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Why reconcile? This is awesome competition. It involves open-source competitors. Today's gripes will soon be forgotten.
by ac360 12y ago
Why reconcile? This is awesome competition. It involves open-source competitors. Today's gripes will soon be forgotten.
- sagivo 12y agoit's open source, not commercial. there's no point for competition. it's better to join resources and create equilibrium. the industry will need standards which will cause one project to die (sooner or later) and we will loose all the talent and energy spent there.
- codyps 12y agoCompetitive pressure isn't just useful for commercial projects, it is also useful for open source projects.
- Demiurge 12y agoIt's not even uncommon to have projects compete inside a company, like linux vs osx for ios in the early days. And in-house or open source competition is much better than a typical commercial competition because the good parts from all sides can be reused, lessons learned. This is why I am against software patents, too.
- ac360 12y agoAwesome points :)
- ac360 12y agoThe joint resources/equilibrium broke down. That’s why the fork happened. It's a natural process. Open-source competition is critical and beautiful. This is a major function of Github and a big reason why it’s successful. Forget what the industry needs. Technology creates the industry. Now we're at the crossroads between the next great tech and the next great bureaucracy. Which side sounds cooler?
- couchand 12y agoYou just made my life sound way more awesome than it is.
- jballanc 12y agoOpen source competition can be good when the differences are primarily technical (e.g. GCC vs LLVM/Clang). When the differences are primarily political (e.g. GCC vs EGCS), then the competition serves only as a distraction. As a mostly-uninvolved outside observer, this competition seems more like the later than the former.
- ac360 12y agoPolitical competition is hugely important. Governance models are tech.
- jballanc 12y agoWhat? No. Political debates occur when everyone involved agrees that they're at "A" and they want to get to "B", but they disagree on the best path to take. A technical debate is when there is a fundamental disagreement about whether "B" or "C" is the better end goal. In the EGCS case, the goal of building a cross-platform compiler collection was clear, but the process of getting contributions accepted into the mainline had become increasingly onerous for a large number of (potential) contributors. With LLVM vs GCC, there's a fundamental difference of opinion regarding the importance of modularity of the compiler stack (LLVM) vs speed and efficiency of the generated code (GCC). In the case of node.js vs io.js, it seems to me that everyone still agrees they want an Ecma standards-compliant, evented JS runtime built upon V8 and libuv. If io.js had forked, say, because they wanted to rebase on JSCore or Rhino, then I could see the value in keeping both projects around. As it stands, if I am a developer, and I want to help build an Ecma standards-compliant, evented JS runtime built upon V8 and libuv...then where do I go? node.js? io.js? If that choice is made based on governance model, then we're enriching the world of governance models, not the world of tech.
- ac360 12y agoThe path is technical, the goal is technical. Teams are involved so both are also political. Most importantly, we should not spend any more of our precious time on this unnecessary distinction. Change is the only certainty. As a javascript developer I now have two options to help me through those changes. That makes me happy. Lastly, I love a good fight.
- fugyk 12y agoThis type of competition is not good as there will only be minor differences which will confuse others. They will not be viewed as two different environments but two version of same environment. Developers will not want their libraries to work only with io when they can make it work with node with a hack. This can create situation like unix/windows compatibility. And using same package manager worsens the situation.