An update on webapp2

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Jon Parrott

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Apr 8, 2016, 4:58:51 PM4/8/16
to Google App Engine
In a previous thread, several of you pointed out that webapp2 was abandoned and some of you expressed interesting in helping maintain the project.

I'm happy to provide an update. The original author has allowed the Google Cloud Platform Developer Relations team to assume ownership of webapp2. We've moved the project to github and we're ready to accept pull requests.
We could really use the community's help to:
  • Test it! We cleaned up a bit of stuff and we want to make sure that everything still works as expected.
  • Check the new documentation for accuracy and report any content errors or bad links.
  • Triage the issues that were transferred over from the original project. If you want to just review them and comment whether or not they are still relevant, that would be super helpful.
  • Fix issues. :)
We'll soon release version 3.0.0 to PyPI. This is to mark the ownership transition. We will look into updating the version included with Google App Engine.

pdknsk

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Apr 10, 2016, 3:20:39 PM4/10/16
to Google App Engine
This is good news. The new App Engine docs seem to focus on Flask now, but webapp2 still works well, less a few minor annoyances.


> Although this sample uses Flask, you can use any framework that satisfies the requirements above. Alternative frameworks include Django, Pyramid, Bottle, web.py, Tornado, and more.

I was surprised that webapp2 isn't even mentioned.

Karl MacMillan

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Apr 10, 2016, 10:49:07 PM4/10/16
to google-a...@googlegroups.com
On Apr 8, 2016, at 4:58 PM, 'Jon Parrott' via Google App Engine <google-a...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

In a previous thread, several of you pointed out that webapp2 was abandoned and some of you expressed interesting in helping maintain the project.


Jon,

Thanks for stepping up and making this happen. I’ve submitted a pull request for the bug that I mentioned in that thread.

Two things:

1) Is all of the test infrastructure checked in? I ask because the Makefile (and the test target) are referencing a non-existent run_tests.py in the root of the project. I also didn’t see any documentation on how to run the tests, especially the ones with GAE dependencies.

2) Is it intentional that a CLA is being required to submit patches? I’m not a CLA fan in general, but I understand that they may make sense in some contexts. However, in this case it seems unfortunate and potentially pointless to take a community project, pull it in as a Google project, and then require a CLA. It’s not like you have the copyright grant for all of the previous work so that requiring the CLA for new patches actually gets you any sort of licensing freedom or full patent protection. If you really want to go with this approach I’ll sign the CLA for this trivial patch, but it will likely discourage me from any other contribution. (I hate to keep complaining since you’ve done so much to move this forward - it’s just that this seems like a really strange approach to take).

Thanks - Karl

I'm happy to provide an update. The original author has allowed the Google Cloud Platform Developer Relations team to assume ownership of webapp2. We've moved the project to github and we're ready to accept pull requests.
We could really use the community's help to:
  • Test it! We cleaned up a bit of stuff and we want to make sure that everything still works as expected.
  • Check the new documentation for accuracy and report any content errors or bad links.
  • Triage the issues that were transferred over from the original project. If you want to just review them and comment whether or not they are still relevant, that would be super helpful.
  • Fix issues. :)
We'll soon release version 3.0.0 to PyPI. This is to mark the ownership transition. We will look into updating the version included with Google App Engine.

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Jon Parrott

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Apr 11, 2016, 1:28:25 AM4/11/16
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Karl, first and foremost: thanks for being the first person to contribute.

  1. Yes, I just missed the makefile when I was cleaning things up. I'll remove that and update contributing.md to document how to run tests. In the meantime, you can checkout the travis config file. Mostly, you just need to install nox-automation and run nox -s tests. Travis ran for your PR and it passed.
  2. Enabling the CLA bot is standard procedure, and the OSS lawyer that assisted me in moving over this project did not indicate that it should be passed over. I am not lawyer, however, from what I understand t the CLA does not remove any of your rights as a the author, it just grants the project rights to your contribution (this seems to be pretty clearly stated at the beginning of the CLA itself). If concerns over the CLA cause you to not want to contribute further, I'll be happy to get you in contact our open source programs office so that we can potentially address your concerns.

Karl MacMillan

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Apr 11, 2016, 2:52:40 PM4/11/16
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On Apr 11, 2016, at 1:28 AM, 'Jon Parrott' via Google App Engine <google-a...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Karl, first and foremost: thanks for being the first person to contribute.

  1. Yes, I just missed the makefile when I was cleaning things up. I'll remove that and update contributing.md to document how to run tests. In the meantime, you can checkout the travis config file. Mostly, you just need to install nox-automation and run nox -s tests. Travis ran for your PR and it passed.
  2. Enabling the CLA bot is standard procedure, and the OSS lawyer that assisted me in moving over this project did not indicate that it should be passed over. I am not lawyer, however, from what I understand t the CLA does not remove any of your rights as a the author, it just grants the project rights to your contribution (this seems to be pretty clearly stated at the beginning of the CLA itself). If concerns over the CLA cause you to not want to contribute further, I'll be happy to get you in contact our open source programs office so that we can potentially address your concerns.


While the CLA does not remove any of my rights, it does grant Google significantly more rights than those granted by the Apache 2 license. In projects like the Linux kernel that don’t have a CLA process, everyone is on equal footing and has the same rights - those granted by the GPL. With a CLA like this one it becomes a two tier system. The community at large only has the rights granted by Apache 2 (and ownership of any code that they created), while Google has effective ownership over all contributed code and a perpetual patent license. I think that inequality is ultimately harmful to the community.

For projects that you started I would not object. It just seems . . . aggressive . . . for you guys to take over a project and significantly change the terms under which contributions are handled. Don’t get me wrong - I appreciate that you are investing developer resources into webapp2 and taking on the maintenance role. It’s overall a much better situation. And I signed the CLA and I’ll contribute if I can despite the CLA.

I’m happy if you want to connect me with the open source programs office.

Karl

Jon Parrott

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Apr 21, 2016, 1:43:34 PM4/21/16
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+Max Sills 

Karl, our open-source team has indicated that because we now own the fork we need CLAs present. I've included Max from our open-source team who can follow up with the other concerns.

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