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Comment by Carpetsmoker | Hacker News Reader

So everyone is "equal" in Python?

Even if they're not equals, they're not employees of the owner of the project, which is the point.

So there's an higher chance they could leave without notice for lack of funding or because their full time job leave them not enough time

Yes, and hence a higher chance that they are not a hardened paid-for core team, but a looser team where people can come and go, and where an outsider can get influence.

This always reminds me of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw9gaEiQAxY

people should be paid to work to a product under some direction, if you want some professional outcome

teams where people come and go rarely have built solid products

Take for example the Linux kernel, Alan Cox has been working on it non-stop from 1991 to 2009, and even after resigning as TTY maintainer, he was still heavily involved up to 2014

From 1999 to 2009 he was employed by RedHat and after That by Intel until 2013

I can't honestly say he did RedHat or Intel interests more than he did Linux community as a whole interests

He's a big advocate and activist for free software, but he also said "Yearn for the good old days when you knew every contributor by name and the source code fitted on a single floppy disc ?"

In a way or another, a small group of "directors" is always better for the good of both the product and the users

Google doesn't "own" the project in any meaningful sense. That was Russ' entire point of this post. Could Google assert control if they wanted to? I guess. But that's no unique to just Go. Remember the XFree86 drama, for example? Probably a number of other examples to be found.

The issue here seems to be primarily one of trust. I can relate to that, as I don't like Google either, and actually mostly avoided Go for exactly that reason until I got hired as a Go developer a few years ago. I found that the Go project in particular is developed and managed in a fairly reasonable way; certainly much better than some other popular Google projects such as Android (the open parts of it anyway) or Chromium.

In other words, I think you should give them a chance, rather than immediately go "corporate Google overlords".

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