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Growl fork maintainer banned from Growl mailinglist after fixing bugs

170 points by anon1385 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
cstuder 15y ago
Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:r-VuHzw76A4J:basementcoders.com/2011/10/episode-47-fork-you-growl-interview-with-perry-metzger/+http://basementcoders.com/2011/10/episode-47-fork-you-growl-interview-with-perry-metzger/&hl=de&gl=ch&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:r-VuHzw...
- buro9 15y ago
  The fork: https://bitbucket.org/pmetzger/growl/ https://bitbucket.org/pmetzger/growl/
stephenr 15y ago
From the article: "One of the biggest problems with this approach, other than the fact they just pissed off a lot of people who beleive strongly in OSS, is that Growl is still broken. So you pay your $1.99 and it no workie. <samuel:jackson>TESTING MOTHER FUCKERS, DO YOU DO IT?</samuel:jackson>" I happily paid for Growl from the App store, and sure enough it works fine on both my Lion Macs. http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-source-install.php http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-source-insta... has instructions on how to Build 1.3 from source.
- elgenie 15y ago
  There don't seem to be publicly visible commits after the 1.3 release, though. Compare http://growl.info/documentation/version_history.php http://growl.info/documentation/version_history.php with http://code.google.com/p/growl/source/list http://code.google.com/p/growl/source/list : the source of version 1.3.1, which includes some important-sounding bugfixes, is nowhere to be found.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920faf093 http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920fa... The 1.3 SDK also added Mist[0], which means software does not have to install Growl itself (and the user does not need Growl) to get Growl notifications. The Growl application itself (from the AppStore) essentially becomes a "Growl Pro", offering users more (and centralized) control over notifications display. [0] http://growl.info/documentation/developer/implementing-growl.php#mist http://growl.info/documentation/developer/implementing-growl...
- mansoor-s 15y ago
  "other than the fact they just pissed off a lot of people who beleive strongly in OSS" If they believe so strongly in OSS, they wouldn't use macintosh would they? Nope they don't want to pony up and take out their wallets.
  - castewart 15y ago
    If you want to develop for iOS you have to use a Mac.
    - mansoor-s 15y ago
      no, you don't. You can use a VM
      - deno 15y ago
        You can’t legally run OS X under VM, unless the host is OS X on Apple’s hardware as well (and I think even that is only for server edition).
        ceejayoz 15y ago
        Do note that those laws don't apply to the entire world.
    - ricardobeat 15y ago
      Technically not true. If you want to publish for iOS you have to use a Mac, and there's an exception to that (PhoneGap Build).
patrickod 15y ago
Personally I don't see what people are complaining about here. He took an open source project, with a licence that permitted it, and made it a commercial project by adding chances and forming a derivative work. There is no foul play here. If someone else wants to fork the project and try and mimic the new commercial features they're free to do so. Don't expect the original developers to help you though. They're already set on their own path.
- benatkin 15y ago
  It became popular because it was open source and the community built the brand recognition. Now he went and took the brand recognition to do something that the community didn't expect and doesn't approve of.
  - hmottestad 15y ago
    So the question is. Can you make a fork and call it "Growl" or would the "new" growl try to sue the hell out of you?
    - patrickod 15y ago
      If you use the latest BSD released version then you're ok. The code is free for public use. Were you to make it commercial though I think you would be liable as you would need the explicit permission of the original owner to do so. EDIT: It seems after further research the license that was being used prohibits the name "Growl" being used to promote any derivative works of the same name without explicit permission from the original owners. [1] - http://growl.info/documentation/developer/bsd-license.txt http://growl.info/documentation/developer/bsd-license.txt
      - masklinn 15y ago
        > If you use the latest BSD released version then you're ok. No, I doubt the naming falls under source release. See Firefox.
      - 15y ago
rmc 15y ago
decided they should be paid for their work. There is one slight problem however. Growl is Open Source Software. So? You can sell open source software. Just because software is GPL/BSD licenced doesn't mean you can't sell it. Open Source ≠ Non-commerical. Closed Source ≠ Commmerical. You can change for open source software. If something is open source you can't complain if someone sells it. Obviously if the software is open source, everyone who buys a copy is allowed to sell the software themselves and they don't have to give the original author any money. They also cannot stop someone taking an older version of the code and distributing it.
- _ak 15y ago
  To my knowledge, the source to the 1.3.x release isn't public. I wonder whether it's a complete rewrite from scratch or whether 1.3.x still contains patches from external contributors and whether they agreed that their work be sold for money.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    Your knowledge is incorrect. The 1.3.0 source is available[0], and 1.3.1 should be soon[1], they have not dumped them in the public repository is all. > I wonder whether it's a complete rewrite from scratch or whether 1.3.x still contains patches from external contributors and whether they agreed that their work be sold for money. I'm not sure that has any relevance. It would if Growl had changed its license (they have to agree to license changes to their contributions, unless they ceded their copyright to the project or project owner), but selling the product is independent of that. It can be seen as a dick move, but it's still independent. [0] http://code.google.com/p/growl/source/detail?r=9831a92b05b20af461bf4fc77ec7b7b052831ccf http://code.google.com/p/growl/source/detail?r=9831a92b05b20... [1] http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920faf093 http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920fa...
    - masklinn 15y ago
      And the 1.3.1 source has now been added to the public repository.
peteforde 15y ago
As is so often the case with these sorts of posts, there are several issues being conflated here: 1. Growl authors want to ca$h in 2. Widely reported issues under Lion 3. Legitimate conjecture over rights and ethics for pmetzger's fork and whether it can be called Growl I'd be more than happy to donate (more) to Growl, although I admit that the "suggested upgrade" made me pause. It felt like it crossed that slim line between a premium version and bait-and-switch that is hard to argue either way. It's certainly not strange that people are responding to the fact that this was just dropped on the existing userbase. That pmetzger is getting C+Ds (has this been confirmed) makes me really uncomfortable — it's not in the spirit of OSS as I understand it in my gut. Ultimately, I don't think people will have a problem with paying, and certainly not such a small amount. It's more the way that it's been thrust upon us that feels slightly off. Am I right? Of course, we haven't heard their side of the story yet. I urge you all to wait before you cast aspersions on them, because they've worked hard on something many of us have used for years.
- starwed 15y ago
  >Ultimately, I don't think people will have a problem with paying, and certainly not such a small amount. Growl use seems to be integrated in several open source projects. I probably would never have gone out of my way to get it -- but, a couple of apps I did want suggested installing growl, and it works quite nicely. (I think Adium is what finally prompted me to install it.) If for no other reason a fork will appear if growl is not freely available, because a lot of open source projects use it under the assumption that it is available.
- celticjames 15y ago
  3. It's like the Mozilla Firefox vs Debian Iceweasel controversy. Or Redhat vs Centos. The code is open, but the trademarks are copyrighted. If Growl is a trademark and the brand artwork is non-free, then forks can't use it without permission. I kind of respect the choice of Mozilla and Redhat to defend their trademarks because it's partly an issue of quality control and reputation. But I do prefer projects that put branding under a creative commons license. It's closer to the spirit of free software. I suggest the forked Growl choose a new name and put the branding under a free license.
patio11 15y ago
The OSS community has always had an uneasy tension between a) for-profit enterprise which provides most of the man-power and b) anti-commercial poor adolescents of all ages who simultaneously think that contributing to OSS is a moral obligation and that the license and copyright assignment they fetishize includes a "All contributors will be made happy despite their total lack of business sense" clause, somewhere.
- cousin_it 15y ago
  That sounds uncharitable and is that really true? Linux, Mozilla or Python don't seem to mostly rely on manpower provided by for-profit companies...
  - jbellis 15y ago
    Linux is written almost entirely by employees of for-profit companies: http://lwn.net/Articles/451243/ http://lwn.net/Articles/451243/ Many core Python contributors including Guido are employed by companies like Google to work on it. Mozilla is, technically, an exception: almost everyone is employed by the Mozilla corporation, a non-profit by virtue of its lucrative search deal with Google. Few projects have that luxury.
    - cousin_it 15y ago
      Thanks! I stand corrected.
    - celticjames 15y ago
      Something like 40% of Mozilla code is written by community contributors, which is quite remarkable. How many of those non-employees are paid by someone else specifically to work on Mozilla I don't know. i.e. I don't know if IBM pays people to work on Firefox they way they pay people to work on Linux.
    - einhverfr 15y ago
      Two points: 1) To work full time on something like Linux, it really requires an external employer. So it isn't surprising that this is the case. To get involved does not, and certainly for a long time independent developers were as important as corporations there. 2) Everyone economically owns the output. I don't mean the copyrights. I mean everyone has a right to put the software to use for whatever purposes they want, whether in manufacturing, say, server appliances, or just running a web site (or even on my wife's laptop). If the big companies stopped contributing to Linux tomorrow, would Linux die? I doubt it. So I suppose it depends on what you mean by "dependent." Certainly Linux is not dependent on corporate coding the way, say, Windows is.....
pacifika 15y ago
Drama. He only got a one month ban. The mailing list is not community owned so when subscribers do things that the owners don't like they're free to do whatever they want. Fork the mailing list.
flexterra 15y ago
Here's an interview with Chris Forsythe, the creator or Growl explaining the AppStore decision. http://thechangelog.com/post/11317828888/episode-0-6-8-growl-and-open-source-in-the-app-store-wit http://thechangelog.com/post/11317828888/episode-0-6-8-growl...
bradleyland 15y ago
It strikes me that if Growl were to disappear, there would be a chorus of users chiming in that they'd "happily pay for the software" as we usually see with popular free utilities that disappear. Here we have someone who finally decided they wanted to profit from their effort, and we see the flip side. A definitive lose-lose situation.
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  How? An open source project goes commercial and someone forks it to keep an open source derivative going. The system works. I don't see how this is a lose-lose. If the Growl dev loses users then it just goes to show that it's not worth paying for. I won't offer my opinion on whether it's worth $2, especially at this point in the project lifecycle, but you might be able to guess it.
  - bradleyland 15y ago
    I'm speaking from the perspective of community response. If the developer grows tired of maintaining the application and decides to abandon it, the community reacts negatively. If the developer grows tired of maintaining the application, but decides that being paid to do so is sufficient incentive, the community reacts negatively. That's negative-negative, or lose-lose from a community response perspective.
- antiterra 15y ago
  If you listen to the interview, Metzger actually seemed happy that there would be a paid version, thinking it meant that it would be maintained. Instead, the paid version didn't work for him and fixes didn't seem forthcoming. So he rolled his own and contributed. I'm not saying that your scenario wouldn't happen, but it doesn't apply in Metzger's case.

170 points by anon1385 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:r-VuHzw76A4J:basementcoders.com/2011/10/episode-47-fork-you-growl-interview-with-perry-metzger/+http://basementcoders.com/2011/10/episode-47-fork-you-growl-interview-with-perry-metzger/&hl=de&gl=ch&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:r-VuHzw...

buro9 15y ago
The fork: https://bitbucket.org/pmetzger/growl/ https://bitbucket.org/pmetzger/growl/

stephenr 15y ago

From the article: "One of the biggest problems with this approach, other than the fact they just pissed off a lot of people who beleive strongly in OSS, is that Growl is still broken. So you pay your $1.99 and it no workie. <samuel:jackson>TESTING MOTHER FUCKERS, DO YOU DO IT?</samuel:jackson>" I happily paid for Growl from the App store, and sure enough it works fine on both my Lion Macs. http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-source-install.php http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-source-insta... has instructions on how to Build 1.3 from source.

elgenie 15y ago
There don't seem to be publicly visible commits after the 1.3 release, though. Compare http://growl.info/documentation/version_history.php http://growl.info/documentation/version_history.php with http://code.google.com/p/growl/source/list http://code.google.com/p/growl/source/list : the source of version 1.3.1, which includes some important-sounding bugfixes, is nowhere to be found.
- masklinn 15y ago
  http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920faf093 http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920fa... The 1.3 SDK also added Mist[0], which means software does not have to install Growl itself (and the user does not need Growl) to get Growl notifications. The Growl application itself (from the AppStore) essentially becomes a "Growl Pro", offering users more (and centralized) control over notifications display. [0] http://growl.info/documentation/developer/implementing-growl.php#mist http://growl.info/documentation/developer/implementing-growl...
mansoor-s 15y ago
"other than the fact they just pissed off a lot of people who beleive strongly in OSS" If they believe so strongly in OSS, they wouldn't use macintosh would they? Nope they don't want to pony up and take out their wallets.
- castewart 15y ago
  If you want to develop for iOS you have to use a Mac.
  - mansoor-s 15y ago
    no, you don't. You can use a VM
    - deno 15y ago
      You can’t legally run OS X under VM, unless the host is OS X on Apple’s hardware as well (and I think even that is only for server edition).
      - ceejayoz 15y ago
        Do note that those laws don't apply to the entire world.
  - ricardobeat 15y ago
    Technically not true. If you want to publish for iOS you have to use a Mac, and there's an exception to that (PhoneGap Build).

patrickod 15y ago

Personally I don't see what people are complaining about here. He took an open source project, with a licence that permitted it, and made it a commercial project by adding chances and forming a derivative work. There is no foul play here. If someone else wants to fork the project and try and mimic the new commercial features they're free to do so. Don't expect the original developers to help you though. They're already set on their own path.

benatkin 15y ago
It became popular because it was open source and the community built the brand recognition. Now he went and took the brand recognition to do something that the community didn't expect and doesn't approve of.
- hmottestad 15y ago
  So the question is. Can you make a fork and call it "Growl" or would the "new" growl try to sue the hell out of you?
  - patrickod 15y ago
    If you use the latest BSD released version then you're ok. The code is free for public use. Were you to make it commercial though I think you would be liable as you would need the explicit permission of the original owner to do so. EDIT: It seems after further research the license that was being used prohibits the name "Growl" being used to promote any derivative works of the same name without explicit permission from the original owners. [1] - http://growl.info/documentation/developer/bsd-license.txt http://growl.info/documentation/developer/bsd-license.txt
    - masklinn 15y ago
      > If you use the latest BSD released version then you're ok. No, I doubt the naming falls under source release. See Firefox.
    - 15y ago

rmc 15y ago

decided they should be paid for their work. There is one slight problem however. Growl is Open Source Software. So? You can sell open source software. Just because software is GPL/BSD licenced doesn't mean you can't sell it. Open Source ≠ Non-commerical. Closed Source ≠ Commmerical. You can change for open source software. If something is open source you can't complain if someone sells it. Obviously if the software is open source, everyone who buys a copy is allowed to sell the software themselves and they don't have to give the original author any money. They also cannot stop someone taking an older version of the code and distributing it.

_ak 15y ago
To my knowledge, the source to the 1.3.x release isn't public. I wonder whether it's a complete rewrite from scratch or whether 1.3.x still contains patches from external contributors and whether they agreed that their work be sold for money.
- masklinn 15y ago
  Your knowledge is incorrect. The 1.3.0 source is available[0], and 1.3.1 should be soon[1], they have not dumped them in the public repository is all. > I wonder whether it's a complete rewrite from scratch or whether 1.3.x still contains patches from external contributors and whether they agreed that their work be sold for money. I'm not sure that has any relevance. It would if Growl had changed its license (they have to agree to license changes to their contributions, unless they ceded their copyright to the project or project owner), but selling the product is independent of that. It can be seen as a dick move, but it's still independent. [0] http://code.google.com/p/growl/source/detail?r=9831a92b05b20af461bf4fc77ec7b7b052831ccf http://code.google.com/p/growl/source/detail?r=9831a92b05b20... [1] http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920faf093 http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss/msg/0793d15920fa...
  - masklinn 15y ago
    And the 1.3.1 source has now been added to the public repository.

peteforde 15y ago

As is so often the case with these sorts of posts, there are several issues being conflated here: 1. Growl authors want to ca$h in 2. Widely reported issues under Lion 3. Legitimate conjecture over rights and ethics for pmetzger's fork and whether it can be called Growl I'd be more than happy to donate (more) to Growl, although I admit that the "suggested upgrade" made me pause. It felt like it crossed that slim line between a premium version and bait-and-switch that is hard to argue either way. It's certainly not strange that people are responding to the fact that this was just dropped on the existing userbase. That pmetzger is getting C+Ds (has this been confirmed) makes me really uncomfortable — it's not in the spirit of OSS as I understand it in my gut. Ultimately, I don't think people will have a problem with paying, and certainly not such a small amount. It's more the way that it's been thrust upon us that feels slightly off. Am I right? Of course, we haven't heard their side of the story yet. I urge you all to wait before you cast aspersions on them, because they've worked hard on something many of us have used for years.

starwed 15y ago
>Ultimately, I don't think people will have a problem with paying, and certainly not such a small amount. Growl use seems to be integrated in several open source projects. I probably would never have gone out of my way to get it -- but, a couple of apps I did want suggested installing growl, and it works quite nicely. (I think Adium is what finally prompted me to install it.) If for no other reason a fork will appear if growl is not freely available, because a lot of open source projects use it under the assumption that it is available.
celticjames 15y ago
3. It's like the Mozilla Firefox vs Debian Iceweasel controversy. Or Redhat vs Centos. The code is open, but the trademarks are copyrighted. If Growl is a trademark and the brand artwork is non-free, then forks can't use it without permission. I kind of respect the choice of Mozilla and Redhat to defend their trademarks because it's partly an issue of quality control and reputation. But I do prefer projects that put branding under a creative commons license. It's closer to the spirit of free software. I suggest the forked Growl choose a new name and put the branding under a free license.

patio11 15y ago

The OSS community has always had an uneasy tension between a) for-profit enterprise which provides most of the man-power and b) anti-commercial poor adolescents of all ages who simultaneously think that contributing to OSS is a moral obligation and that the license and copyright assignment they fetishize includes a "All contributors will be made happy despite their total lack of business sense" clause, somewhere.

cousin_it 15y ago
That sounds uncharitable and is that really true? Linux, Mozilla or Python don't seem to mostly rely on manpower provided by for-profit companies...
- jbellis 15y ago
  Linux is written almost entirely by employees of for-profit companies: http://lwn.net/Articles/451243/ http://lwn.net/Articles/451243/ Many core Python contributors including Guido are employed by companies like Google to work on it. Mozilla is, technically, an exception: almost everyone is employed by the Mozilla corporation, a non-profit by virtue of its lucrative search deal with Google. Few projects have that luxury.
  - cousin_it 15y ago
    Thanks! I stand corrected.
  - celticjames 15y ago
    Something like 40% of Mozilla code is written by community contributors, which is quite remarkable. How many of those non-employees are paid by someone else specifically to work on Mozilla I don't know. i.e. I don't know if IBM pays people to work on Firefox they way they pay people to work on Linux.
  - einhverfr 15y ago
    Two points: 1) To work full time on something like Linux, it really requires an external employer. So it isn't surprising that this is the case. To get involved does not, and certainly for a long time independent developers were as important as corporations there. 2) Everyone economically owns the output. I don't mean the copyrights. I mean everyone has a right to put the software to use for whatever purposes they want, whether in manufacturing, say, server appliances, or just running a web site (or even on my wife's laptop). If the big companies stopped contributing to Linux tomorrow, would Linux die? I doubt it. So I suppose it depends on what you mean by "dependent." Certainly Linux is not dependent on corporate coding the way, say, Windows is.....

pacifika 15y ago

Drama. He only got a one month ban. The mailing list is not community owned so when subscribers do things that the owners don't like they're free to do whatever they want. Fork the mailing list.

flexterra 15y ago

Here's an interview with Chris Forsythe, the creator or Growl explaining the AppStore decision. http://thechangelog.com/post/11317828888/episode-0-6-8-growl-and-open-source-in-the-app-store-wit http://thechangelog.com/post/11317828888/episode-0-6-8-growl...

bradleyland 15y ago

It strikes me that if Growl were to disappear, there would be a chorus of users chiming in that they'd "happily pay for the software" as we usually see with popular free utilities that disappear. Here we have someone who finally decided they wanted to profit from their effort, and we see the flip side. A definitive lose-lose situation.

drivebyacct2 15y ago
How? An open source project goes commercial and someone forks it to keep an open source derivative going. The system works. I don't see how this is a lose-lose. If the Growl dev loses users then it just goes to show that it's not worth paying for. I won't offer my opinion on whether it's worth $2, especially at this point in the project lifecycle, but you might be able to guess it.
- bradleyland 15y ago
  I'm speaking from the perspective of community response. If the developer grows tired of maintaining the application and decides to abandon it, the community reacts negatively. If the developer grows tired of maintaining the application, but decides that being paid to do so is sufficient incentive, the community reacts negatively. That's negative-negative, or lose-lose from a community response perspective.
antiterra 15y ago
If you listen to the interview, Metzger actually seemed happy that there would be a paid version, thinking it meant that it would be maintained. Instead, the paid version didn't work for him and fixes didn't seem forthcoming. So he rolled his own and contributed. I'm not saying that your scenario wouldn't happen, but it doesn't apply in Metzger's case.