenses is prohibited . Here is a carefully selected catalog of thousands of packages recommended for use. Finally, the third section is devoted to supporting free software initiatives: various student programs, events conducted, grants issued, etc.

Obviously, Google sees free software as an integral part of its activities - and seeks to maximize support and use it.

Open source is becoming an important part of the business not only of Google, but also of many other companies. As the founding fathers predicted, free software spreads like a virus, forcing creators of derived programs to release them under free licenses as well. As the Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin said, free software will become the new Pareto principle . He means that 80% of the value of any technology — from smartphones or other IT areas — will come from free software, and only 20% from proprietary software. The process is gradually going. Studies show that in 2015, 78% of companies used free software in their operations .