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All things in life is grey. But I think we should ask about is the MAIN thing they do net good or net bad. Most philanthropist spend their lives amassing massiv

All things in life is grey. But I think we should ask about is the MAIN thing they do net good or net bad. Most philanthropist spend their lives amassing massive fortunes built on exploitation and then leave a (large?) percentage of their ill gotten gains for good. As an extreme example, we shouldn't absolve a serial killer just because they volunteer for Meals on Wheels each week. Facebook has revenue greater than the GDP of all but 67 countries. Allowing 10 engineers to give away some crap for free doesn't quite balance the scales imo.

sgregnt 3y ago
Built on exploitation? In my opinion built on utility supplied to customers.
- vkou 3y ago
  Actually, it's built on users supplied to advertisers. --- Facebook's utility for me is now near zero, possibly negative. I'm only there because mom is there. Mom's only there because her friends are there. Moving out of that morass - at least, until mom stops using computers is impossible. At least with Amazon, Google, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, etc, I (currently) have meaningful alternatives. Network effects suck.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > I'm only there because mom is there. Why should that keep you there, though? She's your mother. Surely, you can talk with her directly even if she is on Facebook.
    - scrum-treats 3y ago
      I'm only there because FB requires a current photo of me alongside a picture of my government issued ID in order to "regain access" to my account in order to deactivate it. How this is legal is astonishing.
    - kingTug 3y ago
      Can't speak for OP but I haven't deactivated my FB to keep tabs on my elderly father. It's an enormously toxic force in his life and it gives me some sense of control when I know what's influencing him. Especially in the throes of the pandemic. He would have engaged in a lot more risky behavior had I not been able to steer him away from some of it.
optymizer 3y ago
"Some crap for free". Come on now. Give credit where credit is due if you're going to talk about balanced scales. React PyTorch Flow React Native Folly RocksDB llama HHVM Relay Fresco zstd Buck Sapling Redex JSX infer
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  In fairness, Flow is OSS in name only and almost all major adopters have switched to Typescript after they committed to ignoring the community. Jest was wildly neglected with serious issues for a long time. Yarn shipped with major issues that made it unusable for years, then was handed off to the community. Prepack was "shipped" and immediately killed. JSX has been stagnant despite the community wanting to move the (existing) JSX 2 spec forward. HHVM pivoted to ~abandon PHP and focus exclusively on Hack, leaving many companies to switch away (see: Box). If you're a front-end engineer or dealing with web technologies, Facebook has repeatedly pulled the football away.
  - optymizer 3y ago
    It's true that Facebook didn't commit to maintaining these projects on an ongoing basis, but that has nothing to do with the fact that they did release lots of major projects under an open source license, projects written by highly skilled engineers that could have been kept internal. You're free to fork these repos and maintain them yourself if you'd like, and that freedom exists only because the code was made available under a FOSS license in the first place. The alternative to this situation is not "open source code maintained in perpetuity", but "code that was never made open source in the first place". There's no obligation for maintaining or ensuring that the open source code remains useful to you, so the criticism that projects are being open sourced and ignored might be valid, but the criticism that Facebook doesn't release major projects as FOSS is not. We've all been spoiled by the hard work people have been putting in maintaining their FOSS repos, to the point where we now expect it. Most FOSS licenses include wording such as: THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” and that's what these repos are: code provided to you as is, free of charge and no strings attached (other than what the license specifies).
- jonathankoren 3y ago

sgregnt 3y ago

Built on exploitation? In my opinion built on utility supplied to customers.

vkou 3y ago
Actually, it's built on users supplied to advertisers. --- Facebook's utility for me is now near zero, possibly negative. I'm only there because mom is there. Mom's only there because her friends are there. Moving out of that morass - at least, until mom stops using computers is impossible. At least with Amazon, Google, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, etc, I (currently) have meaningful alternatives. Network effects suck.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I'm only there because mom is there. Why should that keep you there, though? She's your mother. Surely, you can talk with her directly even if she is on Facebook.
  - scrum-treats 3y ago
    I'm only there because FB requires a current photo of me alongside a picture of my government issued ID in order to "regain access" to my account in order to deactivate it. How this is legal is astonishing.
  - kingTug 3y ago
    Can't speak for OP but I haven't deactivated my FB to keep tabs on my elderly father. It's an enormously toxic force in his life and it gives me some sense of control when I know what's influencing him. Especially in the throes of the pandemic. He would have engaged in a lot more risky behavior had I not been able to steer him away from some of it.

optymizer 3y ago

"Some crap for free". Come on now. Give credit where credit is due if you're going to talk about balanced scales. React PyTorch Flow React Native Folly RocksDB llama HHVM Relay Fresco zstd Buck Sapling Redex JSX infer

bastawhiz 3y ago
In fairness, Flow is OSS in name only and almost all major adopters have switched to Typescript after they committed to ignoring the community. Jest was wildly neglected with serious issues for a long time. Yarn shipped with major issues that made it unusable for years, then was handed off to the community. Prepack was "shipped" and immediately killed. JSX has been stagnant despite the community wanting to move the (existing) JSX 2 spec forward. HHVM pivoted to ~abandon PHP and focus exclusively on Hack, leaving many companies to switch away (see: Box). If you're a front-end engineer or dealing with web technologies, Facebook has repeatedly pulled the football away.
- optymizer 3y ago
  It's true that Facebook didn't commit to maintaining these projects on an ongoing basis, but that has nothing to do with the fact that they did release lots of major projects under an open source license, projects written by highly skilled engineers that could have been kept internal. You're free to fork these repos and maintain them yourself if you'd like, and that freedom exists only because the code was made available under a FOSS license in the first place. The alternative to this situation is not "open source code maintained in perpetuity", but "code that was never made open source in the first place". There's no obligation for maintaining or ensuring that the open source code remains useful to you, so the criticism that projects are being open sourced and ignored might be valid, but the criticism that Facebook doesn't release major projects as FOSS is not. We've all been spoiled by the hard work people have been putting in maintaining their FOSS repos, to the point where we now expect it. Most FOSS licenses include wording such as: THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” and that's what these repos are: code provided to you as is, free of charge and no strings attached (other than what the license specifies).
jonathankoren 3y ago