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IO.js – Evented I/O for V8 javascript

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Re: IO.js – Evented I/O for V8 javascript

#11

Post by girvo »

jared314 wrote: post #10
randall wrote: post #4

Can someone tl;dr me the gist of everyone's beef with joyent? I've been hearing about a fork but haven't understood / seen why people feel like the fork is necessary.

Joyent is accused of: 1. Fixating on platform stability over project evolution 2. Ignoring the community on project direction 3. Preserving public image over project committers 4. Being a total square NOTE: I am against the fork.

> 1. Fixating on platform stability over project evolution

That's... hardly a bad thing, in my humble opinion. The other language I use at work, PHP, is a case-study in what happens when you "evolve" a project willy-nilly with little regard to platform stability. Nowadays, it's better, because the community has become more involved in the process, so I can see what #2 and #3 are Bad Things™ however.

Re: IO.js – Evented I/O for V8 javascript

#12

Post by doublerebel »

randall wrote: post #4

Can someone tl;dr me the gist of everyone's beef with joyent? I've been hearing about a fork but haven't understood / seen why people feel like the fork is necessary.

Yes, the forkers are doing themselves a disservice. Joyent is accused of not communicating with the community, and yet the forkers respond by also not communicating with the community [EDIT: they have refused multiple opportunities to comment, Joyent is publicly appearing to make a consolation effort].

If Node wants to be taken seriously by a broader range of companies, it should be stable. There are forkers on the Joyent Node advisory board. As an open-source project, transparency will go a long way to gain community support from either side. So far, Joyent is winning the communication battle.

Recent article on the subject: http://readwrite.com/2014/11/13/node-js-joyent-possible-fork...

Arguably, this has been stewing for a while: http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/can-this-startup-steal-nod...

I am a huge node proponent, and don't encounter problems from outside the project. Joyent's articles and purpose have always been more clear to me than StrongLoop, which is why I use the services of the former. However I have a hard time believing these articles and rumors are the whole story, hopefully someone can chime in with more specific information.

Re: IO.js – Evented I/O for V8 javascript

#13

Post by k__ »

girvo wrote: post #11
jared314 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joyent is accused of: 1. Fixating on platform stability over project evolution 2. Ignoring the community on project direction 3. Preserving public image over project committers 4. Being a total square NOTE: I am against the fork.

> 1. Fixating on platform stability over project evolution That's... hardly a bad thing, in my humble opinion. The other language I use at work, PHP, is a case-study in what happens when you "evolve" a project willy-nilly with little regard to platform stability. Nowadays, it's better, because the community has become more involved in the process, so I can see what #2 and #3 are Bad Things™ however.

PHP?

I had the feeling that much evolution happend from 1 to 5 but not much afterwards :\

Re: IO.js – Evented I/O for V8 javascript

#14

Post by elisee »

randall wrote: post #4

Can someone tl;dr me the gist of everyone's beef with joyent? I've been hearing about a fork but haven't understood / seen why people feel like the fork is necessary.

I don't have very specific details as I'm a bystander too but it seems Node has been stuck in 0.10.x land since early 2013 (http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/03/11/node-v0-10-0-stable/) while Node 0.12 and 1.0 releases were being talked about well over a year ago by former BDFL Isaac Schlueter (now at npm). Joyent, the current project stewards, have not been able to deliver a stable release in that time and don't share public plans / aren't communicating very much.

One of the many symptoms of that slow development process is that Node.js is basically running an unsupported version of V8 (https://twitter.com/jmayer/status/532971494695907328).

From what I've read, node-forward is/was only meant as a fork in the GitHub sense: they'd try to get their stuff merged back into node mainline. The GitHub fork has since been made private (https://github.com/node-forward/discussions/issues/7) and they're working to set up a proper governance model so that the community can truly be in charge. Joyent has reacted (I believe, it might have been in the works prior to node-forward) by proposing a node advisory board (https://github.com/joyent/nodejs-advisory-board) but it seems to be too little too late for at least some of the people behind node-forward (I've read what seem like irreconcilable disagreements about how it should be run).

I have no idea what (if anything) io.js is in relation to node-forward or if the same people are behind it. Can't find any announcements / endorsements on Twitter, so maybe it was just posted here before whoever is behind it were ready to go live.

Re: IO.js – Evented I/O for V8 javascript

#15

Post by mappu »

Node is the obvious leader amongst V8 shells, but there's also

- https://github.com/attractivechaos/k8 and discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913950

- http://silkjs.net/

- https://code.google.com/p/teajs/

- https://github.com/samlecuyer/sorrow.js

- https://github.com/tlrobinson/narwhal

- d8 (bundled with v8 source)

Not counting other CommonJS-compatible platforms, or javascript shells using engines other than V8, or server-side javascript application frameworks

Re: IO.js – Evented I/O for V8 javascript

#16

Post by mappu »

k__ wrote: post #13
girvo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Fixating on platform stability over project evolution That's... hardly a bad thing, in my humble opinion. The other language I use at work, PHP, is a case-study in what happens when you "evolve" a project willy-nilly with little regard to platform stability. Nowadays, it's better, because the community has become more involved in the process, so I can see what #2 and #3 are Bad Things™ however.

PHP? I had the feeling that much evolution happend from 1 to 5 but not much afterwards :\

5.3 is basically a whole new language. Development is pretty quick and regular ever since 5.4 and the new RFC process.

Re: IO.js – Evented I/O for V8 javascript

#17

Post by benatkin »

stormbrew wrote: post #3

40 minutes, 8 points, got to the front page, and... why? Is there a story behind this fork?

There doesn't appear to be much of one, yet. The latest commit by indutny was just a commit to node that the owner of the iojs GitHub organization pushed to GitHub. There are no public members of the iojs organization. Even the name of the repo, "evented I/O for v8 javascript" is the same. All that's been introduced here is a new name, io.js.
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