[simias]

I do admit that I find the "anti-business" citations pretty strange from the context of developing a programing language. I can understand this mindset if you're doing some work of art and don't want it corrupted by corporate drones, but for a technical tool I don't really get what could go wrong.

What would a corporate sponsor of a programing language want? A clear release schedule and roadmap, stability, practicality and efficiency. Those are all positive things IMO. Unless the original author wants to maintain Zig as an ultra-experimental toy language I don't really see the problem.

[kristoff_it]

There are many ways to create relationships between opensource projects and corporations. Some are sane, some are not.

I can't speak for Andrew, and certainly even less for past Andrew (this is an old link), especially when quoted by somebody banned from the community.

What I can say about present-day Zig, as VP of Community at the Zig Software Foundation, is that, to put it in simple terms, we want to take a step away from the usual "get vc money, build a moat" dance that big tech likes to play.

That said, we aren't anti-business and in fact the choice of an MIT license is deliberate to provide the highest degree of freedom to any Zig user, be it individuals or companies.

The problem is that the Zig project just doesn't want anything to do with connectFree and so Andrew took appropriate measures to cut them off.

In light of the consequences of Mozilla depending so much on corporate sponsorships, it almost seems weird to me that we need to clarify why we'd like to walk a different path.

[simias]

That sounds interesting but I'm not sure I understand what this means in practice. In particular I don't get this at all:

>In light of the consequences of Mozilla depending so much on corporate sponsorships, it almost seems weird to me that we need to clarify why we'd like to walk a different path.

I think Mozilla's funding is very unhealthy for Firefox in particular because it's a web browser and there can be a clear conflict of interest, especially when a lot of the money effectively comes from advertisers. What I want from a browser and what Google wants from a browser probably differs significantly. I want good privacy and control, Google wants me to see ads and build a profile.

But how does that translate to Zig, the programing language? For instance as far as Rust is concerned I'd argue that more corporate involvement is actually a good thing, it means that the language is here to stay. I may be naive but I don't really see the failure mode here. What I want from a programing language and what Google/Amazon/Netflix/Samsung want from a programing language probably has a lot of overlap.

[kristoff_it]

Yeah I agree, sorry, I didn't make the point super clearly.

For the Zig programming language, it means that the commercial entity that supports the project is the Zig Software Foundation, a non-profit company. Being non-profit means that we don't have shareholders nagging the board of directors for dividends, nor we have a VC company forcing decisions on us to pursue a hockey stick.

Right now we depend on donations and we are accountable to the community through the restrictions and duties that 501(c)(3) non-profits have.

If at one point we decide that the donation business model doesn't work out, we'll think of something else, but at least we'll be free from pressure that would potentially compromise the quality of the final product (i.e. Zig and its community).

To VCs and other investors that might be reading: we're not against VC money, but we're not a tech startup. If you decide to invest in Zig, it's because you have a strategical interest in having succeed one of the most energy-efficient programming languages ever created.

We're happy to take donations, exchange logos and be vocal about our appreciation for your support, but the only terms we're going to accept are: X money for 0 shares and 0 board seats.

[simias]

Okay, that makes sense, thank you for clarifying (and good luck, Zig seems like an interesting language).