9 ms·

It's fine to be forthcoming about the financial interests of your projects – this is Hacker News, after all. We live on VC. The tone of your previous comment su

by n42 3y ago

It's fine to be forthcoming about the financial interests of your projects – this is Hacker News, after all. We live on VC. The tone of your previous comment suggests there is none. I find it hard to believe that anything you would spend your company's time on would not push the mission of the company forward. This creates a financial incentive.

dang 3y ago
Can you please follow the site guidelines when posting here? They include: "Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- n42 3y ago
  Of course. I hope the edit is more appropriate. Thank you!
  - AndyKelley 3y ago
    I thought it was well said fwiw
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - n42 3y ago
      thank you.
jeffparsons 3y ago
A charitable interpretation could be that a rising tide lifts all boats. Syrus/Wasmer may sincerely believe that WASIX contributes to the rising tide, and it will therefore benefit Wasmer and all other Wasm-related ventures alike. Under this interpretation, there would still be a financial incentive, but it would not be underhanded.
- n42 3y ago
  This is, despite how it may otherwise appear, how I see it. I think that the decision is a good one, made by people and a company I don't trust. The broader context of Syrus' actions within the community (which reflect on Wasmer as its CEO) are what raise concern for me.
  - syrusakbary 3y ago
    > I think that the decision is a good one I'm incredibly happy to hear that
- syrusakbary 3y ago
  I'm happy to see some convergence here :)
syrusakbary 3y ago
I'll address the first non-clickbait question and try to provide some insight, as I think you might be a bit confused on how COSS startups work. We don't plan to monetize WASIX. WASIX is just an enabler to allow any program compile to WebAssembly. If other open-source technology existed and fulfilled what we want to accomplish is more than certain we would not have created WASIX. In our case, the community was asking to have sockets, threads, forking, subprocesses and more fully working on Wasm. And there was nothing that supported that (or that aimed to support it), so we worked on it. Now, let me give more insight on what we actually plan to monetize: Wasmer Edge [1]. Wasmer Edge is the alternative to the expensive big-tech providers that allows any person or company to host their websites at a fraction of the cost. Hope the insight was useful! [1] https://wasmer.io/products/edge https://wasmer.io/products/edge
- n42 3y ago
  Wasmer is a VC company building a platform that depends on the existence of these platform APIs – sockets, threads, forking, etc. They have a vested interest in the existence of these APIs, and the health of the developer ecosystem, to stay alive. From here, it kind of seems like the fundamental foundation of everything Wasmer is building. Meanwhile, Bytecode Alliance is a registered non-profit with many large corporate backers. They are building out the WASI standard with careful due diligence to learn from and avoid the mistakes we have found in POSIX. BCA has their own financial incentives, and they are aligned differently than yours. BCA ultimately is moving slower than works for Wasmer. So I guess you were faced with three options: A) wait for BCA, and do nothing B) work with BCA and push it forward C) fork it and do it yourself. So you chose to fork it and reimplement POSIX with all its warts. I assume because this applies pressure to the community (candidly, a good thing) while letting you make progress immediately. Where I, and I assume others, have issue with all of this is: You have chosen a name that has created confusion in an already confusing space. You have whitewashed it by promoting it as a new open standard, but the controlling entity realllyy is just Wasmer[0]. You have demonstrated through your actions a complete lack of willingness to work with people in the community, preferring to strong-arm with veiled threats[1] or perverting incentives financially[2]. The issue isn't with WASIX, but with you and your actions. I have no confidence in your ability to lead this community forward in a way that has my (our) interests ahead of your company's. [0]: https://github.com/wasix-org/wasix-governance-meeting-notes/blob/5135516d091d1bc3810677ea2cc755a67e10c669/meeting-notes-27-07-2023.md#meeting-attendees [1]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wit-bindgen/issues/306 [2]: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/17115

by n42 3y ago

dang 3y ago

Can you please follow the site guidelines when posting here? They include: "Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

n42 3y ago
Of course. I hope the edit is more appropriate. Thank you!
- AndyKelley 3y ago
  I thought it was well said fwiw
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - n42 3y ago
    thank you.

jeffparsons 3y ago

A charitable interpretation could be that a rising tide lifts all boats. Syrus/Wasmer may sincerely believe that WASIX contributes to the rising tide, and it will therefore benefit Wasmer and all other Wasm-related ventures alike. Under this interpretation, there would still be a financial incentive, but it would not be underhanded.

n42 3y ago
This is, despite how it may otherwise appear, how I see it. I think that the decision is a good one, made by people and a company I don't trust. The broader context of Syrus' actions within the community (which reflect on Wasmer as its CEO) are what raise concern for me.
- syrusakbary 3y ago
  > I think that the decision is a good one I'm incredibly happy to hear that
syrusakbary 3y ago
I'm happy to see some convergence here :)

syrusakbary 3y ago

I'll address the first non-clickbait question and try to provide some insight, as I think you might be a bit confused on how COSS startups work. We don't plan to monetize WASIX. WASIX is just an enabler to allow any program compile to WebAssembly. If other open-source technology existed and fulfilled what we want to accomplish is more than certain we would not have created WASIX. In our case, the community was asking to have sockets, threads, forking, subprocesses and more fully working on Wasm. And there was nothing that supported that (or that aimed to support it), so we worked on it. Now, let me give more insight on what we actually plan to monetize: Wasmer Edge [1]. Wasmer Edge is the alternative to the expensive big-tech providers that allows any person or company to host their websites at a fraction of the cost. Hope the insight was useful! [1] https://wasmer.io/products/edge https://wasmer.io/products/edge

n42 3y ago
Wasmer is a VC company building a platform that depends on the existence of these platform APIs – sockets, threads, forking, etc. They have a vested interest in the existence of these APIs, and the health of the developer ecosystem, to stay alive. From here, it kind of seems like the fundamental foundation of everything Wasmer is building. Meanwhile, Bytecode Alliance is a registered non-profit with many large corporate backers. They are building out the WASI standard with careful due diligence to learn from and avoid the mistakes we have found in POSIX. BCA has their own financial incentives, and they are aligned differently than yours. BCA ultimately is moving slower than works for Wasmer. So I guess you were faced with three options: A) wait for BCA, and do nothing B) work with BCA and push it forward C) fork it and do it yourself. So you chose to fork it and reimplement POSIX with all its warts. I assume because this applies pressure to the community (candidly, a good thing) while letting you make progress immediately. Where I, and I assume others, have issue with all of this is: You have chosen a name that has created confusion in an already confusing space. You have whitewashed it by promoting it as a new open standard, but the controlling entity realllyy is just Wasmer[0]. You have demonstrated through your actions a complete lack of willingness to work with people in the community, preferring to strong-arm with veiled threats[1] or perverting incentives financially[2]. The issue isn't with WASIX, but with you and your actions. I have no confidence in your ability to lead this community forward in a way that has my (our) interests ahead of your company's. [0]: https://github.com/wasix-org/wasix-governance-meeting-notes/blob/5135516d091d1bc3810677ea2cc755a67e10c669/meeting-notes-27-07-2023.md#meeting-attendees [1]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wit-bindgen/issues/306 [2]: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/17115