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Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

clojure.org

61–70 of 77 posts

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you object to a variety of particulars that you just happen to disagree with. A fair bit shy of falling short of some kind of essential "spirit". The OpenJDK CA process was put in place a long time ago by Sun, generally well-liked in open source circles last I knew. And I guess you've got the same problems with all of Apache, for example (which, BTW, requires a signed copy of their CA to be faxed, at a mi…

>The OpenJDK CA process was put in place a long time ago by Sun, generally well-liked in open source circles last I knew. Sun was never well liked outside of the Jave gated community. They - and their CA process - were used several times as examples in articles and presentations on 'how not to do open source' (eg. http://lwn.net/Articles/370157/ - 'How to destroy your community'). >And I guess you've got the same pro…

Re: "other example" - SQLite is a pretty good example of an OpenSource (Hell, public domain) project requiring a CA: http://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

And, if you work for a company, they, too require a snail mail copyright release.

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#63
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really true though? If Company XYZ is your biggest support contract, they'll have influence over you, wouldn't they?

I assume Rich is selling exactly this. Company XYZ wants $hard_to_implement_feature. Company gives Rich money specifically so he'll implement $hard_to_implement_feature, and then they get $hard_to_implement_feature. An example of this was my department wanted a certain feature in the Moose library, so we offered to pay one of the developers to write it. Then it turned out we didn't actually have funding for this ("pa…

Well, "support" doesn't imply "creative control". I doubt a language designer would contract under terms which let companies simply pay to add to the language roadmap.

He likely would let them pay for:

* advice on how to work around the lack of their proposed language feature (as a subset of "advice on how to solve problems in or with the language").

* some influence over prioritisation of the roadmap. If there are two language features Rich was planning to add anyway, pushing one that a paying customer desperately needs up the priority list wouldn't interfere much with the creative direction of the language.

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#64
post #6

Good for him, no donations should translate in to obligations, they're donations , voluntary and are considered to be a reward for services rendered in the past, not the future. Typically when someone is as driven as this and you get the output of all the labour that went in to it the proper words are 'thank you' and if you feel like rewarding the creator then that's great. But that does not entitle anybody to future…

[deleted]

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

FYI, Free Software Foundation has always required contributors to GNU projects to assign copyright to FSF. Back in the day, you needed to send it via snail mail, but now AFAIK, FSF sends the package to you which you have to sign and return (via snailmail). Cite - http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Legal-Matters.htm... http://www.dreamsongs.com/IHE/IHE-110.html

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#66
"my/our continuing work on Clojure is an ongoing gift"

and what a gift it is! Thank you Rich (and the rest of the Clojure community) for this wonderful language.

Personally, it makes my work more enjoyable when I use it and I look around and see folks all over having fun with it. Plus it's creating jobs and competitive advantage.

Not everything is awesome, but from where I sit, Clojure sure is.

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#67
post #6

Good for him, no donations should translate in to obligations, they're donations , voluntary and are considered to be a reward for services rendered in the past, not the future. Typically when someone is as driven as this and you get the output of all the labour that went in to it the proper words are 'thank you' and if you feel like rewarding the creator then that's great. But that does not entitle anybody to future…

I wonder whether most donors actually understand this, with non-donors being the primary complainers. Randy Milholland, the webcomic artist behind Something Positive, quit his job and funded himself for a year with donations to spend more time on his comics. When his output was still less-than-daily, he got a flood of complaints. "We gave you money and you're still not updating as often as you promised!" When he offe…

interesting point - I think people who "donate" do it out of gratitude rather than creation of entitlement. By virtue of that, the complainers are less likely to come from the actual donor list.

My empirical evidence comes from the Cyanogenmod Android project - where "when can I haz gingerbread" or "this sucks - why arent you spending enough time fixing " is always from non donors.

NOTE: it is easy to see this trend on the CM forums, because your forum handle displays whether you are a donor or not. That I think is an easy way to lower the credibility of flamers (something that isnt possible on Clojure Google Groups). But then again, maybe that in itself give rises to the expectation that "if I donate, I can flame". I havent seen it happen on the CM forums though.

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#68
post #49

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#.

The Jon Harrop who used to hang out on the Clojure list is not the same as Dr. John Harrop who used to advocate F#, OCaml, etc.

I asked him and he said "no relation".

Re: Rich Hickey stops Clojure funding appeal from 2011 onwards

#69
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"heavyweight" was my opinion of him based on his education, demonstrated ability, and publications, not anything to do with his way of representing himself. I found his comments very interesting, informed as they were by his extensive work in other languages.

Jon Harrop is well known for his spamming work in Lisp and Haskell communities.

Please see my reply to grandparent.
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