node.js needs a new home

[Darren DeRidder]

Be it proposed that the community of Node.JS users and supporters will be better served by moving the Node.JS project and its affiliated trade marks and copyrights under the control of the Apache Software Foundation.

Refer to http://gigaom.com/2013/12/02/slap-fight-in-node-js-land/ and to the mixed reaction to Ryan's original announcement on Joyent & Node, where you'll see several prescient comments from names you recognize. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs/lWo0MbHZ6Tc

[Joshua Holbrook]

Disagree. Joyent holds it down, and ASF is where software projects go to collect dust.

--Josh

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Darren DeRidder <drder...@gmail.com> wrote:

Be it proposed that the community of Node.JS users and supporters will be better served by moving the Node.JS project and its affiliated trade marks and copyrights under the control of the Apache Software Foundation.

Refer to http://gigaom.com/2013/12/02/slap-fight-in-node-js-land/ and to the mixed reaction to Ryan's original announcement on Joyent & Node, where you'll see several prescient comments from names you recognize. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs/lWo0MbHZ6Tc

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[Brett Ritter]

Can't say I follow your logic.  The article you cite discusses a disagreement on the value of a patch between the Node owners/massive contributors and a significant contributor.

Based on this Node should move to a new owner?  Regardless of which side of the disagreement one falls on, I'm not seeing the logical flow.  Can you restate more clearly?

--
Brett Ritter / SwiftOne
swif...@swiftone.org

[Forrest L Norvell]

Not seconded.

There's an argument to made to remove single stewardship from Node *at all* and to move it under a truly free license (such as GPLv2), but I think that ship has sailed. Joyent has been a responsible steward of Node's trademarks and otherwise has left it alone to develop as it will. In addition, it is a large and heavy user of Node itself (in a real sense, its business is built on Node), and thus feels a sense of responsibility to Node, in a way that ASF projects do and can not.

Forrest L Norvell, New Relic

[Matt]

Losing Ben, even if it ends up being just for a short time, is a huge loss to this project [*], and the StrongLoop writeup on it makes an extremely strong point: this was an opportunity for communication and education, not name calling to try and save face to a lynch mob.

I agree with the premise that Node should have other stewardship than a single commercial entity, though I don't agree the ASF is the right place - I've worked in the ASF before and I don't like their systems and rules. But that's a choice for the core developers to decide on - they create the code, we are mostly just users. It might be better to file this idea as an issue on the project(s) to open discussion to the developers themselves.

[*] What Ben brought to the table more than anyone else was being the only core contributor who regularly responds to very hard technical issues on this mailing list and on IRC. I will definitely miss his contributions to the community, and hope the other core Node guys saw this and will now step up to replace his helpfulness.

 

[Laurent Fortin]

Why not a Node.js foundation?

https://twitter.com/mariocasciaro/status/406948487905804288

[Stephen Belanger]

That seems like a good idea until you see the mountain of paperwork and money required. Foundations are hard.

--

[Laurent Fortin]

If a Node.js foundation could mitigate tensions, help communication inside the Node.js community and drive the project, wouldn't it worth the cost?

-L

[Mikeal Rogers]

I wrote about this in greater detail:

https://gist.github.com/mikeal/7738226

A foundation can't help us deal with these issues with regard to the explosion in users and ecosystem, it could only attempt to alter the process around core which is not a very important issue.

-Mikeal

[Matt]

> it could only attempt to alter the process around core which is not a very important issue

I don't think that's the *only* thing it could do, in fact I doubt it would do that at all. Though yes, the ASF would do that, which is why I don't like the ASF.

It would mean that Joyent as a company is insulated from Node community issues like this one, and that would be a very good thing. It would also mean there's never a concern over a company owning copyrights to Node, which would also be a very good thing (despite their excellent stewardship so far).

Matt.

[Rick Waldron]

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Mikeal Rogers <mikeal...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wrote about this in greater detail:

https://gist.github.com/mikeal/7738226

A foundation can't help us deal with these issues with regard to the explosion in users and ecosystem, it could only attempt to alter the process around core which is not a very important issue.

Despite my seat as a board member of the jQuery Foundation (ie. I think foundations are ok), I completely agree with Mikeal here—a foundation wouldn't have made a difference and it would be fundamentally naive to think otherwise.

Carry on.

Rick

[Scott González]

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:14 PM, Matt <hel...@gmail.com> wrote:

It would mean that Joyent as a company is insulated from Node community issues like this one, and that would be a very good thing.

Good for who? If Joyent is concerned, they can take the action of creating a foundation. I don't think the community is concerned about this (I don't think Joyent is either).

It would also mean there's never a concern over a company owning copyrights to Node

I don't follow the logic here. The formation of a foundation doesn't change any copyright at all. In fact, Joyent does not own the copyright to the code. The copyright is shared by the individual contributors. It's possible that the contributors employed by Joyent have signed a Copyright Assignment Agreement, but even if they did, forming a foundation wouldn't change that. The policy that Joyent put in place is that contributors retain their rights and only grant a license to use/modify/sublicense/etc. to Joyent.

[Matt]

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Scott González <scott.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:14 PM, Matt <hel...@gmail.com> wrote:

It would mean that Joyent as a company is insulated from Node community issues like this one, and that would be a very good thing.

Good for who? If Joyent is concerned, they can take the action of creating a foundation. I don't think the community is concerned about this (I don't think Joyent is either).

I think it would be good in both directions. Joyent was forced to answer by an angry misinformed mob. They calmed one group of people while offending others, and I don't really envy their position. Their response lost us a valuable member of the community who could have been educated (as StrongLoop now says they have successfully done) rather than offended. You may not be concerned about it but please don't force that opinion on me or others by saying what you think is the community opinion.

 

It would also mean there's never a concern over a company owning copyrights to Node

I don't follow the logic here. The formation of a foundation doesn't change any copyright at all. In fact, Joyent does not own the copyright to the code. The copyright is shared by the individual contributors. It's possible that the contributors employed by Joyent have signed a Copyright Assignment Agreement, but even if they did, forming a foundation wouldn't change that. The policy that Joyent put in place is that contributors retain their rights and only grant a license to use/modify/sublicense/etc. to Joyent.

Joyent still owns copyright on the logo and name.

Matt.

[Scott González]

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:39 PM, Matt <hel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Scott González <scott.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:14 PM, Matt <hel...@gmail.com> wrote:

It would mean that Joyent as a company is insulated from Node community issues like this one, and that would be a very good thing.

Good for who? If Joyent is concerned, they can take the action of creating a foundation. I don't think the community is concerned about this (I don't think Joyent is either).

I think it would be good in both directions. Joyent was forced to answer by an angry misinformed mob. They calmed one group of people while offending others, and I don't really envy their position. Their response lost us a valuable member of the community who could have been educated (as StrongLoop now says they have successfully done) rather than offended. You may not be concerned about it but please don't force that opinion on me or others by saying what you think is the community opinion.

I didn't force anything on you or anyone else. I said "I don't think…" as in "my view is…" not "it is fact that…" Reading into things like this is what caused such a huge uproar in the first place.

It would also mean there's never a concern over a company owning copyrights to Node

I don't follow the logic here. The formation of a foundation doesn't change any copyright at all. In fact, Joyent does not own the copyright to the code. The copyright is shared by the individual contributors. It's possible that the contributors employed by Joyent have signed a Copyright Assignment Agreement, but even if they did, forming a foundation wouldn't change that. The policy that Joyent put in place is that contributors retain their rights and only grant a license to use/modify/sublicense/etc. to Joyent.

Joyent still owns copyright on the logo and name.

That's a trademark, not a copyright. Are you concerned that Google owns the Chrome logo or that Mozilla owns the Firefox logo? I'm not sure why this is a concern anyway; if the foundation owned the logo, like the jQuery Foundation owns the jQuery logo, the rights of the community would likely still be limited.

[// ravi]

On Dec 3, 2013, at 12:41 PM, Forrest L Norvell <for...@newrelic.com> wrote:

Not seconded.

There's an argument to made to remove single stewardship from Node *at all* and to move it under a truly free license (such as GPLv2), but I think that ship has sailed.

I agree on both counts.

My 2 cents: ASF is a massive ecosystem that grows larger and more complex by the day. What attracted me (personally) to Node is the lightweight building-blocks model it offers. Less frameworks, more components (modules). Reminds me of the old [golden] Unix days of the late 80s and early 90s. I fear Node cannot exist within ASF without attempts at “integration”. That’s just me, of course. YMMV.

—ravi

[Matt]

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:58 PM, Scott González <scott.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:39 PM, Matt <hel...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Scott González <scott.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 4:14 PM, Matt <hel...@gmail.com> wrote:

It would mean that Joyent as a company is insulated from Node community issues like this one, and that would be a very good thing.

Good for who? If Joyent is concerned, they can take the action of creating a foundation. I don't think the community is concerned about this (I don't think Joyent is either).

I think it would be good in both directions. Joyent was forced to answer by an angry misinformed mob. They calmed one group of people while offending others, and I don't really envy their position. Their response lost us a valuable member of the community who could have been educated (as StrongLoop now says they have successfully done) rather than offended. You may not be concerned about it but please don't force that opinion on me or others by saying what you think is the community opinion.

I didn't force anything on you or anyone else. I said "I don't think…" as in "my view is…" not "it is fact that…" Reading into things like this is what caused such a huge uproar in the first place.

Then allow me to re-word. It's clear just from emails here that there *are* community members who think this is an issue. Saying you don't think the community is concerned about it would be simply incorrect, and ironically very similar to saying "I don't think they/him/her matters" when clearly people are saying it matters.

Matt.

[Gagle]

Lol, it can't be possible. I really want to say my most sincerely opinion but I'll probably be banned from the earth. It can be summarized with: Joyent, what a shame of company.

[Issac Roth]

This is Issac (the bald one) from StrongLoop. We're active sponsors of the Node.js project in core, modules, meetups, evangelism, etc, but not in any kind of leadership way like Joyent.

We think Node.js should move to a foundation. (Eclipse or Mozilla, not Apache.) We think it hurts Node.js adoption for it to be perceived to be owned by Joyent. 

Our business is an mBaaS based on Node.js and we want Node.js to be widely adopted for our own success.

Some developers don't want to contribute to something they feel is owned by a corporation. Some companies won't approve adoption of Node because they're concerned that its future is uncertain since it's owned by a small private company. They ask, "what if Joyent is acquired by our competitor? Or by insert-big-evil-co-here." We can explain how the community can fork in that case, but you have to be sophisticated about open source to understand that logic chain and most people don't.

Uncertainty creates concern, which gives people a reason to not use Node. Broader adoption of Node leads to its continued support and progress and I think most of us want that. The current situation doesn't make the future certain and it doesn't make governance transparent (because Joyent can make decisions unilaterally.) Newcomers don't realize that Joyent has been good so far and how can they trust that they'll be good in the future. 

Finally, the alignment of interests isn't as pure as it could be. When you read posts or hear speakers, try to map who has a commercial relationship with Joyent. Many of the most outspoken community members do. That may or may not taint their opinions - it’s not transparent.

All that said, there is too much commercial interest for Joyent in owning Node.js (it is after all an asset with enterprise value), and I suspect the team feels they have earned the right to own it due to their stewardship to this point. For these reasons alone I doubt they'll let it go.

We can do stuff to change the harmful perception without asking Joyent to do something their investors and history won't let them do:

 - We can distance Node.js a little from Joyent, and hopefully they will even help with this. A neutral Node.js is one that more people can get behind without question. 

 - Posters can disclose their commercial relationships with Joyent if any.

 - We can be more explicit about the difference between node.js core, where Joyent has special jurisdiction, and community where they're like the rest of us.

What do you think?

[Nuno Job]

Joyents actions last week weakened the perception of nodejs. This makes it harder to continue the growth we had so far. Right when we are "crossing the chasm" and showing its a viable piece of technology for more traditional companies. This makes our work harder and made everyone's contributions less likely to be relevant.

The attempt to penetrate consulting market some days after made matters worse cause now it's a conflict of interest of having joyent run the project. Plus made last week seem extremely political.

Joyent is a infrastructure company and that's why node worked so far. They are (were?) not a node company; they use node.

I disagree with more senior members of the community saying things are ok. They are not. This community is not about maintaining status quo, speak your mind but most importantly think.  For many of us node is a big part of our life. 

Stewardship is about responsibility not power. (brain spasm: this whole story is interesting replacing frodo for joyent in lord of the rings)

When this changes it's time to take your contributions elsewhere. Open source is about improving the world and ultimately save duplicated work by sharing. It's a wonderful thing and if people want to make it a joke, let it be their joke and we go on for other adventures. That's what Ben did, in his shoes I would have done the same. (except I would have merged that PR in two seconds but thats a different topic)

I hope the upcoming actions of Joyent reassure me this was a a glitch and the future is bright. So far not a glimpse of humility. But they still have time.

Ps. I have deliberately not talked about anything else since joyent and the meaning stewardship is what is being discussed here. But that doesn't mean I liked all the other stuff that happened. I didnt. Also the ASF is really not a good idea as everyone already said.

--

[Luke Arduini]

Paraphrasing your response:

Fear: what happens if Joyent is acquired and the new evil owner of Node takes the project in a terrible direction?

Uncertainty: companies might not adopt Node if it continues under the stewardship of a for-profit company. Where does that leave the future of the users?

Doubt: Many outspoken community members have more to gain by maintaining the status quo, due to their relationship with Joyent. Can you trust these people to act in the best interest of the community?

----

With all due respect, you have the most to gain from a move like this. Thanks for trying to deceive the community into believing you're coming from an altruistic position, but no thanks. 

P.S., giant companies in the bay & valley without business relationships with Joyent are adopting node full-force. You've already been proven wrong. 

--

[// ravi]

On Dec 3, 2013, at 8:09 PM, Issac Roth <is...@strongloop.com> wrote:

This is Issac (the bald one) from StrongLoop. We're active sponsors of the Node.js project in core, modules, meetups, evangelism, etc, but not in any kind of leadership way like Joyent.

We think Node.js should move to a foundation. (Eclipse or Mozilla, not Apache.) We think it hurts Node.js adoption for it to be perceived to be owned by Joyent. Our business is an mBaaS based on Node.js and we want Node.js to be widely adopted for our own success.

Some developers don't want to contribute to something they feel is owned by a corporation. Some companies won't approve adoption of Node because they're concerned that its future is uncertain since it's owned by a small private company. They ask, "what if Joyent is acquired by our competitor? Or by insert-big-evil-co-here." We can explain how the community can fork in that case, but you have to be sophisticated about open source to understand that logic chain and most people don't.

Sorry, I disagree with the above. Forking open source is not sophisticated logic for *developers*. It might be for regular users or business people, but you are speaking of developers above and I would find it surprising to come across one who does not understand open source and forking.

Uncertainty creates concern, which gives people a reason to not use Node. Broader adoption of Node leads to its continued support and progress and I think most of us want that. The current situation doesn't make the future certain and it doesn't make governance transparent (because Joyent can make decisions unilaterally.) Newcomers don't realize that Joyent has been good so far and how can they trust that they'll be good in the future. 

If anything, the episode that triggered this thread seems to demonstrate that “good”ness doesn’t come from non-owner stewards. IMHO, we, the users of Node (or any open source project), are at the mercy of a few core developers. The more this team is mature/wise and responsive to the community (and not just merely in a technical sense), the greater our (or at least my) confidence.

And while we are at it, what of V8? If we are to worry about the ownership of Node, doesn’t that worry extend in greater magnitude to V8?

The only improvement that would strengthen Node, as it would *all* Open Source, is the GPL. But the GPL is for quixotic reasons controversial among exactly those who benefit from it, so I am not inviting a fork of this thread into that old debate.

Now, FWIW, if Node went anywhere near something like Eclipse (and the implied IDE-driven/centric development philosophy), I’d be a lot more alarmed, personally (for reasons outlined in my earlier concern about Apache).

I readily admit mine may be a minority view,

—ravi

[Matt]

On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 9:40 PM, // ravi <ravi-...@g8o.net> wrote:

I readily admit mine may be a minority view,

FWIW I don't think it is - the very vocal majority appears to support Joyent's blog post and actions here, and maintaining this status quo. Those of us who think Joyent's actions were unfortunate (to say the least) appear to be in a minority.

[// ravi]

Ah that’s likely true, but by minority view, I was speaking both (a) in more general terms of what is valuable for an Open Source project (not the specific commit/merge controversy) as well as (b) my old-fashioned distaste for IDE-centric and monolithic development.

—ravi

P.S: FWIW, I do very much support, more, celebrate, Joyent’s (izs’s) action on GitHub. I also am, as much as possible, going to try avoiding debating that here :-).

[Darren DeRidder]

To clarify, Brett, in reference to the first article, the "old timers" around here who followed this issue as it unfolded will probably realize it involves underlying friction between developers at two different companies coming to the surface. The response of Bryan C., publicly calling for the firing of a core node contributor, was alarming to say the least. It hurts Joyent's credibility when heavily invested users see that their top leadership would rather publicly shame a valuable contributor over a minor misunderstanding than deal with it in a productive way.

As Rick pointed out, a foundation in and of itself may not have helped in this particular instance, but the idea in general isn't naive, and might be inevitable. As others have pointed out, there is a reason why software foundations exist.

Going forward, the inter-company friction could increase... It should be pointed out that today Joyent announced their new professional services support for enterprise Node.JS users, a business model in direct competition with StrongLoop. Owning copyright and trade marks on the code and brand of Node.JS gives them an undeniable advantage, and although we haven't seen this being abused yet, naivety would be to assume it never would be.

Also, as others said, the perception that Joyent "owns" node is a concern for some larger potential users of the technology. I'm not affiliated with either Joyent or StrongLoop; I work for a very large international telecommunications company. It's a continual battle to get acceptance for new technology, and efforts to promote node in the enterprise will be hurt if open hostility is seen coming from it's "corporate stewards", regardless of the underlying issue. A foundation like Mozilla, Apache or Eclipse addresses  the perception issue and could also help ease concerns about Joyent's "trigger-happy" leadership. Other considerations for/against a foundation can be seen in the second link to Ryan's original announcement.

As for the foundations themselves, I agree that they seem dated and uncool and that Apache might not be the right choice. To be fair, PhoneGap / Cordova went with Apache, so it's not *all* gathering dust.

[Mikeal Rogers]

Just a few things.

When you want to comment in regard to Bryan Cantrill's post on behalf of Joyent it doesn't make you sound more definitive to state your opinion as some sort of overwhelming consensus when it is not. I agreed with Bryan and have nothing to do with Joyent. Many others feel the same.

Saying this "hurts Joyent's credibility" is not a better way of saying "I disagree." Please stop, it makes you sound foolish.

Next thing: core doesn't matter. I love core, they do awesome stuff, but core as an influencer of the community overall matters roughly 4x less than it did a year ago. Next year it'll matter less. Being that it matters less why are wasting energy trying to migrate its ownership? The ecosystem is where all the value is, it is not owned by Joyent, it is owned by the contributors.

Next thing: if the actual people who committed regularly to core (there's only about 6 of them) felt that Joyent's involvement was a hinderance they'd fork, guaranteed. It's not actually that hard to just fork the project. In fact, it would be easier for the maintainers to fork than to migrate the ownership and trademark to a non-profit. The maintainers are not calling for that, so how about everyone else just stop.

This is only an attractive subject to rant about because you can put all of the responsibility for action on other people. If someone wants to come up with a half a million dollars in legal fees to start a non-profit and defend the trademark I'll start to care about what you have to say.

It's been a long week, this is an unfortunate and stupid distraction, let's stop.

-Mikeal

[Isaac Schlueter]

Issac,

> We think it hurts Node.js adoption for it to be perceived to be owned by Joyent. 

That's a bold claim to make of the platform that is *still* growing faster in adoption than any platform in history.  Can you back it up with data?  Where SHOULD Node.js be adopted?  Please be specific.  Name a real company that is *not* using Node.js because Joyent owns it.  Because plenty of companies seem to have no problem adopting Node.

The reason it's "perceived" to be owned by Joyent is that it IS owned by Joyent, and most people are capable of perceiving such a thing, because they can read, and they know what "ownership" is.  If you disagree, then disagree.  Say "Joyent does not own Node.js", and make the case for it.  Stop with the weasel words, it's weak writing, and it's gross.

But since this isn't the first time it's come up, I'd like to suggest you actually follow through with this.

So what would be the first step to putting Node.js in a foundation?

Since Apache (the only foundation I'm aware of that does trademark protection) is off the table, would you suggest that we genericide the mark?  Personally, I think that's a bad idea, and I don't think I'm alone.  And what has Eclipse done to earn our trust?

** Obstacle 1: Convince Node.js community that genericide is preferable to trademark protection, and that Eclipse is preferable to Joyent.

Nontrivial, at least.

Let's say that we don't/can't do that, we'd have to create a new foundation.  That's not cheap.  Conservative estimates put it at around 1-2 million a year for legal, marketing, hiring a few developers to work on Node.js.

After all, you're claiming that the foundation is *better* than Joyent, so I'd assume that means that it does *more* than Joyent does for Node. Hiring TJ Fontaine, me, Emily Tanaka-Delgado, another dev, and some legal is a bare minimum, even if we do put it in Eclipse.  (Why would Joyent invest so much more than anyone else, in a product they don't own?)

** Obstacle 2: Come up with $1MM per year in recurring income.

It's easy to say "Big companies would pay."  So, which ones?  Do you have contacts there, with the authority to write checks?  Have you negotiated terms under which they'd do so? Are they any more agreeable to the Node.js community than Joyent, who's biggest sin is "doesn't do enough", and has a long reputation of behaving well in OSS communities?

Show me the money.

And this brings us to the biggest obstacle: the fact that Joyent actually DOES "own Node.js", and in fact, generates a LOT of their revenue from the reputation of being the cloud provider that is most highly focused on Node.js as a first-class citizen.  (Just ask the folks at Voxer, Walmart, etc.)  It would be a breach of fiduciary duty for them to just give it away to a foundation for no reason.  Unconscionable!

So, what's the pitch?  How is it in Joyent's interest to give away their cash cow?

** Obstacle 3: Sell Joyent on giving up Node.js.

Complaining isn't enough.  Show how it is in *Joyent's* financial interest to give it up.  Perhaps you could purchase it from them.  But with what money?  Do you know how much it would cost?  Do you have buyers lined up?

I'm not saying that these obstacles are insurmountable.  Nothing is impossible!  But I see a rather daunting and cash-intensive project, and no one with deep enough pockets who is motivated to pursue it.  What's in it for them?  Their logo on a website?  Why not just hire a core developer for much LESS money, and get involved that way, which is much more useful?

If anyone actually had that kind of motivation and access to capital, why wouldn't they just create a startup and get rich, instead?  Nonprofits are at least as challenging as startups, and in many ways more so.

It's very easy to complain about Joyent not doing some vague misunderstood thing called "put Node.js in a foundation".  But it has never made much sense to me, really.  The purpose of a foundation is to manage valuable assets.  If you already have a corporation doing that for you, and protecting the trademarks for you, what's the point?  What do YOU get out of it?

Until these questions are answered, the "put it in a foundation" spiel isn't something I can take seriously.

[Stephen Belanger]

Very well put, Isaac.

I think eventually someone will come along that wants to buy it and put it in a foundation. I don’t think Joyent would let it go for cheap though.

The only scenario I can think of being at all possible is that somehow Joyent manages to screw up and go bankrupt, then someone picks up node and the team for cheap.

[Luke Arduini]

I would like to buy one node core developer team for cheap, please. Where can I purchase these programmers?

[Stephen Belanger]

Aisle 3, behind the WebOS devices.

--

[Nirk Niggler]

Isaac: 

There is another alternative: Joyent creates a wholly owned subsidiary node.js corporation with an independent board, have the corporation sell direct support (a la red hat or mysql AB), and arrange for it to buy out Joyent's stake at a later date.

This obviates all of your concerns:

- If Joyent is a Delaware Corporation (I assume that's the case), the overhead is minimal

- Joyent still enjoys the economic benefits (and still indirectly owns the Node.JS trademarks)

- The concerned people in the community can rest assured that an independent board is guiding future progress 

[Isaac Schlueter]

Nirk,

A) That's not a "foundation", then, it's just a separate (for-profit) company.

B) Who's on that board?  Why would the Joyent executives and board of directors agree to give up control of it?

How does that address Issac's concerns about Joyent controlling things?

No, I'm afraid only a real foundation will do.  Good idea trying to find a middle-ground, though.

[Tim Fox]

Having node at Eclipse would lead to interesting dynamics, as Eclipse already has Vert.x

[Alex Kocharin]

 

After reading this blog:

http://web.archive.org/web/20131201044200/http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun

 

I tend to agree with you guys.

 

I have a high respect for all core maintainers, they are doing a great work, and I can't even imagine where node.js would've been now.

 

But seeing WHAT some Joyent guys whose names I see for the first time in my life are talking, I would really hate to see their opinion matter any more than opinions of those trolls in a pull request.

 

 

03.12.2013, 21:24, "Darren DeRidder" <drder...@gmail.com>:

Be it proposed that the community of Node.JS users and supporters will be better served by moving the Node.JS project and its affiliated trade marks and copyrights under the control of the Apache Software Foundation.

Refer to http://gigaom.com/2013/12/02/slap-fight-in-node-js-land/ and to the mixed reaction to Ryan's original announcement on Joyent & Node, where you'll see several prescient comments from names you recognize. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs/lWo0MbHZ6Tc

 

--

[Matt]

On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 1:24 AM, Mikeal Rogers <mikeal...@gmail.com> wrote:

Next thing: core doesn't matter. I love core, they do awesome stuff, but core as an influencer of the community overall matters roughly 4x less than it did a year ago. Next year it'll matter less. Being that it matters less why are wasting energy trying to migrate its ownership? The ecosystem is where all the value is, it is not owned by Joyent, it is owned by the contributors.

While mostly true, there's a tie-in. People who write node modules often need the help of core contributors like Ben who have the knowledge of not just the Node internals, but of the nuances of the kernel and APIs like openssl to be able to assist us. And assist he did, almost every single day. We don't see much from other node contributors. Most of Isaacs posts in the last 2 years have been organisational issues. What Ben did, THAT is community, and it's important, and those of us who relied on Ben's help over the years are worried there won't be someone to step up and fill those shoes. Some re-assurance from core developers about that issue would be very useful right now.

 

Next thing: if the actual people who committed regularly to core (there's only about 6 of them) felt that Joyent's involvement was a hinderance they'd fork, guaranteed. It's not actually that hard to just fork the project. In fact, it would be easier for the maintainers to fork than to migrate the ownership and trademark to a non-profit. The maintainers are not calling for that, so how about everyone else just stop.

Agreed. Without the node core maintainers being behind a foundation it will never happen. Might as well stop discussing that particular aspect.

Matt.

[Darren DeRidder]

Thanks for the insightful comments. Nobody addressed Joyent's new business initiative in competition with StrongLoop or how their IP claims impact that. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.

Mikeal, thanks for your work on node, too. Regarding Joyent's credibility: point taken -- it's really the whole node ecosystem that gets hurt when articles like "Slap-fight in Node Land" hit the press.  As you say, creating a separate node foundation isn't realistic. The proposal was about exploring what an existing foundation like Apache (or Eclipse, or Mozilla) has to offer. Comments for/against were expected. Incidentally, submitting a project to the Apache Incubator is free.

Isaac, agreed "perceived ownership" isn't the right phrase. People could be thinking of Oracle and MySQL / Hudson / Java, but I'm not sure there's a succinct word for that situation. Many good points in your reply, but it seems targeted at the early adopters. You asserted Joyent's ownership and referred to node as a "cash cow"; if I'm trying to justify the use of Node.JS to a room full of managers or a new startup, and this statement came up, it would be problematic.

Matt, definitely agree with your comments about alienating Ben. Misunderstandings happen, and if they can't be resolved without immediately "firing" someone, that's bad. There has to be a better way.

[Shane Curcuru]

Wow, this is quite a thread, and quite a blowup, obviously about much more than pronouns.  There are a lot of different issues here, although fundamentally there are two parts that are the most important: one that's easy to define, and one that's much much harder.

1. Who legally owns the Node.js trademarks?  That's easy, or at least reasonably easy to determine.  The wordmark is owned by Joyent, Inc.:

  http://www.trademarkia.com/nodejs-85262623.html

2. What does the community want to do, and how efficient are the committers (who write the code and publish websites about the technology) at organizing themselves around a shared goal?  That's hard, as any question dealing with a lot of people working together usually is.

Another key issue that I often find engineers tend to under-estimate is the appearance of their brand and their work to the larger world.  I.e. who in this community is going to be most effective at taking their message not just to the existing core contributors to the Node.js code, but more to the outside world of new users and corporations who might want to use it - and therefore contribute new things to it.  This focus on the larger impact outside of just the core community is often (for better or worse!) something that for-profit corporations tend to be better at than passionate engineers working on it just for the community or for a smaller company.

In any case, a number of people were talking about the ASF, and I wanted to add a few useful links about how Apache projects work for those that are interested.  The most important thing to understand is that there is no one typical Apache project: every project has it's own community with it's own way of doing things.  Generalizing behavior over 140+ active project communities at Apache is not a good way to understand us.  8-)

By definition, the ASF has a fairly small set of hard rules that must be followed for Apache projects.  These include branding yourself as "Apache Foo", using ASF infrastructure to store the master repo, some basic [VOTE] rules on adding committers and making releases, using the Apache license, and PMCs managing projects independently.  Beyond that, the ASF has a variety of sets of best practices for managing communities, deciding consensus, and the like, but those are all just best practices, and healthy communities are allowed to chose their own ways of doing things within them.

But the thing I find most interesting for this conversation is the concept that Apache projects must be managed independently.  These behaviors are *required* for any Apache project:

  http://community.apache.org/projectIndependence.html

That's the fundamental difference between Node.js at it's current home at Joyent, and the potential idea of an "Apache Node.js" project.  Currently, Joyent owns the trademark, and over the long term, it's likely their overriding goal will be corporate profits.  Fundamentally, the ASF is a public charity, and it's long term goal is providing software for the public good.

I'm not saying that Apache is the right home for Node.js - we'd certainly be thrilled if people were interested in joining the ASF! - that's truly up to the community of people doing the actual work to decide.  But I did want to explain a bit about how Apache projects work in case people were considering that idea.

Thanks for reading,
- Shane

[Darren DeRidder]

Relevant: There's a discussion on HN in response to Ben Noordhuis officially leaving Node.JS core dev.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845286

[Christian Grobmeier]

Hello folks,

On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 5:17:39 PM UTC+1, Darren DeRidder wrote:

Thanks for the insightful comments. Nobody addressed Joyent's new business initiative in competition with StrongLoop or how their IP claims impact that. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.

Mikeal, thanks for your work on node, too. Regarding Joyent's credibility: point taken -- it's really the whole node ecosystem that gets hurt when articles like "Slap-fight in Node Land" hit the press.  As you say, creating a separate node foundation isn't realistic. The proposal was about exploring what an existing foundation like Apache (or Eclipse, or Mozilla) has to offer. Comments for/against were expected. Incidentally, submitting a project to the Apache Incubator is free.

I am a Node.js user and involved into the Apache Software Foundation. Specifically I work for several project, including Struts and Log4j (Logging). I am also doing a lot for the Apache Incubator and helped to mentor a couple of projects. I would like to respond to a few comments I have seen in this thread on a more general level.

As you maybe already guess I am passionate about the ASF. I do not feel its some kind of garbage collector for dusty projects. In fact the ASF hosts a couple of the most important software projects to date. Among them are Hadoop and its eco system and OpenOffice. Despite rumors the latter one is still the leading open source office suite:

 * http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/libreoffice-adoption-soaring-but-openoffice-still-open-source-king/

It has also been mentioned that Adobe donated the code base of Phonegap to the Apache Software Foundation which is now called Apache Cordova. Ripple (an mobile simulator in js) followed some time after, but its still in incubation. 

It's true that we have some old players in our foundation. In example Maven, Ant or heros like Subversion. It's tempting to think projects like Subversion do collect dust in the face of Git and GitHub. Maybe it is. But should the project close because there is the next fancy tool on the market? As a volunteer driven foundation projects are going on until there is nobody who is interested in it. We have no "government" or "project leader group" which decides what to kick and what to fund. If there is a community then there is a project.

Despite GitHub there IS a use case for SVN. There are some use cases of which Git is not of help. As long as there is use for SVN and somebody has fun hacking it, there will be a Subversion project.

Just for the record: both, Git and Svn are supported as scm at Apache.

Now can you say the ASF runs dusty projects? Not really. You need to say: there are still volunteers who maintain $x despite $y.

Maintaining a project doesn't make the whole foundation dusty. Actually it's good that the foundation doesn't tell you when to shut down and when not. There might be a time when Node.js lifecycle is over but a few of you will still consider to go on.

At the time of GitHub rising, what is the difference to a Foundation?

GitHub provides you infrastructure like the ability to publish websites, host code, maintain issues and so on.

The ASF provides you the same but is also a non profit cooperation. It's infrastructure is completely independent of a company which in first aims at profit. It provides legal advise when necessary, help with protecting trademarks and so on. It even provides a license.

It is "business friendly" due to licenses but also a clean ip.

If you want to enter enterprise, people will ask: can I use the code?

At GitHub it is easy to accept pull requests. There is no safety where the code comes from if it has been checked and so on.

At the ASF committers sign an ICLA (contributor agreement) and allow the ASF to distribute the code. It cannot be taken back. Enterprises are safe to use it. 

And on the other hand, the ASF protects its committers. If you commit code and somebody has a problem (lets say a patent troll) the ASF has a problem. Not you. (Please note: this is not a legal advise and I am not a lawyer. Actually I don't have much clue on legal things and you should ask on legal@apache or your local lawyer if you need more information).

Here are a few slides on the risk of using Open Source from our current president Ross Gardler:

http://archive.apachecon.com/eu2012/presentations/07-Wednesday/PR-Community/aceu-2012-managing-project-risk-when-using-open-source.pdf

Of course these kind of things are done by Eclipse or other Foundations as well. What makes the difference for me personally is the community.

At the ASF we say: "community over code" and this is what i experience everyday working with the folks from the ASF. There is a lot of movement and respect. The ASF acts community friendly in a way which makes me prefer it to all other foundations i have seen. Going to a nearby ApacheCon (us, eu, asia) and meet all the people is just fantastic. 

The ASF is independent. If a project joins the foundation, its people will grow into the foundation as well. It is possible that one of you becomes the next board member. I wrote a blog post about it, if you are interested to read:

http://www.grobmeier.de/hey-i-became-a-vice-president-07072012.html

The ASF makes it possible that you can you join any community by election. Once elected you'll have a voice. All voices count equal. There is only one difference from "committer" to "pmc". I will leave off this detail. If you want to read more about it, here is a link:

http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html

I am telling this because not everybody is made for the ASF. There are different ways to run a project. Some need a defined project leader who says whats going on and what not. At the ASF we try to reach a consensus in the team and decide together. In all the projects I have participated it works fantastic. However I have heard of different cases too. In example, iBatis left and became myBatis. I have no link handy but if you google for it you can surely read some thoughts on that.

For me its the community, the legal safety, clear ip, the license and the independent infrastructure. I like the enterprise friendliness. 

You could make up your own foundation. The ASF allows to reuse its documents. But you could have it for free too and just join the Apache Incubator.

If you have an serious interest to do that, I am willing to help you. As I mentioned I am involved in the Incubator and I am a Node.js user. I am willing to help you coming into the incubator and to mentor you until you have learned all specifics around the ASF.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Thanks!

Christian

[Issac Roth]

On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:14:10 AM UTC-8, Darren DeRidder wrote:

Relevant: There's a discussion on HN in response to Ben Noordhuis officially leaving Node.JS core dev.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845286

This is an example of Joyent acting unilaterally. I'm not sure if Isaac actually took away his committer bit, but he and Joyent seem to want Ben out of the codebase. Ben wrote, "I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development." The word probably is important, he wanted to leave the option open. I talked to him before he left to go chill out in the woods for a week and asked if he really wanted to stop working on Node.js. He wasn't sure. He wanted to clear his head first. If he was invited back I guess the official Node.js blog would have said so. http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/12/03/bnoordhuis-departure/

The announcement of Joyent becoming explicitly commercial about Node and of them kicking Ben off the project are on the same day.

I agree with Isaac S. It's a well written email. There's no good reason from Joyent's perspective for them to give up the Node.js trademark (which is what they do own, not all of the code. They own some of the code but not the majority.) 

I stand by my suggestions: 

 - people should disclose their relationships

 - we work as a community to clarify the difference between community and core (which is what Mikeal is advocating) 

On Tuesday, December 3, 2013 10:24:33 PM UTC-8, Mikeal Rogers wrote:

 I agreed with Bryan and have nothing to do with Joyent. Many others feel the same.

If I read your bio on the web you are co-founder of The Node Firm who are commercial partners of Joyent: http://www.joyent.com/partners/the-node-firm

 Many others feel the same.

And many feel the opposite. Just read around. 

You can work to unite or to polarize. I suspect you'll accuse me of being hypocritical in that statement. My view is that I work to unite and I've explained why I'm motivated to do so: For the success of our mobile and node products we need Node.js to be well respected since we're based on it. The incumbent voices like to cast me as a polarizer but that's not coming from me on purpose - it's just a natural response by existing folks when a new person or group shows up.

[Emily Rose]

I feel like it would add a lot of credibility to your cause of being viewed as someone who "seeks to unite" if you were to take the time to understand why you may be perceived by many as someone who has had a polarizing effect on the community thus far. I'd really appreciate it if I saw an honest and open dialogue on this subject before you continue to offer suggestions to others on how they can do the same. This post feels a lot like "do as I say, not as I do". I'm willing to accept the possibility that I'm completely misunderstanding your intent, but this is an honest response to the input I've seen from you so far. The language that I've seen coming from you surrounding Node.js and its ecosystem/community/commercial interests has felt very divisive so far (if I'm honest on a personal level).

[// ravi]

On Dec 4, 2013, at 6:06 PM, Issac Roth <is...@strongloop.com> wrote:
>
> This is an example of Joyent acting unilaterally. I'm not sure if Isaac actually took away his committer bit, but he and Joyent seem to want Ben out of the codebase. <…>

> The announcement of Joyent becoming explicitly commercial about Node and of them kicking Ben off the project are on the same day.
>

Issac,

don’t you think you should first find out for certain whether Ben has been “kicked off” (his committer bit taken away) before reading politics into it? Perhaps Ben has a signal out in the woods and can be contacted for confirmation. Or you could ask IsaacS. Don’t you think more FUD is unhelpful?

—ravi

[Matteo Collina]

Hi Everyone,

Even if I do not feel the urge to take a stand in this political flame (strange for an Italian guy ;)), I would like to add that the Eclipse Foundation is made by very nice people that understand developers and commercial OSS products.

IMHO whatever core developers decides is good for the project. I trust Izs and the rest of the team, otherwise I will not use node at all.

Disclaimer: I do Internet of Things/Machine To Machine projects and so I am part of both the Node.js and Eclipse communities.

Cheers,

Matteo

[jmartins]

+1 to nodejs foudation and here in Brazil is very easy open a Foudation.

we have http://www.python.org.br and http://www.plone.org.br

And all foundations have collaboration between them.

I loved open http://www.nodejs.org.br :-)

regards

Joao Martins

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Sorry to jump into this thread late -- a supporter of Conservancy noted
to me that it might be valuable for me to comment on this thread. Feel
free to ignore this email if it's not helpful.

I read through the posts on this thread, and it seems to me that Node.js
is facing a standard decision that comes up in the life of most Open
Source and Free Software projects. Specifically, the community is faced
with the decision of whether the project should be housed at a specific
for-profit company, or have a non-profit entity behind it instead.
Further, people are considering if the latter is pursued, whether the
Node.js community should form its own non-profit or affiliate with one
that already exists. (BTW, I don't think *how* you came to that
crossroads matters that much, actually: the issue has been raised and a
decision is before you.)

Choosing a governance structure is a tough and complex decision for a
project -- and there is always some status quo that seems easier. Thus,
I'm not surprised there is a certain amount of acrimony in the debate.
I have my own biases on this, since I am the Executive Director of a
non-profit home for Open Source and Free Software projects and have
studied the issue of non-profit governance for Open Source and Free
Software for the last decade. I have a few comments based on that
experience that might be helpful.

The obvious benefit of a project housed in a for-profit company is that
they'll usually always have more resources to put toward the project --
particularly if the project is of strategic importance to their
business. The downside is that the company almost always controls the
trademark, perhaps controls the copyright to some extent (e.g., by being
the beneficiary of a very broad CLA), and likely has a stronger say in
the technical direction of the project. There will also always be
"brand conflation" when something happens in the project ("Did the
project do it, or did the company?"), and that's observable here with
the confusion around recent events.

By contrast, the main benefit of a non-profit is that a non-profit
entity is legally required to balance the needs of many contributors
and users (while a for-profit entity only needs to consider the interests
of its own shareholders). Thus, non-profits are a neutral home for
activities of the project, and a neutral place for the trademark to live,
perhaps a neutral place to receive CLAs (if the project wants CLAs),
and to do other activities for the project (Conservancy, for its part,
has a list of what services it provides at
https://sfconservancy.org/members/services/ )

There's also difference among non-profit options. The primary two USA
options for Open Source and Free Software are 501(c)(3)'s and
501(c)(6)'s. 501(c)(3)'s have to always act in the public good, while
501(c)(6)'s have to act in interest of its many different for-profit
members. I'm a fan of the 501(c)(3) style of non-profit, again, because
I help run one. The choice between the two really depends on whether
you want the project run and controlled by a consortium of for-profit
businesses (the 501(c)(6) option), or if you want the project to operate
as a public charity focused on advancing the public good by producing
better Open Source and Free Software. BTW, the big benefit, IMO, to a
501(c)(3) is that the non-profit *only* represents the interests project
with respect to the public good, so its motives are never conflated with
any corporate interest -- single *or* aggregate.

If you decide you want a non-profit, there's then the decision of
forming your own non-profit or affiliating with an existing non-profit.
Folks on the list who have said it's easy to *start* a new non-profit
are correct; the challenge is in keeping it running. It's a tremendous
amount of work and effort to handle the day-to-day requirements of
non-profit management, which is why so many Open Source and Free
Software projects choose to affiliate or join with an existing
non-profit rather than form their own. I'd suggest strongly that the
Node.js community look the affilation option, in part because many non-profit
umbrellas permit the project to later "spin off" to form your own
non-profit, so affilation is not always a permanent decision.
Anyway, I'd be happy to talk (by email, phone or IRC) with anyone in the
Node.js community about joining Conservancy specifically, or even just
to talk through all the non-profit options available. There are many
options and existing non-profits, all with their own tweaks, so if the
Node.js community decides it'd like a non-profit home, there's lots to
chose from and a lot to consider.

I'd note finally that the different tweaks between non-profit options
deserve careful attention. I see a few people commenting that
structures imposed by non-profits won't help with what Node.js needs.
However, not all non-profits have the same type of structures, and they
focus on different things. For example, Conservancy doesn't dictate
anything regarding specific CLA rules, licensing, development models,
and the like. We generally advise about all the known options, and help
the community come to the conclusions it wants and implement them well.
The only place Conservancy has strict rules is with regard to the
requirements and guidelines the IRS puts forward on 501(c)(3) status.
Meanwhile, other non-profits *do* have strict rules for development
models, or CLAs, and the like, which some projects prefer for various
reasons.

[ I do apologize if this message came through multiple times. I've been
struggling for two days to get Google Groups to accept my posts to
this list. ]
--
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy

[Lloyd Dewolf]

On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Issac Roth <is...@strongloop.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, December 4, 2013 10:14:10 AM UTC-8, Darren DeRidder wrote:

Relevant: There's a discussion on HN in response to Ben Noordhuis officially leaving Node.JS core dev.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6845286

This is an example of Joyent acting unilaterally. I'm not sure if Isaac actually took away his committer bit, but he and Joyent seem to want Ben out of the codebase. Ben wrote, "I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development." The word probably is important, he wanted to leave the option open. I talked to him before he left to go chill out in the woods for a week and asked if he really wanted to stop working on Node.js. He wasn't sure. He wanted to clear his head first. If he was invited back I guess the official Node.js blog would have said so. http://blog.nodejs.org/2013/12/03/bnoordhuis-departure/

The announcement of Joyent becoming explicitly commercial about Node and of them kicking Ben off the project are on the same day.

Issac R, now it is, Joyent has kicked Ben off the project? Does creating more flames, polarity, and controversy help? I think it would be best if we let people speak for themselves and talk directly to each other.

To suggest that Joyent was not previously "explicitly commercial about Node" is bizarre. Also, I'd expect you know the workings of these announcements as well as anyone -- months in the work and impossible to cancel press releases in the days before, not that I would see any reason why we would have.

The suggestions you stand beside are good ones, though I appreciate the complexity of relationships and awkwardness and distraction of constant disclosure -- most important is for us to be honest with each other and ourselves about our interests. Let's focus on your suggestions and other positive initiatives.

Thank you,

Lloyd

--

lloydde, foolswisdom

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Sorry to jump into this thread late -- a supporter of Conservancy noted
to me that it might be valuable for me to comment on this thread. Feel
free to ignore this email if it's not helpful.

I read through the posts on this thread, and it seems to me that Node.js
is facing a standard decision that comes up in the life of most Open
Source and Free Software projects. Specifically, the community is faced
with the decision of whether the project should be housed at a specific
for-profit company, or have a non-profit entity behind it instead.
Further, people are considering if the latter is pursued, whether the
Node.js community should form its own non-profit or affiliate with one
that already exists. (BTW, I don't think *how* you came to that
crossroads matters that much, actually: the issue has been raised and a
decision is before you.)

Choosing a governance structure is a tough and complex decision for a
project -- and there is always some status quo that seems easier. Thus,
I'm not surprised there is a certain amount of acrimony in the debate.

I have my own biases of this, since I am the Executive Director of a

non-profit home for Open Source and Free Software projects and have
studied the issue of non-profit governance for Open Source and Free

Software for the last two decades. I have a few comments based on that

experience that might be helpful.

The obvious benefit of a project housed in a for-profit company is that
they'll usually always have more resources to put toward the project --
particularly if the project is of strategic importance to their
business. The downside is that the company almost always controls the
trademark, perhaps controls the copyright to some extent (e.g., by being
the beneficiary of a very broad CLA), and likely has a stronger say in
the technical direction of the project. There will also always be
"brand conflation" when something happens in the project ("Did the
project do it, or did the company?"), and that's observable here with
the confusion around recent events.

Meanwhile, the benefit of a non-profit is that any non-profit entity is

legally required to balance the needs of many contributors and users
(while a for-profit entity only needs to consider the interests of its
own shareholders). Thus, non-profits are a neutral home for activities
of the project, and a neutral place for the trademark to live, perhaps a
neutral place to receive CLAs (if the project wants CLAs), and to do
other activities for the project (Conservancy, for its part, has a list
of what services it provides at
https://sfconservancy.org/members/services/ )

There's also difference among non-profit options. The primary two USA
options for Open Source and Free Software are 501(c)(3)'s and
501(c)(6)'s. 501(c)(3)'s have to always act in the public good, while
501(c)(6)'s have to act in interest of its many different for-profit
members. I'm a fan of the 501(c)(3) style of non-profit, again, because
I help run one. The choice between the two really depends on whether
you want the project run and controlled by a consortium of for-profit
businesses (the 501(c)(6) option), or if you want the project to operate
as a public charity focused on advancing the public good by producing
better Open Source and Free Software. BTW, the big benefit, IMO, to a
501(c)(3) is that the non-profit *only* represents the interests project
with respect to the public good, so its motives are never conflated with
any corporate interest -- single *or* aggregate.

If you decide you want a non-profit, there's then the decision of

forming one's own non-profit or affiliating with an existing non-profit.

Folks on the list who have said it's easy to *start* a new non-profit
are correct; the challenge is in keeping it running. It's a tremendous
amount of work and effort to handle the day-to-day requirements of
non-profit management, which is why so many Open Source and Free
Software projects choose to affiliate or join with an existing
non-profit rather than form their own. I'd suggest strongly that the

Node.js community look at that option, in part because many non-profit

umbrellas permit the project to later "spin off" to form your own

non-profit, so it's not a permanent decision.

Anyway, I'd be happy to talk (by email, phone or IRC) with anyone in the
Node.js community about joining Conservancy specifically, or even just
to talk through all the non-profit options available. There are many
options and existing non-profits, all with their own tweaks, so if the
Node.js community decides it'd like a non-profit home, there's lots to
chose from and a lot to consider.

I'd note finally that the different tweaks between non-profit options
deserve careful attention. I see a few people commenting that
structures imposed by non-profits won't help with what Node.js needs.
However, not all non-profits have the same type of structures, and they
focus on different things. For example, Conservancy doesn't dictate
anything regarding specific CLA rules, licensing, development models,
and the like. We generally advise about all the known options, and help
the community come to the conclusions it wants and implement them well.
The only place Conservancy has strict rules is with regard to the
requirements and guidelines the IRS puts forward on 501(c)(3) status.
Meanwhile, other non-profits *do* have strict rules for development
models, or CLAs, and the like, which some projects prefer for various
reasons.

[Lloyd Dewolf]

I'm new to Joyent. Three months employed. I'm not new to open source and open source foundations, though it's the first I've seen someone lump the "Eclipse or Mozilla" foundations together -- these organizations are vastly different.

I appreciate what I'm learning from many of the sentiments and ideas in this thread and from lurking these past months. I am having a hard time reconciling how a foundation moves Node forward.

As an outsider what impresses me about the technology is the tight core and how pragmatic and beautifully de-coupled everything else is. I see few assumptions and lots of fresh thinking and energy applied to old problems. The same seems to be true of the community.

One of my main worries was how confident, direct, personal and independent both the technology and community seems. This is a different type of leadership than I've seen and it made me uncomfortable. This has been put to rest for me -- for the most part -- as I've seen this complimented by deep technology and deep people.

Foundations are a centralizing force and everything becomes complete, negotiated and appears egalitarianism. This benefits many projects, particularly where the members don't have the time, energy, infrastructure and most importantly commitment for all aspects of a lasting, success community.

Of course, it doesn't change the nature of the people or the relationships. I'm uncomfortable with any argument that creating or joining a foundation validates the technology or unencumbers it. The technology reflects the community and the community the technology. 

There is no universal path for open source communities, and few tried paths for all the success of free software. The committed (!) in this community will continue to drive it with your choices in collaboration and creations.

Thank you,

Lloyd Dewolf

lloydde, foolswisdom

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Sorry to jump into this thread late -- a supporter of Conservancy noted
to me that it might be valuable for me to comment on this thread. Feel
free to ignore this email if it's not helpful.

I read through the posts on this thread, and it seems to me that Node.js
is facing a standard decision that comes up in the life of most Open
Source and Free Software projects. Specifically, the community is faced
with the decision of whether the project should be housed at a specific
for-profit company, or have a non-profit entity behind it instead.
Further, people are considering if the latter is pursued, whether the
Node.js community should form its own non-profit or affiliate with one
that already exists. (BTW, I don't think *how* you came to that
crossroads matters that much, actually: the issue has been raised and a
decision is before you.)

Choosing a governance structure is a tough and complex decision for a
project -- and there is always some status quo that seems easier. Thus,
I'm not surprised there is a certain amount of acrimony in the debate.

I have my own biases on this, since I am the Executive Director of a

non-profit home for Open Source and Free Software projects and have
studied the issue of non-profit governance for Open Source and Free

Software for the last decade. I have a few comments based on that

experience that might be helpful.

The obvious benefit of a project housed in a for-profit company is that
they'll usually always have more resources to put toward the project --
particularly if the project is of strategic importance to their
business. The downside is that the company almost always controls the
trademark, perhaps controls the copyright to some extent (e.g., by being
the beneficiary of a very broad CLA), and likely has a stronger say in
the technical direction of the project. There will also always be
"brand conflation" when something happens in the project ("Did the
project do it, or did the company?"), and that's observable here with
the confusion around recent events.

By contrast, the main benefit of a non-profit is that a non-profit

entity is legally required to balance the needs of many contributors
and users (while a for-profit entity only needs to consider the interests
of its own shareholders). Thus, non-profits are a neutral home for
activities of the project, and a neutral place for the trademark to live,
perhaps a neutral place to receive CLAs (if the project wants CLAs),
and to do other activities for the project (Conservancy, for its part,
has a list of what services it provides at
https://sfconservancy.org/members/services/ )

There's also difference among non-profit options. The primary two USA
options for Open Source and Free Software are 501(c)(3)'s and
501(c)(6)'s. 501(c)(3)'s have to always act in the public good, while
501(c)(6)'s have to act in interest of its many different for-profit
members. I'm a fan of the 501(c)(3) style of non-profit, again, because
I help run one. The choice between the two really depends on whether
you want the project run and controlled by a consortium of for-profit
businesses (the 501(c)(6) option), or if you want the project to operate
as a public charity focused on advancing the public good by producing
better Open Source and Free Software. BTW, the big benefit, IMO, to a
501(c)(3) is that the non-profit *only* represents the interests project
with respect to the public good, so its motives are never conflated with
any corporate interest -- single *or* aggregate.

If you decide you want a non-profit, there's then the decision of

forming your own non-profit or affiliating with an existing non-profit.

Folks on the list who have said it's easy to *start* a new non-profit
are correct; the challenge is in keeping it running. It's a tremendous
amount of work and effort to handle the day-to-day requirements of
non-profit management, which is why so many Open Source and Free
Software projects choose to affiliate or join with an existing
non-profit rather than form their own. I'd suggest strongly that the
Node.js community look at that option, in part because many non-profit
umbrellas permit the project to later "spin off" to form your own

non-profit, so affilation is not always a permanent decision.

Anyway, I'd be happy to talk (by email, phone or IRC) with anyone in the
Node.js community about joining Conservancy specifically, or even just
to talk through all the non-profit options available. There are many
options and existing non-profits, all with their own tweaks, so if the
Node.js community decides it'd like a non-profit home, there's lots to
chose from and a lot to consider.

I'd note finally that the different tweaks between non-profit options
deserve careful attention. I see a few people commenting that
structures imposed by non-profits won't help with what Node.js needs.
However, not all non-profits have the same type of structures, and they
focus on different things. For example, Conservancy doesn't dictate
anything regarding specific CLA rules, licensing, development models,
and the like. We generally advise about all the known options, and help
the community come to the conclusions it wants and implement them well.
The only place Conservancy has strict rules is with regard to the
requirements and guidelines the IRS puts forward on 501(c)(3) status.
Meanwhile, other non-profits *do* have strict rules for development
models, or CLAs, and the like, which some projects prefer for various
reasons.

[ I do apologize if this message came through multiple times. I've been

struggling for two days to get Google Groups to accept posts from our
mail server. ]

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

[Alexey Petrushin]

Just wondering. I originally thought that node.js license is something like MIT and I only today noticed that it's actually not. There's no clear license of node.js (at least it's not clear for me) - part from here, part from there and all mixed.

Someone mentioned that in case of troubles the fork can be made - is this true? I understand that with MIT and similar licenses it can be made easily, but is it also true for node.js license?

[Alex Kocharin]

 

Node.js license is 2-clause BSD.

 

But since node.js includes other software (including software with silly license like openssl), and it is obligated to mention their licences as well. This is why there is such a legal blahblah, and this is why I prefer using WTFPL everywhere.

 

 

06.12.2013, 04:08, "Alexey Petrushin" <alexey.p...@gmail.com>:

--

[Isaac Schlueter]

Alex, Alexey: Node's license is MIT.  It includes the licenses and copyright notices of its bundled dependencies, as is standard practice, and required for compliance with some of the dependencies' licenses.  (Even where not explicitly required, it's nice to give credit for what we're using, and almost never a bad idea.)  https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/master/LICENSE

Bradley,

I'm sorry, google groups decided that you're a spammer.  That should be cleared up now.  Thank you very much for the great analysis of the options here.

I am getting the sense that we're pitching solutions rather than exposing problems.  Let's get a solid bug report and reproduction test case before we rearchitect anything.

What *problems* are there today?  Once we have some rough agreement on that (which is non-trivial!) let's list out some of the potential solutions.  Once we have a few alternative solutions, let's discuss the costs of each one.

My main objection to "FOUNDATION!" is that there's usually not much details about what that means or why we'd benefit.  What problems is it solving?  Are those problems relevant?  Does a foundation even solve those problems, and if so, is a foundation the BEST way to solve those problems?

Some people object to having an explicitly profit-motivated organization behind a community project.  However, if the strategic goals of that company are aligned with the goals of the project, then such a setup can be extremely beneficial, and provide many valuable assets that most foundations would not.

[Karl Tiedt]

There are many profit-based entities behind Open Source projects that belong to foundations... the difference is those entities do not OWN anything related to the projects they are supporting. Which to me... is in the true spirit of Open Source.

After spending several days reading through all the comments of late regarding this, that seems like the largest hangup, just said in varying levels of clarity. That and the decision process, while these entities could swing a majority vote in a foundation driven Open Source project as well, it's not as easily done. it at least becomes a voting process on large scale changes...

This model has seemed to work quite well for the projects under the Dojo Foundation blanket (the only foundation I've personally had direct interaction with)... 

-Karl Tiedt

[// ravi]

On Dec 6, 2013, at 11:43 AM, Isaac Schlueter <i...@izs.me> wrote:

<snip happens>

I am getting the sense that we're pitching solutions rather than exposing problems.  Let's get a solid bug report and reproduction test case before we rearchitect anything.

What *problems* are there today?  Once we have some rough agreement on that (which is non-trivial!) let's list out some of the potential solutions.  Once we have a few alternative solutions, let's discuss the costs of each one.

Here’s one problem, the one that set this off:

-------

If NodeJS is a *community*, it should not tolerate gendered language use (in English; I am told the issue is more nuanced in languages like Japanese, upon which I cannot comment). The NodeJS community should not consider this a trivial issue. If this is not clear to contributors, then the problem may be that it needs to be spelled out.

———

No doubt others are going to disagree that this is a problem, but there you have it. I filed my first bug. It has nothing to do with foundations and trademarks, I am sorry.

My main objection to "FOUNDATION!" is that there's usually not much details about what that means or why we'd benefit.  What problems is it solving?  Are those problems relevant?  Does a foundation even solve those problems, and if so, is a foundation the BEST way to solve those problems?

Some people object to having an explicitly profit-motivated organization behind a community project.  However, if the strategic goals of that company are aligned with the goals of the project, then such a setup can be extremely beneficial, and provide many valuable assets that most foundations would not.

What happens once we move from being sponsored by one profit-motivated organisation to a foundation sponsored by many profit-motivated organisations? (at ASF the list includes Comcast, Facebook, GoDaddy, and even Microsoft). History doesn’t give me a reliable answer. If standards bodies are an analogy, then there is no comfort to be derived from the idea of multiple vested interests funding a “community” whose interests may not be aligned with their own (“adding shareholder value” is, I believe, how Friedman put it).

On Mikeal’s Gist, a couple of commenters bemoaned the lack of a “benevolent dictator” (there can be no such beast, but I won’t argue that here). I, on the other hand, think this is one of Node’s greatest strengths. I have heard of Joyent … they are the guys who sold or sell virtualised servers built on Solaris 10s most excellent zone/container architecture, I think? When it comes to NodeJS, I know only of the many vocal people on this list, none of them a dictator, people like Isaac (you!) and Ben, and the authors (i.e., TJ Holowaychuk :-)) of the many modules on NPM. Joyent to me is an absentee owner. That’s not an insult. It is the better alternative to a “benevolent dictator” (or bloggers who get trigger happy with the word “asshole”).

As you can probably tell from the above, I  like things the way they are (or were before this kerfuffle). Both in terms of the ownership+community, and in terms of the ecosystem (i.e., Node has its own ecosystem and is not or will not become part of Eclipse or Apache).

FWIW,

—ravi

[Scott González]

On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 2:02 PM, // ravi <ravi-...@g8o.net> wrote:

Here’s one problem, the one that set this off:

-------

If NodeJS is a *community*, it should not tolerate gendered language use (in English; I am told the issue is more nuanced in languages like Japanese, upon which I cannot comment). The NodeJS community should not consider this a trivial issue. If this is not clear to contributors, then the problem may be that it needs to be spelled out.

———

No doubt others are going to disagree that this is a problem, but there you have it. I filed my first bug. It has nothing to do with foundations and trademarks, I am sorry.

This problem has already been addressed, at least for libuv. See https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/39db22594df13e8423af3e923ec15b8dc47a5234 which happened immediately after this whole ordeal started. It looks like portion about language just needs to be added to the node document as well. If there is anything else that needs to be added, an issue or pull request should be filed. I think it's safe to assume that any guidelines which get approved and land in the repo will have been discussed by the team and everyone will be held accountable to those rules.

[Alex Kocharin]

 

06.12.2013, 20:44, "Isaac Schlueter" <i...@izs.me>:

Alex, Alexey: Node's license is MIT.  It includes the licenses and copyright notices of its bundled dependencies, as is standard practice, and required for compliance with some of the dependencies' licenses.  (Even where not explicitly required, it's nice to give credit for what we're using, and almost never a bad idea.)  https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/master/LICENSE

 

 

Oh sorry. There're so much permissive licenses that I lost count already. You're right, the Node's license is MIT.

 

Give credit is a good idea, but a lot of legal stuff everywhere really isn't. For example, I just love this one:

https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/master/test/fixtures/semicolon.js

 

 

My main objection to "FOUNDATION!" is that there's usually not much details about what that means or why we'd benefit.  What problems is it solving?  Are those problems relevant?  Does a foundation even solve those problems, and if so, is a foundation the BEST way to solve those problems?

 

Some people object to having an explicitly profit-motivated organization behind a community project.  However, if the strategic goals of that company are aligned with the goals of the project, then such a setup can be extremely beneficial, and provide many valuable assets that most foundations would not.

 

 

That company might be aligned exactly to where the money is, and this alignment just happened to match node.js way up until now. So yes, it would be beneficial until The Money Way suddenly changes due to unexpected and unfortunate events.

 

 

When that happens, the company will say "well, those reputation damages will cost X dollars, and if we just part with a developer, it'll cost Y dollars", take a reasonable, but extremely offensive action, and node.js will lose again.

 

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Isaac Schlueter wrote at 11:43 (EST) on Friday:

> Thank you very much for the great analysis of the options here.

I hope it was helpful.

> I am getting the sense that we're pitching solutions rather than
> exposing problems. Let's get a solid bug report and reproduction test
> case before we rearchitect anything.

...

> My main objection to "FOUNDATION!" is that there's usually not much
> details about what that means or why we'd benefit. What problems is it
> solving? Are those problems relevant? Does a foundation even solve
> those problems, and if so, is a foundation the BEST way to solve those
> problems?

I think the only problem relates to the main the question of "who should
be in control of the project?". Regardless of all the acrimony, coming
and reviewing the project as an outsider -- which I did about a year
ago, and did so again recently when this recent chain of events began --
it's IMO clear to any observer that Node.js (or, at least, its core) is
a Joyent project. I don't have a value judgment about that necessarily;
it's just a fact that appears to be true, because Joyent controls the
GitHub account where the codebase lives, Joyent controls the trademarked
name, and Joyent is the sole beneficiary of the Node.js CLA.

If the community -- by whatever consensus system this community uses --
feels it's not good for Joyent to be in charge, a non-profit home is the
most common -- and perhaps the only existing -- solution to resolve that
problem.

Meanwhile, also looking as an outsider, I *don't* see the consensus
forming around either "Joyent's control is fine" or "a non-profit would
be better". The views on this from main contributors seem to be all
over the map. So, you'll have to work that out as a community, and --
to make a prediction -- I'd take a large bet at 1.5-to-1 that status quo
is probably inevitable here, at least for a year or two.

> Some people object to having an explicitly profit-motivated
> organization behind a community project. However, if the strategic
> goals of that company are aligned with the goals of the project, then
> such a setup can be extremely beneficial, and provide many valuable
> assets that most foundations would not.

IIRC, I started my previous post with that point: for-profit companies
often have more resources than non-profits to push forward a project.
And, I further agree interests between a FLOSS project and a for-profit
company can sometimes be aligned indefinitely. All can be well --
sometimes for years.

However, I've also watched a lot of key Open Source and Free Software
projects, over the last two decades, move from the a position of great
importance to become "useful but not the 'flavor of the month' anymore".
If any of you believe this will never happen to Node.js, you're also
believing that Node.js is completely unique among all the Open Source
and Free Software projects ever invented.

Some of the work I do at Conservancy is helping projects extend their
"natural life" a bit further than they would have had before, and
sometimes reinvigorating a project that has lost its support temporarily
(e.g., Conservancy recently helped with something like that for the
Mifos project, which recovered through Conservancy to spin off into its
own org.) It's painful when the Free Software project enters the "I
miss the good ol' days" stage, but I've watched a lot of projects do
this over the years [0]. Someone needs to be there to pick up the
pieces when the "big party" becomes just a small gathering of
like-minded friends; a non-profit often does well at that and
for-profits don't.

It's clear to me that Node.js is important enough as technology that
it'll have a long tail of life, but it *will* peak, and then have a slow
decline. What happens to Node.js when it's not a darling technology of
strong start-up companies, but is instead of interest only to those
doing legacy maintenance on existing systems? I suggest the community
plan for the future.

// ravi wrote at 14:02 (EST) on Friday:

>> What happens once we move from being sponsored by one
>> profit-motivated organisation to a foundation sponsored by many
>> profit-motivated organisations?

This is probably a false dichotomy, since it seems to compare single
for-profit company control to control by a trade association. There are
other non-profit options other than a trade association. For example,
public charities, at least in the USA, are legally prohibited from
accepting funding in exchange for influence over their mission, and thus
mitigate well the problem ravi's question suggests.

Isaac Schlueter wrote at 11:43 (EST) on Friday:

> I'm sorry, google groups decided that you're a spammer. That should be
> cleared up now.

Thanks for any effort you did in fixing it. FWIW, I messed with my SPF
records (which originally had a -all instead of a ~all, although the
criteria should have been met regardless, so that shouldn't have
mattered). And, sorry again what ended up happening is that you got
spammed with five of my emails in the end, days after I posted them. :)


[0] I used to be heavily involved in the Perl community, and it led me
to write a blog post last year at Perl's 25th anniversary to talk
about how Perl is the new COBOL, and that there isn't actually
anything wrong with that:
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2012/12/18/perl-cobol.html
--
-- bkuhn

[// ravi]

On Dec 7, 2013, at 12:25 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bk...@ebb.org> wrote:

// ravi wrote at 14:02 (EST) on Friday:

What happens once we move from being sponsored by one
profit-motivated organisation to a foundation sponsored by many
profit-motivated organisations?

This is probably a false dichotomy, since it seems to compare single
for-profit company control to control by a trade association.  There are
other non-profit options other than a trade association.  For example,
public charities, at least in the USA, are legally prohibited from
accepting funding in exchange for influence over their mission, and thus
mitigate well the problem ravi's question suggests.

Hello Bradley,

rather than speak in the abstract, why not consider the actual proposals made that I was referring to: transfer of NodeJS to Apache or Eclipse. Are either of these public charities? Did I misread the Apache web site when I listed that the ASF is sponsored by a number of profit-motivated organisations?

Also, I am not certain that “influence” can be defined clearly enough to regulate the effect of sponsoring entities. I do agree that a level of indirection is obtained by introducing a regulated foundation between sponsors and the project. I differ, perhaps, in my inability to see a problem in the arrangement, as it exists today (one mostly well-reasoned blog post with a couple of ill-chosen words/hypotheticals does not a nuclear winter make!).

Regards,

—ravi

Isaac Schlueter wrote at 11:43 (EST) on Friday:

I'm sorry, google groups decided that you're a spammer. That should be
cleared up now.

Thanks for any effort you did in fixing it.  FWIW, I messed with my SPF
records (which originally had a -all instead of a ~all, although the
criteria should have been met regardless, so that shouldn't have
mattered). And, sorry again what ended up happening is that you got
spammed with five of my emails in the end, days after I posted them. :)


[0] I used to be heavily involved in the Perl community, and it led me
   to write a blog post last year at Perl's 25th anniversary to talk
   about how Perl is the new COBOL, and that there isn't actually
   anything wrong with that:
   http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2012/12/18/perl-cobol.html
--
  -- bkuhn

[Christian Grobmeier]

On 8 Dec 2013, at 18:24, // ravi wrote:
> On Dec 7, 2013, at 12:25 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bk...@ebb.org> wrote:
> rather than speak in the abstract, why not consider the actual
> proposals made that I was referring to: transfer of NodeJS to Apache
> or Eclipse. Are either of these public charities? Did I misread the
> Apache web site when I listed that the ASF is sponsored by a number of
> profit-motivated organisations?

The ASF accepts donations and they come from profit-motivated
organizations too:
http://apache.org/foundation/sponsorship.html

Current sponsors:
http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html

However one cannot donate to a "project" but only to the foundation. In
example, it is not possible to donate to Apache Log4j. The foundation
would take the donation and spend it where it thinks may fit best.
Mostly this is some infrastructure.

> Also, I am not certain that “influence” can be defined clearly
> enough to regulate the effect of sponsoring entities. I do agree that
> a level of indirection is obtained by introducing a regulated
> foundation between sponsors and the project. I differ, perhaps, in my
> inability to see a problem in the arrangement, as it exists today (one
> mostly well-reasoned blog post with a couple of ill-chosen
> words/hypotheticals does not a nuclear winter make!).

In all the time i have been at the ASF i have not seen a company having
direct influence. All committers are individuals first. In some cases
some individuals are paid by an company. But this is usually no harm
because every committer/pmc member at a project has the same voice.

The ASF board will step in if a company tries to abuse a project. I have
seen this one time.

Please let me know if you are having more questions.

Cheers,
Christian

> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the
> Google Groups "nodejs" group.
> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/nodejs/mqSf47HhmyY/unsubscribe.
> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to

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> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

---
http://www.grobmeier.de
@grobmeier
GPG: 0xA5CC90DB

[// ravi]

On Dec 8, 2013, at 12:36 PM, Christian Grobmeier <grob...@gmail.com> wrote:

In all the time i have been at the ASF i have not seen a company having direct influence. All committers are individuals first. In some cases some individuals are paid by an company. But this is usually no harm because every committer/pmc member at a project has the same voice.

The ASF board will step in if a company tries to abuse a project. I have seen this one time.

Please let me know if you are having more questions.

Christian,

thank you for the detailed response. I hope you understand that my intention is not to launch a discussion here of the ASF and its working, and certainly not its integrity.

My previous message was worded poorly: I did not mean to suggest that we should directly examine ASF and Eclipse, but rather, that these are two of the three foundations proposed, and both of them are sponsored by for-profit corporations. To restate my point: the single corporation sponsoring NodeJS today has, to me, demonstrated significant ethical responsibility in its action (if not in the choice of words or hypotheticals by *one* of its employees). While that is arguable (and being argued about), there has been no argument made that said corporation, Joyent, has used its sponsorship to influence the technical direction of the project. In such a situation, I do not see corporate sponsorship as a litmus test that compels a move from single direct sponsor to multiple indirect sponsors.

I’ll make these my last thoughts on the matter on this forum. I will direct future responses to individuals, if necessary (and welcome!).

Regards,

—ravi

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

// ravi wrote at 12:24 (EST) on Sunday:

> rather than speak in the abstract, why not consider the actual
> proposals made that I was referring to

Part of my point in this thread has been that Node.js community need not
narrow its options for an organizational home down to just one or two
choices immediately.

> I differ, perhaps, in my inability to see a problem in the
> arrangement, as it exists today

As I also pointed out in my original post, how the question came up is
not necessarily relevant to considering the question of where Node.js
wants its organizational home. I also pointed out that status quo has a
strong power in situations like this.

Both the upsides and the downsides of having an Open Source and Free
Software project housed in a single for-profit entity are pretty
apparent. If the upsides outweigh the downsides for this community,
then you should stick with it.

--
-- bkuhn

[Isaac Schlueter]

> Meanwhile, also looking as an outsider, I *don't* see the consensus
> forming around either "Joyent's control is fine" or "a non-profit would
> be better".  The views on this from main contributors seem to be all
> over the map.

The problem is that this mailing list is used by roughly 1% or less of the Node community, and only a few "major contributors" have even bothered to weigh in on this thread.

The vast majority of users clearly don't care one way or another.  The majority of current active contributors don't care, or think the status quo is preferable.

--
   -- bkuhn

[Fedor Indutny]

+1 for "status quo". In my opinion, there're not so many problems with
current node's home as advertised in this thread.

[Alex Kocharin]

Do you want to share an opinion about that "blog post" issue?

09.12.2013, 22:35, "Fedor Indutny" <fe...@indutny.com>:

> +1 for "status quo". In my opinion, there're not so many problems with
> current node's home as advertised in this thread.
>
> On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 10:25 PM, Isaac Schlueter <i...@izs.me> wrote:
>

>>> О©╫Meanwhile, also looking as an outsider, I *don't* see the consensus
>>> О©╫forming around either "Joyent's control is fine" or "a non-profit would
>>> О©╫be better". О©╫The views on this from main contributors seem to be all
>>> О©╫over the map.
>> О©╫The problem is that this mailing list is used by roughly 1% or less of the
>> О©╫Node community, and only a few "major contributors" have even bothered to
>> О©╫weigh in on this thread.
>>
>> О©╫The vast majority of users clearly don't care one way or another. О©╫The
>> О©╫majority of current active contributors don't care, or think the status quo
>> О©╫is preferable.
>>
>> О©╫On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 7:50 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bk...@ebb.org> wrote:
>>> О©╫// ravi wrote at 12:24 (EST) on Sunday:
>>>> О©╫rather than speak in the abstract, why not consider the actual
>>>> О©╫proposals made that I was referring to
>>> О©╫Part of my point in this thread has been that Node.js community need not
>>> О©╫narrow its options for an organizational home down to just one or two
>>> О©╫choices immediately.
>>>> О©╫I differ, perhaps, in my inability to see a problem in the
>>>> О©╫arrangement, as it exists today
>>> О©╫As I also pointed out in my original post, how the question came up is
>>> О©╫not necessarily relevant to considering the question of where Node.js
>>> О©╫wants its organizational home. О©╫I also pointed out that status quo has a
>>> О©╫strong power in situations like this.
>>>
>>> О©╫Both the upsides and the downsides of having an Open Source and Free
>>> О©╫Software project housed in a single for-profit entity are pretty
>>> О©╫apparent. О©╫If the upsides outweigh the downsides for this community,
>>> О©╫then you should stick with it.
>>>
>>> О©╫--
>>> О©╫О©╫О©╫О©╫-- bkuhn
>>>
>>> О©╫--
>>> О©╫--
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[Fedor Indutny]

I already did.

And I don't think that it was an accident and I'm quite sure that Ben
has his own reasons to leave even before that "issue".

On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 10:43 PM, Alex Kocharin <al...@kocharin.ru> wrote:
>
> Do you want to share an opinion about that "blog post" issue?
>
> 09.12.2013, 22:35, "Fedor Indutny" <fe...@indutny.com>:
>> +1 for "status quo". In my opinion, there're not so many problems with
>> current node's home as advertised in this thread.
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 10:25 PM, Isaac Schlueter <i...@izs.me> wrote:
>>
>>>> Meanwhile, also looking as an outsider, I *don't* see the consensus

>>>> forming around either "Joyent's control is fine" or "a non-profit would

>>>> be better". The views on this from main contributors seem to be all
>>>> over the map.

>>> The problem is that this mailing list is used by roughly 1% or less of the

>>> Node community, and only a few "major contributors" have even bothered to

>>> weigh in on this thread.
>>>

>>> The vast majority of users clearly don't care one way or another. The

>>> majority of current active contributors don't care, or think the status quo

>>> is preferable.

>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 7:50 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn <bk...@ebb.org> wrote:
>>>> // ravi wrote at 12:24 (EST) on Sunday:

>>>>> rather than speak in the abstract, why not consider the actual

>>>>> proposals made that I was referring to

>>>> Part of my point in this thread has been that Node.js community need not

>>>> narrow its options for an organizational home down to just one or two

>>>> choices immediately.

>>>>> I differ, perhaps, in my inability to see a problem in the

>>>>> arrangement, as it exists today

>>>> As I also pointed out in my original post, how the question came up is

>>>> not necessarily relevant to considering the question of where Node.js

>>>> wants its organizational home. I also pointed out that status quo has a

>>>> strong power in situations like this.
>>>>

>>>> Both the upsides and the downsides of having an Open Source and Free

>>>> Software project housed in a single for-profit entity are pretty

>>>> apparent. If the upsides outweigh the downsides for this community,

>>>> then you should stick with it.
>>>>

>>>> --
>>>> -- bkuhn

[Rick Waldron]

On Monday, December 9, 2013, Isaac Schlueter wrote:

> Meanwhile, also looking as an outsider, I *don't* see the consensus
> forming around either "Joyent's control is fine" or "a non-profit would
> be better".  The views on this from main contributors seem to be all
> over the map.

The problem is that this mailing list is used by roughly 1% or less of the Node community, and only a few "major contributors" have even bothered to weigh in on this thread.

I've had a message in my drafts for 3 days, wherein I request the closing of this group/mailing list on the grounds that non-technical discussion has polluted the waters to the point of uninhabitable toxicity.

Rick 

[john.tiger]

On 12/09/2013 11:25 AM, Isaac Schlueter wrote:

> Meanwhile, also looking as an outsider, I *don't* see the consensus
> forming around either "Joyent's control is fine" or "a non-profit would
> be better".  The views on this from main contributors seem to be all
> over the map.

The problem is that this mailing list is used by roughly 1% or less of the Node community, and only a few "major contributors" have even bothered to weigh in on this thread.

The vast majority of users clearly don't care one way or another. 

Not true.   +1 for working towards foundation.   Not because of recent fuss, and not because of the way the project has been run (actually quite good).  The key reason is that proprietary software companies will continue to buy up open source owning companies and key personnel.  To think proprietary software companies will love OSS is naive - they simply can't/won't - it's totally against their business model.  Service companies are different and can be great foundation sponsors.  

So, one option is to continue as is and when a proprietary company buys Joyent to control Node, then hurry up and react (like MariaDB).  Or be more proactive.   A foundation gives more assurance to those of us users relying on Node as open source, that it will remain open and active. 

If Joyent is unwilling to donate trademarks, copyrights, etc, to a foundation, then maybe it's time for a fork that does go into a foundation.    Lots of OSS projects are in foundations so it can't be as onerous as some claim (ie Inkscape, CouchDB, LibreOffice, AOO, ...). 

[H Schroeder]

> The problem is that this mailing list is used by roughly 1% or less of the Node community, and only a few "major 

> contributors" have even bothered to weigh in on this thread.

>

> The vast majority of users clearly don't care one way or another.  The majority of current active contributors don't care, or

> think the status quo is preferable.

+1 for a Foundation. Maybe you can add a poll to the Node's download page to get a better view on how the community thinks about this. 

[Forrest L Norvell]

On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 11:04 AM, Rick Waldron <waldro...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, December 9, 2013, Isaac Schlueter wrote:

> Meanwhile, also looking as an outsider, I *don't* see the consensus
> forming around either "Joyent's control is fine" or "a non-profit would
> be better".  The views on this from main contributors seem to be all
> over the map.

The problem is that this mailing list is used by roughly 1% or less of the Node community, and only a few "major contributors" have even bothered to weigh in on this thread.

I've had a message in my drafts for 3 days, wherein I request the closing of this group/mailing list on the grounds that non-technical discussion has polluted the waters to the point of uninhabitable toxicity.

Rick,

I'm glad you brought this up here, because I've seen you tweeting about it and it bums me out. I agree that the vibe on this group is not what it could be, but one of the most persistent problems I see in the Node community is that we're pretty poor at communicating with ourselves asynchronously (oh, irony).

I would rather see this mailing list improve, and also work on extending its reach into more of the community (which requires that people believe that the list is actually valuable / welcoming). Resources like https://github.com/mikeal/node-meatspace and https://github.com/knode/meetups are valuable, but only deal with a small piece of this. What would it take to make this into a resource that doesn't irritate you or bum *you* out?

Also, to get back to the original topic (although I made my opinion on this stuff pretty clear already), I more or less agree with Bradley's typology of how open-source projects typically interact with foundations over time. Maybe at some point it makes sense for Node to move under the umbrella of something like the Conservancy (although – no offense intended towards those who have contributed and gotten value from the ASF – the idea of Apache Node.sf does not make me happy), and maybe that time is sooner than a lot of us comfortable with the status quo might recognize. That said, I still believe that Joyent has been a responsible steward for those aspects of Node it has responsibility over and duties to maintain. A lot of the speculation and might-bes people are going over here feel premature to me. (And yeah, I'm friends with a substantial number of Joyent's staff, but that's because I like them and think they're doing good work – my livelihood comes from New Relic and non-Joyent projects alone.)

F

[Rick Waldron]

On Monday, December 9, 2013, Forrest L Norvell wrote:

On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 11:04 AM, Rick Waldron <waldro...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, December 9, 2013, Isaac Schlueter wrote:

> Meanwhile, also looking as an outsider, I *don't* see the consensus
> forming around either "Joyent's control is fine" or "a non-profit would
> be better".  The views on this from main contributors seem to be all
> over the map.

The problem is that this mailing list is used by roughly 1% or less of the Node community, and only a few "major contributors" have even bothered to weigh in on this thread.

I've had a message in my drafts for 3 days, wherein I request the closing of this group/mailing list on the grounds that non-technical discussion has polluted the waters to the point of uninhabitable toxicity.

Rick,

I'm glad you brought this up here, because I've seen you tweeting about it and it bums me out. I agree that the vibe on this group is not what it could be, but one of the most persistent problems I see in the Node community is that we're pretty poor at communicating with ourselves asynchronously (oh, irony).

I would rather see this mailing list improve, and also work on extending its reach into more of the community (which requires that people believe that the list is actually valuable / welcoming). Resources like https://github.com/mikeal/node-meatspace and https://github.com/knode/meetups are valuable, but only deal with a small piece of this. What would it take to make this into a resource that doesn't irritate you or bum *you* out?

FWIW, I also prefer improvement over abandonment. I'm on vacation, so I'll get back to you on the rest at a later time—thanks for understanding.

Rick  

Also, to get back to the original topic (although I made my opinion on this stuff pretty clear already), I more or less agree with Bradley's typology of how open-source projects typically interact with foundations over time. Maybe at some point it makes sense for Node to move under the umbrella of something like the Conservancy (although – no offense intended towards those who have contributed and gotten value from the ASF – the idea of Apache Node.sf does not make me happy), and maybe that time is sooner than a lot of us comfortable with the status quo might recognize. That said, I still believe that Joyent has been a responsible steward for those aspects of Node it has responsibility over and duties to maintain. A lot of the speculation and might-bes people are going over here feel premature to me. (And yeah, I'm friends with a substantial number of Joyent's staff, but that's because I like them and think they're doing good work – my livelihood comes from New Relic and non-Joyent projects alone.)

F

--

[Mikeal Rogers]

GH is suppose to have a new feature soon that should let us kill the mailing list while maintaining a forum for the positive (and without doubt some of the negative) uses of the mailing list. I've got no love for Google Groups.

[Mark Hahn]

> GH is suppose to have a new feature soon that should let us kill the mailing list 

You aren't referring to google hangouts are you?  I and many others refuse to join google+ or facebook.  I'm not going to deal with all that social crap.

[Rick Waldron]

On Tuesday, December 10, 2013, Mark Hahn wrote:

> GH is suppose to have a new feature soon that should let us kill the mailing list 

You aren't referring to google hangouts are you?  I and many others refuse to join google+ or facebook.  I'm not going to deal with all that social crap.

(G)it(H)ub

[// ravi]

On Dec 10, 2013, at 3:47 PM, Mark Hahn <ma...@reevuit.com> wrote:

> GH is suppose to have a new feature soon that should let us kill the mailing list 

You aren't referring to google hangouts are you?  I and many others refuse to join google+ or facebook.  I'm not going to deal with all that social crap.

Hopefully by GH he means GitHub. I am not a fan of Google Groups either, but email beats “forums” (in quotes because today forums means one of those bulletin board things) IMHO, so whatever the new GH feature is, I hope it involves email notification (and hopefully a facility for email responses).

—ravi

[Matt]

On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 3:03 PM, Mikeal Rogers <mikeal...@gmail.com> wrote:

GH is suppose to have a new feature soon that should let us kill the mailing list while maintaining a forum for the positive (and without doubt some of the negative) uses of the mailing list. I've got no love for Google Groups.

Hah interesting. I talked to them about developing such a feature about a year ago. I had to give up on the idea due to other time constraints. I hate google groups too. Also in response to ravi below - I can't imagine they'd leave out email access, since you can interact with Issues via email already.

Matt.

[Mikeal Rogers]

On Dec 10, 2013, at 12:47PM, Mark Hahn <ma...@reevuit.com> wrote:

I and many others refuse to join google+

I'm with you on that :)

GH === GitHub :)

[Mark Hahn]

>  but email beats “forums”

 

I only use email for this forum.  I've never gone to google groups website since I signed up.  I hope anything we switch to also supports email.

--

[Mikeal Rogers]

On Dec 10, 2013, at 2:21PM, Mark Hahn <ma...@reevuit.com> wrote:

I hope anything we switch to also supports email.

That's a given, GitHub issues support email so I assume this new thing will too.

[klrumpf]

social crap for the idle, concur 100%

On 10/12/13 21:47, Mark Hahn wrote:

>�GH is suppose to have a new feature soon that should let us kill the mailing list�

You aren't referring to google hangouts are you? �I and many others refuse to join google+ or facebook. �I'm not going to deal with all that social crap.

On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 12:03 PM, Mikeal Rogers <mikeal...@gmail.com> wrote:

GH is suppose to have a new feature soon that should let us kill the mailing list while maintaining a forum for the positive (and without doubt some of the negative) uses of the mailing list. I've got no love for Google Groups.

On Dec 10, 2013, at 11:48AM, Rick Waldron <waldro...@gmail.com> wrote:

FWIW, I also prefer improvement over abandonment. I'm on vacation, so I'll get back to you on the rest at a later time�thanks for understanding.

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