DEV Community

Fulton Browne
Fulton Browne

Posted on

Do you love or hate big techs influence in open source?

I personally like the popularity and funding boost it gives open source, but what do you think?

Top comments (5)

Collapse
 
elmuerte profile image
Michiel Hendriks

I would say indifferent.

They have a secret agenda, sometimes so secret the people working on the projects don't know it. And that puts every project they run in danger.

Collapse
 
n8chz profile image
Lorraine Lee

I'm old school open source. For me the whole point in using free software is to stick it to the man. Well, not the whole point. But I do sometimes wonder whether Angular and React are some kind of trojan horses. But I'm paranoid. Sometimes I wonder whether the Internet itself is some kind of trojan horse upon society, having originated in the bowels of DARPA and all.

Collapse
 
n8chz profile image
Lorraine Lee

This might be a case in point. Looks like Huawei Just Started Selling Laptops With A Beautiful Linux OS Pre-Installed. This is interesting considering Huawei (rightly or wrongly?) has gained a reputation for shipping devices spiked with (perhaps state-actor-level) spyware. Is the Beautiful Linux an example of openwashing? Or maybe just a generic charm offensive?

Collapse
 
anwar_nairi profile image
Anwar

I love it because this is such a huge time and energy boost for open source tools.

Plus you have more chance that Enterprise grade open source softwares get more secure and rich features than what we would have done you and me on our spare time.

I love for example what Google made with Puppeteer and the MDC project.

Collapse
 
mememe profile image
mememe

Everyone needs funding. Popularity definitely brings projects to more contributors and users. I have no qualms with that.

Influence in a way that moves projects into a different direction is probably where I draw the line.