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“Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

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Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#201

Post by fmajid »

tardyp wrote: post #83
arthurcolle wrote: post #11

Can someone elucidate why he is so against "his" code being used in this project?

Python ambee is a simple client library for a proprietary sass iot service. I guess they want to control exactly how their users are using their service.

Yet the author is an admin on the HomeAssistant community forum, one of only 6. Presumably his other contributions to the project justify those privileges, and he did not shut down the passive-aggressive thread some nixOs folks started there, it was another admin (the founder of HomeAssistant).

This sucks for nixOs, but it looks like community incompatibility means they won’t be able to support HomeAssistant at all.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#202

Post by lucideer »

opheliate wrote: post #39
arthurcolle wrote: post #11

Can someone elucidate why he is so against "his" code being used in this project?

I’m not sure why there are scare quotes around “his”, the code is the author’s property, it’s just they’ve granted a license for it to be used by anyone.

The scarequotes are certainly inappropriate unless it's CC0 licensed, but you do point out that he's explicitly granted a license "for it to be used by anyone". Which seems... of some relevance here.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#203

Post by Spivak »

mpfundstein wrote: post #190
Spivak wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s some emotional nuance here. After a certain point he basically said all of his technical justification and the request does boil down to “because I said so and I’m the author.” The Nix maintainers explicitly do not want to respect the author’s wishes (which is fine) but that makes the whole thing turn adversarial because “okay we won’t include it” wasn’t even something the maintainers considered for e…

they have good reason to not not include it.

In totally agree but in the case where the Nix maintainers don’t think the author’s reasons are good enough (which happened) that’s where we’re left with “because I said so and I control the license.”

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#204

Post by SuperSandro2000 »

Hey Hacker News,

if you contributed to nixpkgs in the last months you have probably seen me already but for the people that don't know me already: I am Sandro, one of the more active reviewers and contributors of NixOS/nixpkgs in the last months.

If you have any question about the situation or NixOS in generally feel free to drop me a comment and I try to answer them to the best of my knowledge. I can't speak for the entire NixOS organization so all my comments on this thread are my own views. I also do not receive any benefits from this in form of money or something else.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#205

Post by gls2ro »

numo16 wrote: post #176
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they even know to ask upstream for support, rather than the fork? If you use package bar and have a problem, you would have to do a lot of digging to even find original progject foo and ask them for help (which wouldn't even make sense since it's a separate thing)

I guess that depends on how users go about finding projects on github to file issues. If, for example, the user has an issue with this NixOS package (or debian package/any other repackaged example), and they start by just searching "python ambee github" or "Home Assistant ambee github" (seems like a reasonable first attempt to me) they will likely find the upstream near the top of the results. Now, some users will pe…

Ah I think you might be right with this case where someone will just google that. I am not doing that but prefer to go to the package manager list find there there the project URL.

I was thinking that people will do the same or else how will they know if the github repository returned from search results is truly the one installed?

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#206

Post by runjake »

elmerfud wrote: post #8

Seems like an author that doesn't understand the spirit of FOSS. The nixos team was clearly allowed to use it and include it when asking for some technical merits as to why, and even offering many alternative options to appease the author the author seemed to just childishly stamp their feet and say, "because I said so". Eventually the author took the position of "taking my ball and going home". Why is a person like…

I have no specific opinions on the author really, but:

  > Seems like an author that doesn't understand the spirit of FOSS.
The author states he understands the licensing and the project's rights to use his software earlier in the thread. He was simply making a request.

  > Why is a person like this even engaged in FOSS if they don't have a desire to share or even engage in a reasoned discussion?
Again, he stated his reasons in the thread. He didn't want to have to potentially support their repackaged and/or old versions of his software. His software being OSS did not give up his right to make nuanced requests.

That said, the thread ended with something to the effect of "well, we can include instructions on how to install his software" -- an option which wasn't presented until the end, yet it fully complies with his request.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#207

Post by karmicthreat »

I can understand the author not wanting to deal with extra noise. But they did try to accommodate them. Forking and changing the contact info is probably the best tactic. The author didn't like that, but is probably the best outcome.

Don't do open source (especially a very permissive licence) if you don't want others using your code as a dependency.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#208

Post by threwawasy1228 »

viccuad wrote: post #164
robotresearcher wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he acknowledges explicitly early in the thread that the license allows the code to be redistributed with or without his approval.

And later he states "Unfortunately, you are wrong there. I will explicitly and publicly list parties that are allowed distribution in the license and allow for requesting distribution requests." The "fine article" always contains the correct bits.

In that context he was talking about for future releases of the project, if the others in that thread forked the project right this minute, it would still be MIT.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#209

Post by lucideer »

lappa wrote: post #66
arthurcolle wrote: post #11

Can someone elucidate why he is so against "his" code being used in this project?

Seems that he wants pypi and pip to be the exclusive distribution mechanisms for his project. He wants to avoid handling bugs that come from his project being packaged through other means. He misunderstands how nixos works and suggests that Home Assistant will be able to install his package via pip on nixos.

> He wants to avoid handling bugs that come from his project being packaged through other means.

From his conduct in the thread this seems a red herring. The nixos devs have proposed a selection of reasonable solutions to avoid any support burden on his part, all of which he's rejected outright.

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