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Comment by foonathan | Hacker News Reader

Based on what they've told me the long term governance plan is to establish an independent foundation, with development controlled by three equal lead developers from different companies.

It may have been started by mostly Googlers but they want other companies and individuals to participate

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Official governance vs the effective governance is the real crux of this issue. Immediately starting from the lead developers separated by companies already puts a deep corporate interest spin on the project. Choosing to do a lot of the initial work in secret and then disclosing is also a pretty big data point.

I think this is going to be an uphill battle for them and I hope they win it but I'll be skeptical unless if I start seeing radical (for google) transparency basically immediately.

Also worth pointing out that the language is not immediately worthless even if they fail or only partially succeed in this endeavor!!

This is an odd line to take considering the language spec is unfinished and there’s no implementation. Anything less than or earlier than this phase of initial work would be akin to “let’s make a new C++; anyone have ideas?”

Also, for what it’s worth: despite being an ISO-standard language, C++ is still heavily swayed by corporate interests, with most committee members being tied to BigCos. This has the effect of somewhat-necessarily aligning language progress with its most significant users. Without this alignment, the language might be “better” in some respects, but less useful.

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