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Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

ziglang.org

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181–190 of 299 posts

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#181

Post by colinmhayes »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #168
CyberRabbi wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If being an asshole is something the Zig community does not want people to do with its code, why not just license Zig in such a way to prevent this type of usage of its code? They already implement a code of conduct to restrict behavior in their community.

Because then it wouldn't be open source. The open source definition prohibits developers from placing a lot of arbitrary license restrictions. One of the examples of this is that Gab, an alt-right site, now uses Mastodon, a platform written and used largely by a pretty far-left community.

We can get into semantics on what open source means, but I don't think the definition has to include a prohibition on any licenses. Open source just means the source code is freely available.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#182

Post by Nullabillity »

falcolas wrote: post #158
scythe wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a developer IP assignment clause, how.. actually quite common It is absolutely not normal to demand copyright for code written by a developer in off-hours. It is extremely not normal to write non-compete clauses for software developers and the ban on non-compete clauses in California has been cited as a key policy promoting the growth of the software industry. And it is obviously adversarial to fork a project and th…

> It is absolutely not normal to demand copyright for code written by a developer in off-hours. In the US, it's the standard. There are exceptions, but most companies will demand it. I've been bound by IP assignment contracts exactly like this for my entire career - from Oracle to a pair of startups. > sign non-competes saying they will not work on the project. Also, in the US, this is a long-established standard. Yo…

Right, because Oracle is the gold standard for ethical behaviour.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#183

Post by turndown »

kristopher wrote: post #132
turndown wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

From your method of half responses I can see immediately why you were banned from the Zig community; I expect the next thing I will hear about Zen is its eventual closure. Also, 89 out of 10k commits makes you a footnote, not a major contributor.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#184

Post by maest »

nindalf wrote: post #3

Probably the strangest part of this is a person trying to sell a paid version of a compiler. Did that person miss the boat by 30 years? All mainstream programming languages today are free and open source. Programming languages are platforms that thrive only when they're widely adopted. The community that adopts it builds the libraries and ecosystem necessary for it to be viable. You can't possibly build a new platfor…

The q/k interpreter requires a license which costs >$100k; wouldn't be surprised if some banks/funds pay >$1M.

Not a compiler, but the same idea.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#185

Post by the-dude »

Narishma wrote: post #147
gmueckl wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is that enforced?

Meet the BSA : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSA_(The_Software_Alliance)

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#186

Post by qayxc »

gmueckl wrote: post #136
qalmakka wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From the horses mouth [1]:

> Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps.

No revenue cap to be found. Also:

> In non-enterprise organizations, up to five users can use Visual Studio Community.

Again - no revenue cap. And finally:

> enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or >$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue)

Now call be a naive buffoon, but in my book, >$1M annual revenue and/or >250 IT workplaces means that licensing costs for software are not a problem at all. This restriction also only applies to commercial use - academic, OSS, and classroom environments are still allowed.

I really don't see how this is constricting in any way.

Edit: [1] https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/ (under "Usage")

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#187

Post by thechao »

gmueckl wrote: post #136
qalmakka wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I could buy visual studio ultimate/pro/... for my Mac, I’d do so. I miss it sorely.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#188

Post by coldtea »

falcolas wrote: post #98
masklinn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except essentially none of the statement takes issue with the forking itself. In fact the author of the statement is active in this very thread and specifically notes that this is very much allowed and is not what they take issue with.

Other than encouraging Japanese users to use Zig instead of Zen, that is. The fact that most of the message was pointing out how poor the character of the Zen authors is doesn't feel good to me, no matter whether the allegations are true or not. It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work". And yet it's really the only argument that could be made by the Zig auth…

>It's an appeal to our sense of fairness, "Look at these big bad guys who are profiting off our work".

When did fairness go out of fashion?

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#189

Post by ifreund »

hitekker wrote: post #39
kristoff_it wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't refute that, there's a pretty explicit PR that reverted all the changes that connectFree was trying to claim ownership of :)

May I have a link to that PR?

Here's one example: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/2701

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#190

Post by monocasa »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #169
CyberRabbi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Has anyone ever perused legal action based on a GPL violation? Last I checked, even the biggest piece of GPL software in existence, the Linux kernel, gets its violated without legal repercussions.

Yes, there have been several successful GPL violation lawsuits.
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