The largest open source company, Google?

I recently read two interesting articles. The first pointed out that a Gartner study found that 85% of companies are using open source software. The second suggested that Google may actually be the largest open source software contributor.

Welocalize has contributed 1.5 million lines of code to the open source GlobalSight product, but that is a small number compared with Google’s open source output.

According to Matt Asay who interviewed Chris DiBona, Google's open source and public sector program manager, about Google's open-source contributions. DiBona’s response was: “Conservatively, we've released about 14 million lines of code. Android tops 10 million lines of code, and then you have Chrome (2 million lines of code), GWT (300,000 lines of code), and about a project released every week over the last five years. Then you have a couple hundred Googlers patching on a weekly or monthly basis.”

Asay goes on to say “While DiBona was quick to suggest that Google doesn't claim the crown for Open Source Top Contributor ("We'd say we're 'among' the largest [contributors]"), it almost certainly is the world's largest open-source code contributor, especially when one considers its other open-source activities, including hosting perhaps the world's largest repository for open-source projects, with more than 250,000 hosted projects, at least 40,000 of which are actively contributed, not to mention its Summer of Code.

What does this have to do with the GlobalSight open source initiative? Well Asay points out the following, “We are all open-source companies now. Which also means that none of us are. Open source is simply a way that we enable some aspect of our businesses, whether we're Red Hat or Microsoft or Google or Facebook.

Or I might say, Welocalize. There are over 1500 registered users in the GlobalSight community now, and they are realizing that an open source initiative such as GlobalSight is the best way to enable an ever growing number of aspects in their businesses.


Smith

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