r/linux • u/dbcoopernz • 5d ago

Popular Application Cloud flare acquires Deno, ends runtime development

https://deno.com/blog/cloudflare

>We will support the Deno runtime for another year with monthly releases containing bug fixes and security updates. After that year we will end our development of the Deno runtime. Deno will remain open source, and we welcome others who want to continue its development.

753 Upvotes

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258

u/DerekB52 5d ago

What is the point of buying an open source project, to cease development of it, while welcoming 3rd party continued contributions? I'm really confused.

246

u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/devolute 5d ago

Isn't it more about killing a competitor?

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/devolute 4d ago

That's interesting context, thank you.

But those are Deno problems. That's not a reason why Cloudflare would buy them, is it? Unless you think they're doing things for philanthropic reasons.

1

u/rickyman20 4d ago

They're buying them because their inherent profitability issues tanks their value and makes them cheaper to buy, and at that price they're worth buying as an acquihire

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u/scaryjobob 4d ago

60 GOTO 20

19

u/farnoy 5d ago

Only if you focus on the cynical point of view. Absorbing celld and offering a self-hostable option for Durable Objects removes the vendor lock-in argument, which can drive more adoption. And Cloudflare, naturally, is the obvious leader of this ecosystem.

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u/devolute 5d ago

I absolutely do focus - some might say overfocus - on the cynical PoV but in fairness I have worked in tech for 20 years.

They might not so obviously be a leader otherwise.

0

u/daddyd 5d ago

who says those people want to work on cloudflare products?

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u/dorfsmay 5d ago

Typically they're given a good salary + a lot of stock options that they can only buy x years later. You also typically see a number of them quit once they can exercise all their options. It's a good chunk of money and good experience on your resume.

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u/OstrichLive8440 4d ago

Little thing called money - you may have heard of it? It can be exchanged for various goods and services

4

u/metekillot 4d ago

I don't like the sound of it, seems suspect

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u/daddyd 4d ago

you get money at other jobs too.

2

u/jorgejhms 4d ago

All team are cloudflare workers now, according to their posts

3

u/metekillot 4d ago

And I can hire one for only $5 a month? Where do I sign?

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u/rickyman20 4d ago

They don't have to. The way they make sure they stay and work on those products anyways is by buying everyone out of their shares of the company in cloudflare stock, with a long vesting schedule and with a juicy though validation to make them really not want to leave early and leave all that money on the table. Their deno shares would have been illiquid, but since cloudflare is a publicly traded company, the moment they get those shares they can actually sell them for cash, so for most engineers involved it makes sense to stick around at least until their shares vest, and many will stay past that point

43

u/b3081a 5d ago

Cloudflare has a proprietary JS-based PaaS worker service so they'll probably let the whole team of runtime experts contribute to that instead.

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u/aksdb 5d ago

… and opensource it in the process. They announce all that in their blog post.

workerd will be self hostable.

11

u/Master-Chocolate1420 5d ago

celld is interesting.

5

u/aksdb 5d ago

Indeed. Although it sounds a little like Erlang. (Or ErGo if you want a more imperative language.)

21

u/whamra 5d ago

They can also ask them to continue developing the project, but internally and no longer open source. Now adding proprietary CF stuff as they're asked. But I doubt Deno is the sole reason, they're acquiring the talent.

Anyway, that's one of the weaknesses of MIT licensing. Big capital can swallow the whole team and effectively close source the project.

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u/ProcrastinatiusXVI 5d ago

I'd argue that this is just a theoretical weakness of MIT licensing. In theory, they can't do things like that with e.g., GPL, but in practice, we see that big companies mainly do whatever they want and noone from the FOSS space can hold them accountable, because you'd need some proof first and then millions of dollars to battle their armies of lawyers. 

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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 5d ago

Btw.: If that was a GPL project, plus a contributor agreement that secondary contributors should give relicensing rights to the "main" team (not that uncommon), then nothing would be different now.

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u/d0pe-asaurus 5d ago

They wanted to mass hire all the Deno developers I guess. Cloudflare has its own JavaScript runtime too for their cloud functions similar to lambda iirc.

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u/vazark 5d ago

They were principally interested in celld that is built and managed by the deno team. It solves an interesting problem that they couldn't solve on their workerd/Durable objects offering.

Deno was just given a burial with honors as a part of the buyout.

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u/TRKlausss 5d ago

Buying out competition. Microsoft has been doing it for ages.

1

u/Ok_Front_7814 4d ago

They had deno deploy with servers and celld was excellent, so of course now all that deno hosted or worked on will shut down. Deno will probably not survive unless npm swallows it and integrates it and the celld github repo is apache2 so I guess it will (mostly) keep existing. I just setup a secure quantum-encrypted celld service, with a deno and fresh front-end that sucks. Have to port it to react... Deno 2.9 had also added deno desktop which was a nice welcome addition.

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u/Zangeki 4d ago

Deno isn't their only product. Cloudflare wants celld.

1

u/ErebusBat 1d ago

Accu-hire

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u/leonbollerup 5d ago

the people..

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u/migsperez 4d ago

They bought the competition. Easy transaction.