8 ms·

Arduino-Org: “Rename this fork and use less confusing versioning”

jkot 12y ago
Most open-source licenses have a clause to prevent forks with the same name. It is in fact against GPL and Apache license to fork project under its original name.
- feld 12y ago
  [citation needed] The Apache license has a Trademarks clause. But if the software name isn't Trademarked... The GPLv2 doesn't cover forking, software name, or trademark. Go ahead and search it. Nagios is the only software I can think of that has a clause that prevents you from forking it, with or without the same name. http://assets.nagios.com/licenses/nagios_open_software_license.txt http://assets.nagios.com/licenses/nagios_open_software_licen...
  - jkot 12y ago
    Apache v2 6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file. I did not found gpl clause
- lukaslalinsky 12y ago
  A part of the story is that each company has the name "Arduino" trademarked in some countries.
SEJeff 12y ago
Another decent writeup: http://readwrite.com/2015/03/18/arduino-open-source-schism http://readwrite.com/2015/03/18/arduino-open-source-schism
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
abstractbeliefs 12y ago
There's more info, including backstory, here: http://hackaday.com/2015/04/06/arduino-ide-forked/ http://hackaday.com/2015/04/06/arduino-ide-forked/
hoopism 12y ago
This has been a fascinating story. As someone who has been an arduino user/fan for years I knew very little of what was going on till Hackaday started covering it. The 1 minute primer: "In short, there are two companies calling themselves “Arduino” at the moment. One, Arduino LLC was founded by [Massimo Banzi], [David Cuartielles], [David Mellis], [Tom Igoe] and [Gianluca Martino] in 2009, runs the website arduino.cc, and has been directing and releasing the code that makes it all work. Most of these folks had been working together on what would become the Arduino project since as early as 2005. The other “Arduino” used to be called Smart Projects and was the manufacturing arm of the project founded and run by [Gianluca Martino]. Smart Projects changed their name to Arduino SRL in November 2014. (A “Società a responsabilità limitata” is one form of Italian limited-liability company.) They have been a major producer of Arduino boards from the very beginning and recently registered the domain arduino.org." Read more at HAD (http://hackaday.com/2015/03/12/arduino-v-arduino-part-ii/ http://hackaday.com/2015/03/12/arduino-v-arduino-part-ii/) For background (before the recent turmoil) there is a documentary about arduino. https://vimeo.com/18539129 https://vimeo.com/18539129
- ihsw 12y ago
  How was this allowed to happen? It's like Dell renaming itself to "Microsoft SRL" and then selling "Windows 9000" to beat MS on the version number train. Am I incorrect in my observation? Was Arduino supposed to be an open name that anyone can adopt, a la Unix and all the varieties that are derived from that name (HPUX, Linux, BSD Unix, UnixWare, Unix System V, etc)?
  - abstractbeliefs 12y ago
    When Arduino got popular, the original team of five spun off a manufacturing company, Smart Projects, to handle the manufacturing and distribution tedium, with 4 of the 5 partners staying in the Development arm. When push came to shove and the development side wanted to make the manufacturing non-exclusive, Smart Projects beat them to the legal punch and registered the trademark before the development team did, forked and uprevved what they could, and cut off the income from sales going back to the dev team.
timdaub 12y ago
I find the title of this submission slightly misleading, as I thought that there can't be something like a hostile fork. FYI: The title has been updated, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9334255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9334255
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- abstractbeliefs 12y ago
  Forking these days is mainly friendly because of the ecosystem that Git has fostered, but until relatively recently, forking was generally hostile, to force development to move in a certain direction away from the original intent. In this case, Arduino SRL (formerly Smart Projects, the arduino manufacturing spinoff) has forked the IDE, and significantly up-revved the version number to try and get people to move away from the original team's IDE. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development)
  - amyjess 12y ago
    Hmm... I'm trying to think of any non-hostile forks that existed before the GitHub era. Only one I can think of off the top of my head is egcs forking off gcc so devs have a place to put their experimental branches.
    - spb 12y ago
      ffmpeg and libav - maybe not "before" the GitHub era, but outside it.
    - mcguire 12y ago
      Technically, that was one of the more hostile forks; EGCS developers were very unhappy that gcc wasn't moving fast enough and in the direction they wanted. They put their code where their mouths were. The only significant, more-hostile fork that I know of is Emacs/XEmacs. I can't think of any project names at the moment, but I believe that most of the pre-Github "hostile" "forks" were due to a package being abandoned.
kls 12y ago
When I started tinkering with microcontroller, I looked at a lot of the projects like Arduino. In the end, I decided to just get some PIC chips and a breadboard and learn it from the ground up. One of the reasons that I did so was because I thought long and hard about what happens if one of these open source hardware projects get's into the same issues as many software projects get into. I did end up picking up an Arduino board to play with later on, but I am really glad that I learned hardware at a lower level than the prepackaged boards, that way I am not tied to the power struggles of the hardware manufacturers. As a side note, I also found that designing the hardware portion is as rewarding or in some cases more rewarding than the final solution that the hardware will be used for.
- vixen99 12y ago
  get's ?
- washadjeffmad 12y ago
  Nice. If you (and anyone else reading) still have any project schematics or notes you can share, it'd be an awesome reminder of and complement to the spirit behind these hardware projects.
  - andyjpb 12y ago
    http://tuxgraphics.org/ http://tuxgraphics.org/
geofft 12y ago
That barrage of thumbs-ups is making me worry about the day when one of my projects gets significant attention on GitHub. Doesn't each one send an email to the project owner and everyone who's commented on the issue? Are we back in the days of AOL-style "Me too!"? How many of them are from this HN link?
- abstractbeliefs 12y ago
  You can opt-out of notifications from a particular issue with the "Unsubscribe" button. Based on the timestamps, it can also be observed that only a couple of posts have been added since this submission. (There was about 20 before submission).
- masklinn 12y ago
  > Doesn't each one send an email to the project owner and everyone who's commented on the issue? By default yes. It's possible to unsubscribe from a thread, and only send emails for threads in which you've participated. Depending on your workflow, the latter can be a boon to your inbox. > Are we back in the days of AOL-style "Me too!"? We've never left it.
pierrec 12y ago
This is only meta, but something needs to be done to prevent Github threads from getting flooded by useless replies as soon as they gain some popularity. And there is far worse than this one - some will have you scrolling through an avalanche of meme gifs. I know that these "+1" aren't entirely useless in that they show support - but people can show support by other means, and on other websites (for example, by simply upvoting the HN submission). This just plagues any possible discussion and turns the whole thing into a circus. Of course, any form of moderation will make people complain even more, so I can understand why nothing has been done yet. Edit: Maybe a feature to fold nonconstructive comments would be a partial solution at least. In cases like this, they can even be automatically detected.
- masklinn 12y ago
  > I know that these "+1" aren't entirely useless in that they show support - but people can show support by other means, and on other websites (for example, by simply upvoting the HN submission). That's not linked to or visible from Github, and assumes the repository owner watches HN or reddit or what have you. Other systems have ways to simply note that you're affected by an issue without having to spam it, but Github has nothing for that: subscriptions to a bug thread are (AFAIK) not available to the repository owner, and there's no "+1" button, the only way to show interest or that you're affected is a bump comment. Which admittedly isn't nice, but how else is the repository owner going to know this issue affects more than just one person living in a cave on a lost island in the middle of the pacific? Issues are not treated based solely on their "popularity" or on the number of people they affect, but that's an important signal when prioritising. > Maybe a feature to fold nonconstructive comments would be the solution - but how to determine which ones are nonconstructive? Repository owners can remove comments, FWIW. Of course unless they also lock the thread that will most likely lead to an avalanche of now outraged claims of censorship.
- fixxer 12y ago
  I think the point is to apply social pressure. I agree that it can be obnoxious, but I would argue that is part of the social contract one makes with public repositories. It can also be managed on the recipient's side as well (email settings & filters).
frik 12y ago
Confused. https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/ https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/ ... real Arduino https://github.com/arduino-org/Arduino/ https://github.com/arduino-org/Arduino/ ... unknown fork? Beside that Arduino IDE was itself forked from the Processing IDE. It's a very basic IDE, with basic syntax highlighting and just 4-5 toolbar buttons. I would prefer e.g. IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition for Arduino and RPi development. edit: the headline has been updated; and I found an article about the background: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fmake%2Fmeldung%2FArduino-gegen-Arduino-Gruender-streiten-um-die-Firma-2549653.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
- abstractbeliefs 12y ago
  arduino/arduino is the legit software from the majority of the arduino team. arduino-org/arduino is a hostile fork from 1 of the 5 original founders who was put in charge of the manufacturing spinoff, as a result of the other 4 members expressing a desire to end the exclusive manufacturing contract.
soyiuz 12y ago
Dilute instead of trying suppress. 1. Make additional forks that are similar in name to the rogue fork to dilute. 2. Rename the original branch to branch-official or branch-llc which should be distinctive enough to keep it above the fray.

jkot 12y ago

Most open-source licenses have a clause to prevent forks with the same name. It is in fact against GPL and Apache license to fork project under its original name.

feld 12y ago
[citation needed] The Apache license has a Trademarks clause. But if the software name isn't Trademarked... The GPLv2 doesn't cover forking, software name, or trademark. Go ahead and search it. Nagios is the only software I can think of that has a clause that prevents you from forking it, with or without the same name. http://assets.nagios.com/licenses/nagios_open_software_license.txt http://assets.nagios.com/licenses/nagios_open_software_licen...
- jkot 12y ago
  Apache v2 6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file. I did not found gpl clause
lukaslalinsky 12y ago
A part of the story is that each company has the name "Arduino" trademarked in some countries.

SEJeff 12y ago

Another decent writeup: http://readwrite.com/2015/03/18/arduino-open-source-schism http://readwrite.com/2015/03/18/arduino-open-source-schism

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

abstractbeliefs 12y ago

There's more info, including backstory, here: http://hackaday.com/2015/04/06/arduino-ide-forked/ http://hackaday.com/2015/04/06/arduino-ide-forked/

hoopism 12y ago

This has been a fascinating story. As someone who has been an arduino user/fan for years I knew very little of what was going on till Hackaday started covering it. The 1 minute primer: "In short, there are two companies calling themselves “Arduino” at the moment. One, Arduino LLC was founded by [Massimo Banzi], [David Cuartielles], [David Mellis], [Tom Igoe] and [Gianluca Martino] in 2009, runs the website arduino.cc, and has been directing and releasing the code that makes it all work. Most of these folks had been working together on what would become the Arduino project since as early as 2005. The other “Arduino” used to be called Smart Projects and was the manufacturing arm of the project founded and run by [Gianluca Martino]. Smart Projects changed their name to Arduino SRL in November 2014. (A “Società a responsabilità limitata” is one form of Italian limited-liability company.) They have been a major producer of Arduino boards from the very beginning and recently registered the domain arduino.org." Read more at HAD (http://hackaday.com/2015/03/12/arduino-v-arduino-part-ii/ http://hackaday.com/2015/03/12/arduino-v-arduino-part-ii/) For background (before the recent turmoil) there is a documentary about arduino. https://vimeo.com/18539129 https://vimeo.com/18539129

ihsw 12y ago
How was this allowed to happen? It's like Dell renaming itself to "Microsoft SRL" and then selling "Windows 9000" to beat MS on the version number train. Am I incorrect in my observation? Was Arduino supposed to be an open name that anyone can adopt, a la Unix and all the varieties that are derived from that name (HPUX, Linux, BSD Unix, UnixWare, Unix System V, etc)?
- abstractbeliefs 12y ago
  When Arduino got popular, the original team of five spun off a manufacturing company, Smart Projects, to handle the manufacturing and distribution tedium, with 4 of the 5 partners staying in the Development arm. When push came to shove and the development side wanted to make the manufacturing non-exclusive, Smart Projects beat them to the legal punch and registered the trademark before the development team did, forked and uprevved what they could, and cut off the income from sales going back to the dev team.

timdaub 12y ago

I find the title of this submission slightly misleading, as I thought that there can't be something like a hostile fork. FYI: The title has been updated, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9334255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9334255

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
abstractbeliefs 12y ago
Forking these days is mainly friendly because of the ecosystem that Git has fostered, but until relatively recently, forking was generally hostile, to force development to move in a certain direction away from the original intent. In this case, Arduino SRL (formerly Smart Projects, the arduino manufacturing spinoff) has forked the IDE, and significantly up-revved the version number to try and get people to move away from the original team's IDE. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development)
- amyjess 12y ago
  Hmm... I'm trying to think of any non-hostile forks that existed before the GitHub era. Only one I can think of off the top of my head is egcs forking off gcc so devs have a place to put their experimental branches.
  - spb 12y ago
    ffmpeg and libav - maybe not "before" the GitHub era, but outside it.
  - mcguire 12y ago
    Technically, that was one of the more hostile forks; EGCS developers were very unhappy that gcc wasn't moving fast enough and in the direction they wanted. They put their code where their mouths were. The only significant, more-hostile fork that I know of is Emacs/XEmacs. I can't think of any project names at the moment, but I believe that most of the pre-Github "hostile" "forks" were due to a package being abandoned.

kls 12y ago

When I started tinkering with microcontroller, I looked at a lot of the projects like Arduino. In the end, I decided to just get some PIC chips and a breadboard and learn it from the ground up. One of the reasons that I did so was because I thought long and hard about what happens if one of these open source hardware projects get's into the same issues as many software projects get into. I did end up picking up an Arduino board to play with later on, but I am really glad that I learned hardware at a lower level than the prepackaged boards, that way I am not tied to the power struggles of the hardware manufacturers. As a side note, I also found that designing the hardware portion is as rewarding or in some cases more rewarding than the final solution that the hardware will be used for.

vixen99 12y ago
get's ?
washadjeffmad 12y ago
Nice. If you (and anyone else reading) still have any project schematics or notes you can share, it'd be an awesome reminder of and complement to the spirit behind these hardware projects.
- andyjpb 12y ago
  http://tuxgraphics.org/ http://tuxgraphics.org/

geofft 12y ago

That barrage of thumbs-ups is making me worry about the day when one of my projects gets significant attention on GitHub. Doesn't each one send an email to the project owner and everyone who's commented on the issue? Are we back in the days of AOL-style "Me too!"? How many of them are from this HN link?

abstractbeliefs 12y ago
You can opt-out of notifications from a particular issue with the "Unsubscribe" button. Based on the timestamps, it can also be observed that only a couple of posts have been added since this submission. (There was about 20 before submission).
masklinn 12y ago
> Doesn't each one send an email to the project owner and everyone who's commented on the issue? By default yes. It's possible to unsubscribe from a thread, and only send emails for threads in which you've participated. Depending on your workflow, the latter can be a boon to your inbox. > Are we back in the days of AOL-style "Me too!"? We've never left it.

pierrec 12y ago

This is only meta, but something needs to be done to prevent Github threads from getting flooded by useless replies as soon as they gain some popularity. And there is far worse than this one - some will have you scrolling through an avalanche of meme gifs. I know that these "+1" aren't entirely useless in that they show support - but people can show support by other means, and on other websites (for example, by simply upvoting the HN submission). This just plagues any possible discussion and turns the whole thing into a circus. Of course, any form of moderation will make people complain even more, so I can understand why nothing has been done yet. Edit: Maybe a feature to fold nonconstructive comments would be a partial solution at least. In cases like this, they can even be automatically detected.

masklinn 12y ago
> I know that these "+1" aren't entirely useless in that they show support - but people can show support by other means, and on other websites (for example, by simply upvoting the HN submission). That's not linked to or visible from Github, and assumes the repository owner watches HN or reddit or what have you. Other systems have ways to simply note that you're affected by an issue without having to spam it, but Github has nothing for that: subscriptions to a bug thread are (AFAIK) not available to the repository owner, and there's no "+1" button, the only way to show interest or that you're affected is a bump comment. Which admittedly isn't nice, but how else is the repository owner going to know this issue affects more than just one person living in a cave on a lost island in the middle of the pacific? Issues are not treated based solely on their "popularity" or on the number of people they affect, but that's an important signal when prioritising. > Maybe a feature to fold nonconstructive comments would be the solution - but how to determine which ones are nonconstructive? Repository owners can remove comments, FWIW. Of course unless they also lock the thread that will most likely lead to an avalanche of now outraged claims of censorship.
fixxer 12y ago
I think the point is to apply social pressure. I agree that it can be obnoxious, but I would argue that is part of the social contract one makes with public repositories. It can also be managed on the recipient's side as well (email settings & filters).

frik 12y ago

Confused. https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/ https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/ ... real Arduino https://github.com/arduino-org/Arduino/ https://github.com/arduino-org/Arduino/ ... unknown fork? Beside that Arduino IDE was itself forked from the Processing IDE. It's a very basic IDE, with basic syntax highlighting and just 4-5 toolbar buttons. I would prefer e.g. IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition for Arduino and RPi development. edit: the headline has been updated; and I found an article about the background: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fmake%2Fmeldung%2FArduino-gegen-Arduino-Gruender-streiten-um-die-Firma-2549653.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

abstractbeliefs 12y ago
arduino/arduino is the legit software from the majority of the arduino team. arduino-org/arduino is a hostile fork from 1 of the 5 original founders who was put in charge of the manufacturing spinoff, as a result of the other 4 members expressing a desire to end the exclusive manufacturing contract.

soyiuz 12y ago

Dilute instead of trying suppress. 1. Make additional forks that are similar in name to the rogue fork to dilute. 2. Rename the original branch to branch-official or branch-llc which should be distinctive enough to keep it above the fray.