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Google's Flutter team was affected by layoffs and we lost some wonderful folks. However, the number of Googlers working directly on Flutter has grown substantia
by loic-sharma 4y ago
Google's Flutter team was affected by layoffs and we lost some wonderful folks. However, the number of Googlers working directly on Flutter has grown substantially in the last year.
Please keep in mind that Flutter is a community project. Google is one of Flutter's many sponsors, many of our contributors are from other companies.
- davidkuennen 4y agoThank you! That's reassuring and I strongly believe that Flutter is the best option for developing cross platform apps right now.
- chrismorgan 4y agoI very, very strongly disagree with this. On web, Flutter is flatly awful (and there’s no reason to expect it to get much better—it’s chosen a paradigm that makes it impossible to do a good job on the web). On desktop, well, this article describes various limitations and problems. Flutter is unquestionably designed mobile-first, with everything else a distant second. Flutter may be the best option for developing cross-platform mobile apps right now (I don’t know), but if you care about web or desktop, it’s not a particularly good choice. Things based on web tech are very likely to be better.
- nileshtrivedi 4y ago> Flutter is a community project A quick WHOIS search for flutter.dev and pub.dev domains tells me that this is not really the case.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- plq 4y agoIs 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 :)
- satvikpendem 4y agoCLAs 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.
- evol262 4y agoWhy 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?
- satvikpendem 4y agoThe 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.
- alwayslikethis 4y agoKeeping 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.
- jhasse 4y agoAs a contributor I wouldn't want the code I made to be under a different license in the future.
- boring_twenties 4y agoAnd I'm not going to contribute any change, no matter how small, to a project whose maintainer reserves the right to change the license in the future.
- timsneath 4y ago
- easythrees 4y agoIs Flutter open source?
- zmk5 4y agoYeah it is under a BSD license: https://github.com/flutter/flutter https://github.com/flutter/flutter
- dmitriid 4y agoIt's open source the way Chrome is open source: the source is there, but the development is ~100% by Google
- rishabhjain1198 4y agoGoogle Chrome is not open source, Chromium is. [Reference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#:~:text=Unlike%20Chromium%2C%20Chrome%20is%20not,Google%20Chrome%20Terms%20of%20Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#:~:text....)
- dmitriid 4y agoPeople keep pointing this out as if this made a grain of difference.
- satvikpendem 4y agoNot 100%, at least 30% of PRs are done by outside Google contributors.
- dmitriid 4y agoHow relevant are those PRs to the actual development of the product? That is, fixing minor bugs or translation strings vs adding new web APIs etc.?
- justeleblanc 4y agoA community project? Flutter.dev literally says "Flutter is an open source framework by Google [...]" There is no list of sponsors on their webpage either, only a list of companies using Flutter. Google owns the logo and the trademark, controls the github repository, etc. Having contributors from other companies does not make the project into a community project.
- moomoo11 4y agoYou’re supposed to feel better, not ask questions. Besides they won’t say anything that affects their own job security (nor should they imo).