Stupid question:
why doesn’twhat does Google lose if it releases the codebases of killed projects on some OS license so that people who want to keep using and maintaining them have a chance to?They don’t lose anything…but they don’t gain anything either.
And yes, I know they may gain goodwill from the tech community but that is not a revenue line item in their P&L so as far as google is concerned it is nothing.
There is an old saying in business: What can be measured, matters. and since goodwill from the tech community cannot be measured in dollars, it does not matter to google or factor into their decision making in any way.
They wouldn’t lose anything except the IP for the code. This, to software companies, is a bad thing. Simply because it means they have less capital.
