Hello folks, On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 5:17:39 PM UTC+1, Darren DeRidder wrote: > > Thanks for the insightful comments. Nobody addressed Joyent's new business > initiative in competition with StrongLoop or how their IP claims impact > that. It'll be interesting to see how that goes. > > Mikeal, thanks for your work on node, too. Regarding Joyent's credibility: > point taken -- it's really the whole node ecosystem that gets hurt when > articles like "Slap-fight in Node Land" hit the press. As you say, > creating a separate node foundation isn't realistic. The proposal was about > exploring what an existing foundation like Apache (or Eclipse, or Mozilla) > has to offer. Comments for/against were expected. Incidentally, submitting > a project to the Apache Incubator is free. >
I am a Node.js user and involved into the Apache Software Foundation. Specifically I work for several project, including Struts and Log4j (Logging). I am also doing a lot for the Apache Incubator and helped to mentor a couple of projects. I would like to respond to a few comments I have seen in this thread on a more general level. As you maybe already guess I am passionate about the ASF. I do not feel its some kind of garbage collector for dusty projects. In fact the ASF hosts a couple of the most important software projects to date. Among them are Hadoop and its eco system and OpenOffice. Despite rumors the latter one is still the leading open source office suite: * http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/libreoffice-adoption-soaring-but-openoffice-still-open-source-king/ It has also been mentioned that Adobe donated the code base of Phonegap to the Apache Software Foundation which is now called Apache Cordova. Ripple (an mobile simulator in js) followed some time after, but its still in incubation. It's true that we have some old players in our foundation. In example Maven, Ant or heros like Subversion. It's tempting to think projects like Subversion do collect dust in the face of Git and GitHub. Maybe it is. But should the project close because there is the next fancy tool on the market? As a volunteer driven foundation projects are going on until there is nobody who is interested in it. We have no "government" or "project leader group" which decides what to kick and what to fund. If there is a community then there is a project. Despite GitHub there IS a use case for SVN. There are some use cases of which Git is not of help. As long as there is use for SVN and somebody has fun hacking it, there will be a Subversion project. Just for the record: both, Git and Svn are supported as scm at Apache. Now can you say the ASF runs dusty projects? Not really. You need to say: there are still volunteers who maintain $x despite $y. Maintaining a project doesn't make the whole foundation dusty. Actually it's good that the foundation doesn't tell you when to shut down and when not. There might be a time when Node.js lifecycle is over but a few of you will still consider to go on. At the time of GitHub rising, what is the difference to a Foundation? GitHub provides you infrastructure like the ability to publish websites, host code, maintain issues and so on. The ASF provides you the same but is also a non profit cooperation. It's infrastructure is completely independent of a company which in first aims at profit. It provides legal advise when necessary, help with protecting trademarks and so on. It even provides a license. It is "business friendly" due to licenses but also a clean ip. If you want to enter enterprise, people will ask: can I use the code? At GitHub it is easy to accept pull requests. There is no safety where the code comes from if it has been checked and so on. At the ASF committers sign an ICLA (contributor agreement) and allow the ASF to distribute the code. It cannot be taken back. Enterprises are safe to use it. And on the other hand, the ASF protects its committers. If you commit code and somebody has a problem (lets say a patent troll) the ASF has a problem. Not you. (Please note: this is not a legal advise and I am not a lawyer. Actually I don't have much clue on legal things and you should ask on legal@apache or your local lawyer if you need more information). Here are a few slides on the risk of using Open Source from our current president Ross Gardler: http://archive.apachecon.com/eu2012/presentations/07-Wednesday/PR-Community/aceu-2012-managing-project-risk-when-using-open-source.pdf Of course these kind of things are done by Eclipse or other Foundations as well. What makes the difference for me personally is the community. At the ASF we say: "community over code" and this is what i experience everyday working with the folks from the ASF. There is a lot of movement and respect. The ASF acts community friendly in a way which makes me prefer it to all other foundations i have seen. Going to a nearby ApacheCon (us, eu, asia) and meet all the people is just fantastic. The ASF is independent. If a project joins the foundation, its people will grow into the foundation as well. It is possible that one of you becomes the next board member. I wrote a blog post about it, if you are interested to read: http://www.grobmeier.de/hey-i-became-a-vice-president-07072012.html The ASF makes it possible that you can you join any community by election. Once elected you'll have a voice. All voices count equal. There is only one difference from "committer" to "pmc". I will leave off this detail. If you want to read more about it, here is a link: http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html I am telling this because not everybody is made for the ASF. There are different ways to run a project. Some need a defined project leader who says whats going on and what not. At the ASF we try to reach a consensus in the team and decide together. In all the projects I have participated it works fantastic. However I have heard of different cases too. In example, iBatis left and became myBatis. I have no link handy but if you google for it you can surely read some thoughts on that. For me its the community, the legal safety, clear ip, the license and the independent infrastructure. I like the enterprise friendliness. You could make up your own foundation. The ASF allows to reuse its documents. But you could have it for free too and just join the Apache Incubator. If you have an serious interest to do that, I am willing to help you. As I mentioned I am involved in the Incubator and I am a Node.js user. I am willing to help you coming into the incubator and to mentor you until you have learned all specifics around the ASF. If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks! Christian -- -- Job Board: http://jobs.nodejs.org/ Posting guidelines: https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Mailing-List-Posting-Guidelines You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs?hl=en?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "nodejs" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
