This Week in Open Source #12

by Daryl Ducharme & amanda casari, Google Open Source

This Week in Open Source for January 9, 2026

A look around the world of open source

Here we are at the beginning of a new year. What will it bring to the open source world? What new projects will be started? What should we be focusing on? What is your open source resolution for 2026? One of ours is to better connect with various open source communities on social media. We've gotten off to a big start by launching an official Google Open Source account on Bluesky. Already, we are enjoying the community there.

Upcoming Events

  • January 21 - 23: Everything Open 2026 is happening in Canberra, Australia. Everything Open is a conference focused on open technologies, including Linux, open source software, open hardware and open data, and the communities that surround them. The conference provides technical deep-dives as well as updates from industry leaders and experts on a wide array of topics from these areas.
  • January 29: CHAOSScon Europe 2026 is co-located with FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium. This conference revolves around discussing open source project health, CHAOSS updates, use cases, and hands-on workshops for developers, community managers, project managers, and anyone interested in measuring open source project health. It also shares insights from the CHAOSS context working groups including OSPOs, University Open Source, and Open Source in Science and Research.
  • January 31 - February 1: FOSDEM 2026 is happening at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium. It is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels.
  • February 24 - 25: The Linux Foundation Member Summit is happening in Napa, California. It is the annual gathering for Linux Foundation members that fosters collaboration, innovation, and partnerships among the leading projects and organizations working to drive digital transformation with open source technologies.

Open Source Reads and Links

  • [Talk] State of the Source at ATO 2025: State of the "Open" AI - At the end of last year Open Source Initiative gave a summary of Gabriel Toscano's talk at All Things Open. In the talk he discusses how AI models call themselves "open" but often lack the legal or technical freedoms that true open source requires. Analysis of ~20,000 Hugging Face models found Apache 2.0 and MIT are common, but many models have no license or use restrictive custom terms. The study warns that inconsistent labeling and mutable restrictions muddy openness and urges clearer licensing and platform checks.
  • [Article] The Reality of Open Source: More Puppies, Less Beer - Bitnami's removal of popular containers last year shows that open source can suddenly change and disrupt users. Organizations must evaluate who funds and maintains each open source component, not just the code. Plan for business continuity, supply-chain visibility, and the ability to fork or replace critical components.
  • [Blog] The Open Source Community and U.S. Public Policy - The Open Source Initiative is increasing its U.S. policy work to ensure open source developers are part of technology and AI rulemaking. Since policymakers often lack deep knowledge of open source, the community must explain how shared code differs from deployed systems. Joining groups like the Open Policy Alliance helps nonprofits engage and influence policy.
  • [Article] Pebble, the e-ink smartwatch that refuses to die, just went fully open source - Pebble, the e-ink smartwatch with a tumultuous history, is making a move sure to please the DIY enthusiasts that make up the bulk of its fans: Its entire software stack is now fully open source, and key hardware design files are available too.
  • [Article] Forget Predictions: Tech Leaders' Actual 2026 Resolutions - We want to know your open source resolutions and perhaps these resolutions from some tech leaders (open source and otherwise) can point you in a direction. Their plans run the gamut of securing and managing AI responsibly, reducing noise in security data, and creating healthier tech habits. The common theme is intentional, measurable change over speculation.
  • [Paper] Everything is Context: Agentic File System Abstraction for Context Engineering - GenAI systems may produce inaccurate or misleading outputs due to limited contextual awareness and evolving data sources. Thus mechanisms are needed to govern how persistent knowledge transitions into bounded context in a traceable, verifiable, and human-aware manner, ensuring that human judgment and knowledge are embedded within the system's evolving context for reasoning and evaluation.

    The paper proposes using a file-system abstraction based on the open-source AIGNE framework to manage all types of context for generative AI agents. This unified infrastructure makes context persistent, traceable, and governed so agents can read, write, and version memory, tools, and human input.

What exciting open source events and news are you hearing about? Let us know on our @GoogleOSS X account or our new @opensource.google Bluesky account.

Google Workspace Updates Weekly Recap – January 9, 2026

A summary of announcements from the last week:

The announcements below were published on the Workspace Updates blog over the last week. Please refer to the original blog posts for complete details.

Manage Apple Intelligence Writing Tools in Google Workspace iOS apps

Admins can now disable Apple Intelligence Writing Tools within Google Workspace apps. This provides greater data protection and risk mitigation on iOS 18.1+ devices. Simply toggle the setting in the Admin console to hide these external features. Users will no longer see the "Writing Tools" option when selecting text. | Learn more about managing Apple Intelligence Writing Tools in Google Workspace iOS apps.

Now generally available: Migrate files from Dropbox to Google Drive

Admins can use the New Data Migration service to migrate data from Dropbox business accounts, including files, folders and associated permissions, helping organizations transition to Google Workspace quickly and easily. | Learn more about migrating files from Dropbox to Google Drive.

Generate podcast-style audio lessons in Google Classroom using Gemini

Last year, we made Gemini in Classroom available to all Google Workspace for Education editions with features to help educators create content and resources through one central destination in Classroom. Starting today, educators can now generate and share audio lessons to help students engage more deeply with instructional content and support various learning modalities. | Learn more about generating podcast-style audio lessons in Google Classroom using Gemini.

Control Speech Translation in Google Meet for your users

Google Meet Speech Translation allows translation in near-real time, bridging language barriers across users and organizations. The feature is currently available in alpha but will launch more broadly in beta on January 27, 2026. | Learn more about controlling speech translation in Google Meet for your users.

More user control for “Take notes for me” in Google Meet

We’re introducing a new toggle that lets users choose whether they want to have “Take notes for me” start automatically any time they are hosting a meeting. Previously, meeting hosts had to manually enable “Take notes for me” when they scheduled a call. | Learn more about new user controls for 'Take notes for me' in Google Meet.

Emojis reactions in Gmail will now be on by default

In 2025, we introduced the ability to react to emails in Gmail with emojis. This feature lets users respond quickly to acknowledge receipt of an email in a fun, informal and more authentic way. While initially enabled as an opt-in feature for early customer access, starting February 9, 2026, emoji reactions in Gmail will be enabled by default. | Learn more about default emoji reactions in Gmail.

Chrome Dev for Desktop Update

The Dev channel has been updated to 145.0.7620.3 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

A partial list of changes is available in the Git log. Interested in switching release channels? Find out how. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.

Chrome Release Team
Google Chrome

Emojis reactions in Gmail will now be on by default

What’s changing

In 2025, we introduced the ability to react to emails in Gmail with emojis. This feature lets users respond quickly to acknowledge receipt of an email in a fun, informal and more authentic way. While initially enabled as an opt-in feature for early customer access, starting February 9, 2026, emoji reactions in Gmail will be enabled by default.

Organizations wishing to disable this feature can do so at any time in the Admin console, and the feature will not be enabled by default for organizations who have previously disabled or modified this feature setting in the Admin console (check the Audit & Investigation tool to confirm). 

Whether you’re using a ‘thanks’ emoji to express gratitude, voting for a team dinner with a food emoji, or congratulating your client for reaching a milestone with a celebratory emoji, emoji reactions provide an expressive and more personal way to respond to emails.

Note that reactions cannot be sent in certain scenarios, for example if an email was received via a Google Group email alias or if there is a Google Group on the recipient list. Visit the Help Center to learn more about these scenarios.

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to all Google Workspace customers.

Resources

Ultrahuman launches features 15% faster with Gemini in Android Studio

Posted by Amrit Sanjeev, Developer Relations Engineer and Trevor Johns, Developer Relations Engineer




Ultrahuman is a consumer health-tech startup that provides daily well-being insights to users based on biometric data from the company’s wearables, like the RING Air and the M1 Live Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM). The Ultrahuman team leaned on Gemini in Android Studio's contextually aware tools to streamline and accelerate their development process.


Ultrahuman’s app is maintained by a lean team of just eight developers. They prioritize building features that their users love, and have a backlog of bugs and needed performance improvements that take a lot of time. The team needed to scale up their output of feature improvements, and also needed to handle their performance improvements, without increasing headcount. One of their biggest opportunities was reducing the amount of time and effort for their backlog: every hour saved on maintenance could be reinvested into working on features for their users.





Solving technical hurdles and boosting performance with Gemini


The team integrated Gemini in Android Studio to see if the AI enhanced tools could improve their workflow by handling many Android tasks. First, the team turned to the Gemini chat inside Android Studio. The goal was to prototype a GATT Server implementation for their application’s Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connectivity. 





As Ultrahuman’s Android Development Lead, Arka, noted, “Gemini helped us reach a working prototype in under an hour—something that would have otherwise taken us several hours.” The BLE implementation provided by Gemini worked perfectly for syncing large amounts of health sensor data while the app ran in the background, improving the data syncing process and saving battery life on both the user's Android phone and Ultrahuman's paired wearable device.


Beyond this core challenge, Gemini also proved invaluable for finding algorithmic optimizations in a custom open-source library, pointing to helpful documentation, assisting with code commenting, and analyzing crash logs. The Ultrahuman team also used code completion to help them breeze through writing otherwise repetitive code, Jetpack Compose Preview Generation to enable rapid iteration during UI design, and Agent Mode for managing complex, project-wide changes, such as rendering a new stacked bar graph that mapped to backend data models and UI models.





Transforming productivity and accelerating feature delivery 


These improvements have saved the team dozens of hours each week. This reclaimed time is being used to deliver new features to Ultrahuman’s beta users 10-15% faster. For example, the team built a new in-app AI assistant for users, powered by Gemini 2.5 Flash. The UI design, architecture, and parts of the user experience for this new feature were initially suggested by Gemini in Android Studio—showcasing a full-circle AI-assisted development process. 


Accelerate your Android development with Gemini


Gemini's expert Android advice, closely integrated throughout Android Studio, helps Android developers spend less time digging through documentation and writing boilerplate code—freeing up more time to innovate.


Learn how Gemini in Android Studio can help your team resolve complex issues, streamline workflows, and ship new features faster.

More user control for “Take notes for me” in Google Meet

We’re introducing a new toggle that lets users choose whether they want to have “Take notes for me” start automatically any time they are hosting a meeting. 

Previously, meeting hosts had to manually enable “Take notes for me” when they scheduled a call. Hosts and select participants could also enable the experience during a call. With this update, users can choose to enable this feature any time they host meetings.

This new toggle is OFF by default. Users can choose to enable or disable it at any time. There are also no changes for hosts or select participants to turn meeting notes off at any time during a meeting. 

Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

Available for Google Workspace:

  • Business Standard and Plus
  • Enterprise Standard and Plus
  • Google AI Pro for Education
  • Frontline Plus

Resources

Stable Channel Update for ChromeOS / ChromeOS Flex

The ChromeOS Stable channel is being updated to OS version 16463.72.0 (Browser version 143.0.7499.196) for most ChromeOS devices.

If you find new issues, please let us know one of the following ways:
  1. File a bug

  2. Visit our ChromeOS communities

    1. General: Chromebook Help Community

    2. Beta Specific: ChromeOS Beta Help Community

  3. Report an issue or send feedback on Chrome

  4. Interested in switching channels? Find out how.

Luis Menezes

Google ChromeOS