Google's Flutter team was affected by layoffs and we lost some wonderful folks. However, the number of Googlers working directly on Flutter has grown substantially in the last year.
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 community project? Flutter.dev literally says "Flutter is an open source framework by Google [...]" There is no list of sponsors on their webpage either, only a list of companies using Flutter. Google owns the logo and the trademark, controls the github repository, etc. Having contributors from other companies does not make the project into a community project.
Is there a CLA? Do I have to waive ownership of my contributions for my code to be merged? If yes then it's not a community project. Domain ownership has little to do with it. Look at who owns github.com :)
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.
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.
Hey, first let me be clear that I think it's great that Google is developing Flutter in the open, publishes it under a permissive license while also trying to get along with other contributors.
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".
CLAs are always a good idea if one is maintaining an open source project. I'm not going to track down every single contributor who made some small PR perhaps, just to make a license change.
The license could change for any number of reasons, making a paid version, making it GPL, etc. With a CLA, I don't have to assume, I'm able to change it regardless, that's why for maintainers they are useful.
Keeping the software free, i.e. not proprietary, even from maintainers trying to make it so, is the very point of GPL.
When you ask contributors to sign a CLA, you are saying that you might want make it proprietary in the future and reserve the ability to do so. You should never sign one if you don't want to contribute to proprietary software.
I very, very strongly disagree with this. On web, Flutter is flatly awful (and there’s no reason to expect it to get much better—it’s chosen a paradigm that makes it impossible to do a good job on the web). On desktop, well, this article describes various limitations and problems.
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.
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.