Is it better to be owned by an adtech company (React, Angular, Go)?

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 and Jane street (not banks but still finance). They don't own OCaml but are heavily involved in its development.

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).

> Who is really going to be interested in building on top of tech owned by a (new, unknown, regional) bank?

As opposed to building on top of tech "owned" by a small software consultancy? Perhaps I simply lack imagination, but how is this worse?

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".

Outside of the license, OF COURSE Relevance, then Cognitect, now nubank owns clojure, in every other way that matters.

Now do datomic :-)

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...

A lot of people don't seem to mind building on top of tech owned and developed by a telecommunications company - Erlang.

Yep, telecomms and banks, very similar dynamics and incentives /s

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

Rich Hickey literally bet his retirement savings on making Clojure, and owns all the IP. It seems unlikely he's just going to let them smother it.

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.

And telecommunications companies don't see their technology as a competitive advantage?

In what relevant way are they different? (I find that your comment has more sense without the /s tag)

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.