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Comment by JoshMnem | Hacker News Reader

Using Facebook's software supports Facebook. I think the industry should move away from that instead of adopting more of their technology. Programmers should start considering these things.

Alternatives: Elm, Purescript, etc.

Edit: I recommend stopping and thinking a bit about ethics of technology choices before reactively downvoting.

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Of all Facebook tech, this is the least "Facebook" of them all. ReasonML is a thin layer on top of OCaml, a language that's been around for decades. If Facebook one day abandons Reason, it would their loss more than anyone else's.

That doesn't really address the issue that the use of Facebook's software supports Facebook. The industry needs to pay more attention to the long-term results of its choices and actions.

I'm not sure what the connection is here. Is it because Facebook sponsored development of Reason? Should we consider not using anything that Facebook touches?

What if Facebook pays a developer to work on another popular library like Vue.js? Should we consider stop using Vue?

Maybe we can think of this as Facebook's payment to us for using our data.

As far as I know, they aren't a sponsor of the project -- they own the project (as opposed to something like Cassandra).

Companies release these libraries because they benefit the companies. The successes of projects like React help Facebook.

I think that people who believe that Facebook is an unethical company should consider alternative technologies on new projects whenever possible.

> Companies release these libraries because they benefit the companies. The successes of projects like React help Facebook.

The success of projects like Haskell and OCaml help Facebook too. Should we consider not using those technologies?

It seems the only difference you can point out is that Facebook "owns" React. But this doesn't make any practical difference when it comes to open source. It's like public transportation. If Facebook sponsors a high-speed railway that benefits both them and two cities, so what? That's great for everyone.

If you were talking about a paid SaaS run by Facebook, then I would agree with you. That would be more analogous to supporting Uber than supporting public transportation.

Facebook's use of software is completely different than a product of Facebook that targets programmers. Companies release open-source libraries because they benefit the companies.

Completely agree. We all have to capitulate sometimes, but rarely with new, less-used tech. I have the same feeling towards GraalVM. Sure we may use Java, React, etc because their ecosystem outweighs their maintainers but that doesn't mean we have to with lesser-adopted things. Reduced adoption is also the best, least-judging way we can send messages to high quality developers that remain at these places.

There are alternatives to React too, like Vue.

Hm I've been saying that for a while but no one seems to understand the connection, or care.

It takes time. Everyone who considers these issues should speak up.

Interesting... we covered ELM a few weeks ago: https://www.imaginarycloud.com/blog/elm-javascript-reinvente...

One reason I don't use Elm and Purescript is that enforcing the purity of functions can be a pain. While pure functions are great in theory, sometimes having a non-pure function is much easier, and I'm okay with my codebase being 99% pure functions.

PureScript has a lenient FFI so you can choose to use 99% pure functions if you like (at your own risk).

My point is more about ethics in tech than a specific language. I expected downvotes, but wish that the industry were different.

We can always fork these things if it comes down to it.

If it were going to be forked, then it would already have been forked. The unethical nature of Facebook is not well-hidden.

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