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by hueving 3960 days ago
You're right, they hired people that were already participating in the git community to continue to participate in the community. This is better than nothing because it ensures that they are employed, but it's a net zero effect for the git community and isn't what I would call participating because they aren't bringing anything new to the table.

It's similar to Microsoft hiring a bunch of Linux developers to continue developing. Yeah, this is good for marketing checkboxes of 'supporting the open source community', but from the perspective of a developer in that community, it's worthless.

What would be nice is if they hired new developers to work on git so the community actually grows and gets something.
1 comments
imbriaco 3960 days ago
I don't know why I'm responding, but I can't help myself. I guess it's the good old XKCD "Someone is wrong on the Internet" effect and I should know better. But.

They are paying people who would otherwise work on Git in their spare time to work on it full time. That is a net win for everyone who uses git.

I'm going to give up at this point and just accept the fact that you're going to spin it such that any commercial entity that uses open source and doesn't open source their core product is a parasite. I think you're wrong, but you're certainly entitled to your opinion.

You're not entitled to your own facts, though.

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hueving 3960 days ago
No, they were both appeared to be working full time on git before (based on commit activity). They just changed 'sponsors' i.e. employers.

These aren't my own facts. This is based on what I've seen with open source contributors for a long time. Rather than companies contributing code or their own engineers, they just hire an existing contributor to keep doing what they do. I'm not arguing that this is bad, I'm saying that they should be put on a pedestal for essentially throwing money at something that they depend on anyway.

I see I've struck a nerve with github fans, but be honest with yourself. Do we say oracle is a great open source contributor because they have java language devs?

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