3 ms·

Can someone tl;dr me the gist of everyone's beef with joyent? I've been hearing about a fork but haven't understood / seen why people feel like the fork is nece

by randall 12y ago

Can someone tl;dr me the gist of everyone's beef with joyent? I've been hearing about a fork but haven't understood / seen why people feel like the fork is necessary.

shinko 12y ago
The same reason anyone forks: some core developers are not happy with the way development is headed. The reasons are myriad, both technically and politically, and you probably won't understand them unless you engage. If they weren't, we wouldn't be seeing something as drastic as a fork.
jared314 12y ago
Joyent is accused of: 1. Fixating on platform stability over project evolution 2. Ignoring the community on project direction 3. Preserving public image over project committers 4. Being a total square NOTE: I am against the fork.
- girvo 12y ago
  > 1. Fixating on platform stability over project evolution That's... hardly a bad thing, in my humble opinion. The other language I use at work, PHP, is a case-study in what happens when you "evolve" a project willy-nilly with little regard to platform stability. Nowadays, it's better, because the community has become more involved in the process, so I can see what #2 and #3 are Bad Things™ however.
  - k__ 12y ago
    PHP? I had the feeling that much evolution happend from 1 to 5 but not much afterwards :\
    - mappu 12y ago
      5.3 is basically a whole new language. Development is pretty quick and regular ever since 5.4 and the new RFC process.
    - skrebbel 12y ago
      Have you at all been paying attention? PHP 5.6 has namespaces, closures, lambdas, generators, autoloaders, traits, function argument splats, sane array literals - basically everything the authors ever saw in good use, anywhere. There is hardly any difference between PHP 4 and 5, except internals. The only real big difference between PHP 3 and PHP 4 is a different class syntax.
      - k__ 12y ago
        Well, I switched from PHP to JavaScript, so, no lol. I thought the class system was improved with 5 and was unusable with 4. At least that was what I read. I started with ... PHP 5.2
    - girvo 12y ago
      PHP 5.6 and what Facebook are doing with HHVM/Hack are (in the latter case, literally) entirely new languages than PHP4 or even pre-5.3, and with the PSR community standards body, Composer/Packagist and the massive amounts of interoperation between libraries nowadays, it's actually enjoyable to code in again :)
  - invisible 12y ago
    Unfortunately, I think node.js is still lacking in a lot of regards that a brief spurt of "willy-nilly" commits (plus some dictatorship-style thoughtfulness) would help. Many of the builtin modules are still "beta" and even core stable ones lack some features that require using unsupported/undocumented properties (it is not even clear why some of it is undocumented). I use node.js in production so I'm not knocking it outright but you quickly understand the plights if you try to do anything with node that scales well.
doublerebel 12y ago
Yes, the forkers are doing themselves a disservice. Joyent is accused of not communicating with the community, and yet the forkers respond by also not communicating with the community [EDIT: they have refused multiple opportunities to comment, Joyent is publicly appearing to make a consolation effort]. If Node wants to be taken seriously by a broader range of companies, it should be stable. There are forkers on the Joyent Node advisory board. As an open-source project, transparency will go a long way to gain community support from either side. So far, Joyent is winning the communication battle. Recent article on the subject: http://readwrite.com/2014/11/13/node-js-joyent-possible-fork-schism http://readwrite.com/2014/11/13/node-js-joyent-possible-fork... Arguably, this has been stewing for a while: http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/can-this-startup-steal-node-from-joyent-vcs-bet-8m-on-it/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/can-this-startup-steal-nod... I am a huge node proponent, and don't encounter problems from outside the project. Joyent's articles and purpose have always been more clear to me than StrongLoop, which is why I use the services of the former. However I have a hard time believing these articles and rumors are the whole story, hopefully someone can chime in with more specific information.
- drderidder 12y ago
  This has been brewing for a year and a lot of people in the community felt it was inevitable [1]. Plenty of early node people were never keen on Joyent's grab in the first place. The idea that the majority of core contribs are being uncommunicative is not really borne out by the growing community around node-forward and how open it actually is. They've set up live chat, a mentors list, help pages, given access to anybody who asks to the fork and are actively seeking input on new features like better numerical comp libs. It probably seems less communicative than it really is only because they want to wait till the concept is past nascent stage to announce anything. Totally not surprised that people have gotten fed up with Joyent and that forks are happening. 1 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs/mqSf47HhmyY
  - scljstcwombat 12y ago
    > actively seeking input on new features like better numerical comp libs That is one of the most comedic issues on github. Worth a read, but tl;dr: "all we need is to compile these ancient libraries! It should be easy, they are ancient and I am async!" ... "I failed to compile these ancient libraries." https://github.com/node-forward/discussions/issues/1 https://github.com/node-forward/discussions/issues/1
elisee 12y ago
I don't have very specific details as I'm a bystander too but it seems Node has been stuck in 0.10.x land since early 2013 (http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/03/11/node-v0-10-0-stable/ http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/03/11/node-v0-10-0-stable/) while Node 0.12 and 1.0 releases were being talked about well over a year ago by former BDFL Isaac Schlueter (now at npm). Joyent, the current project stewards, have not been able to deliver a stable release in that time and don't share public plans / aren't communicating very much. One of the many symptoms of that slow development process is that Node.js is basically running an unsupported version of V8 (https://twitter.com/jmayer/status/532971494695907328 https://twitter.com/jmayer/status/532971494695907328). From what I've read, node-forward is/was only meant as a fork in the GitHub sense: they'd try to get their stuff merged back into node mainline. The GitHub fork has since been made private (https://github.com/node-forward/discussions/issues/7 https://github.com/node-forward/discussions/issues/7) and they're working to set up a proper governance model so that the community can truly be in charge. Joyent has reacted (I believe, it might have been in the works prior to node-forward) by proposing a node advisory board (https://github.com/joyent/nodejs-advisory-board https://github.com/joyent/nodejs-advisory-board) but it seems to be too little too late for at least some of the people behind node-forward (I've read what seem like irreconcilable disagreements about how it should be run). I have no idea what (if anything) io.js is in relation to node-forward or if the same people are behind it. Can't find any announcements / endorsements on Twitter, so maybe it was just posted here before whoever is behind it were ready to go live.
- scljstcwombat 12y ago
  > Joyent, the current project stewards, have not been able to deliver a stable release in that time and don't share public plans / aren't communicating very much. They probably don't want to publicly call out one of the core committers whose promised work is lagging. Or admit that the previous project lead was a poor choice who let it stagnate (but yet is inexplicably in the "Joyent did a bad job" camp). What good would that do anyone, apart from satisfy our boundless curiosity?

by randall 12y ago

Can someone tl;dr me the gist of everyone's beef with joyent? I've been hearing about a fork but haven't understood / seen why people feel like the fork is necessary.

shinko 12y ago

The same reason anyone forks: some core developers are not happy with the way development is headed. The reasons are myriad, both technically and politically, and you probably won't understand them unless you engage. If they weren't, we wouldn't be seeing something as drastic as a fork.

jared314 12y ago

Joyent is accused of: 1. Fixating on platform stability over project evolution 2. Ignoring the community on project direction 3. Preserving public image over project committers 4. Being a total square NOTE: I am against the fork.

girvo 12y ago
> 1. Fixating on platform stability over project evolution That's... hardly a bad thing, in my humble opinion. The other language I use at work, PHP, is a case-study in what happens when you "evolve" a project willy-nilly with little regard to platform stability. Nowadays, it's better, because the community has become more involved in the process, so I can see what #2 and #3 are Bad Things™ however.
- k__ 12y ago
  PHP? I had the feeling that much evolution happend from 1 to 5 but not much afterwards :\
  - mappu 12y ago
    5.3 is basically a whole new language. Development is pretty quick and regular ever since 5.4 and the new RFC process.
  - skrebbel 12y ago
    Have you at all been paying attention? PHP 5.6 has namespaces, closures, lambdas, generators, autoloaders, traits, function argument splats, sane array literals - basically everything the authors ever saw in good use, anywhere. There is hardly any difference between PHP 4 and 5, except internals. The only real big difference between PHP 3 and PHP 4 is a different class syntax.
    - k__ 12y ago
      Well, I switched from PHP to JavaScript, so, no lol. I thought the class system was improved with 5 and was unusable with 4. At least that was what I read. I started with ... PHP 5.2
  - girvo 12y ago
    PHP 5.6 and what Facebook are doing with HHVM/Hack are (in the latter case, literally) entirely new languages than PHP4 or even pre-5.3, and with the PSR community standards body, Composer/Packagist and the massive amounts of interoperation between libraries nowadays, it's actually enjoyable to code in again :)
- invisible 12y ago
  Unfortunately, I think node.js is still lacking in a lot of regards that a brief spurt of "willy-nilly" commits (plus some dictatorship-style thoughtfulness) would help. Many of the builtin modules are still "beta" and even core stable ones lack some features that require using unsupported/undocumented properties (it is not even clear why some of it is undocumented). I use node.js in production so I'm not knocking it outright but you quickly understand the plights if you try to do anything with node that scales well.

doublerebel 12y ago

Yes, the forkers are doing themselves a disservice. Joyent is accused of not communicating with the community, and yet the forkers respond by also not communicating with the community [EDIT: they have refused multiple opportunities to comment, Joyent is publicly appearing to make a consolation effort]. If Node wants to be taken seriously by a broader range of companies, it should be stable. There are forkers on the Joyent Node advisory board. As an open-source project, transparency will go a long way to gain community support from either side. So far, Joyent is winning the communication battle. Recent article on the subject: http://readwrite.com/2014/11/13/node-js-joyent-possible-fork-schism http://readwrite.com/2014/11/13/node-js-joyent-possible-fork... Arguably, this has been stewing for a while: http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/can-this-startup-steal-node-from-joyent-vcs-bet-8m-on-it/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/can-this-startup-steal-nod... I am a huge node proponent, and don't encounter problems from outside the project. Joyent's articles and purpose have always been more clear to me than StrongLoop, which is why I use the services of the former. However I have a hard time believing these articles and rumors are the whole story, hopefully someone can chime in with more specific information.

drderidder 12y ago
This has been brewing for a year and a lot of people in the community felt it was inevitable [1]. Plenty of early node people were never keen on Joyent's grab in the first place. The idea that the majority of core contribs are being uncommunicative is not really borne out by the growing community around node-forward and how open it actually is. They've set up live chat, a mentors list, help pages, given access to anybody who asks to the fork and are actively seeking input on new features like better numerical comp libs. It probably seems less communicative than it really is only because they want to wait till the concept is past nascent stage to announce anything. Totally not surprised that people have gotten fed up with Joyent and that forks are happening. 1 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs/mqSf47HhmyY
- scljstcwombat 12y ago
  > actively seeking input on new features like better numerical comp libs That is one of the most comedic issues on github. Worth a read, but tl;dr: "all we need is to compile these ancient libraries! It should be easy, they are ancient and I am async!" ... "I failed to compile these ancient libraries." https://github.com/node-forward/discussions/issues/1 https://github.com/node-forward/discussions/issues/1

elisee 12y ago

I don't have very specific details as I'm a bystander too but it seems Node has been stuck in 0.10.x land since early 2013 (http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/03/11/node-v0-10-0-stable/ http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/03/11/node-v0-10-0-stable/) while Node 0.12 and 1.0 releases were being talked about well over a year ago by former BDFL Isaac Schlueter (now at npm). Joyent, the current project stewards, have not been able to deliver a stable release in that time and don't share public plans / aren't communicating very much. One of the many symptoms of that slow development process is that Node.js is basically running an unsupported version of V8 (https://twitter.com/jmayer/status/532971494695907328 https://twitter.com/jmayer/status/532971494695907328). From what I've read, node-forward is/was only meant as a fork in the GitHub sense: they'd try to get their stuff merged back into node mainline. The GitHub fork has since been made private (https://github.com/node-forward/discussions/issues/7 https://github.com/node-forward/discussions/issues/7) and they're working to set up a proper governance model so that the community can truly be in charge. Joyent has reacted (I believe, it might have been in the works prior to node-forward) by proposing a node advisory board (https://github.com/joyent/nodejs-advisory-board https://github.com/joyent/nodejs-advisory-board) but it seems to be too little too late for at least some of the people behind node-forward (I've read what seem like irreconcilable disagreements about how it should be run). I have no idea what (if anything) io.js is in relation to node-forward or if the same people are behind it. Can't find any announcements / endorsements on Twitter, so maybe it was just posted here before whoever is behind it were ready to go live.

scljstcwombat 12y ago
> Joyent, the current project stewards, have not been able to deliver a stable release in that time and don't share public plans / aren't communicating very much. They probably don't want to publicly call out one of the core committers whose promised work is lagging. Or admit that the previous project lead was a poor choice who let it stagnate (but yet is inexplicably in the "Joyent did a bad job" camp). What good would that do anyone, apart from satisfy our boundless curiosity?