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Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

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Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#171

Post by skybrian »

sbov wrote: post #74
astazangasta wrote: post #12

A lot of technology development happens at Google and FB and AirBnb these days because that is where the money is, so that is where the smart people go. In the previous generation they would have been at Xerox or Bell Labs. The work they do is often generic and of general interest. We should resist the idea that because the creators are sojourning in the bosom of some corporation, that corp "owns" the work. This is a…

Note that Go is trademarked. C wasn't. IANAL but there probably, legally, cannot be a Go++ or Go#.

That just means you need to pick a different name.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#172

Post by pictur »

c3534l wrote: post #58

Everyone's upset that Go is Google's language, but no one would have adopted it if it weren't. It's not enough to have a cool idea for a language, even if your cool idea is not to put any new cool ideas in the language. You have to be Mozilla, or Google, or someone it seems in order to convince people this language is for real and will be supported for many years to come, and will have a healthy ecosystem. If I had m…

I don't think so. The better the core team in programming languages, the better the future of the language.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#173

Post by joemi »

dudus wrote: post #112
zemo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Python was led by a Google employee for seven years.

It would be more correct to say Google hired the leader of Python and he worked there for 7 years

Is there really much practical difference between that and Go? From the Ian Lance Taylor response:

> There was no mandate or suggestion from Google management or executives that Google should develop a programming language. For many years, including well after the open source release, I doubt any Google executives had more than a vague awareness of the existence of Go

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#174

Post by MikeLui »

voidfunc wrote: post #43
et2o wrote: post #23

“It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It” —- Google employee’s defenses of Go Even if it is theoretically true that Go is open source, by employing the majority of the Core Go team, Google exercises extensive soft power over Go. All of the defenses of Go seem to gloss over this.

Exactly this. And this mailing list post exemplifies that even Googlers don't realize the soft power they have. How many of us get to be lunch or drinking buddies with Russ Cox or Rob Pike? Googlers have much easier access to both than the external community and those are really the only two that matter.

This situation feels similar to the need of politicians to divest any potential conflicts of interest. I would not accept “just trust me” as a response. As long as there’s a possible conflict of interest, there will be ethical concerns.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#175

Post by joemi »

objektif wrote: post #92
zemo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Python was led by a Google employee for seven years.

Does it matter where the person worked? Python definitely was not Google’s or any other corp’s.

Of course it matters. That's the whole reason the Go Is Google's Language post exists. And the whole reason the response exists, and this very comment thread, too.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#176

Post by smnscu »

c3534l wrote: post #58

Everyone's upset that Go is Google's language, but no one would have adopted it if it weren't. It's not enough to have a cool idea for a language, even if your cool idea is not to put any new cool ideas in the language. You have to be Mozilla, or Google, or someone it seems in order to convince people this language is for real and will be supported for many years to come, and will have a healthy ecosystem. If I had m…

> If I had made Go, no one would be using it right now.

This made me think of this (thank you for reminding me about it, by the way):

https://vlang.io/

Really looking forward to see where Alex will take this project.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#177

Post by sametmax »

bigtunacan wrote: post #148
c3534l wrote: post #58

Everyone's upset that Go is Google's language, but no one would have adopted it if it weren't. It's not enough to have a cool idea for a language, even if your cool idea is not to put any new cool ideas in the language. You have to be Mozilla, or Google, or someone it seems in order to convince people this language is for real and will be supported for many years to come, and will have a healthy ecosystem. If I had m…

History doesn't really support that. PHP, Python, Ruby, Tcl, OCaml, Lua. Successful programming languages seem to come in equal measures from both large corporate backers and not. There is certainly the need for network effects which large corporations often can provide more consistently, but we have seen plenty of examples within the space where individuals or smaller companies have been successful in providing thes…

Different times, different stakes.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#178

Post by mfer »

There is a difference between open source and open governance. Go is open source but the governance is controlled by Google. For example, the committee that accepts proposals is all Google employees and a subset of the core team, if I read it right. From what I can tell, they definition of consensus is that of this group rather than the community at large.

This has business decision implications. Those who have had issues with Oracle and Java may want to take note because this is a similar setup. To use Go means you need to trust Google.

I'm not disagreeing with Ian and I'm happy he posted that. There is just more to this than technical considerations.

I for one will be curious to see if the breaking changes currently sitting on master (there are issues for them) end up in a release. The governance can play into the stability of the language which is a pretty hard dependency.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#179

Post by sagichmal »

smnscu wrote: post #176
c3534l wrote: post #58

Everyone's upset that Go is Google's language, but no one would have adopted it if it weren't. It's not enough to have a cool idea for a language, even if your cool idea is not to put any new cool ideas in the language. You have to be Mozilla, or Google, or someone it seems in order to convince people this language is for real and will be supported for many years to come, and will have a healthy ecosystem. If I had m…

> If I had made Go, no one would be using it right now. This made me think of this (thank you for reminding me about it, by the way): https://vlang.io/ Really looking forward to see where Alex will take this project.

This is vaporware.

Re: Ian Lance Taylor's Response to “Go Is Google's Language”

#180

Post by irq-1 »

et2o wrote: post #23

“It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It” —- Google employee’s defenses of Go Even if it is theoretically true that Go is open source, by employing the majority of the Core Go team, Google exercises extensive soft power over Go. All of the defenses of Go seem to gloss over this.

News Rooms and Editorial boards all swear that management never asks for any changes (and they'd all quit if they did!)

I think it would be productive to try and list areas where Go would be different if it wasn't at Google. Some examples: C integration, loading plugins, desktop GUIs.

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