This is the official support channel for Lift

[David Pollak]

Folks,

This mailing list is the official support channel for Lift.  The IRC channel is a popular, but unofficial, support channel for Lift.

The following are not ways to get support for Lift (or my positive attention):

• Personal email unless we know each other (if you have a question about whether we know each other, we probably don't)
• Personal IM unless we know each other very well
• Twitter... don't @message me, don't direct message me for Lift related support.  At the best I'll ignore you.
• GitHub... don't message me on GitHub.  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.

So, if you need support, please post a message on this list.  If you need a new feature, please request it on the list and we'll work on it.

Why am I being a bit harsh here?  Well, I get many direct communications from Lift users every day over mediums that are not the Lift list.  I am not Lift.  Lift is a community that has lots of folks in it who can help you.  I do not know everything about Lift.  There are other people who know more than I do about parts of Lift.  If you and I have a private communication, the rest of the people in the community lose the benefit of the knowledge that we've exchanged.

Thanks,

David

--
Lift, the simply functional web framework http://liftweb.net
Beginning Scala http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219890
Follow me: http://twitter.com/dpp
Git some: http://github.com/dpp

[TylerWeir]

I think we should "sticky" this thread.

On Jul 9, 1:28 pm, David Pollak <feeder.of.the.be...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> This mailing list is the official support channel for Lift.  The IRC channel
> is a popular, but unofficial, support channel for Lift.
>
> The following are not ways to get support for Lift (or my positive
> attention):
>

>    - Personal email unless we know each other (if you have a question about

>    whether we know each other, we probably don't)

>    - Personal IM unless we know each other very well
>    - Twitter... don't @message me, don't direct message me for Lift related

>    support.  At the best I'll ignore you.

>    - GitHub... don't message me on GitHub.  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.
>
> So, if you need support, please post a message on this list.  If you need a
> new feature, please request it on the list and we'll work on it.
>
> Why am I being a bit harsh here?  Well, I get many direct communications
> from Lift users every day over mediums that are not the Lift list.  I am not
> Lift.  Lift is a community that has lots of folks in it who can help you.  I
> do not know everything about Lift.  There are other people who know more
> than I do about parts of Lift.  If you and I have a private communication,
> the rest of the people in the community lose the benefit of the knowledge
> that we've exchanged.
>
> Thanks,
>
> David
>
> --
> Lift, the simply functional web frameworkhttp://liftweb.net

> Beginning Scalahttp://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219890

[DFectuoso]

"that unless you
are a committer and you have written the code yourself, it doesn't
get into "

So maybe it would be a good idea to know how one becomes a committer!
Is it just by new modules? working close to the actual comitters? how
does that work?

[David Pollak]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:00 PM, DFectuoso <santia...@gmail.com> wrote:

"that unless you
  are a committer and you have written the code yourself, it doesn't
get into "

So maybe it would be a good idea to know how one becomes a committer!
Is it just by new modules? working close to the actual comitters? how
does that work?

Contributing the Lift community is the best way to become a committer.

You can contribute by doing a solid job of answering questions on the mailing list and demonstrating both knowledge of Lift and the kind of attitude that furthers the goals of the Lift community (helpfulness, sharing, paying particular attention to newbies).

You can contribute by writing code that demonstrates a solid knowledge about Lift and what people need from Lift.  Put that code out for the world to use... if it's good stuff, we may ask you to join the Lift project and roll that code into Lift.

After you've contributed to the Lift community for a while and your contributions are inline with the Lift way, we'll invite you to join.

There have been a couple of exceptions to the above (e.g., Jonas)... but the exceptions are based on either awesome presence in related forums or stellar, over-the-top technical prowess (Jonas demonstrated both.)

Thanks,

David

--

Lift, the simply functional web framework http://liftweb.net

Beginning Scala http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219890

[Spencer Uresk]

>    - GitHub... don't message me on GitHub.  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.

Sorry if I'm being dense, but does this include patches for small
enhancements and bug fixes?

For example, I posted a message on the list about some limitations in
the Mailer configuration. I made some small modifications to the class
so that it works better in shared vm environments, but I'd like to see
those changes (or at least similar functionality) make it back into
Lift because 1) I think it would be useful to other people, and 2)
maintaining my own Mailer for all my projects causes a maintenance
penalty that I'm interested in not paying in the long term. What is
the best thing I can do to help make that happen? In most communities
I've been involved with in the past, the answer is "Submit a patch!",
but it appears that may not be the case here.

And FYI - the Mailer issue isn't really that critical, I'm just using
it as an example.

Thanks,

- Spencer

[David Pollak]

What we usually do in cases like this is that we'll look at the approach, but do our own implementation.  In the case of your mailer enhancements, they or something very close to them will make it into Lift.

So, we don't take the "submit a patch approach", but we do get the features into Lift.
 

And FYI - the Mailer issue isn't really that critical, I'm just using
it as an example.

Thanks,

- Spencer

[Mark Essel]

I bugged you on twitter Dave before I learned there was a community
(or of this good heads up). My apologies. Sadly I believe many first
time lift users will become confused as to the nature of lift
development and believe you to be the primary contact incorrectly.

On Jul 9, 1:28 pm, David Pollak <feeder.of.the.be...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Folks,
>
> This mailing list is the official support channel for Lift.  The IRC channel
> is a popular, but unofficial, support channel for Lift.
>
> The following are not ways to get support for Lift (or my positive
> attention):
>

>    - Personal email unless we know each other (if you have a question about

>    whether we know each other, we probably don't)

>    - Personal IM unless we know each other very well
>    - Twitter... don't @message me, don't direct message me for Lift related

>    support.  At the best I'll ignore you.

>    - GitHub... don't message me on GitHub.  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.
>
> So, if you need support, please post a message on this list.  If you need a
> new feature, please request it on the list and we'll work on it.
>
> Why am I being a bit harsh here?  Well, I get many direct communications
> from Lift users every day over mediums that are not the Lift list.  I am not
> Lift.  Lift is a community that has lots of folks in it who can help you.  I
> do not know everything about Lift.  There are other people who know more
> than I do about parts of Lift.  If you and I have a private communication,
> the rest of the people in the community lose the benefit of the knowledge
> that we've exchanged.
>
> Thanks,
>
> David
>
> --
> Lift, the simply functional web frameworkhttp://liftweb.net

> Beginning Scalahttp://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219890

[Randinn]

If you haven't already David, you, may want to state where to go for
Lift help in your Twitter Bio.

[Johannes Rudolph]

Just to let you know: This policy (and the form it is stated) seems
overly strict to me when we are talking about small fixes/typos and
instantly discourages me from sending in any more of them (i.e.
perhaps I will do it anyway but with a bad feeling).

I know and understand: It is your project and in the first place the
committers owe nothing to Us, The Users. I can understand (and do
value) the overall decision to let the concensus of committers drive
the development instead of the quickest patch sent to the ML.

Still, for small contributions this policy looks for me like a lost
opportunity to let the broader community polish up little things noone
else noticed yet.

Actually, I just started using lift and I really liked what I've seen
so far. The question is if I'll still actively and openly try to fix
things which occur to me (as a beginner) or if I fix things quitely
and stay a passive user.

Or am I completely mistaken and misunderstood the policy?

Johannes

[David Pollak]

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 2:35 AM, Johannes Rudolph <johannes...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Just to let you know: This policy (and the form it is stated) seems
overly strict to me when we are talking about small fixes/typos and
instantly discourages me from sending in any more of them (i.e.
perhaps I will do it anyway but with a bad feeling).

Most open source software is polluted with code from who knows where.  This is problematic from a protection of rights standpoint and from an end user standpoint.

From the protection of rights, if there's no single copyright holder where all contributors have signed a legal agreement assigning their rights to that copyright holder, there is no single entity that can assert the license as against an infringer (note that in the case of the Apache license, there's very few rights that can be asserted because the license grant can only be revoked if a licensor files a patent infringement case against the licensee.)  However, it's still important that there be an entity that can assert the rights in the software.  If there are 50 different authors of the software, all 50 authors would have to join together (each with separate lawyers) to assert rights in the software.  That's untenable.

The second reason is for the end users.  You as an end user of Lift know that the IP is clean (well, at least if you trust that I've been adhering to the policies that I say I'm following, but for anyone who really cares, I can produce every single Lift IP assignment and we can trace through every commit and verify that each commit was made by someone who has assigned rights to Lift's copyright holder.)  This means that if you deploy a Lift-based application, you have very little risk of legal action from a third party asserting copyright violations.

The second point is very important.  I know of at least one GC (head lawyer) of a company we've all heard of that reviews every single license agreement of every piece of software used at the company.  For open source, she makes sure that the open source provider is following good practices because her company has billions of dollars of sales each year and would be a huge pot of gold for someone with a copyright claim.  Her comments about Lift's license and the way I manage the IP was very encouraging... she viewed Lift's IP cleanliness as top tier for any software she's ever reviewed.  That means that developers from her company can use Lift without her getting involved anymore.

So, the issue boils down to you posting something that's work that you could assert a copyright claim in.

Submitting a change of a single letter, a type-o, is not something that you could assert a copyright claim in.  I made the change that you suggested.

Submitting a one or two line bug fix is also something that's unlikely to be copyrightable work (although I tend to be the judge of that and discourage other Lift committers from making the call.)  If I determine the bug fix is not copyrightable, I'll roll it into Lift.

Submitting a new feature with code is likely to be copyrightable.  What we do in that situation is look at the interface and implement the interface our own way.

So, I'm sorry you think the policy is harsh and discourages community participation.  I developed the policy to protect users of Lift and make sure that they can build Lift-based applications without worry.  I wanted to be sure that Lift users never have to worry about the issues that SCO brought to every Linux users' doorstep a few years back.  And make no mistake, we are at the beginning, not the end, of figuring out the real open source legal landscape.

Thanks,

David

I know and understand: It is your project and in the first place the
committers owe nothing to Us, The Users. I can understand (and do
value) the overall decision to let the concensus of committers drive
the development instead of the quickest patch sent to the ML.

Still, for small contributions this policy looks for me like a lost
opportunity to let the broader community polish up little things noone
else noticed yet.

Actually, I just started using lift and I really liked what I've seen
so far. The question is if I'll still actively and openly try to fix
things which occur to me (as a beginner) or if I fix things quitely
and stay a passive user.

Or am I completely mistaken and misunderstood the policy?

Johannes

[Johannes Rudolph]

Hello David,

thanks for your thorough and comprehensive answer. I think I can now
better understand the decisions you made for the project. In my eyes
the fact alone that a conscious decision was made on this difficult
topic is one that deserves credit.

Still, it feels unfortunate that legal issues get in the way of free
collaboration so easily and that enthusiasm about a piece of software
(and I still think Lift kicks ass in many respects) cannot directly
flow into a stream of positive output in terms of code -- but that
belongs to a greater debate.

Nevertheless, thanks for all the work of the lift team!

Johannes

On Sep 4, 3:01 pm, David Pollak <feeder.of.the.be...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 2:35 AM, Johannes Rudolph <
>

> Beginning Scalahttp://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219890

[David Pollak]

On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 2:29 AM, Johannes Rudolph <johannes...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Hello David,

thanks for your thorough and comprehensive answer. I think I can now
better understand the decisions you made for the project. In my eyes
the fact alone that a conscious decision was made on this difficult
topic is one that deserves credit.

Still, it feels unfortunate that legal issues get in the way of free
collaboration so easily and that enthusiasm about a piece of software
(and I still think Lift kicks ass in many respects) cannot directly
flow into a stream of positive output in terms of code -- but that
belongs to a greater debate.

Nevertheless, thanks for all the work of the lift team!

If you've got material contributions for Lift, please demonstrate what you've got in terms of working code and willingness to help newbies on the this list.  I'm happy to add folks who can build working code and help others to the team of Lift committers.  Some of the committers have made very few commits (e.g., Greg Meredith) but lend a ton of value in their insights.  Other folks commit as much or more code than I do (e.g., Marius and Derek).  So there's a broad spectrum of who has the commit bit and it's not an exclusive club, but rather a group of folks who can roll up their sleeves and represent the values of this community.

--

Lift, the simply functional web framework http://liftweb.net

Beginning Scala http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430219890

[Timothy Perrett]

Commits or no commits, we have a great team - one that is responsive
and highly intelligent; moreover there is enough diversity of
requirement from our various stakes in lift that it will continue grow
organically from the needs of both committers and its users -
hopefully resulting in a super usable framework for all :-)

Cheers, Tim