Slightly curious why it's on the google github account, if it's not an official google project, or even endorsed by google? Surely this should live over on github.com/dragostis/forma then?

If you're a Google employee, there's a few different paths to 'legally' open sourcing stuff without violating your employment contract. The simplest and fastest one is just to assign copyright to Google, use an approved license (basically anything non-copyleft) and stick it under the google/ github org. It being there doesn't mean Google sponsored or authored it, just that a Googler worked/works on it. And the "not official Google product" text is mandatory in the README.

There are other processes that allow you to retain copyright for yourself, but they require approval process.

(I used to work at Google, and have followed this process before.)

afandian

When you leave employment at Google do you typically retain your github account and contribution rights to the repo?

cmrdporcupine

Most people I think just use their personal github but join the Google org. And then you get booted from it when you quit.

Commit rights, I'm actually not clear on, but by default I think you'd lose rights. I believe there's likely a process for keeping them,, but I don't recall what it is. The one repo I contributed to that followed this process was essentially abandoned long before I left Google.

afandian

Thanks, that's interesting. Is any production Google code written this way, or is it only Google-adjacent open source?

zem

i work on https://github.com/google/pytype which is largely developed internally and then pushed to github every few days. the github commits are associated with the team's personal github accounts. pytype is not an "official google product" insofar as the open source version is presented as is without official google support, but it is "production code" in the sense that it is very much used extensively within google.