Why does Google open source its desktop gadgets?
by Colin Dodd
From the Google Open Source Blog:
The Google Desktop team has been steadily releasing our Desktop gadget (widget) creations as Open Source for the past few years. If you check out this list, you can see most of the official Google created gadgets are actively maintained by the Google Desktop developer community. We had many good reasons for opening this code for the community:
- Source code can be a valuable learning tool. The gadgets not only show you how to develop Desktop gadgets, integrate with Google APIs, but also provide other tidbits of knowledge such as how to calculate phases of the moon or StarDates.
- The images and graphics are also Open Sourced. Being an engineer, I know how frustrating it is to work hard on an application only to have it dismissed because of hand-drawn stick figures and shapes. We hope people can take advantage of our graphic designers’ talents. If you’re a fan of clocks, I have something right up your alley.
- We get warm fuzzy feelings by simply supporting the cause. It fosters a spirit of openness and collaboration between the team and developer community.
via Google Open Source Blog: Open Sourcing Google Desktop Gadgets.
January 26th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
I wish more companies felt that way…