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This matters only if Flutter is a closed source project – but it's not. You can fork it on Github right now and continue working on it even if Google pulls its

This matters only if Flutter is a closed source project – but it's not. You can fork it on Github right now and continue working on it even if Google pulls its engineers off. I'd assume that those of us (and there seem be a lot of people) invested in it will continue working on it.

dathinab 6y ago
It might make it even more interesting for some people ;-)
IshKebab 6y ago
> This matters only if Flutter is a closed source project Nonsense. Even though it is open source, if Google drops it it will be effectively a dead project since the vast majority of the work is done by Google, and Flutter still isn't a mature project.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> This matters only if Flutter is a closed source project – but it's not It certainly matters. Without a team of dedicated developers maintaining the project, the APIs it depends on will become deprecated, and it'll slowly become unusable. Flutter touches a lot of APIs across many platforms. It's a complicated project that needs to support virtually every popular operating system in a visually and behaviorally consistent way. Flutter also depends on Dart's maintenance, which is another project without significant open-source contributor activity outside of Google employees. > I'd assume that those of us (and there seem be a lot of people) invested in it will continue working on it. Having contributed fixes to Flutter and Dart, Google does not go out of their way to build an open-source contributor community around the projects. I would be surprised to learn that any significant support is provided by open-source contributors to Flutter or Dart.
rkangel 6y ago
I like the architecture that Flutter has chosen where the only thing you need from the OS is a canvas and everything is painted by Flutter. It gets you a good programming model and predictable results regardless of target. The downside is that in order to produce iOS or Android looking UIs someone needs to create every iOS and Android standard widget, with the same behaviour. If those widgets change in future versions of the OS, or new ones are created then more work needs to be done. This is fine in the current project setup - the work is worth it to Google, but without a corporate backer that's the sort of thing that will fall behind.

dathinab 6y ago

It might make it even more interesting for some people ;-)

IshKebab 6y ago

> This matters only if Flutter is a closed source project Nonsense. Even though it is open source, if Google drops it it will be effectively a dead project since the vast majority of the work is done by Google, and Flutter still isn't a mature project.

heavyset_go 6y ago

> This matters only if Flutter is a closed source project – but it's not It certainly matters. Without a team of dedicated developers maintaining the project, the APIs it depends on will become deprecated, and it'll slowly become unusable. Flutter touches a lot of APIs across many platforms. It's a complicated project that needs to support virtually every popular operating system in a visually and behaviorally consistent way. Flutter also depends on Dart's maintenance, which is another project without significant open-source contributor activity outside of Google employees. > I'd assume that those of us (and there seem be a lot of people) invested in it will continue working on it. Having contributed fixes to Flutter and Dart, Google does not go out of their way to build an open-source contributor community around the projects. I would be surprised to learn that any significant support is provided by open-source contributors to Flutter or Dart.

rkangel 6y ago

I like the architecture that Flutter has chosen where the only thing you need from the OS is a canvas and everything is painted by Flutter. It gets you a good programming model and predictable results regardless of target. The downside is that in order to produce iOS or Android looking UIs someone needs to create every iOS and Android standard widget, with the same behaviour. If those widgets change in future versions of the OS, or new ones are created then more work needs to be done. This is fine in the current project setup - the work is worth it to Google, but without a corporate backer that's the sort of thing that will fall behind.