I do wonder how they successfully justified this to the higher ups. If anything, I would like to learn from them so I can better justify the things I want to do..
“PebbleOS took dozens of engineers working over 4 years to build, alongside our fantastic product and QA teams. Reproducing that for new hardware would take a long time.” [0]
The lackluster value and sales of Google hardware is no master plan, it's a simple incompetency.
Converting a zero-value IP into low impact positive PR has business value. Making MS-DOS sources public falls in the same bucket.
Source code like this doesn’t just have no value for Google. It has negative value. It’s a massive liability.
That’s why big cos simply bury source code instead of releasing it in the open.
You do not need revenue to be liable though.
The plaintiff would have to show actual financial loss due to the infringement. In the case of the pebble assets, that seems exceedingly unlikely.
Generously assume for the sake of argument that the entire codebase is a straight up copy of Samsung and Apple’s IP. What damages have been caused by that IP sitting dormant on Google’s hard drives for the past six years?
... nope. Not even in the US, where "3 years" as you claim is from the possible discovery date, not the infrigment date (https://www.michaelbest.com/Newsroom/340003/US-Supreme-Court...), and this would probably only accrue when the source code is released (as it can be argued that it would be difficult to see a more subtle copyright infrigment on object code).
Also statutory damages exists, so even for no revenue there is a reasonable possibility that they will be sued for that alone (similar to how game and music piracy lawsuits work).
> and 6 years for patents
Other jurisdictions like Germany (no limits) exists.
Something like this would be bizarrely easy if you had the ear of the right person. (i.e. someone who would tell legal etc. "you gotta do it" when asked)
Reason why is, it's a feel-good thing that aligns well with Old Google values, and Google's not yet old enough for "Why bother doing anything at all?" to be an acceptable vocalized response.
It has standard, if not worse, dysfunction with internal conflict at this point. But there just isn't room to come up with a good reason to not open-source the decade-old OS.
Commoditise your complements.
Injecting competition into the watch market reduces the chances one of the majors, e.g. Apple or Altman, runs away with the wearables sector if it takes off again in respect of AI.
"Commoditise your complements" in this setting would mean making watch OSs free for everyone in order to make demand for watches go up.
You're right. The strict interpretation would be the more people who wear smartwatches, the wider Google's surveillance net.
Is there a commercial strategic term for denying your adversaries oxygen?
There's Microsoft's Embrace, extend, and extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
According to Wikipedia:
> Predatory pricing is a commercial pricing strategy which involves the use of large scale undercutting to eliminate competition.