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Interview With Facebook's Head of Open Source

Posted by timothy on 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.

14 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. PR Stunt by Anonymous Coward · · 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 · · 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 · · 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 · · 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 · · Score: 1

      Sorry for typos, 'parent cartels' should be 'patent cartels'

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      My other UID is three digits.
    5. Re:PR Stunt by eulernet · · 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.

  2. I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Anonymous Coward · · 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 the_B0fh · · Score: 2

      Speak for yourself. Some of these are of interest to me and my company.

    2. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by Agrippa · · 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.

    3. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by the_B0fh · · 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?

    4. Re:I wouldn't cite those projects if I were you by the_B0fh · · 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?

  3. massive server farm by Anonymous Coward · · 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?

  4. "talk openly, develop openly" by SourceFrog · · 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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  5. Help me! by slashdice · · 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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