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Graph Mining Library

github.com

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Re: Graph Mining Library

#6

Post by simonw »

tomrod wrote: post #2

This is a big deal, I think. I'm guessing it's not widely used internally anymore if they are open sourcing it. What is used instead?

I don't think "not widely used internally anymore" is a common rationale for open sourcing something.

Generally I'd expect companies to open source things when it's proven itself internally and they want to reap the benefits of open source:

- Make internal engineers happy - engineers like having their code released outside the bounds of their company

- Prestige, which can help with hiring

- External contributions (not even code necessarily, just feedback from people who are using it can be amazingly useful for improving the software)

- Ability to hire people in the future who already know important parts of your technical stack, and don't need internal training on it

- Externally produced resources that help people learn how to use the software (tutorials, community discussion forums etc)

If the software is no longer used internally, open sourcing it is MORE expensive - first you have to get through the whole process of ensuring the code you are releasing can be released (lots of auditing, legal reviews etc), and then you'll have to deal with a flow of support requests which you can either deal with (expensive, especially if your internal knowledge of the tool is atrophying) or ignore (expensive to your reputation).

Re: Graph Mining Library

#7

Post by nivekney »

tomrod wrote: post #2

This is a big deal, I think. I'm guessing it's not widely used internally anymore if they are open sourcing it. What is used instead?

It's based on ParlayLib, which is for shared-memory multicore machines. Highly suspect that they moved the algorithms on to distributed systems.

Re: Graph Mining Library

#8

Post by mlinhares »

simonw wrote: post #6
tomrod wrote: post #2

This is a big deal, I think. I'm guessing it's not widely used internally anymore if they are open sourcing it. What is used instead?

I don't think "not widely used internally anymore" is a common rationale for open sourcing something. Generally I'd expect companies to open source things when it's proven itself internally and they want to reap the benefits of open source: - Make internal engineers happy - engineers like having their code released outside the bounds of their company - Prestige, which can help with hiring - External contributions (no…

Google has done this before so it's not surprising people would think that.

Re: Graph Mining Library

#9

Post by tomrod »

mlinhares wrote: post #8
simonw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "not widely used internally anymore" is a common rationale for open sourcing something. Generally I'd expect companies to open source things when it's proven itself internally and they want to reap the benefits of open source: - Make internal engineers happy - engineers like having their code released outside the bounds of their company - Prestige, which can help with hiring - External contributions (no…

Google has done this before so it's not surprising people would think that.

To be fair, I can often be uninformed with regards to some of the smaller movements of techcos.
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