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Samsung Acquires Joyent

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Re: Samsung Acquires Joyent

#111
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what Samsung being Asian has to do with anything :) This is good news for node.js since what this means is more money gets poured into node.js development. For example Microsoft pouring money into JS seems to have lead directly to Typescript.

I have no personal experience working for Samsung but know quite a few who did work for their US team and most don't have a positive experience. I also know some who worked for other South Korean companies. Lets just say the Korean work culture is quite different than in a typical US company. Hopefully the Joyent guys will be shielded from all this.

From what I understand Samsung is a huge conglomerate of divisions that have little to do with each other.

Samsung Semiconductor is happy to supply chips to Apple even though they're the biggest rival of Samsung Telecommunications the builds the Galaxy phones. Conversely Samsung Telecommunications may or may not pick Samsung chips for their Galaxy phones, it doesn't really matter.

So I guess it depends to what division they will be attached. If they're attached directly to the group, they may actually keep complete freedom and just have a different owner.

Re: Samsung Acquires Joyent

#112
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the CTO's blog post, it seems to me that Samsung became interested in Joyent not for its most famous product, Node.js, but for its new product, Manta, which is some sort of serverless, distributed, data-storage and processing service ( https://www.joyent.com/manta ). Manta might be well-suited for the new hotness, the Internet of Things. So that's how I saw it progressing. Samsung was looking into how to get in…

Manta seems like they are throwing the kitchen sink at those problems, tons of containers, proprietary OS, proxies, etc. If you want to store objects in a distributed way, why not just use something like RethinkDB, which has proxying/sharding etc. built in? RethinkDB even has a way to execute code with 'js'. Or for serverless processing, why not AWS lambda or the crop of clones?

> proprietary OS

Say what? SmartOS is based on illumos, the only free, open source SVR4 UNIX out there.

Get the code: https://github.com/joyent/illumos-joyent

Build it! https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Building+SmartOS+on+Sma...

Modify it: https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Developers+Guid...

Re: Samsung Acquires Joyent

#113
post #74

Hey, maybe Joyent can finally afford to refund the people who supported it when it was textdrive and then went back on their word! Snarky I know but I'm still bitter about how it was all handled..

"How long is it good for? As long as we exist." As a lifetime plan purchaser, I wouldn't say no to a new Samsung fridge... Although, I think we're just beating the dead horse for old time sake—which in this case is fun in itself. Though, it would be kinda awesome to hear a Samsung exec weigh in on the matter.

Re: Samsung Acquires Joyent

#114
post #61
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Node.js has always been MIT licensed, that's impossible. That's one reason why it had a liberal license; just listen to Cantrill's Oracle rants sometime to get a better idea.

Cantrill advocated the fact that CDDL was copyleft as a good thing[1] (it's a bad license overall, but the point is the same) specifically mentioning that the fact that Oracle couldn't use new DTrace and ZFS improvements from the community was a good thing. I agree (though I much prefer the GPL). So actually all of Cantrill's worries with Oracle exist with Node.js's license. I am sad when I see large free software pr…

There are people out there like myself who are convinced that GPL is the most vile, fascist license out there.

On the other hand, I have nothing against CDDL. I think the incompatibility of CDDL with the GPL is what saved the illumos community (even if inadvertently) from having their technology cannibalized by GNU and Linux. I'm happy that BSD is benefitting from illumos (and vice versa), but I'm even more happy that Linux isn't. <--- I do not represent anyone but myself, the position expressed here is my own and not of anyone else.

Re: Samsung Acquires Joyent

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux has a specific amendment to the GPLv2 stating that it must always be distributed under the terms of the GPLv2, not the GPLv3 or any later version.

Honest question, how is anyone expected to keep up with all of this? Software licenses are not all that interesting to me, I just like making things, but now I have to also read pages and pages of legalize for every single dependency. I thought it would be good enough to know most mainstream licenses, but apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that, nor would I trust myself to even…

> apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that, nor would I trust myself to even comprehend it properly.

The amendment is actually the first paragraph of the COPYING file. If you modify any of the terms of the license directy, you have to remove the preamble and refer to it as something other than the GPL.

The other option for modifying the GPL is to distribute a separate LICENSE file alongside it stating something like "this software is released under the GPL, except for ". When this happens, there's almost always an FAQ somewhere on the internet describing what the changes are intended to mean.

So, basically - check the source files to see if they mention a license, then check if there's a file named LICENSE, then check if there's a file named COPYING. One of these should always point you to the right license.

Additionally, as a point, it's not actually a modification of the license, merely a clarification - see section 9 of the GPLv2, which states that the program must explicitly state that it is usable under later versions of the GPL to be usable under later versions of the GPL. The boilerplate text that GNU give you to put at the top of each source code file does that by default, but, it's not required.

Re: Samsung Acquires Joyent

#116
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cantrill advocated the fact that CDDL was copyleft as a good thing[1] (it's a bad license overall, but the point is the same) specifically mentioning that the fact that Oracle couldn't use new DTrace and ZFS improvements from the community was a good thing. I agree (though I much prefer the GPL). So actually all of Cantrill's worries with Oracle exist with Node.js's license. I am sad when I see large free software pr…

There are people out there like myself who are convinced that GPL is the most vile, fascist license out there. On the other hand, I have nothing against CDDL. I think the incompatibility of CDDL with the GPL is what saved the illumos community (even if inadvertently) from having their technology cannibalized by GNU and Linux. I'm happy that BSD is benefitting from illumos (and vice versa), but I'm even more happy tha…

> There are people out there like myself who are convinced that GPL is the most vile, fascist license out there.

Not proprietary software? Not "open source" licenses that don't allow modification (which is also proprietary)? The GPL? The thing that gave us free software in the modern world? Well, that's certainly one opinon.

> On the other hand, I have nothing against CDDL.

The CDDL has a provision that if any part is held unenforcible it will be modified to make it enforceable. As a matter of licensing, that's incredibly devious and bad. There's other super dodgy parts of the CDDL that make it a bad license purely from a license point of view, let alone from "freedoms given to users" perspective.

> I think the incompatibility of CDDL with the GPL is what saved the illumos community (even if inadvertently) from having their technology cannibalized by GNU and Linux.

What are you talking about? Why do you care if GNU/Linux takes your code and modifies it? No damage is done to the original.

> I'm happy that BSD is benefitting from illumos (and vice versa)

Actually, because CDDL is somewhat-but-not-really copyleft, many BSDs essentially have copyleft requirements if you enable ZFS or DTrace. Which is funny, given how much they go on about "freedom to make proprietary software" (something I'm against).

> I do not represent anyone but myself, the position expressed here is my own and not of anyone else.

Your position is also wrong.

Re: Samsung Acquires Joyent

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. I thought you could include v2 code in v3 codebases but not vice versa? I may need to go through my projects if that's really not the case.

Linux has a specific amendment to the GPLv2 stating that it must always be distributed under the terms of the GPLv2, not the GPLv3 or any later version.

Specifically, they left out the "or any later version” clause.

Re: Samsung Acquires Joyent

#118
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the CTO's blog post, it seems to me that Samsung became interested in Joyent not for its most famous product, Node.js, but for its new product, Manta, which is some sort of serverless, distributed, data-storage and processing service ( https://www.joyent.com/manta ). Manta might be well-suited for the new hotness, the Internet of Things. So that's how I saw it progressing. Samsung was looking into how to get in…

Manta seems like they are throwing the kitchen sink at those problems, tons of containers, proprietary OS, proxies, etc. If you want to store objects in a distributed way, why not just use something like RethinkDB, which has proxying/sharding etc. built in? RethinkDB even has a way to execute code with 'js'. Or for serverless processing, why not AWS lambda or the crop of clones?

> Or for serverless processing, why not AWS lambda or the crop of clones?

Data locality.

Re: Samsung Acquires Joyent

#119
post #15

I always thought Microsoft/Google or the likes would acquire Joyent as it is good product fit. Microsoft chose linkedin instead :) For Samsung this is all about IoT .Samsung wants to own both the devices and backend. A good move IMHO

MS already has Azure, with an infrastructure built on their windows core... Not to mention having more services... and while Joyent's Docker story is really nice, MS seems to be heading in a very similar direction with the Windows Subsystem for Linux as Joyent took with SmartOS/Solaris, it's a poor tech fit. I'm not sure where this will take things with Samsung, likely backend services to support their own "store" on…

There is a world of difference between a new, untested implementation of Linux system call translation to a _very_ different type of Kernel on a desktop class operating system than the version on Illumos. The best thing Microsoft could do with their cloud is burn it to the ground and start again with Joyent's tech.

Re: Samsung Acquires Joyent

#120

Samsung is a typical asian electronics company (has a hardware focused history and very good at it, but doesn't understand or respect software). I'm so glad that node.js is not under Joyent control.

Yeah, this comment is ignorance at its finest. Mapzen, for example, was also acquired by Samsung, and it still operates as its own little startup, just with more financial security. Joyent seems to be going the same way. They will remain Joyent, but with support from Samsung.
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