This is great for nubank, but how is this supposed to work for other users of Clojure and Datomic? Who is really going to be interested in building on top of tech owned by a (new, unknown, regional) bank?
Someone said that this is just like Amazon (who would build on top of tech from a bookstore??), but I hope it's obvious the two situations are very different.
I expect that I'll have to be looking for a new job in a year's time :-(
If you asked me that 15 years ago, I'd say "no". In hindsight, it sort of makes sense given their objective of increasing time spent online and the quality of the experience.
The proposition here is that nubank will be the first bank to successfully turn into a software vendor. Maybe my worries will be nothing in 10 years, but no one can say its an obvious outcome.
Nubank already ships software, Cognitect is already a healthy consultancy, no particular reason to kill either one. Surely we can agree that banks also care about good UX? Nubank in particular is known for it.
(I appreciate that you may not have heard of Nubank but I don't think calling them "unknown" is fair. They have attracted a literal billion in funding in a little over a year. They have over 10 million users.)
Bloomberg has sponsored BuckleScript in the beginning, but now it is sponsored by Facebook. Other than that their influence on OCaml development is minimal (and technically BuckleScript is a fork of the OCaml compiler).
We all know the history of acquihires. Key tech and products inevitably are swallowed, never seen outside again.
Besides that, datomic really is a great solution for banks and fintech....are other firms like that going to buy from another bank, maybe a competitor?
Per https://building.nubank.com.br/welcoming-cognitect-nubank/, "Nubank does not own Clojure, just as Cognitect never owned Clojure. Nubank will take over Cognitect’s role as a corporate sponsor for Clojure, funding the core development effort".
I am pretty sure that whoever owns Cognitect is in no position to boss Rich around regarding Clojure. Besides, Clojure is rather simple and stable. No need to change it dramatically...
Yes? What incentive exactly are you implying banks have that make them less suitable than other mega-corporations for the purposes of developing a programming language?
Banks and fintech often view their in-house tech as competitive advantages, and they usually don't care a whit about building cred in dev communities (a common reason why projects are OSS in the first place, to drive recruitment or promote a complimentary platform).
A good outcome isn't impossible, but it might be unprecedented
Nubank has presented their tech several times at a number of conferences and I believe they often sponsor those conferences. It's not a traditional bank, like Airbnb is not a traditional travel agency, and Amazon is not a traditional bookstore. This is not your local neighborhood credit union or ancient behemoth running COBOL mainframes.
Nubank is a company valued at over $10 billion, with investing from major Silicon Valley firms. It is not unknown to millions of people, and is expanding internationally so I don't think they'll be regional much longer. Clojure and datomic being such a good fit for their tech stack of hundreds of microservices and thousands of databases should really encourage people to use clojure like Erlang's history in telecommunications encouraged people to adopt Elixir.
This is great for nubank, but how is this supposed to work for other users of Clojure and Datomic? Who is really going to be interested in building on top of tech owned by a (new, unknown, regional) bank?
Someone said that this is just like Amazon (who would build on top of tech from a bookstore??), but I hope it's obvious the two situations are very different.
I expect that I'll have to be looking for a new job in a year's time :-(