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> I have learned the hard way that "open source" is not sufficient, it should actually also be a product (meaning the owner cares a lot about external opinions)

by uvtc 8y ago

> I have learned the hard way that "open source" is not sufficient, it should actually also be a product (meaning the owner cares a lot about external opinions). There are open source projects that succeed because, aside from being good enough, they also have big corps behind them: TypeScript, Dart, Go, Flow, Kotlin, etc. But there are also open source (often free software) projects that succeed because they're great and are community-focused and community-supported: Python, Haxe, Julia, etc.

ItsMe000001 8y ago
> they also have big corps behind them: TypeScript, Dart, Go, Flow, Kotlin, etc. I talked about just that, no? About two of that list specifically, even.
- uvtc 8y ago
  Ah. Ok. Thank you. I see my reply was sloppy --- sorry. It seemed to me that you were suggesting that being open source plus being productized was required for project success, and my thought was: 1. wait, there are more axes than just license and productization, and 2. there are other values on those axes that can lead to success (not just open source + productized) Here are some separate axes I see: * open source (Apache2, BSD, MIT) vs free software (copyleft (GPL, LGPL)) * corp-backed vs not-corp-backed * community-driven vs closed-style-development * core devs have a very solid vision of project direction, vs being more open to change and/or direction taken from contributors * amount of productization: are the main target users the core devs themselves or external users * overall quality of the language Some armchair comments: + you risk lock-in by going with corp-backed languages + you may see more community involvement with free software projects, whereas more corp involvement with open source + high productization often means a very low contributor to user ratio + although quality doesn't necessarily win, it sure is nice.

by uvtc 8y ago

ItsMe000001 8y ago

> they also have big corps behind them: TypeScript, Dart, Go, Flow, Kotlin, etc. I talked about just that, no? About two of that list specifically, even.

uvtc 8y ago
Ah. Ok. Thank you. I see my reply was sloppy --- sorry. It seemed to me that you were suggesting that being open source plus being productized was required for project success, and my thought was: 1. wait, there are more axes than just license and productization, and 2. there are other values on those axes that can lead to success (not just open source + productized) Here are some separate axes I see: * open source (Apache2, BSD, MIT) vs free software (copyleft (GPL, LGPL)) * corp-backed vs not-corp-backed * community-driven vs closed-style-development * core devs have a very solid vision of project direction, vs being more open to change and/or direction taken from contributors * amount of productization: are the main target users the core devs themselves or external users * overall quality of the language Some armchair comments: + you risk lock-in by going with corp-backed languages + you may see more community involvement with free software projects, whereas more corp involvement with open source + high productization often means a very low contributor to user ratio + although quality doesn't necessarily win, it sure is nice.