14 ms·

Mongrel2 Is Now BSD Licensed

83 points by jcsalterego 16y ago

jcsalterego 16y ago
I need to start signing my emails with "And I promise not to buy guitars with it,".
- zedshaw 16y ago
  Don't lie, you know you couldn't keep that promise. :-)
kunley 16y ago
The voice of reason on the desert of political correctness.
petercooper 16y ago
Like others on here yesterday, I also hoped the big announcement was a corporate sponsorship/hiring of some sort to let Zed just get on with the tech without any hassles.. :-) (Hello VMware?) Ah well, this is still good. Just one "but": I believe that Mongrel2 has the chance to break the religious hold that programming languages have on organizations, businesses, and the average working programmer. Aren't most open source infrastructure and HTTP based projects programming language agnostic? (Incumbents Apache, lighttpd and nginx, for example, as well as proxies like Varnish and Squid.) What's the deeper idea behind this statement that warrants presenting it as a new concept? I'm all for bold attempts to break the status quo but the way I interpret what he's proposing is the status quo..
- billymeltdown 16y ago
  I was actually wondering the same thing, Peter, it's had me thinking I'm missing something obvious. Zed?
- zedshaw 16y ago
  Technically, any protocol if it's going to succeed is language agnostic. It'd be retarded to do a language specific protocol unless you're like Erlang and don't have to care about other languages as much. The difference is Mongrel2 makes this assertion explicit and does everything it can to stay simple but still support languages you need to use. It does this by having a simple base protocol for doing fast async backends with 0MQ or HTTP, and by making the configuration system language agnostic as well. That means if you run a Perl shop, then you can keep using your existing Perl HTTP setups with Mongrel2, write new stuff as 0MQ where needed, change parts to C++, and write configuration automation for your Mongrel2 clusters in Perl. Or any language. It doesn't care. Compared to other servers, which still try to embed some specific language or write their own (Node, Varnish VCL), or have some odd config file only they understand, or force you to mod_* install languages, or use FastCGI in some bastard way, or hack up proxy configs to get page caching, ... this makes Mongrel2 much more agnostic. But more importantly it comes down to the project's philosophy. I have a specific goal that no language will be king, so I'm going to architect the server so that nobody dominates. Same thing I did with Mongrel1 where I refused to let Rails dominate.
  - nailer 16y ago
    One of the things I really like with Tornado is that there's a handful of test apps that ship in every release. This means people learning it always have a definitive, up - to - date demo of the code, rather than relying on some blog from 6 months ago which uses the previous API. It would be super sweet if your minichat examples in various langages were shipped in the base Mongrel2 package. If you're about to say I should do this myself, you're right, and I might try it once I've finished shipping my app and have time to investigate.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  If you read until the end of the article, he says: "I'm also actively pursuing sponsorship and may have some more announcements later."
  - petercooper 16y ago
    Sure, and I did. That doesn't change that today's announcement was not what was anticipated.
steveklabnik 16y ago
Zed, this is great. It seems we've both come to the same conclusion; as much as I respect what the Free Software movement has done, if I create something awesome, I want as many people to use it as possible. There is enough crappy software out there that I'd rather have it improved for everyone than worry about ekeing out every last possible cent.
- zedshaw 16y ago
  As well as language religion, I hate license religion. I GPL things I think will only attract douchebags if it were totally free, like with Lamson. I AGPL things mostly as a joke, like I did with MulletDB. In this case, I believe the cause of getting languages out of my damn web server operations is strong enough that BSD is a better choice.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Licensing things as a joke is generally why I use the WTFPL over 'real' BSD.
maxklein 16y ago
I like the BSD license. I made my first money on the nets by benefitting a lot from BSD licenses, and all open source software I ever write will be BSD. I believe - if you want it to be free, make it free. If you want it to be closed, then make it closed. The in-between that is the GPL is not cool. I do wonder though, how many people have contributed to this project? It seems to me it would be a better idea to have a single sponsor than several big sponsors. Someone who has a vested interest in making Mongrel2 work.
- zedshaw 16y ago
  There's about 5 people who've made contributions, mostly in writing external projects to implement protocol handlers for their favorite language (C++, Ruby, PHP, and Python so far). Most of the work is done by myself though since it's rather early for other folks to get in, but I'm looking for contributors. Anyway, stay tuned for more information on the sponsorship thing.
- alnayyir 16y ago
  What little I've managed to open source so far, is licensed under what amounts to a 2-clause BSD + what I call the "Diane Bruce clause". http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/bsd-guru/have-we-lost-the-fun-21360 http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/bsd-guru/have-we-lost-the-fun-21... * db@FreeBSD.ORG wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you * can do whatever you want with this code, except you may not * license it under any form of the GPL. * A postcard or QSL card showing me you appreciate * this code would be nice. Diane Bruce va3db
  - protomyth 16y ago
    Where in the BSD License does it say you can re-license the code? Or does this just mean no including this code with GPL code?
    - anthonyb 16y ago
      Where in the BSD license does it say that you can't?
mathgladiator 16y ago
Isn't "break the religious hold that programming languages have on organizations," kinda-well-I-dont-know religious? I don't know about you, but I just had a religious experiences reading the post. I got the experience when I used http://kayakhttp.com/ http://kayakhttp.com/ for the first time. It changed my life!!! Programming languages have religious backing not due to HTTP or anything technology related but due to management fearing polyglotism/increased complexity by redundant code/multi-deployment/multi-service management/other people issues. To end the religion that infests programming is to end humanity. And, unless Mongrel2 has skynet built into it, it's not going to break the religious hold that programming languages have on organizations. But, I'll drink some of zed's koolaid and hope to live in a state of denial.
- zedshaw 16y ago
  Yes, any human belief is a religion and temporary. This is just a religion that tries to accept all of them, kind of like Unitarians. :-) (BTW, obvious troll is obvious).
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    The world might be a better place if the norm were meta-religions like, "A Alphabetic Unitarianism," wherein adherents practice all religions in alphabetic order.
  - mathgladiator 16y ago
    Or someone, hint hint, could build skynet into Mongrel2. I'm just say'in.
16s 16y ago
How does this guy get any coding done? He's always writing rants and waving his hands to get attention. He writes, "Send an email and I'll add your name to the donation page." I hope he doesn't get a million donation emails asking to have their names listed. If so, he'll never be able to code another line.
- zedshaw 16y ago
  Well, actually if I got a million donations I'm pretty sure I could: A) Hire a bunch of people to enter them in, if it were important. B) Just use my lamsonproject.org software to automatically make a list of contributors. Because, you see, at that point I'd be both rich as hell and a bad ass programmer who can automate things, while you'll still be a troll. :-)
  - 16s 16y ago
    OK, so I'm a troll, but how do you get any coding done while doing all this other stuff?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - travisjeffery 16y ago
      First sit down at a computer, open up Vim and type.
    - doki_pen 16y ago
      No need to down vote. This is a thinly veiled compliment. It's a good question. Zed's output has been insane for the past few months. How he manages to keep up the pace is a very valid question.
Flow 16y ago
"Copyright (c) 2010, Zed A. Shaw and Mongrel2 Project Contributors." Couldn't this be some sort of loophole that "Mongrel2 Project Contributors" isn't defined right there in the license? I know, it's BSD license, not much point in finding a loophole, but still.

83 points by jcsalterego 16y ago

jcsalterego 16y ago

I need to start signing my emails with "And I promise not to buy guitars with it,".

zedshaw 16y ago
Don't lie, you know you couldn't keep that promise. :-)

kunley 16y ago

The voice of reason on the desert of political correctness.

petercooper 16y ago

Like others on here yesterday, I also hoped the big announcement was a corporate sponsorship/hiring of some sort to let Zed just get on with the tech without any hassles.. :-) (Hello VMware?) Ah well, this is still good. Just one "but": I believe that Mongrel2 has the chance to break the religious hold that programming languages have on organizations, businesses, and the average working programmer. Aren't most open source infrastructure and HTTP based projects programming language agnostic? (Incumbents Apache, lighttpd and nginx, for example, as well as proxies like Varnish and Squid.) What's the deeper idea behind this statement that warrants presenting it as a new concept? I'm all for bold attempts to break the status quo but the way I interpret what he's proposing is the status quo..

billymeltdown 16y ago
I was actually wondering the same thing, Peter, it's had me thinking I'm missing something obvious. Zed?
zedshaw 16y ago
Technically, any protocol if it's going to succeed is language agnostic. It'd be retarded to do a language specific protocol unless you're like Erlang and don't have to care about other languages as much. The difference is Mongrel2 makes this assertion explicit and does everything it can to stay simple but still support languages you need to use. It does this by having a simple base protocol for doing fast async backends with 0MQ or HTTP, and by making the configuration system language agnostic as well. That means if you run a Perl shop, then you can keep using your existing Perl HTTP setups with Mongrel2, write new stuff as 0MQ where needed, change parts to C++, and write configuration automation for your Mongrel2 clusters in Perl. Or any language. It doesn't care. Compared to other servers, which still try to embed some specific language or write their own (Node, Varnish VCL), or have some odd config file only they understand, or force you to mod_* install languages, or use FastCGI in some bastard way, or hack up proxy configs to get page caching, ... this makes Mongrel2 much more agnostic. But more importantly it comes down to the project's philosophy. I have a specific goal that no language will be king, so I'm going to architect the server so that nobody dominates. Same thing I did with Mongrel1 where I refused to let Rails dominate.
- nailer 16y ago
  One of the things I really like with Tornado is that there's a handful of test apps that ship in every release. This means people learning it always have a definitive, up - to - date demo of the code, rather than relying on some blog from 6 months ago which uses the previous API. It would be super sweet if your minichat examples in various langages were shipped in the base Mongrel2 package. If you're about to say I should do this myself, you're right, and I might try it once I've finished shipping my app and have time to investigate.
patrickaljord 16y ago
If you read until the end of the article, he says: "I'm also actively pursuing sponsorship and may have some more announcements later."
- petercooper 16y ago
  Sure, and I did. That doesn't change that today's announcement was not what was anticipated.

steveklabnik 16y ago

Zed, this is great. It seems we've both come to the same conclusion; as much as I respect what the Free Software movement has done, if I create something awesome, I want as many people to use it as possible. There is enough crappy software out there that I'd rather have it improved for everyone than worry about ekeing out every last possible cent.

zedshaw 16y ago
As well as language religion, I hate license religion. I GPL things I think will only attract douchebags if it were totally free, like with Lamson. I AGPL things mostly as a joke, like I did with MulletDB. In this case, I believe the cause of getting languages out of my damn web server operations is strong enough that BSD is a better choice.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Licensing things as a joke is generally why I use the WTFPL over 'real' BSD.

maxklein 16y ago

I like the BSD license. I made my first money on the nets by benefitting a lot from BSD licenses, and all open source software I ever write will be BSD. I believe - if you want it to be free, make it free. If you want it to be closed, then make it closed. The in-between that is the GPL is not cool. I do wonder though, how many people have contributed to this project? It seems to me it would be a better idea to have a single sponsor than several big sponsors. Someone who has a vested interest in making Mongrel2 work.

zedshaw 16y ago
There's about 5 people who've made contributions, mostly in writing external projects to implement protocol handlers for their favorite language (C++, Ruby, PHP, and Python so far). Most of the work is done by myself though since it's rather early for other folks to get in, but I'm looking for contributors. Anyway, stay tuned for more information on the sponsorship thing.
alnayyir 16y ago
What little I've managed to open source so far, is licensed under what amounts to a 2-clause BSD + what I call the "Diane Bruce clause". http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/bsd-guru/have-we-lost-the-fun-21360 http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/bsd-guru/have-we-lost-the-fun-21... * db@FreeBSD.ORG wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you * can do whatever you want with this code, except you may not * license it under any form of the GPL. * A postcard or QSL card showing me you appreciate * this code would be nice. Diane Bruce va3db
- protomyth 16y ago
  Where in the BSD License does it say you can re-license the code? Or does this just mean no including this code with GPL code?
  - anthonyb 16y ago
    Where in the BSD license does it say that you can't?

mathgladiator 16y ago

Isn't "break the religious hold that programming languages have on organizations," kinda-well-I-dont-know religious? I don't know about you, but I just had a religious experiences reading the post. I got the experience when I used http://kayakhttp.com/ http://kayakhttp.com/ for the first time. It changed my life!!! Programming languages have religious backing not due to HTTP or anything technology related but due to management fearing polyglotism/increased complexity by redundant code/multi-deployment/multi-service management/other people issues. To end the religion that infests programming is to end humanity. And, unless Mongrel2 has skynet built into it, it's not going to break the religious hold that programming languages have on organizations. But, I'll drink some of zed's koolaid and hope to live in a state of denial.

zedshaw 16y ago
Yes, any human belief is a religion and temporary. This is just a religion that tries to accept all of them, kind of like Unitarians. :-) (BTW, obvious troll is obvious).
- stcredzero 16y ago
  The world might be a better place if the norm were meta-religions like, "A Alphabetic Unitarianism," wherein adherents practice all religions in alphabetic order.
- mathgladiator 16y ago
  Or someone, hint hint, could build skynet into Mongrel2. I'm just say'in.

16s 16y ago

How does this guy get any coding done? He's always writing rants and waving his hands to get attention. He writes, "Send an email and I'll add your name to the donation page." I hope he doesn't get a million donation emails asking to have their names listed. If so, he'll never be able to code another line.

zedshaw 16y ago
Well, actually if I got a million donations I'm pretty sure I could: A) Hire a bunch of people to enter them in, if it were important. B) Just use my lamsonproject.org software to automatically make a list of contributors. Because, you see, at that point I'd be both rich as hell and a bad ass programmer who can automate things, while you'll still be a troll. :-)
- 16s 16y ago
  OK, so I'm a troll, but how do you get any coding done while doing all this other stuff?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - travisjeffery 16y ago
    First sit down at a computer, open up Vim and type.
  - doki_pen 16y ago
    No need to down vote. This is a thinly veiled compliment. It's a good question. Zed's output has been insane for the past few months. How he manages to keep up the pace is a very valid question.

Flow 16y ago

"Copyright (c) 2010, Zed A. Shaw and Mongrel2 Project Contributors." Couldn't this be some sort of loophole that "Mongrel2 Project Contributors" isn't defined right there in the license? I know, it's BSD license, not much point in finding a loophole, but still.