Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? Facebook engineering is highly regarded.
Perhaps in capability, not so much by reputation or social utility.
If the Rust foundation only took money from morally upright tech companies, it would be bankrupt.
Facebook Joins the Rust Foundation
41–50 of 99 posts
Re: Facebook Joins the Rust Foundation
#42This is a great step for the Rust Foundation and a sign that Rust is transitioning successfully to a foundation model rather than a Mozilla-centric organization. It looks like some people are worried about Facebook's influence on Rust, but that doesn't seem like a huge concern to me. Facebook isn't going to want to influence Rust in any particularly "Facebooky" way since it's such a deep-in-the-infrastructure compone…
So Microsoft, Amazon, and Google being founding platinum members has little bearing on Rust transitioning to a foundation model which is not a Mozilla-centric organization?
The only thing that has any bearing on why Rust transitioned to a non-Mozilla-centric organization is the fact that Mozilla cut the team to focus on Firefox.
Re: Facebook Joins the Rust Foundation
#43Well, that makes me a tad less enthusiastic about Rust.
Why? Facebook is not the sole large corporation in the foundation. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are all founding platinum members.
Re: Facebook Joins the Rust Foundation
#44This is a great step for the Rust Foundation and a sign that Rust is transitioning successfully to a foundation model rather than a Mozilla-centric organization. It looks like some people are worried about Facebook's influence on Rust, but that doesn't seem like a huge concern to me. Facebook isn't going to want to influence Rust in any particularly "Facebooky" way since it's such a deep-in-the-infrastructure compone…
It does bring up something we don't always like to think about, which is that by contributing to the progression of very general technologies we often empower people/organizations who are doing things that may be bad for the world.
But I'm not sure what there is to be done about that, and it isn't limited to Rust (or Facebook for that matter), and I don't think this event really makes that state of affairs worse in any particular way. It just remains an uncomfortable and (seemingly) unavoidable fact of our industry.
Re: Facebook Joins the Rust Foundation
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rust should include in their license: "The Software/Language shall be used for Good, not Evil" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#%22Good,_not...
Why? What effect would this have, in your opinion? Also, who decides what is "good", and what is "evil"? For proper licensing terms, a judge can decide whether those terms have been violated within a given jurisdiction. Would you have philosophers take their place? What a bunch of nonsense.
> Also, who decides what is "good", and what is "evil"?
Huh, Rust developers have plenty of opinions about "good" and "evil" on everything under sun. They peddle it non-stop on social media. So they seem perfectly capable to decide on that.
Re: Facebook Joins the Rust Foundation
#46Does anyone know what the financial requirements are to be a platinum or silver level member of the Rust Foundation? I clicked around on their website but couldn't find the answer.
Rough guess: In the inauguration blog post[0], a yearly budget of $1mil was mentioned, when there were 5 founding members (so $200k/year/company). I am not sure if the distinction they make on the "Members" page between "Founding Platinum" and "Platinum" has any practical implications, but I guess that new members might have to pay a premium. So possibly +$200k/year/company for Platinum level. [0] https://foundation.…
So that would be just enough to pay the bureaucracy, like in other foundations.
It seems they just want some influence and use it as a hiring bait.
After having been hired, you'll be asked to work on a legacy C++ code base.
Re: Facebook Joins the Rust Foundation
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
It had to happen, the only way to make a programming language successful is to have it backed by most big tech companies.
Python, C, C++, Perl, Bash were pretty successful before the modern FAANG culture. Same for projects other than programming languages, e.g. Linux. I don't feel comfortable with corporate-driven FOSS. I'll stick with community languages.
As for C, sure, AT&T is so much better than FAANG. C++ was also heavyly corporate. Python won over Ruby because of FAANG support (I personally like Ruby more, but as it's not supported by big companies, it remained behind in deep learning for example). Also NVIDIA has great Python support, which is really important for high performance software development.
As for Perl, I just look at it as a stepping stone for more modern scripting languages.
Re: Facebook Joins the Rust Foundation
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
So Microsoft, Amazon, and Google being founding platinum members has little bearing on Rust transitioning to a foundation model which is not a Mozilla-centric organization?
The only thing that has any bearing on why Rust transitioned to a non-Mozilla-centric organization is the fact that Mozilla cut the team to focus on Firefox.
> to focus on Firefox.
Finally? It took them almost two decades!
Re: Facebook Joins the Rust Foundation
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The kinds of things that Facebook most often receives flak for would be difficult to pursue though the layer of indirection that is sponsoring a foundation dedicated to the Rust programming language. Similarly, since Facebook isn't a software vendor, the kinds of things that you might achieve by securing undue influence within the Rust Foundation don't really benefit them.
But what's in it for Facebook then? They're spending real money, there's got to be something for them to benefit from?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the Rust Foundation website, it looks like the point of the organization is mainly to allocate funds to pay people to do work relating to the Rust language and community. So it seems like paying for a board seat means you get to indirectly influence the direction of Rust by deciding which parts people get paid to work on, and which parts are stuck with unpaid volunteers. I don't necessarily see anything wrong with that, it's good to see people get paid and the people paying should have a say in it, but it seems different from people claiming that paying for a board seat doesn't give them any additional influence over Rust.
Re: Facebook Joins the Rust Foundation
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The kinds of things that Facebook most often receives flak for would be difficult to pursue though the layer of indirection that is sponsoring a foundation dedicated to the Rust programming language. Similarly, since Facebook isn't a software vendor, the kinds of things that you might achieve by securing undue influence within the Rust Foundation don't really benefit them.
But what's in it for Facebook then? They're spending real money, there's got to be something for them to benefit from?
Making sure Rust works well is good for a company that uses a lot of Rust. It's pretty much as simple as that.