Recently, news from Google’s open source initiative indicates that Google supports open source and allows its employees to easily release projects they are developing internally in an open source format. Open source software helps Google develop software quickly and efficiently without starting from scratch. This allows them to focus on solving new problems.
The team shared their first open source report card, highlighting the most popular projects and sharing some statistics and details on projects released in 2016.
So far, they have open-sourced over 20 million lines of code. Here are the most recognized projects:
1. Android – A complete software stack for mobile devices, including the operating system, middleware, and key applications.
2. Chromium – This project includes Chromium (the software behind Google Chrome) and Chromium OS (the software behind Google Chrome OS devices).
3. Angular – A web application framework for JavaScript and Dart that focuses on developer productivity, speed, and testability.
4. TensorFlow – A library for numerical computation using data flow graphs, supporting scalable cross-platform machine learning, applicable from data centers to embedded devices.
5. Go – A statically typed, compiled programming language known for its clarity, simplicity, cleanliness, and efficiency.
6. Kubernetes – A system for automating the deployment, operation, and scaling of containerized applications.
7. Polymer – A lightweight library built on the Web Components API for building reusable encapsulated elements in web applications.
8. Protobuf – A mechanism for serializing structured data that is extensible and language-independent.
9. Guava – A set of core libraries for Java that includes new collection types (such as multimap and multiset), immutable collections, graph libraries, functional types, caching, and APIs/utilities for concurrent operations, I/O, hashing, primitives, reflection, and strings.
10. Yeoman – A set of reliable and feature-rich scaffolding tools that includes various libraries and a workflow to help developers quickly build beautiful and attractive web applications.
Looking back at Google’s open source projects in 2016, there were many exciting outcomes. They released open source software, hardware, and datasets. Below, let’s take a look at some applications released this year.
1. Seesaw
Seesaw is a load balancing platform based on Linux Virtual Server (LVS) developed by Google site reliability engineers using Go.
A statement from the project’s release announcement says: “We need to handle communication for unicast and anycast VIPs, perform load balancing using NAT and DSR (also known as DR), and conduct thorough health checks on the backend. Most importantly, we need a platform that allows us to easily manage, including automating deployment configuration changes.”
2. Vendor Security Assessment Questionnaire (VSAQ)
Google evaluates the security of hundreds of suppliers each year, and they have developed a process to automate the collection of most preliminary information through VSAQ. The VSAQ framework includes four extensible questionnaire templates covering web applications, privacy programs, infrastructure, and physical security and data center security.
3. OpenThread
OpenThread, released by Nest, is a complete implementation of the Thread protocol for connected devices in the home. The development of OpenThread is supported by ARM, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and other major vendors.
4. Magenta
To help users create compelling art and music through machine learning, this project is built by the Google Brain team on TensorFlow. Its goal is to advance the development of machine intelligence into the realm of music and art and to build a collaborative community of artists, programmers, and machine learning researchers.
5. Omnitone
Without spatial audio, virtual reality (VR) cannot achieve true immersive experiences, and much of the work in VR development is done on dedicated platforms. Omnitone is an open library built by members of the Chrome team that brings spatial audio to the browser. Built on the standard Web Audio API, it aims to provide immersive experiences that can be used with projects like WebVR.
6. Science Journal
Today, smartphones come with sensors that can tell users interesting information about the world around them. This project aims to help teachers, students, and ordinary researchers make the most of these sensors.
7. Cartographer
Cartographer is a library that relies on the support of the Robot Operating System (ROS) for real-time simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in 2D and 3D modes. The library integrates data from various sensors to calculate position and map surrounding environmental information. This is a key element for autonomous cars, unmanned vehicles, and robots, and is part of the indoor mapping work of well-known buildings.
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