And sorry to ask this here, but how have the recent layoffs affected the flutter team?
We're using flutter as our main framework for our app and it's quite important.
The layoffs have sparked some fears that flutter development might slow down.
Please keep in mind that Flutter is a community project. Google is one of Flutter's many sponsors, many of our contributors are from other companies.
A quick WHOIS search for flutter.dev and pub.dev domains tells me that this is not really the case.
It's open source software, developed in the open under a permissive license. You don't have to work for Google to have contributor access or the right to approve others contributions. Google kindly sponsors a fair amount of infrastructure (testing labs, etc.) and pays for a lot of people to work on Flutter. If that doesn't meet your definition of "community", then fair enough -- but the spirit that we work under is that the "Flutter team" is everyone who contributes code.
However, it's not a community project, by any definition of community, because there is a power imbalance between Google and other contributors. Accepting patches or even allowing non-Google people to accept patches from anyone is not enough.
> There is a CLA, so that folk can attest that contributions are theirs, and that they're free to be used by others, and that everyone who uses Flutter can feel comfortable that there are no patent or IP rights reserved by contributors.
No, there is a CLA so that Google keeps the ability to relicense future Flutter releases however it seems fit.
Of course everybody owns their own contributions, git log clearly shows who owns what. BSD license already assures that they are free to be used by others, and if patents were a concern, AFAIK the Apache license would've been a better option (IANAL). You don't need a CLA for any of that.
Users and contributors are bound by the BSD license. Google however gets special treatment:
""" Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, You hereby grant to Google and to recipients of software distributed by Google a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and such derivative works. """
I hope the power imbalance is clear this time?
Again, it's great that Google develops open source software under a permissive license. Mad respect. I'd happily sign the CLA were I to send code to Flutter. I'm also not saying that Google shouldn't have a CLA, I fully understand, and maybe I'd do the same (maybe not). But let's call it what it is.
> but the spirit that we work under is that the "Flutter team" is everyone who contributes code.
Sorry but you sound like that boomer SMB owner who keeps saying "we are a family".
Flutter is unquestionably designed mobile-first, with everything else a distant second. Flutter may be the best option for developing cross-platform mobile apps right now (I don’t know), but if you care about web or desktop, it’s not a particularly good choice. Things based on web tech are very likely to be better.
That is, fixing minor bugs or translation strings vs adding new web APIs etc.?
[Reference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#:~:text....)