5 ms·

The tragedy of Eclipse.org

33 points by r11t 17y ago

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jbellis 17y ago
cached: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:-Xe_P_DouNYJ:www.spearce.org/2010/02/the-tragedy-of-eclipse-org.html+the+tragedy+of+eclipse.org&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:-Xe_P_DouNYJ:www.spearce...
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
blasdel 17y ago
It's like everything distasteful about the Apache Foundation, but amplified a few orders of magnitude. Not surprising since the same corporate goons (IBM) are at the helm, except that this time around they're the founders and original contributors, not just filling a vacuum capitalizing on an existing project.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
blasdel 17y ago
> Yup, the iplog is a PDF file holding XML. The foundation is trying to move from an HTML based iplog to an XML based format. So we generated our iplog in XML, using code I wrote in JGit to mine the Git revision history. Someone told the legal team at the Eclipse Foundation that you can’t edit a PDF, so they “freeze” the iplog by putting its contents in PDF. But they don’t have an XSL to format it in human readable text, so we get this instead. It's even worse than that! The PDF is titled "Microsoft Word - Document29" and has headings duplicating the name of the tag for each type: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.eclipse.org/egit/iplog/v0.7.0.pdf https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.eclipse.org/eg...
bretpiatt 17y ago
[Disclaimer: I do not work for IBM, I do work for Rackspace, I have been in "the corporate world" for over a decade, I have used Eclipse as a developer and I'm currently helping get a project going around cloud deployment through the IDE] The structure isn't just to make people's lives difficult. Is it going to be the perfect process for everything? -> probably not. Will it help keep the end user experience and quality high on the project? -> probably so. Working at a place like IBM doesn't mean you want to "do evil" just like working for a small startup doesn't mean you're automagically out to only "do good". Take a real look at the amount of quality stuff IBM contributes to the OSS community: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource Another example, take a look at where your Linux kernel is coming from: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10288910-16.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10288910-16.html -- More help from IBM.
- blasdel 17y ago
  "I give permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil." http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford-json http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford...
  - neilc 17y ago
    To be fair, that clause of the JSLint license is idiotic.
    - gjm11 17y ago
      I think it's hilarious. Tomayto, tomahto.
      - neilc 17y ago
        "Idiotic" and "hilarious" are not necessarily disjoint. Putting "hilarious" clauses in a software license is not usually a productive policy.
maigret 17y ago
Corps will never invest money in a software that they can't use, or worse can get sued millions for IP violation. IP validation is relevant, and it's probably a lot of work for the reviewers too. Software development isn't what it was in the sixties, and looking at the Eclipse worldwide use & acceptance, this process seems to pretty successful.
tzs 17y ago
One of his complaints is that discussions concerning the legal status of contributions takes place in private, rather than on the public mailing lists. This seems quite reasonable to me. Discuss whether or not some piece of code infringes a patent, say, in a medium that leaves an easily searchable public record, and you are practically begging the patent owner to come ask you to license the patent.

33 points by r11t 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

cached: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:-Xe_P_DouNYJ:www.spearce.org/2010/02/the-tragedy-of-eclipse-org.html+the+tragedy+of+eclipse.org&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:-Xe_P_DouNYJ:www.spearce...

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

blasdel 17y ago

It's like everything distasteful about the Apache Foundation, but amplified a few orders of magnitude. Not surprising since the same corporate goons (IBM) are at the helm, except that this time around they're the founders and original contributors, not just filling a vacuum capitalizing on an existing project.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

blasdel 17y ago

> Yup, the iplog is a PDF file holding XML. The foundation is trying to move from an HTML based iplog to an XML based format. So we generated our iplog in XML, using code I wrote in JGit to mine the Git revision history. Someone told the legal team at the Eclipse Foundation that you can’t edit a PDF, so they “freeze” the iplog by putting its contents in PDF. But they don’t have an XSL to format it in human readable text, so we get this instead. It's even worse than that! The PDF is titled "Microsoft Word - Document29" and has headings duplicating the name of the tag for each type: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.eclipse.org/egit/iplog/v0.7.0.pdf https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.eclipse.org/eg...

bretpiatt 17y ago

[Disclaimer: I do not work for IBM, I do work for Rackspace, I have been in "the corporate world" for over a decade, I have used Eclipse as a developer and I'm currently helping get a project going around cloud deployment through the IDE] The structure isn't just to make people's lives difficult. Is it going to be the perfect process for everything? -> probably not. Will it help keep the end user experience and quality high on the project? -> probably so. Working at a place like IBM doesn't mean you want to "do evil" just like working for a small startup doesn't mean you're automagically out to only "do good". Take a real look at the amount of quality stuff IBM contributes to the OSS community: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource Another example, take a look at where your Linux kernel is coming from: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10288910-16.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10288910-16.html -- More help from IBM.

blasdel 17y ago
"I give permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil." http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford-json http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/theater/video.php?v=crockford...
- neilc 17y ago
  To be fair, that clause of the JSLint license is idiotic.
  - gjm11 17y ago
    I think it's hilarious. Tomayto, tomahto.
    - neilc 17y ago
      "Idiotic" and "hilarious" are not necessarily disjoint. Putting "hilarious" clauses in a software license is not usually a productive policy.

maigret 17y ago

Corps will never invest money in a software that they can't use, or worse can get sued millions for IP violation. IP validation is relevant, and it's probably a lot of work for the reviewers too. Software development isn't what it was in the sixties, and looking at the Eclipse worldwide use & acceptance, this process seems to pretty successful.

tzs 17y ago

One of his complaints is that discussions concerning the legal status of contributions takes place in private, rather than on the public mailing lists. This seems quite reasonable to me. Discuss whether or not some piece of code infringes a patent, say, in a medium that leaves an easily searchable public record, and you are practically begging the patent owner to come ask you to license the patent.