Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

bytecodealliance.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 153 posts

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#101

Post by reitzensteinm »

syrusakbary wrote: post #95
reitzensteinm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By attempting to trademark WebAssembly you've outed yourself as a hostile actor. You don't then get to go and complain that the community isn't treating you well. They're right not to trust you. You use Oracle's JS trademark as precedent, but that's woefully ignorant of how it came about. JavaScript was not a four year old open standard when Oracle came along and scooped it up. JS was a Java branding deal between Sun…

The Bytecode Alliance veto of Wasmer happened the same day it was announced, on November 12 2019 (via direct message by one of their well-known members -now working at Fastly- to a Wasmer investor). Back then, the trademark was not even filed by the lawyers (if you look to the USPTO filings), so I'm not sure how the hostile actor argument could apply here (if we really buy into that argument). As reflected in other c…

Er... did you reply with your sock puppet by accident [1] [2]? If so that's kind of frowned on here, especially if you were using it to vote.

I'm totally willing to entertain arguments that the Bytecode Alliance are also acting in bad faith. It's a harsh world and open source is not all unicorns and rainbows.

But you can't just brush off the trademark issue by claiming it was unintentional. Especially when what you write here doesn't fit well with what you've written elsewhere [3]. I've gotten trademarks through lawyers before and the level of detail was an intense experience.

You seem to be claiming your lawyers independently decided to trademark WebAssembly and you signed the pages without reading them? At least that's what I can put together from your vague writing about it.

If you're not willing to give a concrete step by step post mortem of how such a clusterfuck happened, the community should (and I'm sure does) feel at liberty to not believe you in the slightest. You don't owe them an explanation, they don't owe you their trust.

You're clearly good at technology, better than me I'm sure, and I'm no slouch. You're doing impressive work and I have no wish to downplay that. But you appear to be quite bad at getting along with people. Maybe you can make your business work without developing that skill, and if that's your plan then best of luck to you. Sincerely.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/TPBH9EH.png [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19515476 [3] https://github.com/WebAssembly/WASI/issues/3#issuecomment-71...

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#102

Post by syrusakbary »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #101
syrusakbary wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bytecode Alliance veto of Wasmer happened the same day it was announced, on November 12 2019 (via direct message by one of their well-known members -now working at Fastly- to a Wasmer investor). Back then, the trademark was not even filed by the lawyers (if you look to the USPTO filings), so I'm not sure how the hostile actor argument could apply here (if we really buy into that argument). As reflected in other c…

Er... did you reply with your sock puppet by accident [1] [2]? If so that's kind of frowned on here, especially if you were using it to vote. I'm totally willing to entertain arguments that the Bytecode Alliance are also acting in bad faith. It's a harsh world and open source is not all unicorns and rainbows. But you can't just brush off the trademark issue by claiming it was unintentional. Especially when what you w…

> If you're not willing to give a concrete step by step post mortem of how such a clusterfuck happened, the community should (and I'm sure does) feel at liberty to not believe you in the slightest. You don't owe them an explanation, they don't owe you their trust.

Agreed, perhaps that's the best way.

> Wasmer the company might have been announced November 12 2019, but the open source project was around a year before that. I don't know what happened prior to that date to make the Bytecode Alliance members want to "veto" you as you put it, and maybe you're entirely blameless for that. As you point out, your trademark shenanigans hadn't taken place yet. But saying the "veto of Wasmer happened the same day it was announced" is misleading at best.

I think you misunderstood. I meant that Wasmer itself was vetoed from joining the Bytecode Alliance the same day that the Bytecode Alliance was announced. Wasmer was founded way before (as a company and a open-source project).

> But you appear to be quite bad at getting along with people.

It's curious this is the impression caused. I'm definitely not someone with low social skills.

EDIT: added an extra response

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#103

Post by 0xfaded »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17
ignoramous wrote: post #3

My money was on Cloudflare to have hired them wholesale. Regardless, congratulations to everyone involved! This deal has got me thinking... whether a right way to "lay-off" a supremely talented bunch is to actually see if other companies are willing to offer them jobs? Kind of how player transfers happen in Football (soccer). Either the team goes to the newer company wholesale or you help find your engineers suitable…

In my experience, acqui-hires benefit the company far more than the employees who get moved to a different company. The first time I was acquihired, my compensation actually decreased because they kept my base salary and rewrote the bonus structure such that it was impossible to hit previous payouts. Meanwhile, my prior company received a large payment for the transfer of our team. Ironically, the new company was pay…

I've played this game as a curiosity to see how far I could push my luck by offering myself + a relevant and talented friend that I trust. HR was completely unequipped to handle a packaged hire.

In this case the project the devs were previously working on had public visibility, so perhaps they may have been able to negotiate at a higher level.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#104

Post by glandium »

dblohm7 wrote: post #100
ChrisSD wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The browser is absolutely their focus which is why they laid off the Servo team. Servo is a research project, Gecko/Firefox is their browser. It's also a massive money sink. Firefox itself has zero income and yet keeping up with Google is fantastically expensive (even Microsoft decided to throw in the towel). So they cut teams that a) weren't directly working on their core browser and b) doesn't make money for spendi…

As a Mozilla employee, I can say that this is a fairly accurate assessment.

Except for the part about Firefox not making any money. Firefox is making most of the money.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#105

Post by reitzensteinm »

syrusakbary wrote: post #102
reitzensteinm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er... did you reply with your sock puppet by accident [1] [2]? If so that's kind of frowned on here, especially if you were using it to vote. I'm totally willing to entertain arguments that the Bytecode Alliance are also acting in bad faith. It's a harsh world and open source is not all unicorns and rainbows. But you can't just brush off the trademark issue by claiming it was unintentional. Especially when what you w…

> If you're not willing to give a concrete step by step post mortem of how such a clusterfuck happened, the community should (and I'm sure does) feel at liberty to not believe you in the slightest. You don't owe them an explanation, they don't owe you their trust. Agreed, perhaps that's the best way. > Wasmer the company might have been announced November 12 2019, but the open source project was around a year before…

I'm sorry, I did indeed misunderstand that. You were clear, I just parsed it wrong.

So the criticism in that paragraph is undeserved, I've removed it for clarity but will leave it here for posterity.

> Wasmer the company might have been announced November 12 2019, but the open source project was around a year before that. I don't know what happened prior to that date to make the Bytecode Alliance members want to "veto" you as you put it, and maybe you're entirely blameless for that. As you point out, your trademark shenanigans hadn't taken place yet. But saying the "veto of Wasmer happened the same day it was announced" is misleading at best.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#106

Post by ChrisSD »

glandium wrote: post #104
dblohm7 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Mozilla employee, I can say that this is a fairly accurate assessment.

Except for the part about Firefox not making any money. Firefox is making most of the money.

It gets a fixed amount of money from Google for using them as the default search engine. But what I meant was Firefox has no means to actual generate an income in its own right. Mozilla have tried. The reactions have not been good.

The money from Google is practically a donation at this point. It's not exactly an altruistic one but it's not exactly a pure business transaction either given Firefox's current market share.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#107

Post by arcticbull »

0xfaded wrote: post #103
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, acqui-hires benefit the company far more than the employees who get moved to a different company. The first time I was acquihired, my compensation actually decreased because they kept my base salary and rewrote the bonus structure such that it was impossible to hit previous payouts. Meanwhile, my prior company received a large payment for the transfer of our team. Ironically, the new company was pay…

I've played this game as a curiosity to see how far I could push my luck by offering myself + a relevant and talented friend that I trust. HR was completely unequipped to handle a packaged hire. In this case the project the devs were previously working on had public visibility, so perhaps they may have been able to negotiate at a higher level.

I just did the same thing, and same story played out. HR had no idea what to do.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#108

Post by CyberRabbi »

syrusakbary wrote: post #4

I have mixed feelings about this. In one side, I'm happy that some of the people affected by the Mozilla layoffs have now secured a job. On the other side, now almost all the power of the WASI standard is concentrated into the Fastly corporation (with wider penetration thanks to the WASI integration in Rust). The main and only player of the Bytecode Alliance becomes Fastly as well (as Mozilla is out of the server-sid…

Just curious, why do you have such a strong interest in the WASI logo? That seems tangential to wasmer’s concerns.

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#109

Post by geektips »

ChrisSD wrote: post #106
glandium wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the part about Firefox not making any money. Firefox is making most of the money.

It gets a fixed amount of money from Google for using them as the default search engine. But what I meant was Firefox has no means to actual generate an income in its own right. Mozilla have tried. The reactions have not been good. The money from Google is practically a donation at this point. It's not exactly an altruistic one but it's not exactly a pure business transaction either given Firefox's current market sha…

What will happen to this donation if the outcome of the anti-trust is against Google ?

Re: Fastly hires entire Wasmtime team from Mozilla

#110

Post by tannhaeuser »

What I'm taking away from this, and the apparent infighting and legal/cred battles in the WASM scene it had surfaced, is to stay far, far away from WASM. Also, today I learned that staged discussions on HN are a thing, and even a practice so common it's got a nick name of "sock puppet". As if there weren't enough reasons to not follow the path of ever-increasing browser complexity, and fight to keep the web open. Though WASM, for once, wasn't a Google bomb but very much a Mozilla thing, wasn't it? Good riddance!
Post reply on HN