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I've Just Liberated My Modules

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Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#211

Post by jonatanheyman »

steveklabnik wrote: post #87
gariany wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

> the trademark claim was ridiculous to begin with. npm's lawyers disagree with you, and they're lawyers. EDIT: cool HN, -2 for stating a fact. Sure, I don't disagree that this lawsuit is kind of silly, but npm's laywers don't think this suit is _frivolous_, which is what matters.

There's a huge different between an actual lawsuit and the threat of a lawsuit. Kik's lawyers were being bullies, and NPM caved in, instead of standing up for one of their users who seem to have contributed a lot to the community.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#212

Post by Klathmon »

ploxiln wrote: post #184
Klathmon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying that everything should be a module, but that well designed, well tested bits of code should be modules. These 17 lines had 100% test coverage and were used by a stupidly large amount of people (read: battle tested), why not use it? As is pointed out elsewhere in this thread, echo.c is roughly the same size, does that mean it's not a worthy program?

"echo" is not versioned and delivered on its own. It's part of gnu coreutils (which contains ~ 100 utilities), or part of various BSD core distributions (more than 100 utilities, plus the kernel and libc), and also built-in to shells.

IMO that doesn't change anything.

The fact that in JS land it would be it's a standalone module means you get more choice in what you need (no need to pull down 100 programs if you only need 1 or 2).

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#213

Post by artursapek »

guelo wrote: post #126
bentlegen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're npm: https://twitter.com/seldo/status/712414400808755200

So left-pad is too important to be removed but Kik isn't? What if the author had originally called left-pad Kik? Why is it ok for the Kik trademark holder to break thousands of builds but not the module author?

That's a good point. Very inconsistent behavior by NPM here.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#214

Post by bluefox »

guelo wrote: post #126
bentlegen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're npm: https://twitter.com/seldo/status/712414400808755200

So left-pad is too important to be removed but Kik isn't? What if the author had originally called left-pad Kik? Why is it ok for the Kik trademark holder to break thousands of builds but not the module author?

This is a very good question. I was going to make the argument that the author merely continued what NPM Inc. started, and that if you fault him, you should also fault NPM Inc., but then I noticed that NPM Inc. didn't unpublish his module, but transfered the name to another account, which is much worse, if you think about it.

The ultimate conclusion is that if it's anyone's fault, it is the fault of the person who relies on NPM Inc. when building his software.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#215

Post by chvid »

I really just hope that this guy just didn't know what he was doing and what effect it would have.

Otherwise it is totally irresponsible to mess up a big project like babel just because you control a few lines of trivial code.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#216

Post by [deleted] »

jahewson wrote: post #192
nordsieck wrote: post #157

One interesting thing to me, is that it is pretty clear that the kik lawyers pretty dramatically over enforced their trademark. For those who don't know, the purpose of trademarks is to prevent customer confusion; essentially we don't want people to be able to sell cheap knock-offs of someone else's thing without the general public being able to easily distinguish between them. In practical terms, trademarks are "sco…

Yep, I was going to say the same thing. As you say we can look up the US trademarks [1, 2] and see that this mark covers: Computer software for use with mobile phones and portable computing devices to: - download audio, video, digital photos and programs; - electronic payment systems, namely, a computer application software used for processing electronic payments to and from others; - computer software for use with m…

[deleted]

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#217

Post by maxaf »

akkartik wrote: post #111
cballard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example: http://www.scs.stanford.edu/histar/src/pkg/echo/echo.c

Erm, that's not a very good example. You're pointing out some ancient source file from back when unix had no package management. These days echo.c is part of coreutils, a large package which is economic to manage dependencies for at scale. It's interesting to think about the distinction between promiscuous dependencies (as pioneered by Gemfile) and the Unix way. I like the latter and loathe the former, but maybe I'm…

The main point in support of your argument is the fact that Unix utils are bundled in larger packages instead of shipping in single-command packages. Think of Fileutils, Shellutils, and Textutils... which got combined to form Coreutils! Ha! That leaves only Diffutils, for the time being anyway.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#218

Post by honua »

noobermin wrote: post #143
felixrieseberg wrote: post #21

Azer 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…

Ironically, this demonstrates the same realization that he had, that when you depend on someone's modules, it is their "private land" too, and when they want to do something rash, they can do it and you will suffer consequences, unexpected and possibly undeserved. It's the same issue we all experience, trusting people and institutions and finding out that that sometimes that trust can be violated.

> Ironically, this demonstrates the same realization that he had, that when you depend on someone's modules, it is their "private land" too, and when they want to do something rash, they can do it and you will suffer consequences, unexpected and possibly undeserved.

Best comment in this thread.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#219

Post by tobltobs »

Even if those trademarks would include a tool like kik, it is completely brainwashed to enable trademarks for three letter words and enforcing them on software packages names.

What are we supposed to type for package names in 10 years. 'abshwjais_kik', or will it be hipster to use unicode like in 'κικ'.

Re: I've Just Liberated My Modules

#220

Post by chvid »

vespakoen wrote: post #114
rybosome wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost, but the existing code only pads when the str length is less than that of len.

Ahh you are right, all makes sense now, thanks!

You need to go something like:

  module.exports = function leftpad (str, len, ch) { return Array(Math.max(0, len - String(str).length)).join(ch || ' ') + String(str); };
Unfortunately we need to wrap str twice so maybe a one-liner is not quite in place.
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