Seems like legit? https://zen-lang.org/zig/
I wish they had refuted the part where he had to get kicked for being a jerk :D
Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
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Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#22This is why you always use GPL
How would GPL help? It doesn't stop hostile forks.
Pretty sure the ask isn't the Zen source.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#23Seems like legit? https://zen-lang.org/zig/
> We cannot see a future for Zig where the founder does not allow corporate entities to use and support Zig
Honestly, that's one of the most important reason I'm looking favorably at Zig. And D.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#24Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#25Can someone please explain why Zen/Zip is focused on Japan? I feel I might be missing some context.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#26Earlier 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.
As the author of the statement, I disagree. Parent poster got it right: the license is MIT precisely to allow the highest degree of freedom.
Companies that want to profit from Zig are welcome to do so, but in this particular case, we consider connectFree a bad actor and so we crossed the language barrier to make sure Japanese developers would be able to hear from both sides.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#27This is why you always use GPL
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.
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would GPL help? It doesn't stop hostile forks. Pretty sure the ask isn't the Zen source.
Hostile forks would not be able to keep their enhancements private, thus ensuring a reciprocal relationship.
And there's nothing to stop the current Zig team from making future releases GPL, is there? Problem solved...?
Re: Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language
#29Probably 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…
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 well, although it was open sourced relatively quickly.