Why would a company spend resources on an open source program, and why is it really needed?
These are great questions, and my point of view has probably changed in some ways over time. I have been involved in open source since the start of my engineering career, participating with great open source foundations such as Apache, and then seeing a prototypical example when I got to join Chris DiBona’s open source program office at Google. This is truly learning from the master. Not only is Chris on the list of “I would work for that guy again in a heart beat!” but he was fantastic at providing the frameworks that allowed engineers to get the most out of open source, while also helping the business.
Back then, the tooling and pervasiveness of open source wasn’t quite where it is today, hence Google Code and other solutions coming out of the open source group.
Let’s fast forward to today.