4 ms·

Yeah, except Mojo’s license is a non-starter.

rs186 1y ago
To my naive mind, any language that is controlled by a single company instead of a non profit is a non-starter. Just look at how many companies reacted when Java license change happened. You must be either an idiot or way too smart for me to understand to base your business on a language like Mojo instead of Python.
- discreteevent 1y ago
  It's hard to think of a language for server side programming that I could go back and recommend to build their business on 20 or 30 years ago than java. I don't think aws or even Google regret it. Think of the amount of profitable requests being processed by the jvm all over the world for years by every kind of business.
  - _aavaa_ 1y ago
    Yeah, but whose JVM are they running on? I’d be surprised if they’re all paying the lawnmower.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    That's just because oracle are assholes but not that big of assholes. If OpenJDK did not or could not exist, we would all be mega fucked. Luckily alternative Java implementations exist, are performant, and are largely indistinguishable from the non-free stuff. Well, except whatever android has going on... That stuff is quirky. But if you look at dotnet, prior to opensourcing it, it was kind of a fucked up choice to go with. You were basically locked into Windows Server for your backend and your application would basically slowly rot over time as you relied on legacy windows subsystems that even Microsoft barely cared to support, like COM+. There were always alternative dotnet runtimes like Mono, but they were very not feature complete. Which, ironically, is why we saw so much Java. The CLR is arguably a better designed VM and C# a better language, but it doesn't matter.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      OpenJDK is mainly developed by Oracle employees, the other big one OpenJ9 is developed by IBM, everything else like Azul, PTC, Aicas, microEJ,.... are commercial.
      - const_cast 1y ago
        Yeah and dotnet is developed by MS. What matters is it's open source, and that's literally the only reason we're even talking about dotnet right now. Dotnet was on a slow roll to complete obsolence until MS saw the writing on the wall and open sourced it.
  - rs186 1y ago
    That's definitely true. But we are talking about now, aren't we? A decision of which language to use today is very different from the considerations 20/30 years ago.
- saagarjha 1y ago
  How do you feel about CUDA?
  - rs186 1y ago
    You don't really have a choice, and the alternatives are worse. Plus, it's not the same question as choosing a language -- this is more about choosing hardware vendor their SDK where options could be either plenty or very limited depending on what you work on.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
auggierose 1y ago
Wow, just checked it out, and they distinguish (for commercial purposes) between CPU & Nvidia on one hand, and other "accelerators" (like TPU or AMD) on the other hand. For other accelerators you need to contact them for a license. https://www.modular.com/blog/a-new-simpler-license-for-max-and-mojo https://www.modular.com/blog/a-new-simpler-license-for-max-a...
- _aavaa_ 1y ago
  Yes; in particular see sections 2-4 of [0]. They say they'll open source in 2026 [1]. But until that has happened I'm operating under the assumption that it won't happen. [0]: https://www.modular.com/legal/community https://www.modular.com/legal/community [1]: https://docs.modular.com/mojo/faq/#will-mojo-be-open-sourced https://docs.modular.com/mojo/faq/#will-mojo-be-open-sourced
  - mdaniel 1y ago
    > I'm operating under the assumption that it won't happen. Or, arguably worse: my expectation is that they'll open source it, wait for it to get a lot of adoption, possibly some contribution, certainly a lot of mindshare, and then change the license to some text no one has ever heard of that forbids use on nvidia hardware without paying the piper or whatever If it ships with a CLA, I hope we never stop talking about that risk
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    Same

To my naive mind, any language that is controlled by a single company instead of a non profit is a non-starter. Just look at how many companies reacted when Java license change happened. You must be either an idiot or way too smart for me to understand to base your business on a language like Mojo instead of Python.

discreteevent 1y ago
It's hard to think of a language for server side programming that I could go back and recommend to build their business on 20 or 30 years ago than java. I don't think aws or even Google regret it. Think of the amount of profitable requests being processed by the jvm all over the world for years by every kind of business.
- _aavaa_ 1y ago
  Yeah, but whose JVM are they running on? I’d be surprised if they’re all paying the lawnmower.
- const_cast 1y ago
  That's just because oracle are assholes but not that big of assholes. If OpenJDK did not or could not exist, we would all be mega fucked. Luckily alternative Java implementations exist, are performant, and are largely indistinguishable from the non-free stuff. Well, except whatever android has going on... That stuff is quirky. But if you look at dotnet, prior to opensourcing it, it was kind of a fucked up choice to go with. You were basically locked into Windows Server for your backend and your application would basically slowly rot over time as you relied on legacy windows subsystems that even Microsoft barely cared to support, like COM+. There were always alternative dotnet runtimes like Mono, but they were very not feature complete. Which, ironically, is why we saw so much Java. The CLR is arguably a better designed VM and C# a better language, but it doesn't matter.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    OpenJDK is mainly developed by Oracle employees, the other big one OpenJ9 is developed by IBM, everything else like Azul, PTC, Aicas, microEJ,.... are commercial.
    - const_cast 1y ago
      Yeah and dotnet is developed by MS. What matters is it's open source, and that's literally the only reason we're even talking about dotnet right now. Dotnet was on a slow roll to complete obsolence until MS saw the writing on the wall and open sourced it.
- rs186 1y ago
  That's definitely true. But we are talking about now, aren't we? A decision of which language to use today is very different from the considerations 20/30 years ago.
saagarjha 1y ago
How do you feel about CUDA?
- rs186 1y ago
  You don't really have a choice, and the alternatives are worse. Plus, it's not the same question as choosing a language -- this is more about choosing hardware vendor their SDK where options could be either plenty or very limited depending on what you work on.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

auggierose 1y ago

Wow, just checked it out, and they distinguish (for commercial purposes) between CPU & Nvidia on one hand, and other "accelerators" (like TPU or AMD) on the other hand. For other accelerators you need to contact them for a license. https://www.modular.com/blog/a-new-simpler-license-for-max-and-mojo https://www.modular.com/blog/a-new-simpler-license-for-max-a...

_aavaa_ 1y ago
Yes; in particular see sections 2-4 of [0]. They say they'll open source in 2026 [1]. But until that has happened I'm operating under the assumption that it won't happen. [0]: https://www.modular.com/legal/community https://www.modular.com/legal/community [1]: https://docs.modular.com/mojo/faq/#will-mojo-be-open-sourced https://docs.modular.com/mojo/faq/#will-mojo-be-open-sourced
- mdaniel 1y ago
  > I'm operating under the assumption that it won't happen. Or, arguably worse: my expectation is that they'll open source it, wait for it to get a lot of adoption, possibly some contribution, certainly a lot of mindshare, and then change the license to some text no one has ever heard of that forbids use on nvidia hardware without paying the piper or whatever If it ships with a CLA, I hope we never stop talking about that risk
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  Same