Flutter; is a open source framework designed to create cross-platform applications Android, iOS, web and desktop using a single code base, This framework has gained quite a bit of popularity not only because of its open source nature but also because of its high performance and customizable interfaces.
Due to the great growth and popularity that has gained, Flutter has attracted millions of developers and with it a large number of requests for both feature implementation and bug fixes. and with the halting of the expansion of his team Flutter head of development in 2023 in 2024 with staff cuts, current team at Google and externally contracted workers are not enough to cover the needs of development, which has slowed the progress of the framework, especially on desktop platforms.
This has led to only three of the six supported platforms receiving maintenance on their codebase, with no significant improvements. In addition, the lack of staff has impacted bug resolution, with some reports remaining unaddressed for years.
It is because of that it became known el Launch of the Flock project, a fork of Flutter. The initiative was led by Matt Carroll, a former member of the Flutter team at Google, who pushed for this fork due to what he sees as a lack of sufficient resources that Google is allocating to the project.
The goal of Flock It's not about dividing the Flutter community, but act as an extension, a “Flutter+” that aims to synchronize with the original project, incorporating improvements and fixes that the community has requested but that the Google team has not prioritized. In this way, Flock seeks to accelerate progress and add resources independent of Google to enrich development. Currently, the Flock repository still faithfully reflects that of Flutter.
Our fork of Flutter is called Flock. We describe Flock as “Flutter+.” In other words, we don’t want to, and have no intention of, forking the Flutter community. Flock will be constantly kept up to date with Flutter. Flock will add important bug fixes and popular community features that the Flutter team can’t or won’t implement.
And it is mentioned that among the Main problems that hinder direct collaboration with the Flutter core team, There is a lack of time for core developers to review third-party contributions, the duration of approval processes, delays in discussions on controversial issues and a limited understanding of the needs of app developers. The latter is due to the core team focusing on developing Flutter itself, rather than apps based on it, which makes it difficult to prioritize the resolution of certain issues.
How many Flutter developers are there in the world today? I'd guess somewhere around 1.000.000 developers. The actual number is probably higher, but a million should be a reasonably conservative figure.
How big is the Flutter team currently? Google doesn't publish this information, but I'd guess the team is around 50 people strong.
That means 50 people serving the needs of 1. If we divide it up a bit, that means each member of the Flutter team is responsible for the needs of 000 Flutter developers. That ratio is clearly not feasible for any kind of customer support.
With Flock, we seek that Experienced developers and app packagers for Flutter can address urgent issues and add improvements without waiting for approval from the main team or coordinate changes with it. This bifurcation essentially allows them to act autonomously and streamline processes.
While, the Flutter team will be able to transfer changes implemented in Flock to Flutter according to their timelines and prioritiesSince Flock plans to have a large community of code reviewers, this indirect collaboration should help improve the quality of the Flutter codebase. The community will thus not be limited by the core team's time constraints and will be able to apply more flexible and efficient development standards.
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