Typically if a company wants to contribute to open source, you have to create a PR and have it be reviewed and merged by the maintainers of the open source project on top of internal review. Facebook management decided to circumvent that process.
I even remember some of my internal commits making it into FBs open source code on GitHub, even though at the time I had no idea that this specific area of FBs codebase is open source.
This process is problematic, though. The "special case" is the standard process at FB: to make external contributors second class citizens.
They have their reasons, but doing this pushes the locus of discussion and action to the place where work happens fastest: inside the company. That means that the interests of FB engineers drive the project; in other words, not open.
That argument is I'm sure open to some logical nitpicking. But the evidence speaks for itself: Facebook open source projects aren't responsive to the outside community, and they language when FB's priorities shift. So their strategy has been pennywise, pound foolish in my view: they get the short term benefits of an "open" project, but they're incapable of actually being good open source custodians.
It’s not bad or evil or wrong that Facebook does this…it just is.
Remind me again what the win was here? It seems like they would have been better off not open sourcing it in the first place.
Say you work at FB on unannounced project X. You want to integrate with open source component Y, from a FB open source project but you have questions about the right way to do it, and how to get needed features into the open source project.
You can't discuss this in public channels, and all the maintainers are right there available to you internally. So what do you do?
Everyone just went along with it because it was either YOLO SILICON VALLEY LMAO or they were just too intimidated.
That all stopped when Michael Moritz, legendary silicon valley investor, and one of Facebook biggest early investors and shareholders, was at the campus doing research for leading a 2nd round of funding. He was doing diligence all day and at one point had to poop and that's when Zuckerburg popped his head over with a smile to ask how's the diligence coming along.
Michael Moritz, not one to mince words, was apoplectic. 'GET THE FUCK OUT HERE YOU IDiiOT LIZARD LOOKING FUCKER.' Mark Zuckerburg nervously tried to laugh it off and persisted, because he really loved intimate poop conversations 'Aw c'mon Michael, it's silicon valley'. Zuckerburg then withdrew after Moritz flung his cellphone into his eye socket.
30 minutes later, Mark was in a very import meeting (where he banned questions about his black eye) when Moritz walked into the conference room.
'Everyone except Mark Zuckerburg, OUT'. As intimidated as they were of Zuckerburg, at the time Moritz was the bigger deal, and they all scurried out of the room.
Zuckerburg, however, is not one to be intimated by anyone. Not the Winkewoz twins, not Eduardo Savarn, not Peter Thiel, and not one of his biggest shareholder Michael Moritz. Zuckerburg passionately defended his practice, but Michael Moritz was having none of that. Moritz told him that it was a ticking PR and HR nightmare, and threatened to pull out of leading the 2nd round of funding if Mark continued, which would have been a catastrophe for the company. Zuckerburg pretended to arbitrate 'Ok fine, but you need to give me a good reason, because if it were normal, there would be no problem'.
Moritz was flabberghasted at this response. Was this a serious question? He answered with the most obvious answer 'Because.... it's not FUCKING NORMAL'. Unknown to Moritz, Zuckerburg had guessed a conversation like this would happen as soon as he was kicked out of the toilet stall, and began formulating a strategy to counter Moritz demands. Zuckerburg knew that Moritz would have all the leverage, but Zuckerburg was a master strategist.
Zuckerburg went for the pounce. 'Okay, I'll lets write out an agreement, in writing I'll rescind the policy because it's not normal'. Moritz was dumbfounded, but he was used to being dumbfounded by eccentric tech founders, afterall he was also an early investor in Apple, and he still found Zuckerburg tame compared to Steve Jobs. Moritz had a long day of work so they signed the agreement so that he could go back to doing his due diligence.
When Moritz left, a broad grin spread across Zuckerburg's face. " 'Not Normal' eh? " Zuckerburg said with a menacing laugh. Ever since then, Mark Zuckerburg has been on a life-long crusade to normalize poop conversations.
He had a checklist of what he needed to accomplish in order to realize this. His advisors would tell him it's impossible, but one by one Zuckerburg checked off the list. From normalizing smart phone use on the toilet (actually a collaboration between Mark Zuckerburg and Steve Jobs), to trusting Mark with their private photos, to normalizing people giving up their internet browsing privacy.
In 2015, Zuckerburg knew he would hit a wall, having people watch you while you poop was still too much of a leap. That's when Zuckerburg decided to buy Occulus, and eventually shift his company towards virtual reality.
If he could coax people into having life-like conversations while they were pooping in a virtual reality, then doing it in the real world wouldn't be too big of a leap.
Do you read facebook or instagram while you're pooping? Ever consider what urges you to do that? It's not your personal preference, it's by Mark Zuckerburg's design.
Zuckerburg only has 3 more boxes to check off before poop conversations are normalized.
Mark Zuckerburg wants to watch you poop. Are you going to let him?
https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/udtca7/mark_zuck...
As an outsider and frequent consumer of some high profile open source projects 'owned' by Big Tech Companies I get the feeling that this same thing happens everywhere.
It probably does make good business sense but from out here it's a little odd.