5 ms·
> You usually only get that initial rush in open source when it's a big company driving the project in the first place (LLVM, say). LLVM began as a research pl
by woodruffw 3y ago
> You usually only get that initial rush in open source when it's a big company driving the project in the first place (LLVM, say).
LLVM began as a research platform at UIUC. In terms of public record, Apple only began putting money into it around 2005 (primarily by hiring Lattner). It might have received other corporate funding before and during that time that isn’t well documented, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say that it was driven by a big company from the get-go.
- pjmlp 3y agoYes, and if it wasn't for that, it would still be research platform like many others that predated it in compiler development, like Amsterdam Compiler Toolkit for one such example.
- woodruffw 3y agoNo disagreement there. My point was just that LLVM is not an "initial rush" case, to use the parent's language. It's a success story for the "small group of people" model.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoDid the rush come before or after the huge (I imagine millions per year for a team of Apple devs working on what was to become a core technology pillar) infusion of cash and warm bodies? It was a fairly quiet and incremental research project and then Apple zoomed it to the stars (and Clang wasn't always even guaranteed to be open sourced: that came later, two years after the Clang project started in 2005). Of course, this is actually one of the more unique cases, because it was both well-funded and open-sourced in the end, and, though developed rapidly, is actually a decent project, technically. As opposed to the kind of behind-closed-door too-embarrassed-to-publish shitware that's probably powering things like Hives.