oh you should definitely be alarmed - for anything these evilcorps stick their dirty, nasty fingers in. I am already frustrated they have rats in the C++ standardization committee - in a way I am glad C++ is not as hyped, so that evil corporations spend a relevant part of resources into targeting other languages. But hoo this is scary - if our language standards get compromised, developing open source will also require maintaining an open source version of any given programming language, along with a compiler. Now if newer compilers break the ABI (application binary interface), and the evilcorps lobby those compromised compilers into major OSes, we'll be having a nightmare scenario where we can't even use system dependencies any more.

[–] orclev@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

This has largely worked out with Postgres. The trick is making sure you have a few different competing corporations so that they can't force through anything without convincing all their competitors to support them. If done right the corporations end up paying for maintainers as well as to develop universally useful features. It's better not to have the corporations involved, but if they're going to be involved it's better to have as many of them as you can get. The worst case scenario is only one or two corporations being heavily involved.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

I doubt we have many "tricks" to employ as open source community against big money :/ This world has definitely evolved very very wrong on so many levels. At least I did not contribute by playing tech implementor for big money or surveillance states - but I know enough tech people who aren't very principled on that matter :(