Seeking new custodian for godoc.org

[Liam]

Legal advice will apparently force the Go team to close godoc.org [1]

But the site could be taken over by a new custodian, for instance a non-profit funded by donations.

A first step is to identify a place to host the site. Perhaps a well-known Go shop like Cloudflare?

Then we'd apply to join a foundation like the CNCF, which hosts K8s; that's an easy route to non-profit status.

Please forward this, and/or repost to other forums, thanks!

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-dev/mfiPCtJ1BGU

[ulderi...@gmail.com]

I mentioned twice in this thread that I am willing to join a community-wide effort to keep it working if pkg.go.dev is kept closed source and not feature parity with godoc.org

[Russ Cox]

> [go-nuts] Seeking new custodian for godoc.org

The Go team is the custodian for godoc.org and we are not seeking a new one.

> Legal advice will apparently force the Go team to close godoc.org [1]

This is a grotesque misrepresentation of what I wrote. This is what I wrote:

# Why is there a new package docs site at all? Why not update

godoc.org in place?

With the introduction of modules and the notion of multiple versions

of a package, we knew we had to update the godoc.org experience. After

a hard look, it seemed worth starting anew, especially since the

godoc.org server design, with its single-VM database, had been

starting to show its age. In addition to the modules work, there are

other things we're addressing, such as accessibility and overall

scalability of the service.

As a side note, there's almost nothing in the Go distribution that has

survived eight years without being redone. The compiler, the

assembler, the linker, the go command itself, most of the standard

library: all of them have been massively overhauled one or more times

since the start of Go. That's how we take what we learn and make

things better.

This kind of rewrite always involves a transition period in which the

old version is still the workhorse that most people use and the new

version has a new name for early adopters to test and find bugs in.

The license detection discussion is a sideshow.

Please stop spreading FUD.

Best,

Russ 

[Liam]

Russ, I apologize for any misunderstanding, but below is the relevant quote from your post. When I suggested in response that godoc.org be returned to the community, Ian asked if anyone would be interested to take it on. My note here was prompted by Ian's query. (Appended is my post to which Ian responded, posing Q's which have not yet been answered.)

It was an oversimplification to say, "Legal advice will ... close godoc.org," but hardly a "grotesque misrepresentation". Redirecting links from godoc.org to another site amounts to closure, IMO.

I assume good faith on the part of the Go team in its efforts and communications; please do the same for mine.

Most sincerely,

Liam

# Why does pkg.go.dev require a detected license to show docs? Why doesn't godoc.org?

The teams working on the proxy and on pkg.go.dev have spent a lot of
time talking to Google's lawyers about what we can and can't do with
Go source code downloaded from the internet. The rule we've been given
to follow is that serving a pretty HTML version of the docs is
displaying a modified version of the original, and we can only do that
if there's a recognized known-good license that gives us that
permission.

When we adopted godoc.org from Gary Burd back in 2014, it did not
occur to any of us to put it through that kind of review. If we had,
maybe the community would have gone through this licensing pain
earlier. For now we are focusing on making changes to pkg.go.dev
rather than correcting past mistakes on godoc.org. (At this point,
more scrutiny of what godoc.org does is not likely to have an outcome
that anyone likes.)

# What fraction of popular packages don't display on pkg.go.dev?

Right now it looks like pkg.go.dev sees 1,200 modules imported by at
least 100 other modules. Of those, it looks like 82 are flagged as not
redistributable, so that we can't show their docs. That's under 7%,
and we're working to understand that better. If any of those are
mistakes on our end, we'll fix them.

Another thing that was suggested that I think is a great idea is to
change the “no docs available” page to have a command-line to bring up
the docs in your own local godoc command.

On Tuesday, February 4, 2020 at 11:38:22 AM UTC-8, Liam Breck wrote:

Many search services do what godoc.org does, print part of a published document. It's not generally considered illegal.

The normal means to protest such use is a DMCA takedown request. Google publishes data on those it receives at transparencyreport.google.com. Have you ever received a takedown request re godoc.org?

Have you heard of any search service which refuses to print full results for open source projects that don't use one of a certain set of licenses?

There is no need for the anxious policy re open source docs which you plan to adopt. If your lawyers are convinced there is, and you can't seek a second opinion, a Go foundation is a reasonable solution.

At the very least, hand godoc.org off to a third party.

 

[Ian Lance Taylor]

On Wed, Feb 5, 2020 at 2:29 PM Liam <networ...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Russ, I apologize for any misunderstanding, but below is the relevant quote from your post. When I suggested in response that godoc.org be returned to the community, Ian asked if anyone would be interested to take it on. My note here was prompted by Ian's query. (Appended is my post to which Ian responded, posing Q's which have not yet been answered.)

That's not quite what I meant, and I apologize for muddying the
already very murky waters.

Ian