Live data from Hacker News

I'm sorry

github.com

101–110 of 277 posts

Re: I'm sorry

#101
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(While I applaud your energy, I wanted to gently point out that the labels might not be too productive. You might be right, or you might not, but given Microsoft’s recent (very positive IMO) open source contributions, well… it just seemed a little unfair that your labels discounted it entirely. That said, perhaps “you’re not wrong” applies. I don’t know.)

Microsoft doesn't contribute to open source software because open source software is good for the world. Microsoft contributes to open source software because Microsoft wants to sell more proprietary software and services to the open source world, as more and more developers live in that world. They realized that without significant service lock-in, people would begin to abandon things like Windows (and continue to i…

You might be right about that. But that doesn’t change the fact that good software now exists, which wouldn’t otherwise exist, and that the software is now open source, which otherwise wouldn’t be open source. In my opinion, that counts for something.

I’ve long hoped that gamedev would make a similar transition. And although Unreal Engine et al are open source, it’s still not the default. So in other words, if gamedev as a whole behaved as Microsoft behaves now, I would be gleefully happy. But you would also be correct in saying that they are doing it “just to sell more proprietary software and services to the open source world.”

I don’t know. The reason I’m trying to take a neutral stance is because I empathize with your point of view, but also can’t shake the feeling that the hard line open source idealism of 1980’s has not achieved all the goals that it set out to achieve (to phrase it diplomatically). And so in 2021, the movement is in danger of being totally ineffective, because all of the teenagers from 1980 are old now, and the teenagers from 2021 aren’t buying into the dogma.

Re: I'm sorry

#102

This whole situation is toxic. She literally made a 1-line change in a configuration file with basically no downsides. She also repeatedly re-opened and then merged the PR despite the other guy telling her to follow the format and wait for a review. Which she shouldn't have done. But then everyone started bashing her and .NET for other (similarly small) things and extrapolating that. Then there's this 1000 legalese w…

Please read this discussion[1]. The issue goes far beyond a pull request.

Project maintainers had their projects moved from their public GitHub accounts to the DNF's GitHub Enterprise account without notice. Some maintainers only found out about the transfers of their projects because of this[1] discussion.

[1] https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/38

Re: I'm sorry

#103
post #84

It seems to me that there is a valid apology present in two paragraphs: > [...] I made a mistake this last week when I made a PR and merged it to a project without discussion. [...] I overstepped. I failed to consider how the interaction would look through the lens of my current role. [...] this was a mistake. I sincerely apologize. > To recap, I’m sorry about the PR I made and merged on the ReactiveUI Splat repo. Th…

If you look at the post as a whole, it reads that she's "sorry" that this happened, but the only reason that it's an issue is because the member projects don't understand their place. Literally: "It is also clear that the .NET Foundation project governance model is not well understood. Project maintainers sign an agreement that either assigns or contributes their project to the .NET Foundation. That’s the point at which project ownership changes."

Re: I'm sorry

#104
post #3

Anyone have a link to the PR in question?

https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/pull/778

Yeah, as I thought - If I were the maintainer of that project I would have had no issue with her merging that. But I also understand why PRs exist and process, so I would have said, 'yeah, cool, just don't do it again. Nothing to see here, move along.'

Re: I'm sorry

#105

What is with the comments calling this a non-appology? Do they need a hair shirt to make sure the sinners really suffer? Hyperbole aside its kind of jarring reading a frank apology and ownership of actions (what they did, how it impacted others, why it was bad) that then gets dismissed entirely. I wonder what those people would consider to be sufficient? It does not seem like there is any point to a public apology. Y…

So I'm an outsider here, but I think you're missing the point.

Sure, the post starts out as an actual apology for her actions with regards to the PR, but that doesn't seem to have been the meat of the complaints.

Then her post goes on to start making claims that people were upset because things "sound scary" but that the foundations unilateral decision to move projects under their github account actually somehow "gives them more control over their projects".

Then she goes on to make legal claims that "project ownership changes", when that does not appear to be what the contracts actually say. At this point she is litigating in public against the project maintainers when it seems the foundations purpose in life is to represent them!

There's also an implication here by putting the legal claims after the part about moving projects without the consent that the foundation was "in the right" to do this because they had a contract giving them that right.

Then the email wraps up with multiple paragraphs of polite speech that can frankly be summarized as "and now you get to wait and see what we dictate".

"Non-apology" doesn't seem to be quite the right term, she did apologize at the start for one thing, but the rest was anything but an apology.

Re: I'm sorry

#106
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare the Linux foundation's treatment of projects: Node: Neither the OpenJS foundation, nor its parent the Linux foundation claims owner ship of Node: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/LICENSE Linux: No copyright assignment, just a compatible license required: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin... The CNCF and the kubernetes system does do a CLA, so it's not a concept the Linux f…

Others in the space do ask for copyright assignment though, eg. FSF.

If you're moving your project to the FSF, it's because you want their lawyers to defend your users' rights under the GPL/LGPL/AGPL.

From the FSF[1]:

> Under US copyright law, which is the law under which most free software programs have historically been first published, there are very substantial procedural advantages to registration of copyright. And despite the broad right of distribution conveyed by the GPL, enforcement of copyright is generally not possible for distributors: only the copyright holder or someone having assignment of the copyright can enforce the license. If there are multiple authors of a copyrighted work, successful enforcement depends on having the cooperation of all authors.

> In order to make sure that all of our copyrights can meet the recordkeeping and other requirements of registration, and in order to be able to enforce the GPL most effectively, FSF requires that each author of code incorporated in FSF projects provide a copyright assignment, and, where appropriate, a disclaimer of any work-for-hire ownership claims by the programmer's employer. That way we can be sure that all the code in FSF projects is free code, whose freedom we can most effectively protect, and therefore on which other developers can completely rely.

tl;dr: the FSF can't enforce a project's license unless they're copyright holder.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html

Re: I'm sorry

#107

What is with the comments calling this a non-appology? Do they need a hair shirt to make sure the sinners really suffer? Hyperbole aside its kind of jarring reading a frank apology and ownership of actions (what they did, how it impacted others, why it was bad) that then gets dismissed entirely. I wonder what those people would consider to be sufficient? It does not seem like there is any point to a public apology. Y…

> I wonder what those people would consider to be sufficient?

The exact same apology, but coming from a male.

Re: I'm sorry

#109
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(While I applaud your energy, I wanted to gently point out that the labels might not be too productive. You might be right, or you might not, but given Microsoft’s recent (very positive IMO) open source contributions, well… it just seemed a little unfair that your labels discounted it entirely. That said, perhaps “you’re not wrong” applies. I don’t know.)

Microsoft doesn't contribute to open source software because open source software is good for the world. Microsoft contributes to open source software because Microsoft wants to sell more proprietary software and services to the open source world, as more and more developers live in that world. They realized that without significant service lock-in, people would begin to abandon things like Windows (and continue to i…

open source is open source, it is good that they are embracing open source community and contributing A LOT of resources to that. We have a lot of good softwares, framework, open code to learn and communities build by them and they're not allowed to make money from it?

You're basically saying that people who wants to make money are bad. That is just a weird judgement, laravel is building a whole ecosystem to make money, spring is building training and support around , nestjs is building enterprise support. If there is no way to make money around doing something that we love, then open source will be dead. If we are grateful as a community towards what they did, we should support them. not judge them that they want to make money :/

Re: I'm sorry

#110
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the entire post, it quickly becomes apparent why people are reacting poorly. The opening paragraph is an apology. Other parts of the post undo any goodwill that might have been garnered from the apology itself. One example: > There is a pattern that needs to be resolved. Projects might not fully understand what joining the .NET Foundation means. We share a checklist with project maintainers on project cha…

I did not get that at all. To me it sounds like she is coming clean with what she sees as the issues surrounding the project, including poor communication. I read that as, 'another problem we've seen is that people are unclear what it means to become a member of our organisation so we are working towards improving that.' I initially read her apology and thought it was likely a response to an overblown situation that…

> I read that as, 'another problem we've seen is that people are unclear what it means to become a member of our organisation so we are working towards improving that.'

The implication though is that becoming a member of the organization allows for actions like the one she took. I do think owning up to "maybe these agreements aren't clear enough" is good, but that then seems inextricably linked to "I was allowed to do this".

The reader then needs to figure out "is she apologizing because of what she did, or is she apologizing for not being clear that she was allowed to do what she did?"

If you're one of the maintainers, the latter falls flat, regardless of intent/genuineness.

I hope your more charitable take is closer to reality.

Post reply on HN