[randomtwiddler]

Google doesn't have a track record of long term support for their projects. They readily cancel them when they want to.

I would hate to invest precious years into tech and apps to have the rug pulled out from under me because flutter entered the Google graveyard.

They do have competent engineers, and if they get sufficient community buy-in, I'll be much more open to it.

[daenz]

That's fair. I feel more confident about Google's OSS (like flutter) surviving than I do about Google's consumer products. The flutter community is very strong, and as far as offerings go, it's (imo) the strongest product that abstracts UI/UX development over web and mobile, and the demand for that abstraction is very real.

Plus having Dart (which feels a bit like Java, but less verbose) as the foundation language raises the bar in terms of library code quality (compared to Javascript at least)

[randomtwiddler]

BTW, nice to have these kinds of pro and con conversations about random tech. I don't get it at work as much as I'd like.

A lot of open source projects die when their corporate investor closes shop. The community is often just dependants who want to use the tech but don't have the ability to keep it running. And it is usually not big enough to come up with the funding for a foundation to run maintenance and development.

Flutter is very ambitious as a project. I have more direct experience with other similar projects like react native, which really struggles despite the investments.