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IMO, it shows how they don't plan to make any money from this, don't consider it a large competitive advantage, and think that the largest advantage of open sou

IMO, it shows how they don't plan to make any money from this, don't consider it a large competitive advantage, and think that the largest advantage of open sourcing it are the 'free' open source volunteers will improve the software. It's interesting that they don't consider it a large enough competitive advantage. Either that or they are using this to attract engineers.

mahyarm 10y ago
You also open source if it's in your best interest for something to become the 'standard'. In google there is a regret that they didn't open source a lot of stuff, because it ends up being reproduced outside of google in some form. The open source companies have an advantage in hiring and overall advancement of their product by using the open source version whatever their internal version was. You also see it in facebook's open source initiatives, like react, buck, haxe and so on.
- manigandham 10y ago
  > In google there is a regret that they didn't open source a lot of stuff, because it ends up being reproduced outside of google in some form. What regret? A lot of the open-source clones of Google's internal projects come from Google themselves.
- pierrec 10y ago
  Wait, since when is Facebook pushing for Haxe? I tried looking it up, but I'm not finding much. It would be really cool (I love Haxe). But I'm guessing you only went a bit over the top with that particular example.
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    Sorry that was a typo. I meant HHVM and Hack http://hhvm.com/ http://hhvm.com/
- prirun 10y ago
  Without taking anything away from their generous announcement, it's very much in their interest for .lep files to become a standard so that they do not have to transcode to jpeg when users are viewing files on DropBox. I'm happy they released it.
tetrep 10y ago
> Either that or they are using this to attract engineers. On a related note (I can't speak for Dropbox specifically) there are many engineers who desire their work to be open source for their own motivations, and when it's not a significant business risk to do so, nice companies will allow it. So it works on two fronts, as a "hey, we'll let you open source your stuff" and a "hey, we've got people here who care about and contribute to open source."

mahyarm 10y ago

You also open source if it's in your best interest for something to become the 'standard'. In google there is a regret that they didn't open source a lot of stuff, because it ends up being reproduced outside of google in some form. The open source companies have an advantage in hiring and overall advancement of their product by using the open source version whatever their internal version was. You also see it in facebook's open source initiatives, like react, buck, haxe and so on.

manigandham 10y ago
> In google there is a regret that they didn't open source a lot of stuff, because it ends up being reproduced outside of google in some form. What regret? A lot of the open-source clones of Google's internal projects come from Google themselves.
pierrec 10y ago
Wait, since when is Facebook pushing for Haxe? I tried looking it up, but I'm not finding much. It would be really cool (I love Haxe). But I'm guessing you only went a bit over the top with that particular example.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  Sorry that was a typo. I meant HHVM and Hack http://hhvm.com/ http://hhvm.com/
prirun 10y ago
Without taking anything away from their generous announcement, it's very much in their interest for .lep files to become a standard so that they do not have to transcode to jpeg when users are viewing files on DropBox. I'm happy they released it.

tetrep 10y ago

> Either that or they are using this to attract engineers. On a related note (I can't speak for Dropbox specifically) there are many engineers who desire their work to be open source for their own motivations, and when it's not a significant business risk to do so, nice companies will allow it. So it works on two fronts, as a "hey, we'll let you open source your stuff" and a "hey, we've got people here who care about and contribute to open source."