Facebook has a terrible track record when it comes to open-sourcing their internal tools. See: Phabricator, HHVM, Flow, Jest, ...
Even React, which is their most popular library, is not actually "open source." They're very transparent about the fact that their priorities are Facebook's needs -- even if they do take community input.
None of this is per-se bad, but you should definitely treat an open-source project out of Facebook with skepticism when it comes to adopting it for your own use cases (possibly making sure you're not too locked in when an incompatible v2 comes out with virtually no warning after FB's internal implementation drifts).
> Even React, which is their most popular library, is not actually "open source."
How do you define "open source"? It typically simply means the source code is available. By any definition I can think of, React is definitely both free and open source. How they design the software or if they take contributors isn't really relevant.
What's wrong with Flow, Jest or Graphql? I think these are all fantastic projects. I mean, Flow "lost out" to Typescript, but, it's usual for one winner to emerge from competing frameworks.
I'm actually curious what the strategy is here. To my knowledge only FB, Google and MS do megascale monorepo, and Google and MS already have a solution. Are there now other companies outgrowing Git that Facebook is hoping to build a community with?
For what, another Phabricator, that I’ll inevitably have to migrate my company away from again?
So if history serves the next announcement to watch for is your departure from Facebook and the launch of Edenity, which will be sunset and abandoned inside a decade once it fails to IPO. Am I close?
travisd|3 years ago
Even React, which is their most popular library, is not actually "open source." They're very transparent about the fact that their priorities are Facebook's needs -- even if they do take community input.
None of this is per-se bad, but you should definitely treat an open-source project out of Facebook with skepticism when it comes to adopting it for your own use cases (possibly making sure you're not too locked in when an incompatible v2 comes out with virtually no warning after FB's internal implementation drifts).
peterhunt|3 years ago
folkrav|3 years ago
How do you define "open source"? It typically simply means the source code is available. By any definition I can think of, React is definitely both free and open source. How they design the software or if they take contributors isn't really relevant.
hn_throwaway_99|3 years ago
tptacek|3 years ago
bjackman|3 years ago
aliveli|3 years ago
epage|3 years ago
> Re-sync with internal repository
ripphab|3 years ago
So if history serves the next announcement to watch for is your departure from Facebook and the launch of Edenity, which will be sunset and abandoned inside a decade once it fails to IPO. Am I close?
wocram|3 years ago