4 ms·

It seems like many or even most dynamic programming languages fall in this category: Python, Ruby, and Perl. GNU bash has been maintained by Chet Ramey for dec

by chubot 10y ago

It seems like many or even most dynamic programming languages fall in this category: Python, Ruby, and Perl. GNU bash has been maintained by Chet Ramey for decades (although he isn't the original author.) Most of the GNU projects probably count, although some of them have changed maintainers much more often. R was started by a couple of stats professors, and I'm sure it wasn't their main line of research (as opposed to Lua, Haskell, and OCaml, which are definitely labors of love, but they are somewhat funded, if you consider an academic salary funding). Julia seems to be a labor of love, although it has had some amount of funding. Clojure and D both have or had some commercial element, but you can tell it's mainly the love driving it, not the business. Java and JavaScript are probably the big exceptions, in that they were started by big companies. As well as C and C++, which both originated at Bell Labs. ----- And if you are really looking for single person projects, sqlite is probably one of the best examples. If I recall Richard Hipp has actually paid people to work on sqlite occasionally, but he's written almost all the code, and doesn't really accept patches. Though I'm not really sure if "not accepting patches" like Knuth, Bellard, or Hipp is something to be admired... I have tend to want to control things too, which is probably a bad tendency.

isxek 10y ago
I might be wrong, but Hipp does accept patches in a different way. On the Fossil SCM mailing list, I've seen him (and other contributors who have commit access) get patches from users and incorporate them into the project. They do mention the user who contributed the patch instead of actually assigning the commit to him, though. Does that count somehow?
- SQLite 10y ago
  We are more open to patches on Fossil because (1) Fossil has a BSD license, which is easier to accept patches for than public-domain and (2) Fossil is seen (rightly or wrongly) as less "mission critical" than SQLite. And, you are right - in many cases people will send a drive-by patch but we will rewrite it rather than apply it directly: to make sure we understand it for long-term maintenance, to clean it up, and to avoid licensing problems.
SQLite 10y ago
Patches are difficult to accept on a public-domain project. That is one real advantage of GPL over BSD-style licenses or public-domain - it is easier to accept patches. I've had a lot of help from Dan and Joe and Shane and others on SQLite. Stats here: https://www.sqlite.org/src/reports?type=ci&view=byuser https://www.sqlite.org/src/reports?type=ci&view=byuser
- chubot 10y ago
  How did Dan, Joe, and Shane get started on sqlite? Were they volunteers or paid? (I attended a Google talk you gave probably 10 years ago, and I remember that you mentioned you had paid people to work on sqlite. I thought that was interesting for open source software!)

by chubot 10y ago

isxek 10y ago

I might be wrong, but Hipp does accept patches in a different way. On the Fossil SCM mailing list, I've seen him (and other contributors who have commit access) get patches from users and incorporate them into the project. They do mention the user who contributed the patch instead of actually assigning the commit to him, though. Does that count somehow?

SQLite 10y ago
We are more open to patches on Fossil because (1) Fossil has a BSD license, which is easier to accept patches for than public-domain and (2) Fossil is seen (rightly or wrongly) as less "mission critical" than SQLite. And, you are right - in many cases people will send a drive-by patch but we will rewrite it rather than apply it directly: to make sure we understand it for long-term maintenance, to clean it up, and to avoid licensing problems.

SQLite 10y ago

Patches are difficult to accept on a public-domain project. That is one real advantage of GPL over BSD-style licenses or public-domain - it is easier to accept patches. I've had a lot of help from Dan and Joe and Shane and others on SQLite. Stats here: https://www.sqlite.org/src/reports?type=ci&view=byuser https://www.sqlite.org/src/reports?type=ci&view=byuser

chubot 10y ago
How did Dan, Joe, and Shane get started on sqlite? Were they volunteers or paid? (I attended a Google talk you gave probably 10 years ago, and I remember that you mentioned you had paid people to work on sqlite. I thought that was interesting for open source software!)