It looks like Google are about to announce (at OSCON) the launch of a Google Bug Tracking and Subversion hosting service — basically a suite of tools for open source developers.
The full story is nicely written up over at NewsForge.
Two interesting things come to mind here:
Firstly, Google say they are not going to let existing projects hosted on SourceForge signup up without the original project owner’s permission — presumably to stop hoax projects setting up that appear to be official but aren’t.
I’m not sure how they’re actually going to do that, but it’s nice to hear Chris DiBona and the Google Code team have thought of these kinds of issues.
(At the moment there is a big issue with open-source applications like bit-torrent and file download apps being recompiled into ‘plus/super releases’ that actually contain spyware/malware and heavily SEO’d so that unsuspecting users download the dodgy version rather than original, pure version).
The second, perhaps even more interesting point, is that Google is talking about a product launch openly before it actually launches. Google has always been very secretive and well known for not pre-announcing details of new products.
Admittedly this is probably not a commercial project, although some references to an enterprise product are made in the above article. However I wonder whether we are seeing a new, more open side to Google?
Only time will tell.
“more open”?
Nah. I asked if the soruce code for Google Code Hosting was hosted on Google Code Hosting and which license it was under.
It’s not available. Draw your own conclusions. 🙂
lol
Google does a lot of things half way the first time around, it looks like they did the same thing with their code hosting.
Derek
– http://www.gigenet.com