[vander_elst]

Disclaimer: I made some contributions to Fuchsia and I am clearly biased.

I am not sure why there's so much negativity around Fuchsia. From a technical point of view it's finally a serious attempt to do something new in the OS space. It might not be the right and perfect answer, but it might introduce new paradigms and maybe some fork of the project might be able to provide additional benefits for end users down the road. I know that there are lots of hobby/research projects trying out new stuff, but i think Fuchsia stands out because it might be able to land the innovation and make it accessible for a larger user base.

[michaelbrave]

I just don't trust google to not abandon it like it has most other things they made that I invested in. It's brand erosion same as what's happened with Blizzard, used to have a lot of trust, lots of disappointments later and now I go in skeptical.

Personally I think Fuchsia is cool, and there is a lot to like, but I expect to hear it was killed by google anyday now.

[tomComb]

Yes, it may well be killed, but that’s Ok - it’s an experiment. But, yes, you need to take that into account before investing time in it. The other mistake that I think people make is assuming that because Google is a giant Corp. these things will move quickly, when in fact Google often puts small teams on non-critical projects.

[cogman10]

6 years of development and deployed to actual products is an experiment?

The issue I have with Google is it's never clear to outsiders when projects are simply "experiments" that google is going to kill later. Dart, GWT, Angular Dart, for example, seemed like more than "experiments" yet google did a soft kill on Dart and effectively a hard kill on GWT.

You learn that something is "an experiment" when all the sudden updates slow or stop and the mailing list stops getting responses.

I don't trust google software because google bureaucracy is fickle and unpredictable.

[ErikCorry]

> The issue I have with Google is it's never clear to outsiders when projects are simply "experiments" that google is going to kill later.

Well if it's any comfort that's not clear to the Googlers either.

On the other hand if something is done by a startup there's also no way to know how much of a future it has. At least if it's open source then you have time to migrate to something else if Google stops investing in it. All the examples you name are Open Source.

And I don't think it's accurate to say Google did a "soft kill" on Dart. I don't recall any time when they reduced the manpower on the project, excepting perhaps the Dartino/Fletch (embedded Dart), which was explicitly labelled as tentative and experimental. These days things are going great for Dart.

[abdulla]

Dart is core part of Flutter: https://flutter.dev

What makes you say it's being killed?

[cogman10]

Before it was a part of flutter it went through years of silence and effective death.

From roughly 2013->2015 the mailing list was practically silent on dart.

Even then, the language got "rebooted" with a v2 in 2018 to try and stir up some new life in a language everyone thought was dead.

[josephcsible]

> I am not sure why there's so much negativity around Fuchsia.

Because the real reason for its existence seems to be to slowly kill open source, by not requiring hardware vendors to provide kernel/driver source anymore.

[IshKebab]

Nonsense. Linux already doesn't require hardware vendors to provide driver sources. Fuchsia just makes it easier to upgrade things when they don't.

[josephcsible]

> Linux already doesn't require hardware vendors to provide driver sources.

Yes it does. The GPL literally does exactly that.

[pjmlp]

It is sooo successful on the Android, IoT ecosystems.

[josephcsible]

So just because some people have broken rules and gotten away with it so far, we should get rid of those rules for everyone?

[cogman10]

Nobody has broken rules. The rules are simply permissive enough that you can still push out a Non-GPL drivers for a GPL mono-kernel.

The Fuchsia design is good because it recognizes that reality and creates a world where patching the kernel doesn't require hardware vendors to rebuild their drivers.

[pjmlp]

Rules that can be broken in the open without consequences aren't rules.

In any case, the transition to MIT based FOSS on embedded platforms like Zephyr, RTOS, NutX,... proves that it won't matter for much longer anyway.

[pabs3]

That will probably change if this lawsuit against Vizio succeeds:

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

If it does, then any recipient of Linux will be able to sue for compliance.

[qubex]

This may show my age, but Fuchsia smells like BeOS meets OS/400.

As to why there’s so much negativity: no clue. I quite appreciate the idea of a blank slate devoid of cruft.

[kardianos]

I love so many ideas Fuchsia brings in. Blob storage as a primary FS type, software integrity, software archives that can naturally just pull blobs it requires from archives to name a few. A system that can as a first class, be atomically updated.

I'm concerned that it may not get real use or that Google might poison the well it dug.

But I would love to see it become a minimum viable desktop/embedded platform. But looking at CLs, sometimes the enemy of better/good is perfect.

[ncmncm]

If it were not such bad code, it would seem more valuable.

[rvz]

> I am not sure why there's so much negativity around Fuchsia.

Change is quite scary for some judging from the responses and there is finally a serious new OS that abandons the legacy Unix model and gives a refreshing approach to doing something new with support for only modern architectures.

To see it already running Chrome, Flutter, and being deployed on a Nest Hub without the users noticing tells me it is likely going to be the base of ChromeOS first and then it will replace Android in a couple of years with all Flutter and Android apps all running on Day 1 on the first phone running Fuchsia.

Won't be surprised to see Fuchsia on Chromebooks.

[hosteur]

> I am not sure why there's so much negativity around Fuchsia.

Easy: this is not the future we want. We don’t trust google. We don’t want an OS designed to further their goal of total control and surveillance capitalism.

[qubex]

It’s hilarious. I’ve been around long enough to remember people not trusting IBM and heralding Microsoft as the underdog with bright principles. Then it became Google being the white prince on a unicorn telling Micro$oft to eff off. For about a decade now we’re collectively in Not Trusting Google mode.

“It’s all just a little bit of history repeatin’.”

[vander_elst]

But given that's open source shouldn't it be a bit better? If I don't agree with some parts of the OS I can fork the project and remove some stuff. Given that's open source you don't have to fully trust Google, you can check things yourself. I know I'm probably bring native, but I am hoping to see some changes in the space.

[bobthecowboy]

MIT means it's only open source for as long as Google feels like it should be (and only the parts they want to keep open). Older versions will still be around to fork from, but maintaining a fork of an OS is a pretty large task.

Android is also open source, and is notably very difficult to simply fork and do your own thing and then actually use the thing, unless you happen to be a handset maker.

My OS entirely driven by Google? No thanks, they're making enough of a mess of the web (and Android lately, TBF).

[_k9eq]

> We don’t want an OS designed to further their goal of total control and surveillance capitalism.

What parts of the operating system design do this?

[josephcsible]

The license, by allowing proprietary forks.

[daptaq]

But that is a matter of licensing, not design (which I underdtand to be things like the capability system or the micro kernel). I'd prefer a Copyleft license too, but 1. it is not a suprise that Google is not interested in that 2. even with Android they are able to restrict the user.

[mda]

Haha.. Take that evil open source OS! Let's see what are you going to do against "We" and our strong slogans.