Interview With Facebook's Head of Open Source

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Interview With Facebook's Head of Open Source

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 30, 2014 @03:25AM from the complete-transparency dept.

Czech37 writes Facebook may be among the world's most well-known tech companies, but it's not renowned for being at the forefront of open source. In reality, they have over 200 open source projects on GitHub and they've recently partnered with Google, Dropbox, and Twitter (among others) to create the TODO group, an organization committed to furthering the open source cause. In an interview with Opensource.com, Facebook's James Pearce talks about the progress the company has made in rebooting their open source approach and what's on the horizon for the social media network.

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PR Stunt by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 03:36 · Score: 1, Funny

Because FB supports open source I'm signing up for FB today! I was so wrong about them, this proves their not creepy after all....
1. Re:PR Stunt by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  I recently went to an open house at a software company hoping to hire hundreds of developers. They actually said "We believe strongly in open source. Well, using it anyway. Maybe one day we will contribute back." And that pretty much sums it up for most companies these days. Facebook might be creepy and Zuckerberg is the NSA's bitch, but at least they do contribute something back. I can't fault them for that last part.
2. Re:PR Stunt by i+kan+reed · 2014-09-30 03:51 · Score: 1
  
  Please, facebook doesn't want more programmer registered users. They want you to do more free work for them.
3. Re:PR Stunt by SourceFrog · 2014-09-30 04:27 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  In some ways, it's worse than just a PR stunt, because patents effectively neutralize many of the benefits of open source - this effectively allows these companies like Google andF B to recruit developers to fix their bugs for free, while they make billions from the improved software - because they know the fact that it's open source doesn't matter when the big software 'parent cartels' own all the patents and cross-license, ring-fence and regulate to keep real competition out the market anyway. The serfs work for free while the lords live the high life.
  Abolishing software patents would do more to benefit the software industry (and everyone on earth) than making every last piece of code open source.
  
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4. Re:PR Stunt by SourceFrog · 2014-09-30 04:27 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry for typos, 'parent cartels' should be 'patent cartels'
  
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5. Re:PR Stunt by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 04:59 · Score: 0
  
  Well, Facebook is beholden to its shareholders to -not- contribute anything back, except insofar as "contribute" is code-word for "get back more financially than we give." It's fair to assume that they already have the monetization plans for their "contributions" well-defined, by, say, the advantages of free technical labor and QA review.
  Maybe I'm a rarity, but I find the notion of Facebook (and, similarly, Apple's BSD... er, OS X...) "contributions" ethically perverse. A significant part of Open Source development historically has been, quite simply, motivated by a notion of "good will" of a distinctly altruistic flavor. To see this work hoovered up en masse by predatory money-driven corporations, who then have the ostentation to claim they are likewise "contributing," is rather offensively absurd. They are doing it for the money derivable from free labor, as they are in a vastly better position to monetize the work--and doing so is their sole institutional imperative.
6. Re:PR Stunt by eulernet · 2014-09-30 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  While I agree with your view about abolishing software patents, I disagree about your view that "these companies recruit developers to fix their bugs for free".
  First, unless the project is widely used, the bugs are rarely fixed in open source projects, except when someone is paid to do that.
  Secondly, from my experience, I know that working on an open source project increases your chances to find a job, since you both demonstrate that you know how to code, and that you can improve a collective project.
  But I agree that it's a way to increase your R&D team without spending any money.
7. Re: PR Stunt by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 00:00 · Score: 0
  
  I dunno man. Facebook are pretty the only contributors to HHVM and thats an awesome free project. And it doesnt cost like the ccommercialzend php drop ins.
I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 03:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

90% of them are specific to Facebook with no particular applications for anyone who doesn't have a massive server farm.
1. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 03:47 · Score: 0
  
  This article bought and paid for by FB as a desperate attempt to regain some cred for occulus among the geek crowd aka the only crowd that will actually pay for these for the next several years.
2. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by the_B0fh · 2014-09-30 04:21 · Score: 2
  
  Speak for yourself. Some of these are of interest to me and my company.
3. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 04:27 · Score: 0
  
  So because Facebook's contributions are not tailored to YOUR specific needs, this completely invalidates the value of their contributions in their entirety?
4. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 04:30 · Score: 0
  
  I'm not saying it doesn't have value, I'm saying these projects are just not particularly useful to the majority of open source contributors. After all, you're not going to contribute to a project you aren't first a user of, right?
5. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Agrippa · 2014-09-30 04:37 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  While I would agree with the OP that a lot of these projects target the needs of large, FB-like companies, Reactjs and Flux (Flux is a pseudo-framework for React) are really nice alternatives to heavier options like Angular and Backbone. If you're building with JS on the front end then definitely take a look; the speed advantage over Angular is ridiculous.
6. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 04:40 · Score: 0
  
  No but the fact that it is Facebook is a good reason to invalidate their value. Since they'll likely get everyone using their tech re-licence it commercial and then suddenly try to own any information that ever traversed any of its code.
  Don't support Facebook, don't work for them for free.
7. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 04:59 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, Mark, that is correct.
8. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 07:19 · Score: 0
  
  Facebook Folly is an impressive C++ template library. It contains generic data structures that can be useful for anything. I seriously considered using Facebook's concurrent skip list implementation for a project recently.
9. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by the_B0fh · 2014-09-30 15:56 · Score: 1
  
  Are you fucking shitting me? It's an open source license. That means you can fork it at will if they screw with the license. Is this what passes for critical thinking around here, or is it just bash anything at will?
10. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by the_B0fh · 2014-09-30 15:58 · Score: 1
  
  You do realize their implementation of PHP is the only secure form of PHP out there? The one they released as a virtual machine?
11. Re: I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 00:48 · Score: 0
  
  Same with hhvm and php on the backend
massive server farm by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 04:20 · Score: 1

90% of them are specific to Facebook with no particular applications for anyone who doesn't have a massive server farm.
So the NSA and facebook will be helping each other out to optimize their code?
"talk openly, develop openly" by SourceFrog · 2014-09-30 04:33 · Score: 2

The TODO group's motto. If the members of this group really cared about "talk openly, develop openly", they would release all their collectively owned software patents into the public domain. Until then, open source means 'you fix bugs for us, we still own the patents on the final product'.

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Irony alert by OzPeter · 2014-09-30 04:33 · Score: 0

In TFA (yes I read it this time)

Q. Do you have advice for young open source enthusiasts?
A. I'll fall back to one of Facebook's mottos: Think about "what would you do if you weren't afraid?"
How can I not be afraid of what FB does?

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Help me! by slashdice · 2014-09-30 04:57 · Score: 1

Ok, don't panic. You don't want to spend the rest of your life wondering if you ate poop so the best thing to do is find some more poop and eat it. Because knowing is half the battle.

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Re:Help me! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 04:59 · Score: 0

I think I accidentally ate some poop. Should I be worried -- or will I be OK?
I read somewhere that some people consider eating fecal matter a submissive fetish. Are you okay with being a fecal matter eating fetishist?
I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Anonymous Coward · 2014-09-30 06:48 · Score: 0

Can you point to the study from which the "90%" statistics is coming from ?