I don't get the appeal. It's like a. OSS Matlab but all contributions are used directly so the language developers can make money for a parent company? Most OSS languages aren't run that way. Seems kind of scammy
It always amuses me when people assume that the nefarious scheme is taking open source contributions and selling them. That's not the nefarious scheme. The nefarious scheme is going to partners, funding agencies and investors and saying "look at this unique capability / important research / profitable business opportunity that we can do together, but oops, all of our code is written in Julia, so I guess we better pay some people to maintain it so it'll all come crashing down, wouldn't want that to happen".
Also, I'm of course using nefarious in jest here in both cases. While we don't directly try to monetize our open source work, I respect that sometimes people need to do that. As long as people are transparent about it, I don't have a problem. Doing the thing we're doing seems to work, but it's a lot harder, because you have to build a successful pice of software and a (or multiple) successful something elses that has a critical dependency on it. It's like hitting the lottery twice.
I wouldn't say nefarious, but I don't know how I feel about the power structure. I could see it being very much a one way venture for most participants. I'd have to think about it before actually using the language.
Your baseline for comparison is a company that doesn't give anything away for free?
Also, contributing in open source is a choice, not a mandate. I greatly benefit from Julia and its ecosystem so I chose to contribute back some of my work, no one forced me. I chose the MIT license because I want other people to be able to make money with it, just like I make money with other peoples MIT licensed stuff.
the parent company is a consumer of Julia, and has no formal role in oversight or governance; they are of course invested in the success and performance of the language, but so are all other users!
Seems kind of contradictory with the other comment which states that they decide what features are prioritized. I guess not because it could be an informal process.
It's interesting. I like the more opaque approach rust takes. Rust has its own issues but it seems less corporately motivated. Maybe that's why it has more corporations using it? You aren't going to end up with the core maintainers to the language rug pulling packages or language features to slow down competition who are also using the tool. I say competition because it looks like they are making money through consultancies and very broad applications of the niche language.
Weird stuff to have to think about. I just want to write code
this is not true; the other comment is wrong. there is no central body at all that "decides" what features are prioritized. features are simply worked on by whomever has the capacity, ability, and desire to do so.
many engineers at JuliaHub have all three of the capacity, ability, and desire to work on certain features because JuliaHub, in its capacity as a private business, pays them to do so. but with respect to Julia the programming language these are "just" third party contributions like any other.
So when I was googling it I was seeing a few other corporate activities seemingly coming from the other major contributors of the language outside of Julia hub? It looks like pumas AI has a few of the same people as Julia hub. Or am I misunderstanding the situation?
From a quick Google search it looked kind of like a bunch of MIT staff/professors(?) are getting students to churn out code for a variety of business interests. Just doesn't seem right in the surface and does make me wonder about what other things happen knowing what I know about human behavior.
I am personally not interested that's for sure. Thanks for sharing your experiences though.
> I like the more opaque approach rust takes. Rust has its own issues but it seems less corporately motivated. Maybe that's why it has more corporations using it?
I don’t if these are contradictory exactly but it seems to come from a very cluttered space.
Meh, I’ve never been associated with the company and AFAICT they provide value through platforms for enterprises. Not everyone gets OSS sponsorships to fund team (and using a social media presence to achieve this was a post-Julia phenomenon).
It’s nothing like Google-the-ad-company influencing Chrome. The company consumes Julia for products to sell, rather. Maybe this affects the ordering of features landing, but… meh.
Also, I'm of course using nefarious in jest here in both cases. While we don't directly try to monetize our open source work, I respect that sometimes people need to do that. As long as people are transparent about it, I don't have a problem. Doing the thing we're doing seems to work, but it's a lot harder, because you have to build a successful pice of software and a (or multiple) successful something elses that has a critical dependency on it. It's like hitting the lottery twice.