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> Spotify had previously posted the code for its uboot and kernel to GitHub, under the very unassuming name "spsgsb" and with no announcement Interesting. Why

> Spotify had previously posted the code for its uboot and kernel to GitHub, under the very unassuming name "spsgsb" and with no announcement Interesting. Why not make some tiny announcement about it somewhere?

norgie 2y ago
I wonder if open sourcing it might have been a low(er)-level engineering decision, so there wasn't any marketing/PR awareness.
- belval 2y ago
  That seems like a likely scenario, some engineer started an email thread that ended up in their director's inbox who said "sure why not". In a big company getting PR/Marketing to write an announcement can be a tall order, especially for a discontinued product that did not do very well and is mostly unknown.
- kllrnohj 2y ago
  This looks more like bare minimum legal compliance. The 4 posted repositories are all for (L)GPL licensed projects, so they're required to make it available.
Aurornis 2y ago
Several years ago I had a similar situation: Company was discontinuing a product that sold poorly except with enthusiasts. Some of us wanted to open source it. I don’t know how or why, but after pushing on legal for months the only solution they came up with was for us to post the code on an unattributed GitHub account. If asked about it we were supposed to shrug and imply that it was a leak without saying anything. I do now know why legal came to that conclusion because nobody wanted to ask for details before they changed their mind. This legal department was very conservative on most matters so the decision surprised us.
- nightfly 2y ago
  Think about how bad the the Winamp open sourcing went. Try and do a favor to the public and all the skeletons in your code come out
- raxxorraxor 2y ago
  Plausible deniability probably. There is a chance that they would not be allowed to make parts of that code public if it relies on third party dependencies that may have stricter licensing. Even if the unknowns do not prove substantial, legal would likely tread carefully.

norgie 2y ago

I wonder if open sourcing it might have been a low(er)-level engineering decision, so there wasn't any marketing/PR awareness.

belval 2y ago
That seems like a likely scenario, some engineer started an email thread that ended up in their director's inbox who said "sure why not". In a big company getting PR/Marketing to write an announcement can be a tall order, especially for a discontinued product that did not do very well and is mostly unknown.
kllrnohj 2y ago
This looks more like bare minimum legal compliance. The 4 posted repositories are all for (L)GPL licensed projects, so they're required to make it available.

Aurornis 2y ago

Several years ago I had a similar situation: Company was discontinuing a product that sold poorly except with enthusiasts. Some of us wanted to open source it. I don’t know how or why, but after pushing on legal for months the only solution they came up with was for us to post the code on an unattributed GitHub account. If asked about it we were supposed to shrug and imply that it was a leak without saying anything. I do now know why legal came to that conclusion because nobody wanted to ask for details before they changed their mind. This legal department was very conservative on most matters so the decision surprised us.

nightfly 2y ago
Think about how bad the the Winamp open sourcing went. Try and do a favor to the public and all the skeletons in your code come out
raxxorraxor 2y ago
Plausible deniability probably. There is a chance that they would not be allowed to make parts of that code public if it relies on third party dependencies that may have stricter licensing. Even if the unknowns do not prove substantial, legal would likely tread carefully.