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Ask HN: Are FAANG layoffs having an effect on high-profile open source projects?

29 points by ern ↗ HN
Are there any projects that are being cut back?

Also is it a bad thing if it is happening? Will it slow progress or is it giving the rest on the industry an opportunity to catch its collective breath if the hype train slows down?

20 comments

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shaunsingh0207
Quite a few of the FAANG layoffs are from employee retention programs, and a few of these projects were high-profile and open source. The one I'm most interested in is google's fuchsia project, I hope it doesn't lose traction and get killed off.

Firefox's servo research project team was laid off in 2020, and the servo project was branched completely into its own thing. The servo project is still up and kicking with plans for 2023 though.

The layoffs will certainly have an impact, but hopefully nothing substantial

zamnos
Fuchsia is already powering Nest devices so I am highly doubtful Google is going to kill it off. Don't let the loud contingent of people who are are still sad about Google killing off Google Reader 10 years ago drown out the sane voices. Google will never kill off Google Search or Google Keep.
re-thc
They can kill off Nest too. Doubt it makes a difference.
IshKebab
Probably true but I think they are aware that they need to move away from Linux in the long term because it is holding them back in various areas where Apple is beating them - especially security and software updates.
roland35
Thanks for reminding me that Reader was killed off! That just reopened the wound in my soul :(
zamnos
To be clear, I am one of those people who are still sad about that. It was a social network for thoughtful writers in stark contrast to Instagram. (Note that I am not saying that a ton of thought and intention goes into top level instagram posts, it's just a different medium is all.)
x86x87
Are you new around here?

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Search, Gmail, Maps, Chrome and Android are probably safe. Everything else can be killed at any point in tine.

zamnos
You're one of the one's that are still sad that Google Killed off Reader that I referred to.

Like I said, Google's never killing of Keep.

p1esk
What is Google Keep? First time I’m hearing about it.
erklik
Notes app. Pretty similar to Evernote but simpler in some ways. Nothing ground-breaking.
foxandmouse
What about BumpTop, Picnik, Picasa, Orkut, Timeful, Stadia, Hangouts, Surveys, Chrome apps, Youtube Go, G-Suite free edition..

A lot of these changes came with Pichai, his ethos for google seems to be to turn it into another Microsoft; Microsoft is fine, but we already have one of those. It was better when we also had a google that was true to its founding ideology... everything went downhill since that g became uppercase.

Gustomaximus
Google search and Google keep are strange things to merge as never kill off.

I think we can all agree on search.

Maps, Android, Chrome & YouTube would be very unlikely. Adsense too but maybe if they needed to avoid anti-trust .

Docs, drive and Gmail, probably not but I wouldn't say never.

The rest, Id say could go on the right whim of cost cutting.

dstala
Layoffs are a byproduct over hyped hiring in past few years. So, it looks to me is like more of a normalisation.
youngtaff
Layoffs are largely a by product of wall street investors complaining that insanely profitable companies aren’t profitable enough and so need to cut costs

Even after Google laid off a huge number of staff one investment company wrote to them saying that average comp was too high and Google should reduce stock grants - of course this was an investor who probably earned 1mn+ complaining people earning 300,000 were earning too much

trasz3
FAANG-controlled “open source” projects aren’t really Open Source - they release the code licensed under Open Source license, but without most of its fundamental advantages.
frou_dh
Kinda pointless to speak in such broad strokes because people will have a range of experiences based on the specificities of the projects they interact with.
emanuele-em
this is not a always true and general rule, probably I agree if you say that they do open source only to grow reputation between dev but not every OSS project are fake OSS -> VSCode in my opinion is one of these example