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This is a such a dead horse. Exactly how is Go _tied_ to one company, Google? Sure Go is near exclusively "incubated" by Google, they employ much of the core d

by bsg75 6y ago

This is a such a dead horse. Exactly how is Go _tied_ to one company, Google? Sure Go is near exclusively "incubated" by Google, they employ much of the core development team, but there is nothing preventing any organization from contributing to it. Go and Rust are both open languages - they can be used with no commercial licenses and the source is available. The differences are in their major supporting companies, and the perspective which some choose to use as a deciding factor in the platforms they choose. Neither is a product. They may be used to create products, but they do not directly generate revenue.

chrismorgan 6y ago
A key word here is “governance”. I searched for “rust programming language governance”, and immediately found https://www.rust-lang.org/governance https://www.rust-lang.org/governance. Nice and clear description of how it all works, how changes are made and who makes decisions, making it very clear that Rust is its own thing and not the property of or beholden to any one company, and that it’s very deliberately an open project, not merely open source. I searched for “go programming language governance”, “golang governance” and a few other things, but I can’t find anything at all. When I look through their website, it’s Google this Google that, supported by Google, in order to contribute you must accept Google’s contributor license agreement, that kind of thing. I’ve found mention of “Go maintainers” in about two locations, as being those that can approve changes, but I can’t find any mention of who they might be (search terms included “{go programming language,golang} {maintainers,core team}”). Go is absolutely a Google open source project, as they say in a few places. I imagine Go is a good deal more open to non-Google contributions than Swift is to non-Apple contributions, but it’s still very firmly Google controlling Go, setting its direction, and managing the project, in a way that was never the case for Rust.
donmcronald 6y ago
> Sure Go is near exclusively "incubated" by Google, they employ much of the core development team, but there is nothing preventing any organization from contributing to it. Except if the majority of the expertise is held by Google employees it's extremely difficult to do anything without their support. What if Google decides to drop Go tomorrow? A lot of the expertise disappears with that decision and replacing it would require another company to step up and dump gobs of money into the project.
- bsg75 6y ago
  > What if Google decides to drop Go tomorrow? The community can fork the code and continue. If that did not happen, or the community does not believe that is viable, then the languages is not viable. Google’s theoretical abandonment of the language does not seem to bother the multiple successful projects based on it. Nor does the lack of apparent focus in Rust’s founder affect its growing user base.

by bsg75 6y ago

chrismorgan 6y ago

A key word here is “governance”. I searched for “rust programming language governance”, and immediately found https://www.rust-lang.org/governance https://www.rust-lang.org/governance. Nice and clear description of how it all works, how changes are made and who makes decisions, making it very clear that Rust is its own thing and not the property of or beholden to any one company, and that it’s very deliberately an open project, not merely open source. I searched for “go programming language governance”, “golang governance” and a few other things, but I can’t find anything at all. When I look through their website, it’s Google this Google that, supported by Google, in order to contribute you must accept Google’s contributor license agreement, that kind of thing. I’ve found mention of “Go maintainers” in about two locations, as being those that can approve changes, but I can’t find any mention of who they might be (search terms included “{go programming language,golang} {maintainers,core team}”). Go is absolutely a Google open source project, as they say in a few places. I imagine Go is a good deal more open to non-Google contributions than Swift is to non-Apple contributions, but it’s still very firmly Google controlling Go, setting its direction, and managing the project, in a way that was never the case for Rust.

donmcronald 6y ago

> Sure Go is near exclusively "incubated" by Google, they employ much of the core development team, but there is nothing preventing any organization from contributing to it. Except if the majority of the expertise is held by Google employees it's extremely difficult to do anything without their support. What if Google decides to drop Go tomorrow? A lot of the expertise disappears with that decision and replacing it would require another company to step up and dump gobs of money into the project.

bsg75 6y ago
> What if Google decides to drop Go tomorrow? The community can fork the code and continue. If that did not happen, or the community does not believe that is viable, then the languages is not viable. Google’s theoretical abandonment of the language does not seem to bother the multiple successful projects based on it. Nor does the lack of apparent focus in Rust’s founder affect its growing user base.