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Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

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Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#41

Post by joeyh »

joeyh wrote: post #39
ElliotH wrote: post #2

Not to be too harsh on Jeff Atwood - as he has decades more experience than myself. But does anyone else feel that this blog post is a bit out of line? In short when John Gruber gives the code out under a BSD thatis a gift to whoever wants to use it - and it gives them near-complete freedom to use Markdown however they like. I don't see why on top of this gift he is in any way obliged to provide 'leadership' or 'dire…

If Gruber had released markdown and explicitly walked away from it, then yes, we would only be justified in appreciating his gift. (And I think anyone seriously using markdown has to conclude he did essentially release and walk away from the perl implementation. Aside from it being 6 to 12 times faster, there is no reason now to use it rather than the Text::MarkDown in CPAN -- which fixes its many, many, crippling bu…

Correction: Text::MarkDown differs in compatability in that it _seems_ to fix the internal underline issue. Although possibly not completly.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#42

Post by dasht »

gfunk911 wrote: post #9

1. This article is a bit too personal, 100% agree on that. 2. The best thing Gruber could do is pass on "ownership" of the project to someone else. He is under no obligation to do so, but it seems like that would essentially solve the problem, while requiring almost no effort from him.

Why should Gruber pass on "ownership" in the absence of a prospective owner who's work on the project he likes?

What "problem" would be solved here other than the problem that Atwood is bad-mouthing Gruber, apparently to force him to pass on "ownership" or at least to make Gruber into a negative example for others?

Isn't the better solution to that "problem" for the rest of the libre software community to disapprove of Atwood's defamatory statements about Gruber?

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#43

Post by pkaler »

The way that Atwood quotes the mailing list is irresponsible.

Please read this message: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2008-Marc...

1) Gruber states that he doesn't have time to update Markdown. 2) Gruber states that any fork of Markdown should be clearly stated as such.

End of story.

Gruber could respond with a post titled "Responsible Forking". Hopefully, Gruber just ignores Atwood and spends his time and attention on stuff that actually matters.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#44

Post by joeyh »

tptacek wrote: post #38
gfunk911 wrote: post #9

1. This article is a bit too personal, 100% agree on that. 2. The best thing Gruber could do is pass on "ownership" of the project to someone else. He is under no obligation to do so, but it seems like that would essentially solve the problem, while requiring almost no effort from him.

What's the "problem" here? The bugs Atwood is talking about are minor, and their solutions don't require drastic incompatible changes to Markdown-the-language. The issue here is that Gruber seems to be satisfied with Markdown-the-language, and Atwood (and many others) aren't. Obviously, Atwood could just create a new markup language derived from Markdown (like MultiMarkdown). But then he can't call it Markdown. He wa…

The underscore bug sounds minor, but is not.

The problem with this bug is you can start with something that works just as you would expect, like "HTTP_PROXY is a CGI variable".

Now you go back and, edit the sentence: "HTTP_PROXY and REQUEST_METHOD are CGI variables". Suddenly, and in violation of Least Suprise, markdown spits out text that has a em tag between the two underscores.

So, in practice, you have to remember to always escape underscores, so you start with. "HTTP\_PROXY is a CGI variable" and never run into the problem.

Except now you have to keep this arbitrary rule in your head, and remember to do it all the time, and you end up with something that does not look like a plain text email; it's obviously marked up now. Which rather defeats the point of markdown.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#45

Post by kragen »

Jeff wants Markdown to make a bunch of backward-incompatible changes that would change the interpretation of existing Markdown documents. It doesn't matter if Jeff is right that the new language would be better than Markdown; changing the spec in this way would still be an act of vandalism, because it scribbles all over the pages already written in Markdown.

I think Gruber is providing admirable leadership and direction by not making backwards-incompatible changes to the spec and smacking down people who want to do so.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#46

Post by ZachPruckowski »

algorias wrote: post #29
ElliotH wrote: post #2

Not to be too harsh on Jeff Atwood - as he has decades more experience than myself. But does anyone else feel that this blog post is a bit out of line? In short when John Gruber gives the code out under a BSD thatis a gift to whoever wants to use it - and it gives them near-complete freedom to use Markdown however they like. I don't see why on top of this gift he is in any way obliged to provide 'leadership' or 'dire…

When you release code, there's an implicit commitment of improving and maintaining it, or at least finding someone who will when you can't anymore, unless you say otherwise from the start. The attention and effort others invest in your project needs to be respected. You do have an ethical obligation to follow through on the project, at least in my view. Feeling no obligation towards your user base just because one of…

I don't think that's fair. I think "when you SELL code", there's an implicit (and usually explicit) commitment to improve/maintain it, but not when you give it away. When someone buys me a Christmas present, I don't go to them to repair it if it malfunctions.

Besides, the Markdown license explicitly says it's "as is" with no such support promises.

I don't think you can even call Markdown users Gruber's userbase. He created Markdown because it works for him. If you don't like how it works, change it and call it something else (MarkSide? MarkIn? MarkOut?)

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#47

Post by tptacek »

joeyh wrote: post #44
tptacek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the "problem" here? The bugs Atwood is talking about are minor, and their solutions don't require drastic incompatible changes to Markdown-the-language. The issue here is that Gruber seems to be satisfied with Markdown-the-language, and Atwood (and many others) aren't. Obviously, Atwood could just create a new markup language derived from Markdown (like MultiMarkdown). But then he can't call it Markdown. He wa…

The underscore bug sounds minor, but is not. The problem with this bug is you can start with something that works just as you would expect, like "HTTP_PROXY is a CGI variable". Now you go back and, edit the sentence: "HTTP_PROXY and REQUEST_METHOD are CGI variables". Suddenly, and in violation of Least Suprise, markdown spits out text that has a em tag between the two underscores. So, in practice, you have to remembe…

The change required to fix that glitch is so not drastic that many (most?) Markdown implementations have silently applied it already.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#48

Post by stevelosh »

billpg wrote: post #3

"Item #3, the conversion of returns to linebreaks, is somewhat more debatable. I'm on the fence on that one, but I do believe it's significant enough to warrant an explicit choice either way." Really? Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break? "Oh no, I kept hitting Enter between words instead of using the space-bar! If only pressing Enter was interpreted as a…

> Has anyone ever typed stuff, hit enter once, then typed more stuff, ever not intended a line break?

Yes. It makes diffs of version-controlled documentation far, far more readable (and efficient).

^Q in TextMate does it for you, so it's not even much extra effort. Type your paragraph, ^Q to wrap it to 78/80/whatever characters. I think someone else mentioned that emacs has a similar feature, and I'm sure vim does too.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#49

Post by ZachPruckowski »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #6

I don't understand why the term "fork" didn't appear in Atwood's article. It's the simplest solution to his problem.

This is blogging, not problem solving, Bloggers are capable of solving problems, but ad impressions, not solutions, pay the bills.

Re: Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

#50

Post by thwarted »

daleharvey wrote: post #10
sfk wrote: post #5

Markdown is not John Gruber's baby, it is an open source project. Stop anthropomorphizing everything in order to make a cheap point.

Open source projects are usually someones 'baby', democracy is nice and all but experience suggests that open source does best with an 'owner / leader', if the owner/leader isnt committed, then the project flounders until someone else takes their place. a highly visible blog post criticising gruber isnt the way to move forward though, email your issues offline, maybe offer to take 'leadership' of it if gruber is too…

Open source projects are not someone's baby unless someone claims them as such and takes their development personally. Having a leader on a project is nice, but not all source code needs a leader, and not all projects flounder without a leader. And just because development is stagnant on a popular project doesn't mean that it's floundering either.

It seems that the "official" version is 1.0.1 and is available as a zip file on daringfireball. The license file doesn't say anything about Gruber being against someone else maintaining it, or forking it, or whatever. Nothing is stopping anyone, or everyone, from importing the code into github and people maintaining it there. Considering the recent comments on this submission http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1017698 it only makes sense to put it on github, where everyone can contribute or fork and make it easy for control of the conceptually "official" version change hands.

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