On Dec 6, 2013, at 11:43 AM, Isaac Schlueter <[email protected]> wrote:
> <snip happens>
> I am getting the sense that we're pitching solutions rather than exposing
> problems. Let's get a solid bug report and reproduction test case before we
> rearchitect anything.
>
> What *problems* are there today? Once we have some rough agreement on that
> (which is non-trivial!) let's list out some of the potential solutions. Once
> we have a few alternative solutions, let's discuss the costs of each one.
>
Here’s one problem, the one that set this off:
-------
If NodeJS is a *community*, it should not tolerate gendered language use (in
English; I am told the issue is more nuanced in languages like Japanese, upon
which I cannot comment). The NodeJS community should not consider this a
trivial issue. If this is not clear to contributors, then the problem may be
that it needs to be spelled out.
———
No doubt others are going to disagree that this is a problem, but there you
have it. I filed my first bug. It has nothing to do with foundations and
trademarks, I am sorry.
> My main objection to "FOUNDATION!" is that there's usually not much details
> about what that means or why we'd benefit. What problems is it solving? Are
> those problems relevant? Does a foundation even solve those problems, and if
> so, is a foundation the BEST way to solve those problems?
>
> Some people object to having an explicitly profit-motivated organization
> behind a community project. However, if the strategic goals of that company
> are aligned with the goals of the project, then such a setup can be extremely
> beneficial, and provide many valuable assets that most foundations would not.
What happens once we move from being sponsored by one profit-motivated
organisation to a foundation sponsored by many profit-motivated organisations?
(at ASF the list includes Comcast, Facebook, GoDaddy, and even Microsoft).
History doesn’t give me a reliable answer. If standards bodies are an analogy,
then there is no comfort to be derived from the idea of multiple vested
interests funding a “community” whose interests may not be aligned with their
own (“adding shareholder value” is, I believe, how Friedman put it).
On Mikeal’s Gist, a couple of commenters bemoaned the lack of a “benevolent
dictator” (there can be no such beast, but I won’t argue that here). I, on the
other hand, think this is one of Node’s greatest strengths. I have heard of
Joyent … they are the guys who sold or sell virtualised servers built on
Solaris 10s most excellent zone/container architecture, I think? When it comes
to NodeJS, I know only of the many vocal people on this list, none of them a
dictator, people like Isaac (you!) and Ben, and the authors (i.e., TJ
Holowaychuk :-)) of the many modules on NPM. Joyent to me is an absentee owner.
That’s not an insult. It is the better alternative to a “benevolent dictator”
(or bloggers who get trigger happy with the word “asshole”).
As you can probably tell from the above, I like things the way they are (or
were before this kerfuffle). Both in terms of the ownership+community, and in
terms of the ecosystem (i.e., Node has its own ecosystem and is not or will not
become part of Eclipse or Apache).
FWIW,
—ravi
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