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Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

clojure.org

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Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#41

Post by scott_s »

bphogan wrote: post #34
fogus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they'll have influence over you, wouldn't they? Only for the items relevant to the contract terms.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying. There's no terms at all in the donation-based giving, and yet people think they have influence. Contracts get renegotiated all the time. What would prevent Company XYZ from exerting pressure along the lines of "we want you to do [abc] or we're not renewing?" All I was originally saying was that I just feel he'll end up in the same situation. I'm not suggesting he can't sa…

I think the sense of entitlement from a donation is unbounded, since it was voluntary. People are usually more clear that a business transaction is thing x for money y.

If you're pointing out that people are acting irrationally, then, yes, they are. The difference is that we tend to treat "business transactions" different from other kinds - I think monetary donations are not seen as business transaction, so the expectations are different. See this excerpt from Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8923395...

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#43

Post by disponsible »

Tichy wrote: post #36
philjackson wrote: post #35

Why not accept donations with the explicit disclaimer that under no circumstances will Rich's development efforts be swayed?

I think human psychology just doesn't work that way.

Actually it may work. The only ones deterred by this notice would be those who donate to feel entitled, but not those who do it to show genuine appreciation for his work. And I doubt former kind even makes it to the donation form in the first place.

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#44

Post by scott_s »

disponsible wrote: post #43
Tichy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think human psychology just doesn't work that way.

Actually it may work. The only ones deterred by this notice would be those who donate to feel entitled, but not those who do it to show genuine appreciation for his work. And I doubt former kind even makes it to the donation form in the first place.

A feeling of entitlement does not work that way. People aren't that rational; they don't donate for the purpose of having a say in what happens. They probably donate for honorable reasons, but once something they want becomes an issue, they feel entitled because they donated.

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#45

Post by mark_l_watson »

Rich: I am sorry that you did this. Please add the PayPal donate button back onto clojure.org.

I never make large donations to open source projects, etc., but I give small $2 to $10 donations for things that I use. What this allows me to do is to contribute a modest $30 to $40 per year to projects that I use and not feel like a total freeloader.

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#46

Post by Waywocket »

zaph0d wrote: post #31
pmorrisonfl wrote: post #27

Wow, now I want to contribute anyway, as a token of respect... and I don't even use clojure!

Patches, bug reports are welcome :)

>Patches, bug reports are welcome :)

Well, not really. My biggest beef with clojure is that it masquerades as an open source project by strictly following the letter (it is released under an open source license), but not actually following the spirit in any meaningful way.

How many other OSS projects have an exhaustive list on their website of everyone who is allowed to make contributions?

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#47

Post by masterponomo »

From what I've seen, Rich does things to end controversies quickly rather than talk them to death. There was a religious war developing in the user group some time ago over licensing terms of products that were developed in Clojure. Rich didn't take a side, as I recall--he simply intervened after a few days and asked people not to carry on this discussion but to focus on technical issues. At least one heavyweight (Jon Harrop) seemed to disappear from the user group upon being asked to cut out the licensing jibber-jabber, but peace was restored.

Given Clojure/core potential earnings and the bigger bang for the buck of corporate sponsorships, requests for individual donations are not worth the ill-will that they apparently cause. I like his techniques for time management and choosing his battles carefully.

Onward with Clojure development!

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#48

Post by cemerick »

Waywocket wrote: post #46
zaph0d wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patches, bug reports are welcome :)

>Patches, bug reports are welcome :) Well, not really. My biggest beef with clojure is that it masquerades as an open source project by strictly following the letter (it is released under an open source license), but not actually following the spirit in any meaningful way. How many other OSS projects have an exhaustive list on their website of everyone who is allowed to make contributions?

> How many other OSS projects have an exhaustive list on their website of everyone who is allowed to make contributions?

That is a way of thanking contributors.

If the question is, "How many other OSS projects require filing a CA before patches will be accepted?", then the answer is "many". viz. Many run by Oracle now (e.g. http://openjdk.java.net/contribute/), all apache projects AFAIK (http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt), django (http://www.djangoproject.com/foundation/cla/faq/), etc. etc.

So...what "spirit" are you talking about here?

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#49

Post by huwigs »

masterponomo wrote: post #47

From what I've seen, Rich does things to end controversies quickly rather than talk them to death. There was a religious war developing in the user group some time ago over licensing terms of products that were developed in Clojure. Rich didn't take a side, as I recall--he simply intervened after a few days and asked people not to carry on this discussion but to focus on technical issues. At least one heavyweight (Jo…

As a longtime Lisp observer, I can't say that I've ever seen Jon Harrop conduct himself as a "heavyweight" in forums unrelated to OCaml, Mathematica, or F#.

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#50

Post by Waywocket »

cemerick wrote: post #48
Waywocket wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Patches, bug reports are welcome :) Well, not really. My biggest beef with clojure is that it masquerades as an open source project by strictly following the letter (it is released under an open source license), but not actually following the spirit in any meaningful way. How many other OSS projects have an exhaustive list on their website of everyone who is allowed to make contributions?

> How many other OSS projects have an exhaustive list on their website of everyone who is allowed to make contributions? That is a way of thanking contributors. If the question is, "How many other OSS projects require filing a CA before patches will be accepted?", then the answer is "many". viz. Many run by Oracle now (e.g. http://openjdk.java.net/contribute/ ), all apache projects AFAIK ( http://www.apache.org/licen…

Well let's see, the choice of license is a starting point. The EPL is, per se, a bad license (intentionally incompatible with the GPL and with the showstopping choice-of-venue clause), but it's ubiquitous in Java land so we'll let them off.

In case you hadn't noticed, Oracle is widely considered to be an enemy of open source, so pointing out similarities with their processes isn't hugely helpful. In fact, contributor agreements are reviled by a large segment of the open source community (see the fights that go on whenever this subject comes up on LWN, one of the less flame-infested pro-OSS sites). This example is a particularly bad CA because it is effectively a full grant. The only way it could be worse would be a total transfer of copyright.

Finally, unlike any other projects I'm aware of, Clojure requires the agreement to be printed out, signed, then snail mailed to a foreign country. There is no reason for this other than to deter potential contributors. I've accepted one CA in the past - after fixing a crash in a little-exercised part of Ogre3D I figured the change was so minor that they could own the copyright on it as far as I was concerned. Would I have submitted the fix if I had to post a letter to New York? Not bloody likely.

Other projects (Android is a notable example) are widely derided for this sort of approach to open source - why does Clojure get a free pass?

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