> I'm not sure why the victim complex about Apple in your comment, he said too few companies do it
Sure it's all good when companies fund projects they use, but that does not mean they should instantly get a board seat.
It makes sense why Jane Street sponsors OCaml, does not mean they instantly get a board seat. I don't see Jane Street sponsoring RISC-V and getting a board seat do I?
And it doesn't make sense to do so.
I find is suspicious for companies to join or create a foundation and get automatically propped up on the board, especially Google.
It's going to be much harder to remove them if your values are not aligned with theirs or you dare criticise them.
Google is highly invested Kotlin and it’s success with Android and what I’m certain is the fact that they have huge Java code adds that I could see them having real value in slowly converting to kotlin and allowing Kotlin to be the first class choice where Java would be.
Honestly I just don’t see it here. Google’s marketplace ambitions have not surfaced in these foundations. I would
Love a real tangible counter example of Google leveraging their seat on a language committee to control the language in such a way it only furthers Googles interests. Even with the browser I don’t see them outright controlling tc39 or WHATWG/W3C or the CSS working group. Otherwise HTML imports would be a thing right now (and arguably they should be but that’s another debate)
I don’t defend what they’re doing with Chrome the product but they so far have seemed to be pretty sane with standards bodies
The thing about Google or any entity of their size is that they’re huge and lots of different types of people work there, and I’d wave most aren’t malicious
That doesn’t handwave legitimate complaints here and I don’t like Google have arbitrary outsized influence either but I don’t think that’s the case with these commuters/foundations
I don't see what benefit of putting them on the board would give them, same thing with Rust, just because it's used on Android? Was a gold sponsorship not enough?
> Honestly I just don’t see it here.
You're not looking hard enough, they are bearing 'generous' gifts to these foundations, Example: OpenAI was all about openness weren't they?
But a big somebody bared a huge gift and so much for 'Open AI'.
Don't you think Google and others like them are doing the same thing such that they are getting you to use their products through their 'donations'?
> That doesn’t handwave legitimate complaints here and I don’t like Google have arbitrary outsized influence either but I don’t think that’s the case with these commuters/foundations
Again we shall see, but I am seeing this everywhere and I am not happy with the shift from community to corporation led open source projects. A sponsorship should be enough but they want more as always.
I can understand caution and concern and it’s healthy to have it.
That said, I’m unable to think of or find obvious examples of them having a track record of using foundations like this for their own agenda at the expense of the community, language or only to further their own ends.
Even with the browser stuff there’s Chrome the product which makes a lot of changes that does hurt the community but then there’s Googles representation on tc39 and in the web standards groups. With that I haven’t found evidence of malpractice or foul play. Please give me some concrete evidence that they have a history of this as I’m not finding it.
Doesn’t mean that as a whole these companies get a pass for
Bad behavior, I think a key to a great argument against something is to be able to scope what it does and doesn’t do, so I hate to say they are doing this for malicious reasons only to be wrong (and again I’m not seeing evidence) and undercutting more legitimate arguments. Fundamentally that’s the arching issue we end up with by just making assumptions without evidence at a minimum
Kotlin is not a community led project. It has always been a Jetbrains led project, and that move to a foundation is a way to try to distribute responsibilities a bit more. At least thats how they sell it.
Sure it's all good when companies fund projects they use, but that does not mean they should instantly get a board seat.
It makes sense why Jane Street sponsors OCaml, does not mean they instantly get a board seat. I don't see Jane Street sponsoring RISC-V and getting a board seat do I?
And it doesn't make sense to do so.
I find is suspicious for companies to join or create a foundation and get automatically propped up on the board, especially Google.
It's going to be much harder to remove them if your values are not aligned with theirs or you dare criticise them.