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It sounds like a perfect solution if you ask me. Free software gets made, developer gets paid.
by chungy 4y ago
It sounds like a perfect solution if you ask me. Free software gets made, developer gets paid.
- mort96 4y agoFree software gets made, to the degree that it benefits Facebook, in the ways which benefit Facebook. Software development in areas which don't benefit Facebook suffers. Facebook gets people to use their software, and therefore gains influence in places where they don't belong. Yes, the developer gets paid, but it's not a good solution that's healthy for an independent free software movement.
- chungy 4y agoIt should be no surprise that Facebook works on projects that benefit Facebook. By making it free software, it also happens to benefit the wider world at the same time. Win-win. Is your problem with the idea that developers are getting paid at all, or just that this instance is at Facebook?
- mort96 4y agoMy main issue is that I would rather not use Facebook products, and I would rather we don't create standards which rely on Facebook products. The FOSS funding issue I more of a side-point which I didn't even bring up, but I don't see "get hired by Facebook if you want to work on FOSS" to be a healthy solution to the FOSS funding problem, we need a way to ensure funding for FOSS developers who don't work for Facebook. But that's not strictly related to the zstd thing specifically.
- eropple 4y agoCalling a GPL-licensed piece of software with nontrivial public contribution "a Facebook product" is begging the question.
- mort96 4y agoHow is it begging the question? Is it the word "product" you're unhappy with? I can call it a Facebook project instead if you prefer, it doesn't change the substance of anything I've written. The problem I have is with the "Facebook" part.
- chungy 4y agoI think the problem is that you have a hard time living in a community with some actors you may not like. That's just life.
- mikepurvis 4y agoTBH, I worry a lot more about this kind of thing in the case of Google, where they can afford to give away things that other companies would have made an entire business out of, which devalues those markets, then they lose interest and sunset it all— and only in a few cases (like Wave) does any of it end up open source. But FB isn't really competing with other companies here. They're giving away frameworks, libraries, tools— this is building block stuff, and the fact that it's perhaps particularly optimized for FB's workloads is just their privilege, having been the ones to fund it.