Documentation update for ActorPing -> Schedule on ListenerManager

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Lars Francke

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Jul 12, 2011, 10:49:12 AM7/12/11
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Hi,

as I've been bitten by this when I tried learning Lift I'd like to
update the documentation for the ListenerManager to replace ActorPing
with Schedule and to make the example compile by fixing a typo
(updateListeneres -> updateListeners) and extending LiftActor.

I've attached a patch (don't know if the ML allows attachements
though) and I can also create a ticket but I read that I should bring
it to the mailing list first...so here I am :)

Cheers,
Lars

listener_manager_doc.patch

David Pollak

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Jul 12, 2011, 12:51:33 PM7/12/11
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Sorry, but we don't accept patches.  Please see http://liftweb.net/community

I'll look through the CometActor code and clean it up.

Thanks!

David


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Lars Francke

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Jul 15, 2011, 4:22:51 AM7/15/11
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> Sorry, but we don't accept patches.  Please see http://liftweb.net/community

Is there any background information about this decision that I can read up on?

> I'll look through the CometActor code and clean it up.

Thank you.

Cheers,
Lars

David Pollak

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Jul 15, 2011, 4:51:54 AM7/15/11
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On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 1:22 AM, Lars Francke <lars.f...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry, but we don't accept patches.  Please see http://liftweb.net/community

Is there any background information about this decision that I can read up on?

Did you read the link I sent you?  Specifically:

None of the Lift committer will pull from your repository. The Lift IP is clean which means that unless you are a committer and you have written the code yourself, it doesn't get into Lift. This allows businesses to use Lift knowing what the provenance of the code is.
 

> I'll look through the CometActor code and clean it up.

Thank you.

Cheers,
Lars

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Lars Francke

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Jul 15, 2011, 5:39:23 AM7/15/11
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>> Is there any background information about this decision that I can read up
>> on?
>
> Did you read the link I sent you?  Specifically:
>
> None of the Lift committer will pull from your repository. The Lift IP is
> clean which means that unless you are a committer and you have written the
> code yourself, it doesn't get into Lift. This allows businesses to use Lift
> knowing what the provenance of the code is.

Yes I did and I don't mean to start a discussion with this but a lot
of other projects manage to do the same while still accepting patches
so I was interested in background information what lead to the
decision to do it this way in Lift.

Cheers,
Lars

Todd O'Bryan

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Jul 15, 2011, 4:54:03 PM7/15/11
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At the risk of speaking out of turn, I think that dpp's wife is an
intellectual property attorney and the project's conservative approach
to accepting code is a result of her being aware of nightmare
scenarios that most of us don't want to think about.

I do wish there were a "contributor" level for people who are willing
to assign their IP rights, but who aren't familiar enough with the
project to be trusted with commit rights. Especially for people who
are willing to write documentation, bug fixes, or small features,
being able to contribute your code while having someone who knows what
they're doing check it over would be a nice thing for the community.

The trade-off is that you have to keep track of many more IP
agreements and keep track of who's signed them and who hasn't, so the
Lift team may view that mess as more trouble than it's worth. I think
clear code provenance and knowing that you won't get sued is worth
quite a bit, so I can't fault the decision.

Todd

Lars Francke

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Jul 18, 2011, 4:12:50 AM7/18/11
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> At the risk of speaking out of turn, I think that dpp's wife is an
> intellectual property attorney and the project's conservative approach
> to accepting code is a result of her being aware of nightmare
> scenarios that most of us don't want to think about.

Thanks for the explanation.

Cheers,
Lars

David Pollak

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Jul 18, 2011, 11:51:53 AM7/18/11
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I'm a lawyer by training and clerked at a large Boston-based high tech firm.  I wrote the shrink wrapped license agreement used by many software companies in the 90s.

The Lift IP agreement was taken from the Plone Foundation's agreement.  The structure of the Lift IP is oriented to allowing corporations to safely adopt Lift while making sure that the Lift license (Apache 2.0) can be enforced.

Because the only people with commit rights to Lift source code are people (or organizations) who have assigned their code to the Lift IP holding company, the number of folks who can add code to Lift is very limited and most of the committers go through a code review process.  This means that the code is original works and cleanly assigned to the holding company.  This avoids the problems for businesses brought out in the SCO law suit a few years back (copy paste of code, lack of code provenance, etc.)  The bottom line for businesses is that they can use Lift in their projects and their legal departments have an easier time giving the code a clean bill of health... and clear statements about process and rule following like this help out a lot.

From a license enforcement perspective, having a single holding company own the IP means that if there ever is a license enforcement issue, we do not have to join all the copyright holders into a single suit because there's only one copyright holder.  The Apache foundation dances around this issue by allowing each contributor to retain copyright, but to claim copyright in the work as a whole (like claiming copyright in a phone book even though no single entry has copyright).  I think this is a load of horse poop and because it's never been tested in court and I don't want to be the test case.

Finally, in terms of code quality, I have not seen too many patches that I'd accept into Lift and those patches that are worth taking are from folks who I would like to be committers anyway.  This holds true for code patches as well as documentation patches.  It's very rarely the case that it's easier to review and merge a patch than to take the idea embodied in a patch and express it in a way that's more consistent with the code in the project.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

David

PS -- Yes, my wife is a particularly stellar IP litigator (just Google "Annette Hurst") and she's got great feedback on IP licensing structures.
 

Cheers,
Lars

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Lars Francke

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Jul 18, 2011, 7:11:18 PM7/18/11
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> Hope this helps.

Yes, thanks for taking the time to write this down. It helps in
understanding the decision.

Thanks,
Lars

Todd O'Bryan

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Jul 18, 2011, 9:12:51 PM7/18/11
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Well, clearly I didn't know what I was talking about, and this
explains things better, but...

David,

How is it that you managed to get kicked out of CS classes for being
ornery and yet managed to make it through law school????

:-)

Todd

David Pollak

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Jul 20, 2011, 11:00:49 AM7/20/11
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On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 2:12 AM, Todd O'Bryan <toddo...@gmail.com> wrote:
Well, clearly I didn't know what I was talking about, and this
explains things better, but...

David,

How is it that you managed to get kicked out of CS classes for being
ornery and yet managed to make it through law school????

Because in CS class, I was generally smarter and more experienced than the teachers and TAs (OMG... that was an arrogant thing to say) where my law school profs were far better than I was.  This was due to the fact that I went to the best law school in the US (rating based on quality of teaching staff) and I hadn't spent the prior 7 years of my life learning law.  The same was not true for my CS experiences... had I gone to MIT, I would have likely been similarly humbled by my professors and classmates.

Although I did mix it up with Clark Byse (http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/bulletin/2008/winter/mem-byse.php http://volokh.com/posts/1193468251.shtml ) a few times. ;-)
 
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