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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”

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've mistaken my assertion. HA are perfectly entitled to continue including the package. The NixOS dev opening that thread was doing so with the intent of warning them about a potentially problematic upstream maintainer. There's an argument to be made that that dev was overstepping, but they weren't making any demands: their intent was informational. The community response was multiple HA admins expressing…

I probably misread your assertion (and possibly the subtext), my initial interpretation was that the HA folk were saying "We're not getting involved with your dispute, or make any changes to accommodate you: take care of it", which is a fair thing to say to a downstream project. To me - the subtext was NixOS still wants to do both: have reproducible builds that match HA and honor lib authors wishes. Lib author "rejec…

> the HA folk were saying "We're not getting involved with your dispute,

There are two HA folk (excluding frenck) commenting on that thread. The first demands than nixos devs should "Just do as he asks", which seems to me like they are very much getting involved in the dispute.

The second only comments to close the thread, and—while they do include the phrase "it's not our issue" in their closing comment—the rest of that comment accuses the OP of bad faith posting, and goes on to misrepresent the issue completely, claiming the problem is that NixOS are doing things that are unsupported (Frenck's objection was to NixOS packaging his package at all in any form, not to anything specific they were doing with it). So again, that seems like the second poster is very much contributing to the dispute, not "not getting involved".

> one way was for NixOS to ask upstream HA to drop the library as a dependency. It doesn't sound like a friendly heads-up to me

I guess a lot of this does depend on how reasonable you think that request would be. I thought the post seemed friendly as it was phrased politely. And I think removing the dependency should be reasonable if HA wished to remain an open source project given the dependency is now defacto closed source (perhaps not technically in licence text, but the author harassing anyone wishing to avail of the licence would seem to nullify that).

> from the thread title.

Title opens with the word "consider". Seems polite to me...

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

#332

Nixpkgs contributor here. One of the misunderstandings by frenck is how Nix operates[0], which is not via mutable site-packages folders but more accurately as an immutable graph structure. What this means is that to have home-assistant packaged properly, we need to also package its dependencies, which includes ambee. The argument that "In that case you are shipping an broken Home Assistant version."[1] is incorrect,…

Isn't the argument that HA has this functionality, thus if it cannot download its plugins/manifests at runtime, then it can be considered not fully functional? (Even though Nix users likely consciously trade off that for reproducibility.)

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

#333
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. This is kind of bizarre behavior from someone who is such an important contributor to Home Assistant, a large scale open source platform. I can’t imagine most of the leaders in Home Assistant would share this attitude, but maybe I’m wrong.

> I can’t imagine most of the leaders in Home Assistant would share this attitude, but maybe I’m wrong. I'm afraid they do[1] (that's from the project founder, and current CEO of the company supporting HA development). https://community.home-assistant.io/t/consider-to-avoid-addi...

oh gosh. i am afraid i need to get rid of HA now. Whats that attitude about for gods sake?

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

#334
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the response to someone finding and using your work is the kind of over the top demand to "don't use the thing I just released under a permissive license" with multiple replies that amount to, "Don't use the thing in a way I don't like kthanxbai" how can you depend on it?

> If the response to someone finding and using your work That wasn't the issue and it's crazy how much people interpreted it as such. His issue is with how it was packaged with it. He want it to be exclusively distributed using PIP. If you don't want to depends on PIP, well sure don't use it.

If that's what he wants then he should put it in the licence.

But then the problem would be that it probably could not be on PyPI, since by putting it to there you grant users the right to do stuff with source, including distribution.

"If I upload Content other than under an Included License, then I grant the PSF and all other users of the web site an irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive license to reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, perform, and publish the Content, including in digital form." https://pypi.org/policy/terms-of-use/

(first pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27507770)

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

#335

I am reminded of jwz, debian, and xscreensaver (Not linking to jwz's blog from HN because... he doesn't want it to be.)

It's the exact same issue. Author ships code with a permissive license, other people build code, and view things from a purely legal perspective. Author realizes that code doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that actual binaries/packages matter (different versions, etc) , which he doesn't control, and it's a problem to him. He then asks the distro guys to do things differently. Distro guys are either offended (evil author…

NixOS community offered him multiple alternatives, but he flst out rejected everything.

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

#336

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.

Yes this is precisely the section I meant.

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

#337
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's speculative on his part (noone has opened any issues with him, neither coming from nixos nor from any other repackaging). The nixos guys also offered various proposals to him to completely avoid any support burden on his part, all of which he roundly rejected. Seems he's just being unreasonable for the sake of it tbh; I can't see any logical reasoning behind it all.

> That's speculative on his part (noone has opened any issues with him, neither coming from nixos nor from any other repackaging). Which is the whole point of acting on it before it happens... It's crazy the amount of entitlement I see toward open-source developers. You don't like his stance, then fork it and support it yourself. You are already lucky to have a good base to work on, you shouldn't even be entitled to…

[deleted]

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

#338
post #332

Nixpkgs contributor here. One of the misunderstandings by frenck is how Nix operates[0], which is not via mutable site-packages folders but more accurately as an immutable graph structure. What this means is that to have home-assistant packaged properly, we need to also package its dependencies, which includes ambee. The argument that "In that case you are shipping an broken Home Assistant version."[1] is incorrect,…

Isn't the argument that HA has this functionality, thus if it cannot download its plugins/manifests at runtime, then it can be considered not fully functional? (Even though Nix users likely consciously trade off that for reproducibility.)

> Even though Nix users likely consciously trade off that for reproducibility.

Even if home-assistant would download the files at runtime it can't put them at the right location and it would only work for python only packages.

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

#339
I would suggest the author of the package use, say, this

4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.

to force nixos either to fork completely or become humble again.

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

#340
post #97
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…

He understands it perfectly. That's why he asked nicely at first. Nixos just "request denied" him after rounds of requests and discussion. With that he's roiled up to change the license to exclude Nixos. He just doesn't want the extra work to support another distro which would include an outdated version of his package.

It's not because he asks nicely that people have to agree or accept. This is literally the nice guy meme.

If you make a license FOSS then people are free to do what they want. Just don't make it FOSS if you don't want.

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