When the Google Web
Toolkit team asked me to mentor them as they opened their source code, I was honored
not only because they're a fantastic group of engineers, but also because they wanted to make
the Google Web Toolkit into an open source project. Last month I sent the
entire team copies of Karl Fogel's book "Producing Open Source
Software" to guide them in their decisions of how to best open their development to
the world.
Of course, they started off on the right foot at their
launch this past May by opening the user libraries under the Apache 2.0 license.
They took another step in the right direction when they moved all their issues into Google
Code's issue tracker.
But now they're taking a gigantic
leap forward--not only by open-sourcing all of their code, but their entire development
process. That includes development discussions, code reviews, future milestones, and
the entire
codebase.
So, needless to say, I'm really excited about the
Google Web Toolkit's grand entrance into the open source world and hope that you'll join me in
welcoming them.
