My observation at companies has been that there is rarely the required foresight to be able to prune something off into a separate open-source project. Google uses a mono-repo I believe, which already makes it extremely unlikely that they’ll be able to even build a thing outside the company, much less let it thrive. And “cancellation time” is not when new resources will be diverted to fixing broken-only-outside-the-company behavior.
I’ve only seen this work a couple different ways. One: if the company spins off something very large (like an entire division) that was already self-sufficient so it is pretty clear how to keep it all functional from the outside. Or, two: if, from the very beginning, the person pitching a project insists on an open-source/flexible model and takes lots of steps to ensure that it is constantly working in that way.
I’ve only seen this work a couple different ways. One: if the company spins off something very large (like an entire division) that was already self-sufficient so it is pretty clear how to keep it all functional from the outside. Or, two: if, from the very beginning, the person pitching a project insists on an open-source/flexible model and takes lots of steps to ensure that it is constantly working in that way.