It's not just greenfield-ness but the fact it's a commercial endeavor (even if the code is open-source).

Building a commercial product means you pay money (or something they equally value) to people to do your bidding. You don't have to worry about politics, licensing, and all the usual FOSS-related drama. You pay them to set their opinions aside and build what you want, not what they want (and if that doesn't work, it just means you need to offer more money).

In this case it's a company that believes they can make a "good" package manager they can sell/monetize somehow and so built that "good" package manager. Turns out it's at least good enough that other people now like it too.

This would never work in a FOSS world because the project will be stuck in endless planning as everyone will have an opinion on how it should be done and nothing will actually get done.

Similar story with systemd - all the bitching you hear about it (to this day!) is the stuff that would've happened during its development phase had it been developed as a typical FOSS project and ultimately made it go nowhere - but instead it's one guy that just did what he wanted and shared it with the world, and enough other people liked it and started building upon it.

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eru 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You don't have to worry about politics, licensing, and all the usual FOSS-related drama. You pay them to set their opinions aside and build what you want, not what they want (and if that doesn't work, it just means you need to offer more money).

Money is indeed a great lubricator.

However, it's not black-and-white: office politics is a long standing term for a reason.

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Nextgrid 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Office politics happen when people determine they can get more money by engaging in politics instead of working. This is just an indicator people aren't being paid enough money (since people politicking around is detrimental to the company, it is better off paying them whatever it takes for them not to engage in such behavior). "You get what you pay for" applies yet again.

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dpark 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Politicking is just group dynamics. In large companies people engage in politics because it becomes necessary to accomplish large things.

Of course a group can also have bad actors but that’s not really an issue with politics specifically. Politics are neither good nor bad.

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xvector 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Hard disagree, most of my coworkers make well north of $1M and office politics is at an all time high.

I believe office politics happens when there are simply too many people at a company or org.

	▲	optionalsquid 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Office politics happen when the number of people at an office exceeds 2
	▲	Nextgrid 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I think too many people happens because a company would rather hire 10 "market rate" people than 3 well-compensated ones. Headcount inflation dilutes responsibility and rewards, so even if one of the "market rate" guys does the best work possible they won't get rewarded proportionally... so if hard work isn't going to get them adequate comp, maybe politics will.
	▲	ngcc_hk 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I believe incompetence is the key. When someone cannot compete (or the office does not use yardstick that can be measurable) politics is the only way to get you up. Switch to what Nobel prize to man instead of the woman who do the work … sometimes. Take the credit and get the promotion.

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WD-42 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't know what you think "typical Foss projects" are but in my experience they are exactly like your systemd example: one person that does what they want and share it with the world. The rest of your argument doesn't really make any sense with that in mind.

	▲	Defletter 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It depends on governance, for want of a better word: if a project has a benevolent dictator then that project will likely be more productive than one that requires consensus building.

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baby 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That doesn't make any sense. You can do open source by yourself and not accept any input.

How's the company behind uv making money?

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another-account 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sounds like you’re really down on FOSS and think FOSS projects don’t get stuff done and have no success? You might want to think about that a bit more.

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insane_dreamer 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

numpy would like a word