From: cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net   
      
   In article <10cp0eg$3tqik$1@dont-email.me>,   
   Craig A. Berry  wrote:   
   >On 10/15/25 7:16 AM, Dan Cross wrote:   
   >> In article <10cmovf$3a740$1@dont-email.me>,   
   >> Arne Vajhøj   wrote:   
   >>> On 10/13/2025 10:03 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>>> On Mon, 13 Oct 2025 21:20:43 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:   
   >>>>> On 10/13/2025 8:20 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>>>>> On Mon, 13 Oct 2025 19:26:56 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:   
   >>>>>>> Enterprises with a need to document support can not just hire a   
   >>>>>>> random consultant when the need arrive.   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> If something is mission-critical and core to their entire business,   
   >>>>>> they want a staff they can rely on, completely, to manage that   
   >>>>>> properly.   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> Few/no CIO's want to support the hundreds of millions of lines   
   >>>>> of open source code their business rely on themselves.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> The whole point of having all that code is that they didn’t need to   
   write   
   >>>> it themselves.   
   >>>   
   >>> Yes. But they want free beer more than free speech.   
   >>>   
   >>>> You have to take responsibility for your own business, don’t you?   
   >>>   
   >>> They don't want to write or maintain their own OS.   
   >>>   
   >>> They don't want to write or maintain their own platform   
   >>> software (web/app servers, database servers, message queue   
   >>> servers, cache servers etc.).   
   >>>   
   >>> They don't want to write or maintain their own tools   
   >>> (compilers, build tools, IDE's, source control, unit   
   >>> test frameworks etc.).   
   >>>   
   >>> None of that stuff is their business.   
   >>>   
   >>> They want to focus on their business the applications   
   >>> that help them produce and sell whatever products   
   >>> or services.   
   >>   
   >> Every single one of the FAANG companies do all of those things.   
   >   
   >In other words, hardly anyone.   
      
   I wonder what percentage of professional software engineers work   
   or have worked at one of those companies at this point.   
      
   But Arne's statements were categorical and near absolute.  "They   
   don't..." "Few/no..." "None of that is their business...", and   
   so on.  It wasn't Meta's business to do any of that stuf,   
   either, until they reached a point where they had to.   
      
   >> At Google, we used to joke that, "not only does Google reinvent   
   >> the wheel, we vulcanize the rubber for the tires."  Spanner,   
   >> Piper/Fig/Jujutsu, Prodkernel/ChromeOS/Android, CitC, gunit, Go   
   >> (not to mention the work on LLVM/Clang), Blaze/Bazel/Skylark,   
   >> etc, are all examples of the things you mentioned above.  And   
   >> that's not even to mention all the custom hardware.   
   >>   
   >> For organizations working at hyperscale, there comes a point   
   >> where the off-the-shelf solutions simply cannot scale to meet   
   >> the load you're putting on them.   
   >>   
   >> At that point, you have no choice but to do it yourself.   
   >   
   >You're kinda going in circles here by arguing that very big companies   
   >whose business is to make their own technology need to make their own   
   >technology.   
      
   Really?  I thought I was providing a counter-example to Arne's   
   assertions.   
      
   And none of those companies started out big; with the exception   
   of Apple and Microsoft, which both started at the dawn of the   
   personal computer era, it was not part of the mission for   
   Google, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, etc, to do any of the things that   
   Arne mentioned most organizations don't want to do.  The FAANGs   
   didn't want to do them, either, honestly, but they do so out of   
   business necessity, which is the point: most companies don't   
   have to do those things because they never reach the point where   
   it's required.  That's not necessarily a feature.   
      
   It's an oversimplifictation to assert that people and businesses   
   won't do the things that are essential to their core business;   
   history shows that they can and will---once it actually becomes   
   a necessity.   
      
   >I believe Arne's point was the fairly obvious one that a   
   >retail chain or a hospital chain does not need to and cannot afford to   
   >maintain, for example, their own operating system.   
      
   Of course, but those aren't technology companies.  Most farmers   
   don't need to maintain their own OS either, though I know at   
   least two who do just for fun.  But just saying that most child   
   daycare centers don't need their own in-house IT stack is a non   
   sequitur, because they're not reliant on their technical   
   infrastructure the way that organizations for which it is   
   essential are.   
      
   	- Dan C.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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