The tables below, list some of Google's eclectic mix of open source luminaries grouped by project.
No doubt I've forgotten some, so don't hesitate to contact me with corrections/additions.
Note also this list of Google's open source projects.
Gradually Google is becoming less secretive, especially so since 2005/2006. Consequently it can attract high profile people from the open source community, on whose technologies it depends so much. As well as employing those above and many others involved in open source, it has begun to interact more with the community. For example Google has started to release internal tools, provide an open source project hosting service and runs the very cool Summer of Code initiative. These are definitely not trivial undertakings. For instance Google has spent the following on the Summer of Code project:
Project | Students | Amount |
SoC 2005 | 400 | $2.0M |
SoC 2006 | 600 | $3.0M |
SoC 2007 | 900 | $4.5M |
SoC 2008 | 1125 | $5.6M |
SoC 2009 | 1000 | $5.0M |
SoC 2010 | 1025 | $5.6M |
SoC 2011 | 1116 | $6.1M |
This is money well spent as they get better open source software, kudos from the community and also get an early view of blossoming open source stars. I notice Fedora as of 2010 has started the "Fedora Summer Coding" program. Other notable Google hackers not directly involved in open source are:
Name | Previous experience |
Peter Norvig | NASA |
Andrew Moore | Carnegie Mellon |
Steve Lawrence | CiteSeer |
Mike Burrows | altavista, Microsoft (spam research) |
David Hanson | Microsoft: compiler research |
Martin Taylor | Microsoft: linux strategist, VP of live |
Joe Beda | Microsoft: Avalon, IE |
© Apr 27 2010