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Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

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Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#21

Post by Chickencha »

This is the nature of free software and a big part of why free software is great. Sometimes a maintainer can no longer work on a project for a variety of reasons. A free license makes it pretty easy for someone to fork the project and take over development.

It would be nice if John Gruber opened up the contribution process or officially handed off development to someone else, but he's under no obligation to do so. We're not paying him. He probably started Markdown for his own purposes and was kind enough to release it under a free license. It's totally fine if he doesn't want to continue work on it, because I can easily take his code, check it into GitHub, and start my own fork.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#22

Post by andrewcooke »

billpg wrote: post #18
andrewcooke wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some people hit return when the text is nearing the end of the input box. as in this text, which has "return" after "end of".

(Edit: I think I was a bit rash in this message, stemming from my sense of sheer disbelief. While I stand by my overall point, I would like to apologize for my tone.) Really? I can't recall the last time I saw a multi-line text box that didn't word-wrap. That may have made sense back in the day when TEXTAREA form elements didn't wrap and there was no way to switch the wrapping on, but its been over 10 years since tha…

dude, i'm telling you what people do.

perhaps your problem is confusing people with computers?

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#23

Post by billpg »

andrewcooke wrote: post #22
billpg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Edit: I think I was a bit rash in this message, stemming from my sense of sheer disbelief. While I stand by my overall point, I would like to apologize for my tone.) Really? I can't recall the last time I saw a multi-line text box that didn't word-wrap. That may have made sense back in the day when TEXTAREA form elements didn't wrap and there was no way to switch the wrapping on, but its been over 10 years since tha…

dude, i'm telling you what people do. perhaps your problem is confusing people with computers?

Fair enough. My point would be that if people are still doing that, they don't have to anymore.

Also, my earlier response was written a little rashly, stemming for my sense of sheer disbelief. While I stand by my overall point, I'd like to apologise for my tone.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#24

Post by billpg »

lutorm wrote: post #12
billpg wrote: post #3

"Item #3, the conversion of returns to linebreaks, is somewhat more debatable. I'm on the fence on that one, but I do believe it's significant enough to warrant an explicit choice either way." Really? Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break? "Oh no, I kept hitting Enter between words instead of using the space-bar! If only pressing Enter was interpreted as a…

Yes, I have. When you hit alt-q in emacs, you do, too. It goes with the theme of "making it look like you write ascii files". Have you never tried to read an ascii file that's written without line breaks in an xterm? When programming, do you never cut lines with enter except after the semicolon either?

When writing code, I hit enter to add a line-break in order to make the code look nice. I would consider it a bad thing if next time someone looked at the code, those line-breaks were removed and changed to spaces, even if the code was technically equivalent.

Compilers (except maybe Python) don't care about layout.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#26

Post by andreyf »

ElliotH wrote: post #2

Not to be too harsh on Jeff Atwood - as he has decades more experience than myself. But does anyone else feel that this blog post is a bit out of line? In short when John Gruber gives the code out under a BSD thatis a gift to whoever wants to use it - and it gives them near-complete freedom to use Markdown however they like. I don't see why on top of this gift he is in any way obliged to provide 'leadership' or 'dire…

Not harsh at all. IMO, the kind of attitude that equates the responsibility to maintain your open source projects to the parenting of a child is one thing which scares people from contributing to the open source community.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#27

Post by apinstein »

ElliotH wrote: post #2

Not to be too harsh on Jeff Atwood - as he has decades more experience than myself. But does anyone else feel that this blog post is a bit out of line? In short when John Gruber gives the code out under a BSD thatis a gift to whoever wants to use it - and it gives them near-complete freedom to use Markdown however they like. I don't see why on top of this gift he is in any way obliged to provide 'leadership' or 'dire…

I agree. I don't see why Jeff didn't just start a GitHub project himself as a new starting point for the community.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#28

Post by michael_dorfman »

lutorm wrote: post #13
michael_dorfman wrote: post #6

I don't understand why the term "fork" didn't appear in Atwood's article. It's the simplest solution to his problem.

It did appear.

Only in a quoted passage, and Atwood didn't engage with that portion of the quote.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#29

Post by algorias »

ElliotH wrote: post #2

Not to be too harsh on Jeff Atwood - as he has decades more experience than myself. But does anyone else feel that this blog post is a bit out of line? In short when John Gruber gives the code out under a BSD thatis a gift to whoever wants to use it - and it gives them near-complete freedom to use Markdown however they like. I don't see why on top of this gift he is in any way obliged to provide 'leadership' or 'dire…

When you release code, there's an implicit commitment of improving and maintaining it, or at least finding someone who will when you can't anymore, unless you say otherwise from the start.

The attention and effort others invest in your project needs to be respected. You do have an ethical obligation to follow through on the project, at least in my view.

Feeling no obligation towards your user base just because one of the price dimensions (money) happens to be 0 is an irresponsible attitude.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#30

Post by ihumanable »

The idea that since markdown hasn't done anything in years its somehow being stewarded improperly is a bit foolish. Look at Gruber's vision statement, he wanted to make an easy-to-read easy-to-write markup.

He did it, it is done, it's called markdown. If Atwood had his way Gruber would have spent the last 4 years filling it up with features and today we would be reading a post about how Markdown went from slim and sleek to fat and bloated.

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