Does anyone know who or what the legal entity "The Go Authors" is/are?
Conversation
Replying to
It's a shorthand referring to all authors in the same way as "The Android Open Source Project". Their open source projects don't use copyright assignment so there are many copyright owners.
cla.developers.google.com/about/google-i is what they have individuals sign to contribute to any projects.
2
It's essentially granting an equivalent of the Apache 2 license for all of your contributors without a strict attribution requirement.
Their own projects are now almost entirely Apache 2. Go still uses BSD license but with a similar patent grant setup so it's basically the same.