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Imagine depending in your web development work on the state of affairs at Facebook / Meta. (I too am one such dependant; and it grieves me that this is the cas

Imagine depending in your web development work on the state of affairs at Facebook / Meta. (I too am one such dependant; and it grieves me that this is the case).

jrvarela56 4y ago
This applies to any open source tech we depend on. The bright side is we get libraries/frameworks to use in our projects for free.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sktrdie 4y ago
Imagine writing words into a computer that depends on the state of affairs at Apple/Microsoft.
- factorialboy 4y ago
  Which OS do you use?
- smt88 4y ago
  There was never such a period. For the last few decades, it has been relatively easy (definitely a hassle that most people wouldn't want to do, but not especially complicated) to build a PC and run Linux on it. I did it as a child just following instructions online without understanding what I was doing.
  - com2kid 4y ago
    And that PC's functionality is dependent upon code contributed by dozens of large technology companies. Even GCC and Clang work well because Intel and AMD contribute to them. Heck, Firefox exists because Google keeps funding them. It isn't 2002 anymore where Linux was some radical open source project with basement hackers making it all work.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      > And that PC's functionality is dependent upon code contributed by dozens of large technology companies. Even GCC and Clang work well because Intel and AMD contribute to them. That really doesn't seem like the same problem; there's a world of difference between being wholly at the mercy of one company (Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) vs "dozens of large technology companies". If tomorrow Microsoft disappeared or turned more evil, Windows users would have a problem. If tomorrow Redhat disappeared or turned more evil, Linux users at large would be totally fine, and even folks in the RH ecosystem would recover quickly enough (probably by rebasing Rocky directly from Fedora).
- azangru 4y ago
  You've just expressed the sentiment of the open source (or free software) community :-)
racl101 4y ago
A lot of people depend on Google or Amazon for their welfare of their business. I guess it's no different. And also, at least Facebook makes money to fund that open source project. VueJS on the other hand depends on big donations and foundations to help. The point being that people depend on way more precarious open source projects as the linchpins to their businesses than they realize.
jstummbillig 4y ago
I think that is exactly not how to look at it. Instead, consider that you chose to leverage your web development work by taking what fb has jumpstarted with a lot of their cash. You can also think of it as second-hand-investment for your thing, and you don't have to sell any part of that to get the money/talent. And yeah sure, that second-hand-investment money might dry up at some point, but you can still continue to use what you got when you decided to go that route (it's not like your react project is going to suddenly fail, why would it), and since it's a huge project and you are not the only one to have made that choice, you can likely still count on enough third-hand-investment for it to not be any problem in the future. All in all, I would say that if this is your most worrisome dependency you are probably in pretty good shape.

Imagine depending in your web development work on the state of affairs at Facebook / Meta. (I too am one such dependant; and it grieves me that this is the case).

jrvarela56 4y ago

This applies to any open source tech we depend on. The bright side is we get libraries/frameworks to use in our projects for free.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sktrdie 4y ago

Imagine writing words into a computer that depends on the state of affairs at Apple/Microsoft.

factorialboy 4y ago
Which OS do you use?
smt88 4y ago
There was never such a period. For the last few decades, it has been relatively easy (definitely a hassle that most people wouldn't want to do, but not especially complicated) to build a PC and run Linux on it. I did it as a child just following instructions online without understanding what I was doing.
- com2kid 4y ago
  And that PC's functionality is dependent upon code contributed by dozens of large technology companies. Even GCC and Clang work well because Intel and AMD contribute to them. Heck, Firefox exists because Google keeps funding them. It isn't 2002 anymore where Linux was some radical open source project with basement hackers making it all work.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > And that PC's functionality is dependent upon code contributed by dozens of large technology companies. Even GCC and Clang work well because Intel and AMD contribute to them. That really doesn't seem like the same problem; there's a world of difference between being wholly at the mercy of one company (Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) vs "dozens of large technology companies". If tomorrow Microsoft disappeared or turned more evil, Windows users would have a problem. If tomorrow Redhat disappeared or turned more evil, Linux users at large would be totally fine, and even folks in the RH ecosystem would recover quickly enough (probably by rebasing Rocky directly from Fedora).
azangru 4y ago
You've just expressed the sentiment of the open source (or free software) community :-)

racl101 4y ago

A lot of people depend on Google or Amazon for their welfare of their business. I guess it's no different. And also, at least Facebook makes money to fund that open source project. VueJS on the other hand depends on big donations and foundations to help. The point being that people depend on way more precarious open source projects as the linchpins to their businesses than they realize.

jstummbillig 4y ago

I think that is exactly not how to look at it. Instead, consider that you chose to leverage your web development work by taking what fb has jumpstarted with a lot of their cash. You can also think of it as second-hand-investment for your thing, and you don't have to sell any part of that to get the money/talent. And yeah sure, that second-hand-investment money might dry up at some point, but you can still continue to use what you got when you decided to go that route (it's not like your react project is going to suddenly fail, why would it), and since it's a huge project and you are not the only one to have made that choice, you can likely still count on enough third-hand-investment for it to not be any problem in the future. All in all, I would say that if this is your most worrisome dependency you are probably in pretty good shape.