Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

ziglang.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 299 posts

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#191

Post by liveoneggs »

rainfall wrote: post #166

As a Japanese-speaking software engineer, I found that the company, connectFree, did too many suspicious acts as below: - They are attempting to register "ZIG" [1] and "SiFive" [2] as trademarks in Japan. Only this is enough for me to see them as a trademark troll. - Since Zen is a fork, Zen comes with Zig's (or its derived version of) standard library, but when they copied Zig's library source files, they removed th…

it's not okay to re-license or change copyright. You can sublicense aka make a commercial version.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#192

Post by darthrupert »

falcolas wrote: post #172
reitzensteinm wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you complain about a "hostile fork" that's just somebody stripping your branding and releasing a commercial fork, that should fall on deaf ears. That's in the spirit of MIT, and you've just picked your license poorly. But what's being alleged here is actual hostility and deception. If it's true, Zig being MIT licensed in no way removes their "moral high ground" (as GP put it) to make a post like this.

Here's my point of view - why does Zig even care what Zen is doing? Zen's shortcomings don't impact the userbase or development of Zig in any real fashion. The fact that the Zig foundation wrote this letter condemning the actions of Zen's founder/employees - especially when they closed the letter with a call to action to return to Zig - shows that Zen's fork actually matters to them, that they don't believe it should…

I suppose they're doing this as a public service, so that fewer people will fall for this total scam.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#193

Post by CyberRabbi »

we2341 wrote: post #133
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.

>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 ca…

>>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.

Zen makes their system available for free download to the public, thus would be forced to provide source to the public. https://zen-lang.org/ja-JP/download/

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#194

Post by falcolas »

coldtea wrote: post #188
falcolas wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Fairness could also apply to someone taking advantage of the decision to use an MIT license, only to be publicly lambasted. Is that fair?

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#195

Post by jlarocco »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #151
aidenn0 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Is it necessary to go through all that work to re-license, though? I don't see the problem with how they're handling it now.

The person in question is free to use the code and be an asshole. Everybody else is free to call him out for it.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#196

Post by nemothekid »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #159
nemothekid wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

If he doesn’t then there is little point in writing this blog post as well.

The point of the blogpost isn't to shutdown Zen, it's to ensure new people who find Zig or Zen aren't confused into thinking there is a relationship between the two.

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#197

Post by erlend_sh »

kristoff_it wrote: post #122
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…

I think that's a perfectly good point. The ZSF wants to build momentum and have the language take off. We also are looking for money in order to pay core contributors. I can also share that my own role at the ZSF has as ultimate goal of increasing the total amount of effort spent on Zig. The core problem with what kristate is doing is that, in a moment where the Zig community needs community members to take initiativ…

Here’s one possible avenue: https://users.rust-lang.org/t/what-if-crates-io-paid-subscri...

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#198

Post by igneo676 »

colinmhayes wrote: post #181
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except, we do have a rigorous definition on what Open Source really means. The best place to check is the OSI's definition[0] and the licenses they approve[1]. What you're describing is commonly described as Source Available and doesn't readily meet the definition of Open Source.

Our terms matter. And considering this conversation is really about what it means to be OSS and what the tradeoffs are, we need to "get into semantics on what open source means". Too many people co-opt the term and we need to defend it.

[0]: https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

[1]: https://opensource.org/licenses

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#199

Post by kazinator »

falcolas wrote: post #81
drcode wrote: post #10

As somebody that just got into Zig and loves the language, it makes me super sad that the developers on this project have to spend their valuable time stressing about BS like this. Also, the ideas the Zen people list on their website for forking Zig are terrible ideas- They were pushing to turn Zig into a hard-to-reason-about vanilla object-oriented programming language.

That's one of the costs of using the MIT and BSD licenses: anybody can take it and go private/for-profit with it (without giving back even a "thanks"), and all the author can do is issue a strongly worded statement about it. Moreover, they can't even claim the moral high ground when writing the strongly worded statement, since they've made the explicit choice to give up any and all rights to the product.

When I put the BSD license on something, I'm not condoning activity of hiring people away from working on the free version with non-competes that prevent them from contributing to the original. That's not in the scope of the license.

I think the situation could easily exist with a GPL-ed project. It seems possible to hire someone to extend the fork of some GPL-ed code base in specific ways, and use non-compete clauses to disallow any other activity with regard to that fork, or any other.

On paper, you might think that the GPL would hamper such at hing; after all, you have to release the source code. But in practice, things fall through the cracks. Someone with a fork of some GPLed code has certain customers. Those customers get access to the source code, but don't necessarily make it public. If you have key developers bound up with non-competes, and only they understand some code that only certain customers have, ... see the picture?

Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

#200

Post by coldtea »

falcolas wrote: post #194
coldtea wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Fairness could also apply to someone taking advantage of the decision to use an MIT license, only to be publicly lambasted. Is that fair?

If he's being a dick about it (e.g. splitting the community, attempting to take credit, trying to register the trademark for a name it's not his, etc), then yes.
Post reply on HN