This is what I'm here for. Indeed the Atlanta team bet it all on Brightly, and while it was so ahead of its time, it didn't get enough of an uptake to satisfy... certain executives in engineering.
They subsequently shuttered Atlanta and it would take five or more years before they'd allow engineers there again.
It was very Google. Lost some truly talented (Hi Bruce!) software engineers who would go on to make terrific software elsewhere.
The closest we got to a fully open source android release was probably in the Nexus one days with some 9 proprietary blobs and , worse, user space support programs (IIRC the compass calibration routines, annoyingly.) , all for various chip/radio support.
When my sister died, the reality was that I didn't know everyone that was important to her, so I had to resort to emailing all those she had emailed in a mass mailing she had sent a while back. I also created a web page so that people would find when they searched for her.
If twitter had been around, I would have posted there too.
Years on, I still get email from old friends of hers who found out via the page and want to chat about her to me.
They subsequently shuttered Atlanta and it would take five or more years before they'd allow engineers there again.
It was very Google. Lost some truly talented (Hi Bruce!) software engineers who would go on to make terrific software elsewhere.