5 ms·

Jamis Buck lets go of Capistrano

62 points by sofal 18y ago

henning 18y ago
At least, because it's free software, the users have the source and can use that to migrate to alternatives or carry on the projects without him.
mpk 18y ago
Well, this sounds like a good opportunity for me to mention an alternative deployment tool with a cooler name : Vlad the Deployer. http://rubyhitsquad.com/Vlad_the_Deployer.html http://rubyhitsquad.com/Vlad_the_Deployer.html
- dustineichler 18y ago
  Yeah, I second this. It's really useful and easy to use.
- larrywright 18y ago
  I would have had a lot more respect for Vlad if the developers hadn't acted like complete jerks about it: http://rubyhitsquad.com/Ruby_Hit_Squad.html http://rubyhitsquad.com/Ruby_Hit_Squad.html Building a competing tool because you think you can do it better is fine. Building a competing tool because you want to take a different approach is also fine. Being rude isn't fine, and shouldn't be tolerated in any community.
  - richcollins 18y ago
    == SPECIAL THANKS: * First, of course, to Capistrano. For coming up with the idea and providing a lot of meat for the recipes. http://github.com/fs/vlad/tree/master http://github.com/fs/vlad/tree/master
    - larrywright 18y ago
      That's nice, but I don't think it makes up for how they attacked it. PJ Hyett (of GitHub fame) even commented on it at the time: http://www.pjhyett.com/posts/224-how-not-to-open-source http://www.pjhyett.com/posts/224-how-not-to-open-source
  - omouse 18y ago
    If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Really that page is a joke and isn't very rude. It's friendly competition and clearly states why they're competing: needless complexity in the existing tool. >Being rude isn't fine, and shouldn't be tolerated in any community. That page isn't rude and the community will tolerate being rude if the code is any good. Look at Linus Torvalds', Theo de Raadt's, and other awesome coders' comments! They're still appreciated by the community for their code and if rudeness weren't tolerated, they'd be kicked out quick quick.
mikeryan 18y ago
Actually after his last announcement of no longer supporting Windows for Capistrano and Net::SSH this will hopefully be a good thing, assuming the community picks it up. Would be nice if he could find a designated maintainer but either way I doubt these projects will go to the wayside. Wish I had the time I'd contribute more and props to Jamis for the great tools.
jupiter 18y ago
He probably doesn't imagine just for how many people he made life easier every day. Great job, props and good luck for whatever is coming next!
tptacek 18y ago
This seems a lot healthier and more mature than the industry standard approach towards abandoned open source projects, which is absentee landlordism. He's giving people opportunity and the clear signal that it's OK to fork the project.
- jmtulloss 18y ago
  I think Github will really help that situation. The problem with traditional open source projects is that somebody can control who contributes back, and if that person isn't around, the project dies. Sure you can fork, but there's no way for others to keep track of where the project has gone to. When this happens, it tends to just acquire a new name and become something else. Github solves all these problems. Github rocks.
  - there 18y ago
    > but there's no way for others to keep track of where the project has gone to so now instead of searching around for the project's new homepage, you have to search through dozens of forks each with one or two bugfixes or random changes and find out which one is the most actively maintained? i'm all for git's concept of forking to make your own development easier, but unless you merge your fixes back into a mainline distribution, it's just stupid and creates confusion for everyone else relying on that software. say you want to run a script that someone has written that uses net-ssh. until now you could be assured that they wrote it using the official net-ssh ruby module and it will work with the one you have installed. so from now on you'll have to install the random net-ssh version that someone has stashed away on his github account? and what happens when that particular fork of net-ssh stops getting maintained? someone else forks it and now you have to install a different version? what about the security ramifications of using some random person's fork of an ssh module that you are entrusting to login to your servers? would you install a forked version of openssh from an unknown source on your server or would you rather get it from a known, trusted source?
    - tptacek 18y ago
      So it's not a silver bullet. It's still a bullet. Beats a waving hand.
Harkins 18y ago
"Lets go" is not an accurate title, "abandons" would be a better word. He's written good code and it sucks that he's burning out, but it's not cool to ignore questions and not even try to find a maintainer. Capistrano is used by nearly every Rails project, abandoning it is grossly irresponsible.
- jamis 18y ago
  Why is it "grossly irresponsible" of me to take this action? Are lives going to be lost or injured as a result? Will the economy suffer? Will my leaving this project result in a health epidemic? I've never made any promises about the project. I never claimed that I would be around for ever. I never said I would ignore questions, either -- just that I would ignore emails sent directly to me. But I'm going to remain on the mailing list, and will remain about as responsive there as I have (and I'm, by far, the most frequest poster there).
  - joshwa 18y ago
    Why not look for someone to take over as maintainer? I'm sure an appropriate person in the community would step forward. This is the traditional method in most open-source communities... particularly where there are canonical distribution sources such as the rubyforge gems.
    - jamis 18y ago
      I don't believe that's effective, especially for projects like Net::SSH and Capistrano where the hacker-to-user ratio is so low. If someone wants to step forward and maintain Capistrano, they'll do so, and the community will organize around them because they'll show they have the passion to do it. If no one steps forward, then an appointment would have failed anyway, because obviously no one has the necessary passion to maintain it, and it might be better for it to die and make way for other alternatives. Either way, appointing a successor would be futile. Even if no one steps forward, would that be so bad? Capistrano works perfectly well for the vast majority of folks. It's not like I'm leaving behind a legacy of mostly-broken software. :)
100k 18y ago
When acts_as_solr was abandoned by its old maintainer, there was a lot of confusion about what to do with the code. Unfortunately, no one was named as the maintainer of the project, and no one could push to the official repository. It didn't help that the code was moved to GitHub with git newbie problems, like directories not being in the repo, that stopped it from working out of the box. Eventually, things sorted themselves out (here's the maintainers' fork: http://github.com/mattmatt/acts_as_solr/tree/master http://github.com/mattmatt/acts_as_solr/tree/master) but there are still frequent questions on the mailing list asking why the plugin doesn't work. It would have been better to name a maintainer who could manage things. I hope Capistrano can avoid these problems.
jballanc 18y ago
So long and thanks for all the fish^H^H^H^H AWESOME SOFTWARE!
MikeBailey 18y ago
Capistrano is mature and stable. Jamis deserves respect for the original idea and the implementation. For the vast majority of people, the current version will work just fine. When we all get sick of git and start using the next source control system then Capistrano will need support for that but I can't see that happening anytime soon. Massive thanks to Jamis for all the love he's given to these projects over the last few years.

62 points by sofal 18y ago

At least, because it's free software, the users have the source and can use that to migrate to alternatives or carry on the projects without him.

mpk 18y ago

Well, this sounds like a good opportunity for me to mention an alternative deployment tool with a cooler name : Vlad the Deployer. http://rubyhitsquad.com/Vlad_the_Deployer.html http://rubyhitsquad.com/Vlad_the_Deployer.html

dustineichler 18y ago
Yeah, I second this. It's really useful and easy to use.
larrywright 18y ago
I would have had a lot more respect for Vlad if the developers hadn't acted like complete jerks about it: http://rubyhitsquad.com/Ruby_Hit_Squad.html http://rubyhitsquad.com/Ruby_Hit_Squad.html Building a competing tool because you think you can do it better is fine. Building a competing tool because you want to take a different approach is also fine. Being rude isn't fine, and shouldn't be tolerated in any community.
- richcollins 18y ago
  == SPECIAL THANKS: * First, of course, to Capistrano. For coming up with the idea and providing a lot of meat for the recipes. http://github.com/fs/vlad/tree/master http://github.com/fs/vlad/tree/master
  - larrywright 18y ago
    That's nice, but I don't think it makes up for how they attacked it. PJ Hyett (of GitHub fame) even commented on it at the time: http://www.pjhyett.com/posts/224-how-not-to-open-source http://www.pjhyett.com/posts/224-how-not-to-open-source
- omouse 18y ago
  If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Really that page is a joke and isn't very rude. It's friendly competition and clearly states why they're competing: needless complexity in the existing tool. >Being rude isn't fine, and shouldn't be tolerated in any community. That page isn't rude and the community will tolerate being rude if the code is any good. Look at Linus Torvalds', Theo de Raadt's, and other awesome coders' comments! They're still appreciated by the community for their code and if rudeness weren't tolerated, they'd be kicked out quick quick.

mikeryan 18y ago

Actually after his last announcement of no longer supporting Windows for Capistrano and Net::SSH this will hopefully be a good thing, assuming the community picks it up. Would be nice if he could find a designated maintainer but either way I doubt these projects will go to the wayside. Wish I had the time I'd contribute more and props to Jamis for the great tools.

jupiter 18y ago

He probably doesn't imagine just for how many people he made life easier every day. Great job, props and good luck for whatever is coming next!

tptacek 18y ago

This seems a lot healthier and more mature than the industry standard approach towards abandoned open source projects, which is absentee landlordism. He's giving people opportunity and the clear signal that it's OK to fork the project.

jmtulloss 18y ago
I think Github will really help that situation. The problem with traditional open source projects is that somebody can control who contributes back, and if that person isn't around, the project dies. Sure you can fork, but there's no way for others to keep track of where the project has gone to. When this happens, it tends to just acquire a new name and become something else. Github solves all these problems. Github rocks.
- there 18y ago
  > but there's no way for others to keep track of where the project has gone to so now instead of searching around for the project's new homepage, you have to search through dozens of forks each with one or two bugfixes or random changes and find out which one is the most actively maintained? i'm all for git's concept of forking to make your own development easier, but unless you merge your fixes back into a mainline distribution, it's just stupid and creates confusion for everyone else relying on that software. say you want to run a script that someone has written that uses net-ssh. until now you could be assured that they wrote it using the official net-ssh ruby module and it will work with the one you have installed. so from now on you'll have to install the random net-ssh version that someone has stashed away on his github account? and what happens when that particular fork of net-ssh stops getting maintained? someone else forks it and now you have to install a different version? what about the security ramifications of using some random person's fork of an ssh module that you are entrusting to login to your servers? would you install a forked version of openssh from an unknown source on your server or would you rather get it from a known, trusted source?
  - tptacek 18y ago
    So it's not a silver bullet. It's still a bullet. Beats a waving hand.

Harkins 18y ago

"Lets go" is not an accurate title, "abandons" would be a better word. He's written good code and it sucks that he's burning out, but it's not cool to ignore questions and not even try to find a maintainer. Capistrano is used by nearly every Rails project, abandoning it is grossly irresponsible.

jamis 18y ago
Why is it "grossly irresponsible" of me to take this action? Are lives going to be lost or injured as a result? Will the economy suffer? Will my leaving this project result in a health epidemic? I've never made any promises about the project. I never claimed that I would be around for ever. I never said I would ignore questions, either -- just that I would ignore emails sent directly to me. But I'm going to remain on the mailing list, and will remain about as responsive there as I have (and I'm, by far, the most frequest poster there).
- joshwa 18y ago
  Why not look for someone to take over as maintainer? I'm sure an appropriate person in the community would step forward. This is the traditional method in most open-source communities... particularly where there are canonical distribution sources such as the rubyforge gems.
  - jamis 18y ago
    I don't believe that's effective, especially for projects like Net::SSH and Capistrano where the hacker-to-user ratio is so low. If someone wants to step forward and maintain Capistrano, they'll do so, and the community will organize around them because they'll show they have the passion to do it. If no one steps forward, then an appointment would have failed anyway, because obviously no one has the necessary passion to maintain it, and it might be better for it to die and make way for other alternatives. Either way, appointing a successor would be futile. Even if no one steps forward, would that be so bad? Capistrano works perfectly well for the vast majority of folks. It's not like I'm leaving behind a legacy of mostly-broken software. :)

100k 18y ago

When acts_as_solr was abandoned by its old maintainer, there was a lot of confusion about what to do with the code. Unfortunately, no one was named as the maintainer of the project, and no one could push to the official repository. It didn't help that the code was moved to GitHub with git newbie problems, like directories not being in the repo, that stopped it from working out of the box. Eventually, things sorted themselves out (here's the maintainers' fork: http://github.com/mattmatt/acts_as_solr/tree/master http://github.com/mattmatt/acts_as_solr/tree/master) but there are still frequent questions on the mailing list asking why the plugin doesn't work. It would have been better to name a maintainer who could manage things. I hope Capistrano can avoid these problems.

jballanc 18y ago

So long and thanks for all the fish^H^H^H^H AWESOME SOFTWARE!

MikeBailey 18y ago

Capistrano is mature and stable. Jamis deserves respect for the original idea and the implementation. For the vast majority of people, the current version will work just fine. When we all get sick of git and start using the next source control system then Capistrano will need support for that but I can't see that happening anytime soon. Massive thanks to Jamis for all the love he's given to these projects over the last few years.