“Please don't add any of my stuff to this project” • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by Ericson2314 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

I often have a sinking feeling the free software world is going to fall apart because upstream developers don't know what the distro is even for (curation, consistency, etc.), and legacy distro downstream developers haven't kept up with any of the development rends in recent years (good or bad).

The Nix community is one of the few that has feet in both camps, so it's all the more frustrating to see a stupid reaction like this; a traditionally distro wouldn't even bother packaging any of this stuff or engage at all.

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

#262

Post by ris » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:10 PM UTC

lesto wrote: post #247

whateveracct wrote: post #150

What's worse is this frenk guy seems to be the reason his packages are being added to nixpkgs He added the dependency himself https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/51645 Nobody gives a shit about frenk or his code directly here - they want to use Home Assistant. But now that frenk added his code as a dependency, he has the right to transitively make Home Assistant un-packagable on NixOS? EDIT: On top of that, t…

> Pinning every Python dependency instead of fetching HEAD is how you get local control and security! yes it is? they make sure the user get a specific version that is (hopefully) vetted and know as working properly; this is much safer than pulling HEAD for a 3th party repo. As long as the libs are updated regularly and when security issue are found, I see no problem with this approach > he has the right to transitiv…

> they make sure the user get a specific version that is (hopefully) vetted and know as working properly

This is exactly what nixpkgs maintainers do, using more reliable and explicit tools than the likes of pip. A significant effort is made to enable tests on as many packages as possible, meaning that when you get a package from nixpkgs, it has been tested against the exact dependency chain (down to the libc) it is being shipped to you with. If tests fail, issues are investigated and solved.

This is a far stronger guarantee than you get from almost any other installation method.

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

#263

Post by andrewmcwatters » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

lesto wrote: post #253

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #246

Both the comments on GitHub, and this thread are an absolutely awful look for open source, and it's feedback like this that drives excellent creators to stop creating open source projects, leaving the entire FOSS ecosystem left with half-assed solutions or hand-off maintainers who can do nothing more than nominal bugfixes once an original author leaves because of harassment. You're entitled to nothing when authors wr…

> You're entitled to nothing when authors write FOSS. They provide it as-is. Take it or leave it. No one is obligated to take support harassment. the author of the lib literally pushed it to Home Assistant , so he gave it to a relatively famous project that is present in a lot of distro and Snapstore. Pushing to such project is a guarantee that your code will be repackaged. He could say it was a misunderstanding and…

Does that change what you're entitled to? No.

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

#264

Post by jchw » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

mijoharas wrote: post #244

jchw wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's being added as a dependency to home assistant, a popular package, so they are pretty much between a rock and a hard place. Ultimately, if the author of the code doesn't want it redistributed by distributions, I assume home assistant will have to remove it from upstream. It might be good for someone to raise the flag with home assistant since this is apparently becoming a point of contention with two different di…

It appear this has already been done, and the founder of home assistant seems to be supporting the developer. [0] I'm starting to get the feeling that home automation might be somewhat hostile to repackaging. [0] https://community.home-assistant.io/t/consider-to-avoid-addi...

This is unfortunate, but I suppose it joins the growing list of open source things that I have to avoid because I don't want to support behavior that's hostile/antithetical to the health of the open source ecosystem. It's a damn shame, but nothing new.

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

#265

Post by lucideer » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #5

sneak wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author's wishes are formally and legally specified in the copyright license to the code he wrote, which is MIT and allows redistribution. Everything else is simply noise. Once you make your software free, it isn't yours any longer and your opinions about it (or what others do with it) aren't relevant.

The author’s contractual wishes are specified there. It’s fine for an author to have additional, non-contractual wishes. (Legally, it’s equally fine for someone to follow or not follow those additional wishes.)

Unless your non-contractual wishes are directly contradictory to your contractually stated wishes, and you actively harass the maintainers of a project that very politely choose to decline your non-contractual wishes.

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

#266

Post by lesto » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #261

I often have a sinking feeling the free software world is going to fall apart because upstream developers don't know what the distro is even for (curation, consistency, etc.), and legacy distro downstream developers haven't kept up with any of the development rends in recent years (good or bad). The Nix community is one of the few that has feet in both camps, so it's all the more frustrating to see a stupid reaction…

> a traditionally distro wouldn't even bother packaging any of this stuff or engage at all.

unfortunately the library author made a PR to Home Assistant, a program that is packaged in many distro; all those distro will add his package. see https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/51645

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

#267

Post by ticviking » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

Zancarius wrote: post #48

pfraze wrote: post #2

Really seems like you need to respect the author’s wishes here, but the tension between author and community can get complicated with FOSS. Open source is a contract with your audience that the code can be used freely. Authors gain their audience because of that contract, so there’s some obligation for them to respect that. That said, respect flows both ways, and I’ve had FOSS code get repackaged to steal credit whic…

> (That’s not the issue here but it touches on the same challenge.) I don't think so. The "problem" here is that the author doesn't want nixos to repackage his library because he's concerned about a "support burden" imposed, presumably, by nixos users who might get confused and report issues to him instead of the packager. I can vaguely understand where he's coming from, but being as his library in question[1] doesn'…

The fact that it's a brand new project probably has more to do with the lack of issues.

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

#268

Post by lesto » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

ris wrote: post #262

lesto wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pinning every Python dependency instead of fetching HEAD is how you get local control and security! yes it is? they make sure the user get a specific version that is (hopefully) vetted and know as working properly; this is much safer than pulling HEAD for a 3th party repo. As long as the libs are updated regularly and when security issue are found, I see no problem with this approach > he has the right to transitiv…

> they make sure the user get a specific version that is (hopefully) vetted and know as working properly This is exactly what nixpkgs maintainers do, using more reliable and explicit tools than the likes of pip. A significant effort is made to enable tests on as many packages as possible, meaning that when you get a package from nixpkgs, it has been tested against the exact dependency chain (down to the libc) it is b…

there is a reason if pretty much all distribution follow this approach :)

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

#269

Post by lucideer » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

fmajid wrote: post #216

Zancarius wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think the best solution in this case is to fork his repo from a version still under the MIT license and work with home-automation to replace their dependency.

He is a HomeAssistant community admin and they took his side, this is a case of two FOSS communities with irreconcilable differences.

> this is a case of two FOSS communities with irreconcilable differences

If the HA community's stance goes on to be made official (for now it's informal forum posts, albeit from senior maintainers), I would argue this is then a case of one FOSS community (Nix) having irreconcilable differences with the community of a proprietary software project falsely advertised as FOSS.

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

#270

Post by Ericson2314 » Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

lesto wrote: post #266

Ericson2314 wrote: post #261

I often have a sinking feeling the free software world is going to fall apart because upstream developers don't know what the distro is even for (curation, consistency, etc.), and legacy distro downstream developers haven't kept up with any of the development rends in recent years (good or bad). The Nix community is one of the few that has feet in both camps, so it's all the more frustrating to see a stupid reaction…

> a traditionally distro wouldn't even bother packaging any of this stuff or engage at all. unfortunately the library author made a PR to Home Assistant, a program that is packaged in many distro; all those distro will add his package. see https://github.com/home-assistant/core/pull/51645

Is home-assistant packaged in any traditional distro like Debian or Fedora? I didn't think so.

So long as everyone is supposed to just grab some docker container or OS image from the home-assistent people, the traditional distros that should back up NixOS here won't even be looped in.