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SleepyHead Project Is Shutting Down

jedimark.net

51–55 of 55 posts

Re: SleepyHead Project Is Shutting Down

#51
post #13

> If there is one tiny bit of hard learned advice I can leave behind from all this, it would be: Friends don’t let friends release full blown complex applications under the GPL – Keep it for hacks or corporate backed stuff. Anyone know what the story is behind this? Is it that GPL is hard to monetize?

If you read the other posts in this discussion, with links to the forum discussions, it appears that he thinks people having access to the source of the program without him as a gatekeeper and sole steward is a mistake, and allowed people to steal his work by forking the project when he was perceived to be out of communication for months on end.

Looking at the whole situation from the outside... yeah.

In my experience there's only one reasonable way to deal with "friendly" forks like that. Meet up with the folks who forked the project, thank them for their work and ask if they're interested in reunifying the codebase and joining the two teams.

And if that fails, you switch to "Okay I respect this is GPL/BSD/xyz'd OSS, you have a right to fork the code. But can you please name it something else so people aren't confused? And do you mind if I cherrypick some of your cool features and fixes back into mainline?"

Maybe I'm just turning into an old pacifist, but I just don't see the point of stoking hatred and arguments in an open community.

Re: SleepyHead Project Is Shutting Down

#53
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The code is GPLed[1]. It sounds like there were other people willing to contribute. The code goes on, without him. That's not how it works - other people are free to fork the code , but the trademark is owned by the original author. This is one of the reasons why open source foundations exist - they hold the trademark and decide on how it can be used. For instance, CNCF or Apache Foundation holds the trademark for…

If he's giving up and abandoning it, then the trademark won't continue to belong to him. > Trademarks rights must be maintained through actual lawful use of the trademark. These rights will cease if a mark is not actively used for a period of time, normally 5 years in most jurisdictions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Maintaining_rights

actively used != actively developed

Re: SleepyHead Project Is Shutting Down

#54
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the other posts in this discussion, with links to the forum discussions, it appears that he thinks people having access to the source of the program without him as a gatekeeper and sole steward is a mistake, and allowed people to steal his work by forking the project when he was perceived to be out of communication for months on end.

Looking at the whole situation from the outside... yeah. In my experience there's only one reasonable way to deal with "friendly" forks like that. Meet up with the folks who forked the project, thank them for their work and ask if they're interested in reunifying the codebase and joining the two teams. And if that fails, you switch to "Okay I respect this is GPL/BSD/xyz'd OSS, you have a right to fork the code. But c…

yes, but if you read those fourm threads, the author unfortunately has absolutely no inclination to reconcile. Shame for this project, it seems to be of tangible benefit to people with this disorder.

Re: SleepyHead Project Is Shutting Down

#55
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the whole situation from the outside... yeah. In my experience there's only one reasonable way to deal with "friendly" forks like that. Meet up with the folks who forked the project, thank them for their work and ask if they're interested in reunifying the codebase and joining the two teams. And if that fails, you switch to "Okay I respect this is GPL/BSD/xyz'd OSS, you have a right to fork the code. But c…

yes, but if you read those fourm threads, the author unfortunately has absolutely no inclination to reconcile. Shame for this project, it seems to be of tangible benefit to people with this disorder.

True enough -- but if a friendly fork is impossible and he's given up... I'd consider that fair game for a less-friendly fork provided the licence allowed it.

I know a few folks who use CPAP machines and would likely contribute to such an endeavour.

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