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Announcing Rome Tools, Inc.

rome.tools

71–80 of 90 posts

Re: Announcing Rome Tools, Inc.

#71

I had a quick look at how they are set up and I like what they are doing from the point of view of actually creating an OSS community. I don't actually know much about what they do as I'm not one of their users. Judging this purely from a "does this make sense as an OSS company" point of view. - License: MIT. Great pragmatic choice. Generally a good fit for not obstructing your users to actually use, copying, modifyi…

> License: MIT.

Virtually all open source projects in the web dev community are MIT licensed, especially when it comes tooling. Choosing any other license would cause a lot of friction and prevent adoption.

Re: Announcing Rome Tools, Inc.

#72
post #42

Being written in TypeScript and not Rust seems quite a big liability that might see Rome never be popular or lose out quickly due to inferior performance. There is already RSLint and SWC as JavaScript tools written in Rust and I would expect such tools to take over, with a good choice of it happening before Rome is ready.

I don't see the relevancy of rust here, but you're right that at this point any language that compiles directly to machine code will blow any javascript tool out of the water any time. Of course, perf is only one reason to use a tool, I expect javascript based tooling to stick around for much longer because developers are used to them now. And, of course, if all you know is frontend, everything starts to look like a…

I'd prefer my tools to use languages that are compiled + memory safe. Basically that just leaves rust or go.

But rust also has other features that can help prevent bugs regarding concurrency and more. So rust is a feature in my book and not just an implementation detail.

Re: Announcing Rome Tools, Inc.

#73
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthy skepticism is good. Dev tools are hard. There are hundreds of open source companies - many making gobs of money. Not all - many fail. This team has name recognition and a few successful projects already - Babel and yarn. I can see it working out. JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages. Millions of developers. With solid execution, there are monstrous markets here.

> There are hundreds of open source companies - many making gobs of money. [citation needed] It seems there may be many open source companies with tons of users, but they seem to struggle with monetization and turning those users into paying users. Redhat which used to be the epitome of a company making money from open source got acquired by IBM. A lot of other open source companies are switching to non-open source l…

34 billion dollars doesn't count as gobs of money?

Re: Announcing Rome Tools, Inc.

#74
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthy skepticism is good. Dev tools are hard. There are hundreds of open source companies - many making gobs of money. Not all - many fail. This team has name recognition and a few successful projects already - Babel and yarn. I can see it working out. JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages. Millions of developers. With solid execution, there are monstrous markets here.

> There are hundreds of open source companies - many making gobs of money. [citation needed] It seems there may be many open source companies with tons of users, but they seem to struggle with monetization and turning those users into paying users. Redhat which used to be the epitome of a company making money from open source got acquired by IBM. A lot of other open source companies are switching to non-open source l…

OSS Capital, which participated in the Rome Tools, Inc round, has compiled a list which includes commercial open source companies, revenue estimates, and how much VC raised: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17nKMpi_Dh5slCqzLSFBo...

Re: Announcing Rome Tools, Inc.

#76

I think the future of JavaScript tooling is esbuild and SWC, written in fast compiled languages like Go and Rust. I don't see the value proposition in a brand new toolchain written in slow and memory hungry TypeScript/JavaScript.

you are right but the most common tools are still made with these. I think people don't worry about performance that much. or worry, but they don't make an effort to change that.

Re: Announcing Rome Tools, Inc.

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the relevancy of rust here, but you're right that at this point any language that compiles directly to machine code will blow any javascript tool out of the water any time. Of course, perf is only one reason to use a tool, I expect javascript based tooling to stick around for much longer because developers are used to them now. And, of course, if all you know is frontend, everything starts to look like a…

I'd prefer my tools to use languages that are compiled + memory safe. Basically that just leaves rust or go. But rust also has other features that can help prevent bugs regarding concurrency and more. So rust is a feature in my book and not just an implementation detail.

[redacted]

Re: Announcing Rome Tools, Inc.

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd prefer my tools to use languages that are compiled + memory safe. Basically that just leaves rust or go. But rust also has other features that can help prevent bugs regarding concurrency and more. So rust is a feature in my book and not just an implementation detail.

[redacted]

Is go not compiled and memory safe?

Re: Announcing Rome Tools, Inc.

#79
post #50
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a given that because the software is open-source, the decision-making will be, too? Almost seems there should be a separate set of claims for what the decision-making process will be (like how there are various software licenses).

From the article: > Eric Raymond, the founder of the Open Source Initiative and one of the authors of the standard-bearing Open Source Definition, said Kyle’s decision violated the fifth clause of the definition, which prohibits discrimination against people or groups.

Okay, so the issue wasn't decision-making, then, and you agree with the parent comment that open source need not have open decision-making?

Re: Announcing Rome Tools, Inc.

#80

I had a quick look at how they are set up and I like what they are doing from the point of view of actually creating an OSS community. I don't actually know much about what they do as I'm not one of their users. Judging this purely from a "does this make sense as an OSS company" point of view. - License: MIT. Great pragmatic choice. Generally a good fit for not obstructing your users to actually use, copying, modifyi…

> License: MIT. Virtually all open source projects in the web dev community are MIT licensed, especially when it comes tooling. Choosing any other license would cause a lot of friction and prevent adoption.

Isn't Apache-2.0 also considered easy going?
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