4 ms·

Tailwind JIT fails to credit Windi CSS

34 points by hide_yo_kids 6y ago

rendall 6y ago
I don't understand. They stole code? Methodology? It's not clear really what the beef is.
jasonlfunk 6y ago
One open source library was inspired by another but didn’t mention it. What a scandal.
speedgoose 6y ago
So we are back in the phase of mixing html and style, which was considered super bad practice just a few years ago. Now we have components frameworks like vue or react so some people argue it's not that bad to mix html and style. How long before we consider things like tailwind as bad practice again?
- sfvisser 6y ago
  It was only considered super bad by a subset of people. Usually not the people creating and maintaining web apps.
  - butt_hugger 6y ago
    The "subset of people" known as "good developers." Lately they haven't been creating and maintaining web apps because of things like Tailwind.
    - sfvisser 6y ago
      Pretty sure ‘good developer’ wasn’t the discriminating factor.
- nightski 6y ago
  The thing is there is no hivemind best practice. It depends on a lot of factors such as team size, project duration, technology stacks, etc... As you may already know being able to spot pros and cons ahead of time and avoiding pitfalls for a specific scenario just comes from experience. So if anyone is uncertain about how to proceed, the only way you can become more comfortable in decisions is to try all the things and learn the nuances of different approaches. Eventually it becomes much more natural and requires less effort.
- jlouis 6y ago
  This will almost surely happen. CSS will be extended until it solves the pain points, at which point things will swing in the other direction. It's just a question of where your abstraction point is. Currently it's in a component. Tomorrow it might move.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  Does this mean never put style strings in html? Whether by style-attr, JS or CSS, that html tree has to get style attributes somehow. I sort of accepted a similar view, that functionality and presentation should be separate (although base html isn't necessarily representative of either). Now have a more nuanced view: functionality and presentation don't map strictly to logic (js) and style (CSS) - I think there is such a thing as presentation logic, versus data logic.
jlouis 6y ago
Offline dead code elimination was already a thing. Moving it online seems rather natural. Could you come up with that idea independently? I think so.
yabadubakta 6y ago
Frankly the Windi code should not be MIT—make a custom license that requires attribution.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Attribution and reproduction of license are literally the only conditions that MIT has.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    If you actually use the project's source code, and this is not the case. Being inspired by a MIT project doesn't have any condition at all.
renewiltord 6y ago
If I understand this correctly, one library built a feature another library has using independent code? That doesn't sound to me like a scandal of any sort.
benatkin 6y ago
The video had pretty high production value. I think I'm still a fan of Adam Wathan. It seems like it would have been so easy for him to credit Windi CSS, and it would have made it an all around great video to me. I don't understand why he didn't do it. Perhaps if I had done it I would have talked about Windi CSS for five minutes and it would have distracted from the point of the video. Maybe even talking about it for five seconds would have distracted from the point of the video? FAAMG companies also don't credit people for making bits and pieces of things they release, even when they directly use them to deliver a key feature. In this case he didn't use WindiCSS' code at all, and it seems like they probably wouldn't have needed to because they no doubt took a different approach. Maybe Adam Wathan is a bit like Steve Jobs.
- hide_yo_kids 6y ago
  It sounds like the crux of the issue is found in this tweet (mentioned in the blogpost): > I remember the day when Windi got blown up on Twitter, @adamwathan called me and asked me about how Windi CSS works and he is happy to make it official. And yeah, I was excited to see things are improving for the whole community, so I shared all I know with him. [1] Speculating, but this sounds like Anthony Fu lost his trust in Adam Wathan after their personal one-on-one conversation about how the Windi CSS technology works, then failing to mention it subsequently. As also mentioned in the blogpost, Adam did end up mentioning Windi CSS in a tweet, only after the pushback from Anthony's original tweet. [2] [1] https://twitter.com/antfu7/status/1371538602488786945 https://twitter.com/antfu7/status/1371538602488786945 [2] https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1371542711086559237?s=20 https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1371542711086559237?s=...
  - benatkin 6y ago
    Yeah. Perhaps it was a simplistic explanation and Adam Wathan got bored and went on to working on it on a brand new implementation. I would have a hard time making an implementation of something like that sound impressive. I imagine @adamwathan meets a lot of people, some of whom he continues collaborating with, and some who he doesn't. He also had a similar issue w/ Heroicons, which are icons from Tailwind. Someone made heroicons.dev which shows a filterable list of them, and later Tailwind made one and put it on heroicons.com which also has a very similar looking filterable list of them. Again it was an idea that could be explained in its entirety in under a minute.
Chris2048 6y ago
Fu claims: Tailwind used/inspired by Windi’s idea without even mentioning Windi CSS once and claiming it’s their own ideas Adam Wathans tweet: Props to others who have explored this approach in the past like.. @satireven who proved this could work with Tailwind's API with Windi CSS For years I had wanted to explore an official CSS-in-JS library to get some of these same benefits, but Windi CSS especially gave me hope we could do something universal with zero runtime cost. So, what specific ideas are being used here? The idea of a CSS-in-JS library, or something more implementation specific?
- leerob 6y ago
  I don't understand the outrage here by Windi CSS. What more are they looking for? Tailwind credited them. And Windi is _based on Tailwinds API_.
anaganisk 6y ago
I dont see why it needs attribution when it's MIT. Okay, you may argue its about ethics. Then why the heck do we need different types of license then? Whatever the licence people still want attribution, share in business that use their project etc etc. Lets just put on the README.md attribute me, release the source or do whatever you want, dont use my project for profits.
- geofft 6y ago
  > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. The MIT license has just one condition, but it's there. (If you don't want it, try 0-clause BSD.) The original purpose of the MIT license was to require attribution: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9263265 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=926... (From other comments, it sounds like Tailwind isn't a derivative of the copyrighted work in Windi, just the idea, so the MIT license is not relevant. But if the MIT license is relevant, the one and only thing the MIT license obligates you to do is to attribute the origin of the code. Even if you incorporate it into GPL'd software, even if you incorporate it into commercial software, the MIT license and the original copyright notice must be preserved.)
  - oflannabhra 6y ago
    But the code wasn’t even used, from what I can tell. No one is even making that claim. It was just an idea for a feature.
ksec 6y ago
Since Windi CSS is MIT, and Tailwind JIT doesn't seems to have copy or took any of the code from Windi CSS. What is the problem here? Copying an idea? There's just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it.
alexey2020 6y ago
AFAIU all the buzz is about good manners. If you announce smth with pomp, it's good to not forget about those who has contributed to the achievements
genmud 6y ago
Did Windi credit all the people who have pioneered JIT compilation? There is nothing to be upset about here, you had an idea... Cool. Someone thought that was a good idea and re-implemented it in their framework. If the windi devs are this entitled, I can see why you might roll your own, seeing how insufferable it could be to work with them.

34 points by hide_yo_kids 6y ago

rendall 6y ago

I don't understand. They stole code? Methodology? It's not clear really what the beef is.

jasonlfunk 6y ago

One open source library was inspired by another but didn’t mention it. What a scandal.

speedgoose 6y ago

So we are back in the phase of mixing html and style, which was considered super bad practice just a few years ago. Now we have components frameworks like vue or react so some people argue it's not that bad to mix html and style. How long before we consider things like tailwind as bad practice again?

sfvisser 6y ago
It was only considered super bad by a subset of people. Usually not the people creating and maintaining web apps.
- butt_hugger 6y ago
  The "subset of people" known as "good developers." Lately they haven't been creating and maintaining web apps because of things like Tailwind.
  - sfvisser 6y ago
    Pretty sure ‘good developer’ wasn’t the discriminating factor.
nightski 6y ago
The thing is there is no hivemind best practice. It depends on a lot of factors such as team size, project duration, technology stacks, etc... As you may already know being able to spot pros and cons ahead of time and avoiding pitfalls for a specific scenario just comes from experience. So if anyone is uncertain about how to proceed, the only way you can become more comfortable in decisions is to try all the things and learn the nuances of different approaches. Eventually it becomes much more natural and requires less effort.
jlouis 6y ago
This will almost surely happen. CSS will be extended until it solves the pain points, at which point things will swing in the other direction. It's just a question of where your abstraction point is. Currently it's in a component. Tomorrow it might move.
Chris2048 6y ago
Does this mean never put style strings in html? Whether by style-attr, JS or CSS, that html tree has to get style attributes somehow. I sort of accepted a similar view, that functionality and presentation should be separate (although base html isn't necessarily representative of either). Now have a more nuanced view: functionality and presentation don't map strictly to logic (js) and style (CSS) - I think there is such a thing as presentation logic, versus data logic.

jlouis 6y ago

Offline dead code elimination was already a thing. Moving it online seems rather natural. Could you come up with that idea independently? I think so.

yabadubakta 6y ago

Frankly the Windi code should not be MIT—make a custom license that requires attribution.

renewiltord 6y ago
Attribution and reproduction of license are literally the only conditions that MIT has.
- 1_player 6y ago
  If you actually use the project's source code, and this is not the case. Being inspired by a MIT project doesn't have any condition at all.

renewiltord 6y ago

If I understand this correctly, one library built a feature another library has using independent code? That doesn't sound to me like a scandal of any sort.

benatkin 6y ago

The video had pretty high production value. I think I'm still a fan of Adam Wathan. It seems like it would have been so easy for him to credit Windi CSS, and it would have made it an all around great video to me. I don't understand why he didn't do it. Perhaps if I had done it I would have talked about Windi CSS for five minutes and it would have distracted from the point of the video. Maybe even talking about it for five seconds would have distracted from the point of the video? FAAMG companies also don't credit people for making bits and pieces of things they release, even when they directly use them to deliver a key feature. In this case he didn't use WindiCSS' code at all, and it seems like they probably wouldn't have needed to because they no doubt took a different approach. Maybe Adam Wathan is a bit like Steve Jobs.

hide_yo_kids 6y ago
It sounds like the crux of the issue is found in this tweet (mentioned in the blogpost): > I remember the day when Windi got blown up on Twitter, @adamwathan called me and asked me about how Windi CSS works and he is happy to make it official. And yeah, I was excited to see things are improving for the whole community, so I shared all I know with him. [1] Speculating, but this sounds like Anthony Fu lost his trust in Adam Wathan after their personal one-on-one conversation about how the Windi CSS technology works, then failing to mention it subsequently. As also mentioned in the blogpost, Adam did end up mentioning Windi CSS in a tweet, only after the pushback from Anthony's original tweet. [2] [1] https://twitter.com/antfu7/status/1371538602488786945 https://twitter.com/antfu7/status/1371538602488786945 [2] https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1371542711086559237?s=20 https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1371542711086559237?s=...
- benatkin 6y ago
  Yeah. Perhaps it was a simplistic explanation and Adam Wathan got bored and went on to working on it on a brand new implementation. I would have a hard time making an implementation of something like that sound impressive. I imagine @adamwathan meets a lot of people, some of whom he continues collaborating with, and some who he doesn't. He also had a similar issue w/ Heroicons, which are icons from Tailwind. Someone made heroicons.dev which shows a filterable list of them, and later Tailwind made one and put it on heroicons.com which also has a very similar looking filterable list of them. Again it was an idea that could be explained in its entirety in under a minute.

Chris2048 6y ago

Fu claims: Tailwind used/inspired by Windi’s idea without even mentioning Windi CSS once and claiming it’s their own ideas Adam Wathans tweet: Props to others who have explored this approach in the past like.. @satireven who proved this could work with Tailwind's API with Windi CSS For years I had wanted to explore an official CSS-in-JS library to get some of these same benefits, but Windi CSS especially gave me hope we could do something universal with zero runtime cost. So, what specific ideas are being used here? The idea of a CSS-in-JS library, or something more implementation specific?

leerob 6y ago
I don't understand the outrage here by Windi CSS. What more are they looking for? Tailwind credited them. And Windi is _based on Tailwinds API_.

anaganisk 6y ago

I dont see why it needs attribution when it's MIT. Okay, you may argue its about ethics. Then why the heck do we need different types of license then? Whatever the licence people still want attribution, share in business that use their project etc etc. Lets just put on the README.md attribute me, release the source or do whatever you want, dont use my project for profits.

geofft 6y ago
> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. The MIT license has just one condition, but it's there. (If you don't want it, try 0-clause BSD.) The original purpose of the MIT license was to require attribution: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9263265 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=926... (From other comments, it sounds like Tailwind isn't a derivative of the copyrighted work in Windi, just the idea, so the MIT license is not relevant. But if the MIT license is relevant, the one and only thing the MIT license obligates you to do is to attribute the origin of the code. Even if you incorporate it into GPL'd software, even if you incorporate it into commercial software, the MIT license and the original copyright notice must be preserved.)
- oflannabhra 6y ago
  But the code wasn’t even used, from what I can tell. No one is even making that claim. It was just an idea for a feature.

ksec 6y ago

Since Windi CSS is MIT, and Tailwind JIT doesn't seems to have copy or took any of the code from Windi CSS. What is the problem here? Copying an idea? There's just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it.

alexey2020 6y ago

AFAIU all the buzz is about good manners. If you announce smth with pomp, it's good to not forget about those who has contributed to the achievements

genmud 6y ago

Did Windi credit all the people who have pioneered JIT compilation? There is nothing to be upset about here, you had an idea... Cool. Someone thought that was a good idea and re-implemented it in their framework. If the windi devs are this entitled, I can see why you might roll your own, seeing how insufferable it could be to work with them.