Arend van Beelen
Author, philosopher, programmer, entrepreneur, father and husband.
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2·5 months ago@solardirus @SorteKanin Maybe Go is easier to read in a word-for-word sense, but when I read a program, I want to understand what it does and why it works the way it works. I want to validate its properties to build a mental model of how pieces interact.
As soon as I start doing that I find Rust is much easier to reason about, because the compiler enforces a lot of properties that I rely on, whereas with Go I end up looking through multiple files to get the same picture.
@jenesaisquoi @Ordoviz It’s a gray area, legally. What you say is theoretically correct, but there’s practical issues once you’ve looked at the code that will open you up to legal liability anyway.
For instance, what if you need a utility function during your reimplementation for which there is really only one obvious implementation? You can no longer claim to have come up with it by yourself.
I doubt the FSF would sue over it, but companies are known to avoid the risk.
@vas Yeah, that’s fair too. The project behind it is indeed a commercial entity, hence why they set it up that way.
Personally, I wouldn’t be too concerned about them failing to publish new versions, because then the last version will still remain open source forever. And even projects with an open governance model can run out of steam, so the risk might not be any greater here. But yeah, it’s good to be mindful of the risks and restrictions when starting any new project.