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Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

plei.one

191–200 of 242 posts

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#191
This article really needed to be longer and have some illustrations. What's the point of publishing an essay about interface design without including any graphics?

I'm sympathetic to the points made, but as someone who has not used Flutter, I really do not have a sense of what the tooling and output is like based on this short piece.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is your project changing the license, and why do you assume that contributors would still have done so under whatever license you're changing to?

The license could change for any number of reasons, making a paid version, making it GPL, etc. With a CLA, I don't have to assume, I'm able to change it regardless, that's why for maintainers they are useful.

Keeping the software free, i.e. not proprietary, even from maintainers trying to make it so, is the very point of GPL. When you ask contributors to sign a CLA, you are saying that you might want make it proprietary in the future and reserve the ability to do so. You should never sign one if you don't want to contribute to proprietary software.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#193
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a CLA? Do I have to waive ownership of my contributions for my code to be merged? If yes then it's not a community project. Domain ownership has little to do with it. Look at who owns github.com :)

CLAs are always a good idea if one is maintaining an open source project. I'm not going to track down every single contributor who made some small PR perhaps, just to make a license change.

As a contributor I wouldn't want the code I made to be under a different license in the future.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#194
I LOVE Flutter for a web / iOS / android side project.

It's a Spotify music player that turns your device into a jukebox at https://getjukelab.com/.

As a hobbyist I couldn't imagine getting this far on 3 different platforms if I had to go native. My favorite surprise is how much faster doing dev, deploy and QA on the web target is, vs doing mobile dev and release. I can deploy to the web 5 times a weekend, and batch those up to do monthly mobile releases.

I tried Flutter Desktop but hit an immediate show stopper that the flutter Spotify SDK doesn't support it. There's no "Mac Spotify SDK", so it would have to wrap the web one somehow. All the UI bits worked as expected.

But watching the trajectory of Flutter and the community over the past couple of years I'm cautiously optimistic it'll get good.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#195

If there's anything I've learned from using Google projects it's this: It's not going to get fixed. It almost doesn't matter what it is. If you've used any Google OSS project seriously you're going to come across an obvious defect and run to GitHub to open an issue. But, there's already an open issue for the problem.. And it's been open for almost as long as the project has existed. It will have an inscrutable priori…

Agreed, still unable to take a high res photo from any device using their own camera plugin.

https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/58163#issuecomment...

Sighhh. Maybe one day.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#196
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a CLA? Do I have to waive ownership of my contributions for my code to be merged? If yes then it's not a community project. Domain ownership has little to do with it. Look at who owns github.com :)

There is a CLA, so that folk can attest that contributions are theirs, and that they're free to be used by others, and that everyone who uses Flutter can feel comfortable that there are no patent or IP rights reserved by contributors. It's open source software, developed in the open under a permissive license. You don't have to work for Google to have contributor access or the right to approve others contributions. G…

Hey, first let me be clear that I think it's great that Google is developing Flutter in the open, publishes it under a permissive license while also trying to get along with other contributors.

However, it's not a community project, by any definition of community, because there is a power imbalance between Google and other contributors. Accepting patches or even allowing non-Google people to accept patches from anyone is not enough.

> There is a CLA, so that folk can attest that contributions are theirs, and that they're free to be used by others, and that everyone who uses Flutter can feel comfortable that there are no patent or IP rights reserved by contributors.

No, there is a CLA so that Google keeps the ability to relicense future Flutter releases however it seems fit.

Of course everybody owns their own contributions, git log clearly shows who owns what. BSD license already assures that they are free to be used by others, and if patents were a concern, AFAIK the Apache license would've been a better option (IANAL). You don't need a CLA for any of that.

Users and contributors are bound by the BSD license. Google however gets special treatment:

""" Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to Google and to recipients of software distributed by Google a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works. """

I hope the power imbalance is clear this time?

Again, it's great that Google develops open source software under a permissive license. Mad respect. I'd happily sign the CLA were I to send code to Flutter. I'm also not saying that Google shouldn't have a CLA, I fully understand, and maybe I'd do the same (maybe not). But let's call it what it is.

> but the spirit that we work under is that the "Flutter team" is everyone who contributes code.

Sorry but you sound like that boomer SMB owner who keeps saying "we are a family".

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#197
post #17

The more "solutions" that are developed for desktop + mobile cross-platform applications, the more I see highlighted how different the paradigms are, and how the streams really shouldn't be crossed. They're both UIs viewed on a screen that you interact with by pointing and clicking, but the similarities end there. The entire output of this cross-platform effort has been awkward applications that run everywhere but fe…

I think Flutter is the best option right now to release your idea on mobile, web and desktop platforms yourself without hiring additional people. The only other realistic option I know of is to use web tech. Are there other good options for single devs?

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#198
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, but we're focused on mobile first as these are the most resource constrained platforms. We're also experimenting with 3D support in Flutter using Impeller. Check out these demos from Flutter Forward: https://youtu.be/zKQYGKAe5W8?t=6955 You can learn more about Impeller here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKrYWC_SDxQ

Something being highlighted about Flutter is that it ultimately compiles to native code so unlike RN which transpiles to native widgets, its UI animations should technically be buttery smooth. But in watching the flutter announcement video https://youtu.be/Nu5m1FiS5X4?t=60 (timestamped link) on the screen as menus are opening and the mouse cursor is shown selecting different items, there is... a very perceptible stut…

There are a lot of levels of indirection here:

* A video on YouTube...

* Of a livestream...

* Of a video made by a separate video production team...

* Based a slideshow (probably Google Sheets)...

* Containing a pre-rendered video...

* Of a screen recording...

* Of a Flutter desktop app.

Any and all of those can introduce latency or lag in the video. It's a great form for showing users features, but probably not a great way to evaluate UI performance, unfortunately.

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#199
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, contrary to some of the comments here I’ve had nothing but great experiences coming from a purely web background previously.

same here,keep up the great work. by the way dart is my favorite cross platform language nowadays beyond flutter.

I work on Dart, and I'm glad you like it. I always like getting feedback from users. If there was something you could change about Dart, what would you pick? What would you keep just as it is?

Re: Flutter desktop isn’t there yet

#200
post #14

I feel like this is similar the conversations we heard about Rust and Go 5-10 years ago. late edit: 5-10 years ago people were complaining about these languages having issues binding databases, network protocols, etc.

Do Rust and Go have good (complete) Desktop UI libraries yet?

For Rust, the existence of https://www.areweguiyet.com/ suggests "no".
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