Qn. Why do you think providing a compiler/support for a totally unproven language (for embedded) is a good business model?!
Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
131–140 of 299 posts
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Of course, I don't deny that, what I'm asking is about the code that was incorporated into your project from Zig after version 0.3, such as async/await, mentioned in this very post. I contributed to Zig by not forking it for my own financial gain ;). What features did you work on in Zig that gives you the right to claim work you didn't do and incorporate it into your project?
A simple search on github will show what I worked on:
https://github.com/ziglang/zig/search?q=author%3Akristate&un...
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking the story at face value: Zen lied to customers and the community, hired a developer away from Zig, and that developer cannot work on Zig now due to an NDA. GPL violations are not unknown. Would Zen have really cared about breaking the license? Would legal mechanisms work fast enough to limit damage?
All of that developers work on zen would be available to the zig foundation if it were licensed GPL. If it were licensed GPL and they were violating that license they could sue in the legal system instead of writing a blog post with dubious effect.
>All of that developers work on zen would be available to the zig foundation if it were licensed GPL.
False. the changes and the license only need to be extended to Zen's customers. They don't need to be provided back to Zig.
>If it were licensed GPL and they were violating that license they could sue in the legal system instead of writing a blog post with dubious effect.
Suing isn't a good idea even if you have a case. The blog post does more with less effort.
Even if Zig and Zen were GPL the employees agreement can be structured such that his work on Zen can not be used for Zig. There's an FAQ for this sort of stuff: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DevelopChangesU...
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are warning contributors to not inadvertently sign a contract that would prevent them from contributing to Zig. Me telling you there is a cliff here, be careful does nothing to infringe on your rights to walk off that cliff.
This is precisely my point. Why allow anyone to walk off the cliff if you’re just going to tell them it’s wrong anyway? They could have avoided all of this if it were GPL in the first place.
Because you believe in personal freedom?
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they're discouraging users from using zen because it is zen. And I quote: "we invite all Japanese developers ... to join the global Zig community and enjoy the real deal, without having to pay a single Yen for the privilege." > doesn't point out the poor character of Zen's creator but their poor behaviour Potato, tomato. You're correct that the specifics are different, yet the underlying message is the same: "these…
It’s perfectly reasonable for an Open Source software foundation to point out how a private company is misusing their software and misappropriating their brand. Saying that Zig’s creators should sit down and be quiet sounds both condescending and craven.
No, Zig's creators putting up a stink about a for-profit fork (a developer IP assignment clause, how.. actually quite common, come to think of it) sounds like they made a decision that they now regret, and so they'll use whatever tactics they can to pull people off the fork.
And lay off the personal attack, 'k?
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of commercial compilers available. Embedded platforms, Apple (100€£$/year), Windows, PGI/CUDA, IBM/xlc,game consoles,....
Apple's and Microsoft's compilers are downloadable for free (Apple's is actually Clang), they're not forcing you to pay if you want to use them; even the IDEs have been free for a while without any kind of payment or subscription.
That is not quite true in the case of Visual Studio. There is a community edition, but it is only free under a very constrained set of circumstances (mostly company revenue < 100.000$/year, IIRC). Most business need to buy Visual Studio Professional to legally use that IDE.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re branding a MIT license software and selling a commercial version is a good thing if done correctly. Clearly Zen is not providing any added value. The key takeaway from this is you don't sign contracts with overly aggressive business executives. I also think Non-competes should be almost completely banned for most employees.
The key takeaway for me is that a third party is able to use thousands of manhours of someone else’s labor as a basis for their closed source product without having to share their enhancements or pay a dime. If zig were licensed GPL, the zig foundation would be able to sell permissive licenses to companies that don’t want to share source as a way to fundraise.
> If zig were licensed GPL, the zig foundation would be able to sell permissive licenses to companies
That would be against the spirit of GPL, which is ideologically opposed to all proprietary software.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#138Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of commercial compilers available. Embedded platforms, Apple (100€£$/year), Windows, PGI/CUDA, IBM/xlc,game consoles,....
They generally sell you an ecosystem though, and are often tied to specific hardware, not "just" a language. The only examples that come to mind of a "pure" commercial compiler, not tied to a particular environment or piece of hardware are the Comeau C++ compiler (defunct for well over a decade) and arguably the original D compiler (although I don't know if it qualifies as proprietary, just not open source). Swift as…
The D compiler is now completely open source. It was always source available, but Walter wrote the backend when he was at a different company and he was able to use it but because of copyright it couldn't be open sourced as per se.
Symantec signed off on it a few years ago, it's been Boost licensed ever since.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
that's laughable. How much do you suppose it would cost to hire an international lawyer to pursue a case in a foreign country. Even if there were enough resources, do you think that the stakeholders in the Zig Foundation would consider that to be a reasonable use of the funds that they've donated? I certainly wouldn't. As a donor, as far as I can tell, this is as good as they could do. I'm much happier that they spen…
Roughly $100K-$200K maximum and it would be a good use of time if it would recover potentially millions for the foundation.
>recover potentially millions for the foundation.
You really believe a guy setting up a superficial fork in his basement has "millions" to pay out in damages?