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Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

ziglang.org

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Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#101

Post by kristopher »

dnautics wrote: post #85
kristopher wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Loris, thanks for the question and congratulations on your new role at the Zig Software Foundation. We originally planned on supporting Zig in Japan via support contracts and this is from that preparation. Trademarks have multiple categories and one such category is for contract work and related materials. We don't plan to use this trademark to harm Zig.

since you have instead settled on forking as the zen PL, which is your right to do, would you turn that trademark over to the zig foundation as a show of good faith?

Our communication with the ZSF seems to be on the rocks. If they can communicate politely, this could be possible. The ZSF has my email address.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#102

Post by ratww »

kristopher wrote: post #43

Hello HN and sorry for this bizarre drama! Although we have a page documenting some outlandish comments that the founder of Zig has made about Zen[0], we find it well inside of our rights to fork the MIT Licensed Zig and make a better product with commercial support. We had initial plans to support Zig in Japan, but efforts to localize Zig were not accepted and we could not take the risk of not having some sort of fo…

Will you release contributor No. 2 from the anti-compete and allow them contribute again to Zig?

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#103

Post by CyberRabbi »

judofyr wrote: post #92
CyberRabbi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the statement: “We can’t in good conscience recommend to Japanese professionals and businesses to make their livelihood depend on a closed-source, superficial rebranding of Zig“ Does the zig foundation have a problem with recommending closed-source superficial rebrandings of Zig or just from connectFree?

Regardless of the legality of a thing, the foundation might of course recommend against using it. Imagine that someone wrote a shitty book (without stealing any content) which ends up as the only result on Amazon. It’s perfectly legal to release such a book and it would be sensible for the foundation to warn the Zig community about the lacking quality. Just because the license allows anyone to fork it and sell it doe…

It’s fine for the foundation to recommend against certain companies, but it’s inconsistent to recommend against any specific company on the basis of it being “closed source superficial rebrand” if they claim to have no issue with people using their code on those terms.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#104

Post by bachmeier »

kodablah wrote: post #50
CyberRabbi wrote: post #2

This is why you always use GPL

For those that believe in software freedoms as fewer restrictions, you have to accept that people may take advantage of your fewer restrictions. This is the cost of giving more (beer) freedom, and you don't have to abandon your principles because of how it manifests. (this has obvious political analogies in other restriction-less freedom contexts too)

> For those that believe in software freedoms as fewer restrictions, you have to accept that people may take advantage of your fewer restrictions.

This argument has never made sense. "The software is more free because you can impose restrictions on the way it's used." It's more of an attempt to rationalize than a concern about the freedom of the software.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#105

Post by masklinn »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #87
kristoff_it wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely.

Two logical issues with that position: 1. Why do you believe that No. 2 can make valuable contributions to Zig if you do not value his contributions to Zen? 2. Why do you believe that No. 2 would be a potential contributor to Zig if he weren’t otherwise legally restricted?

> 1. Why do you believe that No. 2 can make valuable contributions to Zig if you do not value his contributions to Zen?

Because the project does not care for Zen's desired direction and following this direction is the form No. 2's contributions to Zen would have taken as they were a contractor to Zen.

The contributions No. 2 would make to the Zig project as an individual and independent of Zen are… unrelated to the direction Zen wants.

> 2. Why do you believe that No. 2 would be a potential contributor to Zig if he weren’t otherwise legally restricted?

Because No. 2 is the number two contributor to Zig and is actively stopped from contributing by the NCC. That's literally in the statement.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#106

Post by tyingq »

masklinn wrote: post #82
tyingq wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you get the compiled binary into the app store? Or to end users in some other way?

> Can you get the compiled binary into the app store? Can you do something completely unrelated to the question at hand without fulfilling requirements entirely unrelated to the question at hand? No. That doesn't make the compiler commercial. > Or to end users in some other way? You can put your mac application on your website more or less as you've always been able to.

Surely the usefulness of what the compiler outputs is at least related to whether it's commercial or not.

If I forked GCC and made a version where the produced binaries would only run on the machine where the compiler ran, and removing that was a subscription...I'd call it a commercial product.

(Ignoring the GPL issues)

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#107

Post by klohto »

kristopher wrote: post #80
kristoff_it wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you're attempting to register a "ZIG" trademark in Japan? https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/c1800/TR/JP-2020-078615/FF... (for people that can't read japanese: click the "english" link on the top right for a translation) (edit: fixed link, I pasted another trademark registration by connectfree by mistake)

Hi Loris, thanks for the question and congratulations on your new role at the Zig Software Foundation. We originally planned on supporting Zig in Japan via support contracts and this is from that preparation. Trademarks have multiple categories and one such category is for contract work and related materials. We don't plan to use this trademark to harm Zig.

> We don't plan to use this trademark to harm Zig.

Can you back that statement up somehow?

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#108

Post by kristopher »

turndown wrote: post #96
kristopher wrote: post #43

Hello HN and sorry for this bizarre drama! Although we have a page documenting some outlandish comments that the founder of Zig has made about Zen[0], we find it well inside of our rights to fork the MIT Licensed Zig and make a better product with commercial support. We had initial plans to support Zig in Japan, but efforts to localize Zig were not accepted and we could not take the risk of not having some sort of fo…

What is your statement about the fact that Zen clearly takes code from Zig post fork? Do you not find it - extremely - hypocritical that you are using thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lines of someone elses code for free while also mandating your employees enter draconian contracts? Do you think your actions will ostracize you from more communities, as has already occured with yourself and Zig? How quickly…

Sorry, but I was a top contributor to Zig when we forked it. What did you contribute? No regrets, by the way -- conversation is important.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#109

Post by kristopher »

ratww wrote: post #102
kristopher wrote: post #43

Hello HN and sorry for this bizarre drama! Although we have a page documenting some outlandish comments that the founder of Zig has made about Zen[0], we find it well inside of our rights to fork the MIT Licensed Zig and make a better product with commercial support. We had initial plans to support Zig in Japan, but efforts to localize Zig were not accepted and we could not take the risk of not having some sort of fo…

Will you release contributor No. 2 from the anti-compete and allow them contribute again to Zig?

Sorry, cannot talk about individual cases.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#110

Post by aidenn0 »

pfraze wrote: post #84

Something which people don't always recognize about open source is how "value-capture" works for creators. FOSS eschews direct monetization (selling licenses to the core product) based on an ethical premise (it's unfairly limiting to end-users) and/or a business premise (the ecosystem is a key to the value prop and licenses would slow down the ecosystem growth). None of that means that the creator isn't capturing val…

Also the back and forth seems to be

Andrew, et al: "you're being an asshole"

Kristopher: "we're not doing anything illegal"

Which to an outsider just reads like a tacit admission of being an asshole.

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