Hi everyone, what is your opinion on this? As far as I can tell Flock got a lot of attention. Is the situation with flutter development really that bad that we should consider this fork?
2 Likes
I personally found it extremely difficult to resonate with some of the reasons given and I was left feeling slightly suspicious (not in an accusatory way, just things didn’t feel right in general) after reading the post.
My gut feeling says it’s probably not going to be able to do what it sets out to do, I don’t know it solves a real problem for most people in the first place although that isn’t to say everyone, clearly some people see a need for it.
If I’m been honest, I didn’t appreciate the perception it seems to have left in people’s mouths who aren’t in the Flutter community already and are extremely quick to jump on the “look, Google is abandoning something else” train without actually thinking about things for more than 5 seconds (that isn’t what’s happening and there’s never once been a single compelling signal that’s even on the cards) and so I’m a bit resentful in the way that they appeared to be a very small but very vocal minority who appeared to be speaking on behalf of the community sharing a view that I don’t think is commonly held.
All that been said, I don’t think it was malicious, I genuinely wish them well, this is the very nature of open source obviously. I just wouldn’t be in a rush to even consider adopting it personally and unless the reasons they gave in the post really hit a chord with you, I don’t understand why you would consider swapping a fully funded team working on a very complicated project with what I can tell currently appears to be a team of two people mostly. That just doesn’t seem like a sensible path to take on any level.
7 Likes
Honestly I’m with you on this one, one of the reasons was that flutter team was not responding to PR fast enough, my first thought was okay but can’t we do something with that and try to help there instead creating a fork…
3 Likes
Note that there are two products behind Flock.
First is Nest, which should allow anyone to build their own version of Flutter. + stuff like sync with Flutter etc. Imagine you need some feature in Flutter now – with Nest you can put it in Flutter framework and just build your version. This is really great and I see big value in it.
Second is the Flock fork itself. It will obviously use Nest. And the community will then try to fix or add some stuff. I am not really sure how the merge hell will be dealt with, I hope people will find some nice and easy way. Hovewer the idea that if the community need some feature or fix, they will just do it (and test it) in Flock and then (hopefully) Flutter will just copy paste it, is really nice. I think it’s hard to speculate whether it will actually work or not, we will see. I think it can only bring people good, since they can adopt some future things or new features faster. And hopefully Flutter will then adapt most of the features or fixes.
Time will tell, at least people are talking about important stuff now. 
4 Likes
Yeah, when I said I was suspicious before, maybe another way of putting that was I couldn’t help but feel like there were other unstated reasons that might have been more personal to the author driving the decision beyond what was included in the post.
Again, no value judgement on that either way, I’d just noticed a couple of odd interactions between those camps historically and I don’t want to speculate but like I said, I just left that post thinking the decision to fork seemed really out of whack with the examples given.
It’s not on me to judge this before it even gets started, I think it’s fair to let the project have a moment to actually get up and running and we can see where we are all at in a year from now.
1 Like
Hopefully this fork will influence flutter only in a way to address possible issues that they mentioned. Appreciate the elaborated responses
3 Likes
Honestly I’m not judging, just don’t like the split. Still kinda have a feeling that the effort could be towards flutter itself. I just love flutter and want to see it shine
3 Likes
Yeah, same, if I had to boil it all down to one thing it would be that no question.
I think Flutter and even more so Dart itself are wildly, wildly underrated technology choices in 2024 and I just want to see them do well and have the community grow in a healthy way.
If they can deliver on that then everybody wins.
2 Likes
Meh we gonna be good and lead flutter to the glory 
1 Like
First off, @dr_terapeut, I added the link to Flock to your first post so that other people have the context. Hope you don’t mind.
Second, I agree with @tenhobi that Nest from that same team is a fantastic idea. This is the project that aims to allow anyone to build their own version of Flutter. It’s something that was missing, and I may need it in the future. Imagine you need to have that one obscure change to the Flutter engine but otherwise keep in sync with the official Flutter SDK. For this, Nest is a godsend.
Third, I’m happy that Flock (the project that aims to fork Flutter) exists. I think more things like that should exist. I’m not going to use Flock, at least not until the project proves that it can keep itself maintained long-term and in good quality. But I think we need the flexibility, competition and disruption that projects like that bring.
Fourth, reading the This is Why blogpost, I get the frustration but I’m personally glad that Flutter, as an organization, is rather conservative and slow-moving at this point. Don’t take me wrong, I’d love bugs fixed and features implemented as fast as the next person. But when it comes to foundational tech, I’ll take stability and code quality and direction and ability to say “no” over fast development anytime.
24 Likes
I agree with Filip. If something is open source, it can be forked. If the fork is good, people will use it and collaborate with it. I don’t see it like something negative. 
I understand that some people didn’t like it because the previous rumours of flutter is dying, but I don’t care about those rumours, I worked with COBOL for ten years reading that it would die… 
1 Like
Don’t take me wrong, I’d love bugs fixed and features implemented as fast as the next person. But when it comes to foundational tech, I’ll take stability and code quality and direction and ability to say “no” over fast development anytime.
Throughout my career, I’ve had the pleasure of contributing to numerous open-source packages. Whenever I discover a bug in a project I’m passionate about, I make it a priority to develop a solution, even if it means dedicating my personal time.
However, the reality is that most developers can’t afford to spend one to two weeks going back and forth with package maintainers to get their contributions accepted. It’s a significant time commitment that often doesn’t align with their professional responsibilities.
This is where I believe Flock shines as an excellent intermediate platform for future Pull Requests (PRs). Let me illustrate with an example:
If I discover a bug in Chip, I can document the issue on Flutter’s official GitHub repository and implement a fix. Instead of initiating a lengthy process with the Flutter team directly, I can submit my PR to Flock first.
The Flock maintenance team can then review my contribution, make any necessary refinements, and merge it into their codebase. Subsequently, Flock takes responsibility for submitting the PR to Flutter’s official repository and manages the potentially lengthy review process.
This approach creates a win-win-win situation:
- Contributors can submit fixes quickly
- Flock maintains quality control
- The Flutter team receives well-vetted contributions
This streamlined process benefits everyone in the ecosystem while maintaining high standards for code quality.
6 Likes
That would work if there were enough developers available in the Flock team but there aren’t. Where should the necessary people power come from?
3 Likes
Listen, lets see what happens. I think it’s plausible that they could be successful.
Think about it, If I discover a critical bug and they can merge it quickly, I would use Flock until it’s merged into Flutter.
If I had good experiences with them, I may even help review others work.
1 Like
I was fortunate enough to be present for some of the discussions that led up to the Flutter Foundation’s formation and the creation of Flock. As such, I’m privy to some information that doesn’t seem to have trickled out to the public. But first, …
DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated in any way with Google, the Flutter team, the Flutter Foundation, or Flock. (Maybe some day this will change. Who knows.) I do not speak on behalf of anyone in these institutions and anything they say that contradicts my own statements should nullify anything I say. Okay? Okay. Let’s continue.
When I was sitting around discussing this in early September, the conversation (which was long and covered many topics) essentially boiled down to this:
Flock isn’t meant to replace Flutter. In fact, it’s meant to compliment it. The intention is to have the Flutter team (as well as other “key players”) have a seat at the table, weighing in on the process in order to ensure all parties benefit equally.
The Flutter team is small and moves slowly, which is frustrating for a lot of people. As previously noted, this could be helped by Flock contributing upstream changes… But that will only work if the contributions are held to the same quality standards as Flutter itself. Since the Flutter team itself is small, Flock could augment it by having key individuals performing code reviews in the same vein as the Flutter team. These reviewers would be vetted vigorously.
Flock isn’t born out of fear of Google abandoning Flutter. On the contrary, it’s born out of a genuine place of love for Flutter and a desire to see it grow and foster contributions. (Part of the conversation was that the number of individual contributions to Flutter is extremely low when compared to other languages and frameworks, in part due to the lengthy and exhausting process of submitting a PR.)
I haven’t even begun to touch on everything that was discussed, and honestly, I’m not sure I could even remember it all. It was a lot. Just know that, despite some rather questionable wording in the blog post, the intent as I know it comes from a genuine place of love and wanting this community to grow, thrive, and flourish.
3 Likes
I don’t question the intent but the execution was pretty problematic. No communication with the Flutter team before the fork. No effort to gather bigger community support before doing the fork and the way the website is texted you already mentioned that it’s problematic.
How the people behind it won’t to provide quicker and better support than the Flutter team is beyond my imagination.
9 Likes
I just watched the Flutter Friday Live 
Flutter & Flock with Matt Carroll on YouTube. It seems to me there are a lot of misunderstandings about Flock. Before I saw the video I thought “what a waste of developer’s time”, now I can understand the motivation and think that Flock can have a positive impact on the Flutter community.
6 Likes
I can only repeat, the intentions are good but I stand to my post above
3 Likes
What confuses me is if there are individuals who would do this role, whats stopping these same people from helping PRs to completion, as mentioned in the blog - doing the last 10% themselves - on PRs to flutter itself than maintaining a fork, because then there wouldn’t need to be efforts required to keep the 2 in sync and manage merging in changes from flutter into fork
5 Likes