I think a big problem is that Flutter's approach is very labor intensive.
It takes over responsibility for the UI, which is tough when you want to be cross-platform. You need to keep up with the native UI across all the platforms. (Or, of course, you don't, in which case there are gaps, bugs, inconsistency, jank, etc.)
Beyond the UI, it needs to offer integration with platform services and conventions, which is another perpetual treadmill.
Not to mention it includes a dedicated language, which takes significant effort in its own right.
Add to that, that as a project gets larger and more complicated, it becomes harder to change and tech debt builds up.
It's not surprising to me issues are building up. I've got to wonder if a fork, while it can move forward in one respect, may just be adding more complexity in a project that already has too much.
It wouldn't surprise me if Flutter's unmanaged complexity is exponential, in which case quadrupling the number of dedicated engineers won't move the needle a lot.
> You need to keep up with the native UI across all the platforms. (Or, of course, you don't, in which case there are gaps, bugs, inconsistency, jank, etc.)
And for the latter, the result is something that mostly does what web-based solutions do (with well-understood downsides), only with virtually no ecosystem in comparison.
I do think there are opportunities for cross-platform native development solutions like https://skip.tools/, which offer an alternative to React Native.
It takes over responsibility for the UI, which is tough when you want to be cross-platform. You need to keep up with the native UI across all the platforms. (Or, of course, you don't, in which case there are gaps, bugs, inconsistency, jank, etc.)
Beyond the UI, it needs to offer integration with platform services and conventions, which is another perpetual treadmill.
Not to mention it includes a dedicated language, which takes significant effort in its own right.
Add to that, that as a project gets larger and more complicated, it becomes harder to change and tech debt builds up.
It's not surprising to me issues are building up. I've got to wonder if a fork, while it can move forward in one respect, may just be adding more complexity in a project that already has too much.
It wouldn't surprise me if Flutter's unmanaged complexity is exponential, in which case quadrupling the number of dedicated engineers won't move the needle a lot.