Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

If Facebook embodied "the hacker way" internally, they wouldn't behave in the manner they do toward their users. They wouldn't elevate their "hacker employees" to a privileged position over a "hacker user" when it comes to that user's data and mechanism of experience.

A company wouldn't get to call itself an "open source company" just because all of their employees have access to their source code.



> A company wouldn't get to call itself an "open source company" just because all of their employees have access to their source code.

HipHop. Thrift. Cassandra. Hive. Tornado. And that's just off the top of my head.

I've seen commits from @facebook.com emails to Hadoop, HBase, PHP, and Varnish.

There are a lot of things you can call Facebook. One is definitely an "open source company."


RedHat is an open source company. Facebook is a social networking company.


That was an analogy, it should be blindingly obvious I was in no way addressing whether Facebook is an open source company.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: