Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking an idea to the logical extreme is an effective means of invalidating said idea. How many UNIX utilities are 17 silly lines long? A bit of code duplication would go a long way towards bringing sanity to JS land.
Quite a bit are pretty small.
I've Just Liberated My Modules
71–80 of 827 posts
Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules
#72Azer has contributed awesome modules to the community, but such a move _obviously_ messes with a bunch of people who previously didn't trust npm, but Azer. Npm works fine. There might be issues with it, but the reason builds are failing right now is that he decided to unpublish all of them - in a move that feels very kneejerky, despite him claiming that it's the opposite. If this had been actually in the interest of…
And we wouldn't be talking about it.
If that was his goal, to make noise, then that was a pretty "destructive" way to spark a discussion.
Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules
#73Update: NPM takes "unprecidented action [...] given the severity and widespread nature of the breakage" and un-un-publishes left-pad https://twitter.com/seldo/status/712414400808755200
This is incredible. They screwed the author about ownership once and then they did exactly the same thing again.
Writing a 15 line function shouldn't grant someone the right to break an entire language ecosystem
I think the real issue though here is technical - does npm really allow mutation of published assets like this? That's a shitty situation that can only lead to unreliable builds
Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules
#74This is a surprisingly effective protest action. It got the attention of an incredible number of people very quickly, and the damage is mostly limited to wasting the time of a bunch of build cops. I don't have much of an opinion on his actual reasons for protesting, but I do think it was a pretty cool protest.
EDIT: For those with a short attention span, the first paragraph is a drastic metaphor, the second is making my point. If a kid does not get cookies at home it can shoot all its classmates. Lots of media coverage, the kid will get "the attention of an incredible number of people very quickly". NO. For me, publishing code under a FOSS-license means giving back to the community. Anyone who then decides to cause collate…
You must be really fun to be around.
Really, comparing this to mass murder, well done. It's more like he had a bunch of toys, someone stamped on one of them and he took the rest home with him whilst the other kids are still playing with them.
These are his repositories which he created, he is welcome to remove the code, and others are more than welcome to rehost (as they require).
If you are depending on npm (or any other build tool such as composer, whatever) or on Github, you really need to have a backup plan when the shit hits the fan.
Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules
#75Seriously? "When I started coding Kik, didn’t know there is a company with same name. And I didn’t want to let a company force me to change the name of it. After I refused them, they reached NPM’s support emphasizing their lawyer power in every single e-mail CC’ing me. I was hoping that NPM would protect me, because I always believed that NPM is a nice organization." a) Ignorance is no excuse. b) Expecting others to…
There are no legal claims to be made over NPM package names. NPM has a policy for assigning names and third party attorneys don't get a say. Are you serious? >Seriously
What is the legal basis for the claim that NPM package names are somehow exempt from trademark and other law?
Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules
#76So what keeps Kik from going after Github?
Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules
#77I think it's amusing to see this from the perspective of the company. Some guy uses your trademark without your permission so you tell him to knock it off. He refuses, so you go around him, and so he protests... by fucking over all of his users. In a dispute that doesn't involve them. And people are celebrating this.
Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm using npm / browserify etc in anger for the first time today. This is a horrible issue to have run into and it's left a pretty sour taste. The fact that it's possible for someone to unpublish 17 lines of js and break the install of major bits of infrastructure for everybody is pretty insane. It seems like at a minimum the dependency tree should be traversed to see what the flow on effect will be. Should it even b…
Should one not be able to unpublish? What if there's a bug in a released version, and it's going to take a while to fix? Or what if you simply no longer wish to be associated with the organization anymore?
I don't think it's relevant - if there are other libraries depending on it, the code probably needs to stay. Maybe there's a bug but it's been worked around. The library has been up long enough for others to depend on it and publish their own code using it.
You could have a "soft" unpublish so the module is still available for any libraries that depend on that specific version but it won't be picked up in the "greater than" version case.
In terms of the owner wanting to have it taken down, there should probably be a licence flag that hands control over to the host so at the very least an audit can be carried out before removal.
EDIT some discussion rather than downvotes would be nice. In this case we have a library with a totally permissive license, used by screeds of other libraries, with 2.4M downloads a month. The pragmatist in me says that there should be some mechanism by which pushing a button shouldn't screw up everyone's day. Let's discuss potential solutions.
Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how it works. You can't publish left-pad 0.0.3 again.
Unless you're npm: https://twitter.com/seldo/status/712414400808755200
ooh gosh, they should really do something like ban new projects from using those names until they figure out a better solution, hopefully with the module author.
Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules
#80Not sure I follow this completely... You start a project with the same name as a company, which owns the registered brand and are surprised when some 3rd party complies with legal suggestions to make an adjustment? Seems kind of silly to expect that NPM would want to fight for your project name when you didn't seem to do your own due diligence when picking a name. Also, a bit backwards to go remove all your modules a…
a) from what I understand, his project was there first.
b) NPM shouldn't have to fight it unless they are requested to, the trademark claim was ridiculous to begin with. Regardless of the claim, enforcing it would have taken years... I'm not saying NPM shouldn't have comply with the request and rename the package but definitely could/should have handled this better.
c) the guy wrote: "NPM is no longer a place that I’ll share my open source work at, so, I’ve just unpublished all my modules." I think it's pretty clear why we pull all of his modules.