11 ms·

As somebody that just got into Zig and loves the language, it makes me super sad that the developers on this project have to spend their valuable time stressing

by drcode 6y ago

As somebody that just got into Zig and loves the language, it makes me super sad that the developers on this project have to spend their valuable time stressing about BS like this. Also, the ideas the Zen people list on their website for forking Zig are terrible ideas- They were pushing to turn Zig into a hard-to-reason-about vanilla object-oriented programming language.

time0ut 6y ago
I feel so bad for Andrew. It must be frustrating to pour your heart into something beautiful like zig only to have this sort of thing happen. Now is a great time to sponsor the zig project on github!
- drcode 6y ago
  Agreed, I have a donation to them in the works already.
- justin66 6y ago
  > Now is a great time to sponsor the zig project on github! Indeed.
0xTJ 6y ago
I'm really looking forward to Zig becoming more refined. I started writing an x86 kernel, but put that on pause because of known compiler bugs.
- kristopher 6y ago
  Which ones? Chances are that Zen has them fixed. We have a unikernel under Zen that we sell and had to revamp how packed structs were handled.
  - ziddoap 6y ago
    I can't help but feel slimey on your behalf. You're ignoring or hand-waving the questions asked of you in this thread, in order to attempt to convert a sale, in a thread about the poor behavior of Zen. Ugh.
falcolas 6y ago
That's one of the costs of using the MIT and BSD licenses: anybody can take it and go private/for-profit with it (without giving back even a "thanks"), and all the author can do is issue a strongly worded statement about it. Moreover, they can't even claim the moral high ground when writing the strongly worded statement, since they've made the explicit choice to give up any and all rights to the product.
- masklinn 6y ago
  Except essentially none of the statement takes issue with the forking itself. In fact the author of the statement is active in this very thread and specifically notes that this is very much allowed and is not what they take issue with.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Other than encouraging Japanese users to use Zig instead of Zen, that is. The fact that most of the message was pointing out how poor the character of the Zen authors is doesn't feel good to me, no matter whether the allegations are true or not. It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". And yet it's really the only argument that could be made by the Zig author.
    - drcode 6y ago
      It's fine for Zen to fork the Zig code. It's not fine for Zen to claim authorship of code that was written by someone else (such as the async/await code)
    - masklinn 6y ago
      > Other than encouraging Japanese users to use Zig instead of Zen, that is. They're not encouraging users to use zig instead of zen because zen is a private fork, they're discouraging users from using zen because it is zen. > The fact that most of the message was pointing out how poor the character of the Zen authors is doesn't feel good to me Most of the statement has to do with Zen's dubious relationship with the truth (with the lack of significant value despite lofty claims being but one of the examples thereof). The statement also doesn't point out the poor character of Zen's creator but their poor behaviour. You can infer poor character from poor behaviour but that is not what is pointed out in the statement. > It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". You may want to re-read the statement if that's what you got from it.
bzb5 6y ago
Maybe he shouldn’t have used the MIT licence if he didn’t understand what it meant. You can always hire a lawyer to explain it to you. Excuse my cynicism but this story where someone starts a MIT or BSD licenced project so they can attract more contributors and then cry when someone makes money off the project is getting far too old.
- GordonS 6y ago
  The situation is a little more nuanced than that - it's the way they are trying to make money from Zig that people find objectionable. In particular, what they are doing could damage the future of Zig and potentially splits the ecosystem. In addition, they have done some obviously scummy things like try to register a trademark on Zig in Japan.
  - bzb5 6y ago
    A fork is literally a split of the ecosystem.
skohan 6y ago
How close to "production ready" do you feel Zig is, especially in terms of tooling and cross-platform support? It's a super interesting language for me, but I am hesitant to invest in a language which might not be truly usable for years if ever
- kristoff_it 6y ago
  Hi, right now Zig is still a bit wild. If you don't feel like looking into a language that is still moving at this speed (if you read the changelogs for the last few releases you'll see what I'm talking about), then you might want to wait a little. Zig 0.7.0 is scheduled to be released soon and the main effort is being spent on porting the current C++ compiler to a self-hosted version. Once that's done, we'll be in a much better position to provide better stability for features. During the last fundraiser we announced the intention of launching a Zig Stability Program once the self-hosted compiler is done, so that we can guarantee that any bug found in features that we decide to support are going to be prioritized appropriately. To be clear, this is a bug stability program, not an API stability one: we'll still redesign things from one version to the next if necessary. In terms of timelines, we hope to have the self-hosted compiler replace the current one in version 0.8.0, indicatively 6 months from now. If you want to help speed the development up: https://github.com/ziglang/zig https://github.com/ziglang/zig to contribute https://github.com/sponsors/ziglang https://github.com/sponsors/ziglang (or email us at donations@ziglang.org) to donate

by drcode 6y ago

time0ut 6y ago

I feel so bad for Andrew. It must be frustrating to pour your heart into something beautiful like zig only to have this sort of thing happen. Now is a great time to sponsor the zig project on github!

drcode 6y ago
Agreed, I have a donation to them in the works already.
justin66 6y ago
> Now is a great time to sponsor the zig project on github! Indeed.

0xTJ 6y ago

I'm really looking forward to Zig becoming more refined. I started writing an x86 kernel, but put that on pause because of known compiler bugs.

kristopher 6y ago
Which ones? Chances are that Zen has them fixed. We have a unikernel under Zen that we sell and had to revamp how packed structs were handled.
- ziddoap 6y ago
  I can't help but feel slimey on your behalf. You're ignoring or hand-waving the questions asked of you in this thread, in order to attempt to convert a sale, in a thread about the poor behavior of Zen. Ugh.

falcolas 6y ago

That's one of the costs of using the MIT and BSD licenses: anybody can take it and go private/for-profit with it (without giving back even a "thanks"), and all the author can do is issue a strongly worded statement about it. Moreover, they can't even claim the moral high ground when writing the strongly worded statement, since they've made the explicit choice to give up any and all rights to the product.

masklinn 6y ago
Except essentially none of the statement takes issue with the forking itself. In fact the author of the statement is active in this very thread and specifically notes that this is very much allowed and is not what they take issue with.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Other than encouraging Japanese users to use Zig instead of Zen, that is. The fact that most of the message was pointing out how poor the character of the Zen authors is doesn't feel good to me, no matter whether the allegations are true or not. It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". And yet it's really the only argument that could be made by the Zig author.
  - drcode 6y ago
    It's fine for Zen to fork the Zig code. It's not fine for Zen to claim authorship of code that was written by someone else (such as the async/await code)
  - masklinn 6y ago
    > Other than encouraging Japanese users to use Zig instead of Zen, that is. They're not encouraging users to use zig instead of zen because zen is a private fork, they're discouraging users from using zen because it is zen. > The fact that most of the message was pointing out how poor the character of the Zen authors is doesn't feel good to me Most of the statement has to do with Zen's dubious relationship with the truth (with the lack of significant value despite lofty claims being but one of the examples thereof). The statement also doesn't point out the poor character of Zen's creator but their poor behaviour. You can infer poor character from poor behaviour but that is not what is pointed out in the statement. > It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". You may want to re-read the statement if that's what you got from it.

bzb5 6y ago

Maybe he shouldn’t have used the MIT licence if he didn’t understand what it meant. You can always hire a lawyer to explain it to you. Excuse my cynicism but this story where someone starts a MIT or BSD licenced project so they can attract more contributors and then cry when someone makes money off the project is getting far too old.

GordonS 6y ago
The situation is a little more nuanced than that - it's the way they are trying to make money from Zig that people find objectionable. In particular, what they are doing could damage the future of Zig and potentially splits the ecosystem. In addition, they have done some obviously scummy things like try to register a trademark on Zig in Japan.
- bzb5 6y ago
  A fork is literally a split of the ecosystem.

skohan 6y ago

How close to "production ready" do you feel Zig is, especially in terms of tooling and cross-platform support? It's a super interesting language for me, but I am hesitant to invest in a language which might not be truly usable for years if ever

kristoff_it 6y ago
Hi, right now Zig is still a bit wild. If you don't feel like looking into a language that is still moving at this speed (if you read the changelogs for the last few releases you'll see what I'm talking about), then you might want to wait a little. Zig 0.7.0 is scheduled to be released soon and the main effort is being spent on porting the current C++ compiler to a self-hosted version. Once that's done, we'll be in a much better position to provide better stability for features. During the last fundraiser we announced the intention of launching a Zig Stability Program once the self-hosted compiler is done, so that we can guarantee that any bug found in features that we decide to support are going to be prioritized appropriately. To be clear, this is a bug stability program, not an API stability one: we'll still redesign things from one version to the next if necessary. In terms of timelines, we hope to have the self-hosted compiler replace the current one in version 0.8.0, indicatively 6 months from now. If you want to help speed the development up: https://github.com/ziglang/zig https://github.com/ziglang/zig to contribute https://github.com/sponsors/ziglang https://github.com/sponsors/ziglang (or email us at donations@ziglang.org) to donate