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> There is no meaningful sense in which Google, apart from the core Go team, makes decisions about the language. That's like saying that there's no meaningful

> There is no meaningful sense in which Google, apart from the core Go team, makes decisions about the language. That's like saying that there's no meaningful sense in which I, apart from my brain and nervous system, make decisions about what my body does.

ritchiea 7y ago
There's a lot more nuance in the original post, outlining that Go is fully open source & it can be forked. That the author believes any good open source project should have a coherent vision and a set of decision makers. That the actual committers to Go are majority Googlers but not overwhelmingly so (59 Googlers to 51 others). There is more to Go than Google, there is a community and it is as free as can be. But the final decision makers are at Google. It's all very well said, every open source project has a set of final decision makers and that project is theirs. Unless you work hard to become one of those decision makers the project is not yours. And perhaps it is not notable to write the blog post "this open source project ACTUALLY belongs to so-and-so."
a1369209993 7y ago
I think it's more like saying that there's no meaningful sense in which your body, apart from your pancreas, makes decisions about how much insulin your pancreas secretes. It is technically true, just... only technically.
z3c0 7y ago
I agree that it's worded confusingly, but I think I can see the point they're making. Solutioning usually looks vastly different when driven by a core team than when it's driven by higher-ups or "The Business". The Go Core team is likely more vested in the overall success of the language than the rest of Google. I'm not certain, because - like I said - it's worded confusingly, but that was my impression.
- brianberns 7y ago
  > The Go Core team is likely more vested in the overall success of the language than the rest of Google. I think you could say that about most teams at most companies. That doesn't mean that they have any autonomy whatsoever from their company, though.
  - z3c0 7y ago
    But isn't that what the article is stating? That the core team is making the final decisions?
  - lozenge 7y ago
    Go can live on if Google collapses, the same cannot be said for most teams at most companies.
lake99 7y ago
Not at all. Google Chrome and Android are produced by Google too. And yet, the user tracking or advertising sections of Google have their interests met through Chrome and Android. If the Chrome and Android teams had only their users' interests in mind, ad blocking and tracker blocking would have been built into these products.
danieldk 7y ago
I was not really convinced by that line of argumentation either. For me, the more convincing argument is that Go would have probably happened in a parallel universe as well. Imagine that Griesemer, Pike, and Thompson had worked another company that gives the freedom to work on personal projects, it is very likely that they had come up with the same language. They have argued in talks that Go was created as an answer to problems that they identified in the development of infrastructure at Google. That may have been a trigger, but Go is firmly rooted in the tradition of C, UNIX, Plan 9, and Limbo and a logical next step in that tradition. Hence, to me, Go is really Griesemer, Pike, Thompson, and Cox' language and not Google's language. Of course, the title of the original article that Taylor is reacting to was a bit sensational. But I think the original point was that Go is not a language that is developed by the community, but a small set of people. Whether they are employed by Google, Facebook, Uber, or Zalando is somewhat irrelevant to this debate.

ritchiea 7y ago

There's a lot more nuance in the original post, outlining that Go is fully open source & it can be forked. That the author believes any good open source project should have a coherent vision and a set of decision makers. That the actual committers to Go are majority Googlers but not overwhelmingly so (59 Googlers to 51 others). There is more to Go than Google, there is a community and it is as free as can be. But the final decision makers are at Google. It's all very well said, every open source project has a set of final decision makers and that project is theirs. Unless you work hard to become one of those decision makers the project is not yours. And perhaps it is not notable to write the blog post "this open source project ACTUALLY belongs to so-and-so."

a1369209993 7y ago

I think it's more like saying that there's no meaningful sense in which your body, apart from your pancreas, makes decisions about how much insulin your pancreas secretes. It is technically true, just... only technically.

z3c0 7y ago

I agree that it's worded confusingly, but I think I can see the point they're making. Solutioning usually looks vastly different when driven by a core team than when it's driven by higher-ups or "The Business". The Go Core team is likely more vested in the overall success of the language than the rest of Google. I'm not certain, because - like I said - it's worded confusingly, but that was my impression.

brianberns 7y ago
> The Go Core team is likely more vested in the overall success of the language than the rest of Google. I think you could say that about most teams at most companies. That doesn't mean that they have any autonomy whatsoever from their company, though.
- z3c0 7y ago
  But isn't that what the article is stating? That the core team is making the final decisions?
- lozenge 7y ago
  Go can live on if Google collapses, the same cannot be said for most teams at most companies.

lake99 7y ago

Not at all. Google Chrome and Android are produced by Google too. And yet, the user tracking or advertising sections of Google have their interests met through Chrome and Android. If the Chrome and Android teams had only their users' interests in mind, ad blocking and tracker blocking would have been built into these products.

danieldk 7y ago

I was not really convinced by that line of argumentation either. For me, the more convincing argument is that Go would have probably happened in a parallel universe as well. Imagine that Griesemer, Pike, and Thompson had worked another company that gives the freedom to work on personal projects, it is very likely that they had come up with the same language. They have argued in talks that Go was created as an answer to problems that they identified in the development of infrastructure at Google. That may have been a trigger, but Go is firmly rooted in the tradition of C, UNIX, Plan 9, and Limbo and a logical next step in that tradition. Hence, to me, Go is really Griesemer, Pike, Thompson, and Cox' language and not Google's language. Of course, the title of the original article that Taylor is reacting to was a bit sensational. But I think the original point was that Go is not a language that is developed by the community, but a small set of people. Whether they are employed by Google, Facebook, Uber, or Zalando is somewhat irrelevant to this debate.