Re: [nodejs] What happens to hook.io?

[Marak Squires]

hook.io the open-source project is gone.

Reasoning is complicated, but ultimately due to various legal reasons, it would have been imprudent of me to continue development.

I'm not pleased with the outcome, but some of possible alternative outcomes if I had continued developed on that specific project could have been much worse.

- Marak

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Arunoda Susiripala <arunoda.s...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I've notice that hook.io's source code has been removed from Github.

Anyone know why it has been removed?

Or is it moved to some other place?

--
Arunoda Susiripala

@arunoda

https://github.com/arunoda

http://www.linkedin.com/in/arunoda

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[Marak Squires]

I didn't leave. I was forced out by Charlie Robbins, against my will.

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 11:53 AM, Ruben LZ Tan <sog...@gmail.com> wrote:

Marak left his company, and removed the source code as a result. Hook.io has been discontinued. Big drama couple weeks back. That's the gist of it.

Thanks,

Ruben Tan

[Marak Squires]

Here's a nice quote from one of the executives at Nodejitsu:

If people were considering hook.io as an alternative to Nodejitsu I would be equally concerned.

It's small thinking like this that pretty much made it impossible to continue the hook.io open-source project, since Nodejitsu put no real resources into building hook.io while simultaneously selling enterprise licenses of a similar and proprietary product.

This is the same type of mentality that Alfresco uses ( https://www.alfresco.com/ ), and there is no fucking way I'm going to build "fake" open-source projects to fuel enterprise sales.

[Marak Squires]

Don't speak me to like we are familiar Charlie Robbins.

It's this kind of lies, bullshitting and rationalizations that have caused you to lose all three of your original co-founders ( Paolo is gone, I'm gone, Saadiq is leaving ), and how many developers? I'd list them here, but I don't want to drop their names. My current count is five developers quitting and three founders leaving.

For the record, working on the project for one weekend, and then having me have to revert the majority of your changes, does not qualify you as a "major contributor to hook.io". Go claim credit for your own projects, like Flatiron.

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 7:27 PM, Charlie Robbins <charlie...@gmail.com> wrote:

My favorite kind of thread to weigh in on. First, welcome back to the world Marak. Hope you're enjoying India. I hear Will's place in Goa is pretty awesome.

Yes, we terminated Marak's employment. No, we did not delete or otherwise mess with the hook.io Github account. Nor did anything having to do with Marak's previous employment at Nodejitsu prevent him from working on hook.io after he left. hook.io was and always has been maintained by Marak. I'm going to guess that in a rage after his separation with Nodejitsu he deleted it. 

hook.io was and always will be MIT open-source licensed so if any of you want to take over maintenance of it I encourage it. We simply don't use it at Nodejitsu anymore and given all the other open source projects that require our frequent attention (forever, http-proxy, winston, union, resourceful, vows, cradle ... over 200 modules) we just don't have the time. Sorry. 

For a time we did sponsor hook.io development and use it in production at Nodejitsu. As the hook.io project grew in scope to be more of an application level tool and less of an infrastructure level tool (read: "it was no longer a small library", think substack small) we opted to go with a different solution based on another MIT open source library we maintain called nssocket: http://github.com/nodejitsu/nssocket.

swhen Marak deleted the Github account I thought about asking Github to give me permission after-the-fact, but I decided that it was Marak's decision since he had started the project.

Nothing has changed about our corporate culture at Nodejitsu; we still spend about 40-50% of our time working on Open Source software that we give back to the node.js community. We contribute to Node core itself and sponsored a node.js core developer (indutny) for almost a year. We ask nothing in return and believe that's the way it should be. 

Go forth and Open Source. Don't be led astray by false idols.

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 2:46 PM, Alexey Petrushin <alexey.p...@gmail.com> wrote:

As far as I know, if the license is MIT - then the repository can be restored by someone else without any legal issues.

There may be legal issues preventing Marak from working on it (like NDA agreement), but there souln't be problems for anyone else to use and contribute to it.

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[Marak Squires]

I agree. Double-talking bullshit has no place anywhere in my book.

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 9:51 AM, Mikeal Rogers <mikeal...@gmail.com> wrote:

the list isn't the place for kind of thing. let's close this thread now.

[Marak Squires]

Ken -

Are you actually using hook.io? I suspect you are not. If you are, you have the code and can continue to use it if you feel so inclined.

If you are genuinely concerned about continued development, you can fork and rename the project at any time.

I'm telling you as the creator, you should not waste your time. There are several fundmental problems with hook.io ( many of which are technical ). Solving these problems would require an entire new suite of libraries and tools, which do not exist.

- Marak

On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Ken <ken.wo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Interpersonal drama aside, I actually think this is a very interesting scenario and something the node community should probably consider developing some best practices around.  To abstract a bit, what, if anything, can and should the community do when a popular package is abandoned by its sole maintainer?

As far as github and the code goes it looks like Nathan Rajlich has an up-to-date version here (package.json matches NPM, not sue if he's got custom hacks though):

https://github.com/TooTallNate/hook.io

It seems like NPM is a slightly bigger problem, as Marak is the only maintainer and there are over 60 packages that depend on hook.io

https://npmjs.org/package/hook.io

so while it would be possible to fork the package it would be a tremendous effort to repoint all of the dependents at the new fork.  Perhaps we should have some mechanism for interested parties to petition the registry to take over as maintainer of abandoned packages?

--Ken

[Rohit Rao]

Ken brings up a good point.  The biggest risk with indie tech like this is that it might get abandoned due to unforeseen circumstances.

It would behoove us to have some sort of fallback so users don't get negatively affected with their projects due to something like this.

[Isaac Schlueter]

Rohit,

The same problems exist for all software, indie or enterprise.

If you depend on it, be prepared to one day either own it or find a
replacement. Such is the way of the world.

[Arunoda Susiripala]

Well said issac.

I'm saving this quote :)

On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 1:09 PM, Isaac Schlueter <i...@izs.me> wrote:

If you depend on it, be prepared to one day either own it or find a
replacement.  Such is the way of the world.

[Ro Rao]

seven months ago, i posted my first email to this group.  the one you responded to was the second email i've ever posted to this group.

the first one was about a project i was working on that had a particular set of requirements.  the helpful response email i got was from marak, suggesting that hook.io would do what i needed based on my requirements.  i looked into it and thought it was legit, but for one reason or another, i decided against using it.

i'm working on another project now, and if the whole idea behind these modules is "use at your own risk", then that's kinda bs, and frankly not the school of developer that i come from. 

i think it would make sense to have some construct where if a module is implemented and then abandoned, the submitter would be willing to let someone else pick up where they left off.

R.

--
Rohit Colin Rao
Writer / Director / Producer
ULTRASONIC
ultrasonicmovie.com
206.293.8148

[Nuno Job]

It's an MIT licensed project:

1. Go to github.com

2. Click fork

3. Rename the project and change package.json accordingly

4. npm publish

You are now the owner of the `new-hook-io` project.

This is all there is to "pick up where they left off".

If you are concerned about the number of followers the project had, well you have to recreate it. So did Marak back in the day, hard work and a lot of passion is what made people have visibility to the project.

You seem to be very passionate about your arguments but quite frankly there not much substance to it.

Thinking that `forking` is not from the "school of developers" you come from must mean you don't come from an open source world:

* http://files.cyberciti.biz/uploads/tips/2007/06/44218-linuxdistrotimeline-7.2.png

Nuno

[Ro Rao]

nope... that answers my question.  my concern was just for devs like myself who are new to node who might've implemented hook.io and then not known where to turn when the module is abandoned.

R

[Ro Rao]

and you're right, i come from a .net world, switched to front end js, and now am working on node.  not an open source guy.

R.

On 12/1/12 3:04 AM, Nuno Job wrote:

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Dec 1, 2012, at 00:50, Ken wrote:

> Interpersonal drama aside, I actually think this is a very interesting scenario and something the node community should probably consider developing some best practices around. To abstract a bit, what, if anything, can and should the community do when a popular package is abandoned by its sole maintainer?

I thought the procedure for this situation was already well-established and documented:

https://npmjs.org/doc/disputes.html

[Martin Cooper]

On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 11:55 PM, Ro Rao <substa...@gmail.com> wrote:

seven months ago, i posted my first email to this group.  the one you responded to was the second email i've ever posted to this group.

the first one was about a project i was working on that had a particular set of requirements.  the helpful response email i got was from marak, suggesting that hook.io would do what i needed based on my requirements.  i looked into it and thought it was legit, but for one reason or another, i decided against using it.

i'm working on another project now, and if the whole idea behind these modules is "use at your own risk", then that's kinda bs, and frankly not the school of developer that i come from. 

I wouldn't be so sure. Pretty much every software license - open source *and* commercial - includes a clause that effectively states that the software is provided "as is" and there is no warranty, so yes, it's "use at your own risk".

Now, there are organisations such as The Apache Software Foundation that, in effect, provide community ownership for software, such that, as long as there are volunteers, the software will continue to be maintained. That's based on a central source of truth, as opposed to the typical GitHub one-or-two-person projects with multiple forks. However, there's still no guarantee, other than that the source code will continue to remain available indefinitely.

With commercial software, you may think you have a guarantee, but it almost always has the same kind of "as is" clause. You may be able to pay someone to support it, but the company could go out of business or be acquired or abandon the project. In those cases, you're generally completely hosed, because the code wasn't made available to you, so you can't choose to maintain it yourself, even if you want to.
 

i think it would make sense to have some construct where if a module is implemented and then abandoned, the submitter would be willing to let someone else pick up where they left off.

We have that, as others have said. The GitHub forking model is exactly that, and a permissive license such as MIT is perfect for fostering this kind of approach. If what you're really looking for is a central body to manage the project, or a single "officially sanctioned" maintainer - well, again, anyone is free to start, or offer to start, such a community around a single fork. It's not how the Node community typically works, and it wouldn't be easy, but it's conceivable.

One of the key take-aways here is: you're in charge. That is, whatever the direction you believe is right for a project, voicing that opinion and waiting for someone else to do the work doesn't generally make it happen. If you start down the path, others may choose to follow, and you'll be on your way. Or they may not. Much of open source revolves around "scratching your own itch". So start scratching, and see if others have the same itch. :-)

--
Martin Cooper
 

[Isaac Schlueter]

Ro,

I think that Nuno and Martin really covered all that needs to be said,
and I don't want to echo what they've explained very nicely. But I do
want to point out that what you're seeing is indeed a cultural
difference between open source and proprietary worlds. In effect,
with liberally licensed open source software, you have the *option* to
take ownership of your code. In the proprietary world, that is not
the case.

If you are depending on a bit of software that someone else wrote,
whether it's a database or operating system or just some little
library or javascript thing, you are accepting a bit of risk, in
exchange for some value. The risk is that the author might move on
and not care about this thing any more, or might take the project in a
direction that doesn't benefit you. The value is that you get to use
what they have built, at a much lower cost than building it yourself.
(Often it's free in terms of $$, but there's also the cost of learning
how it works, etc.)

I'm biased, but this is based on seeing how this goes in the real
world, and being on both ends of getting burned by these things.

In the proprietary world, you can find yourself in a situation where
the bulk of your system is in fact owned by Microsoft (if you're
lucky!), or worse, by a company like Oracle[1], which is explicitly in
the business of "extracting value" from their users. Or, you may be
married to a company run by someone you know and trust, and then one
day, they retire, and the person who follows them runs things very
differently.

Switching from one platform to another is usually prohibitively
expensive. Proprietary vendors know this, that's how they can raise
prices to exorbitant levels once you're using their platform. The
general MO is to sell these platforms with the promise of support
contracts and such, and to tell horror stories about how open source
projects get abandoned.

But proprietary software projects get abandoned as well! Just ask the
Solaris or MySQL users how much support they're getting from Oracle,
or how much innovation they're seeing in those software projects. On
the other hand, their free spin-offs (Maria and Illumos, respectively)
are seeing a lot of innovation and have a much more active community
support network. For that matter, compare the experience of sharing
code with other users in .NET or iOS vs Perl or Node. Proprietary
systems tend to destroy communities, by polarizing them into "the
provider" and "the users".

Open source communities by necessity acknowledge the reality of
project abandonment, because we can't ignore it. We don't have a
company buy a project and then slowly squeeze all the life out of its
trapped users; the developer says, "Ok, I'm doing another thing now",
and that's that. If someone wants to take over, they do. (Usually
this is one of the users who depend on it, perhaps someone who was
*already* helping find/fix bugs.) If no one cares, then it dies
peacefully.

--i

[1] If it seems like I'm picking on Oracle unfairly, it's only because
they're the most evil software company I know of. LIke any large
organization, there are a lot of good people working there, and some
of them are doing good work; but as a whole, the company is clearly
evil. Apple, Google, and Microsoft are also not blameless or purely
good, but I think that all three at least are trying to be a net
benefit for the software industry.

[Paweł Marzec]

Hi! All below is IMHO:

I've observed, by reading the comments, that understanding the problem
wake up - it arised!.

There is a big diffrences between open licenses.

Like between MIT & GPL for example

the first one (MIT) guarantees the freedom to be used in all
aplication, the freedom to code & to decomplie & to decompile
& even to be transformed to closed project (by some company interested
to invest some money to open project it's the decision key)

But the second one (GPL) guarantees to keep the freedom of project and
freedom of apliances. (as long as you keep it public),
but it guratnees also to keep the freedom of the project by itself!
It forbids to be closed by anybody! As long as they have something to
be published and given back to society!

The first one (MIT) has the big virus counter (it is attractive to
yound developers as a leverage to be)
But the second one is less viruses in short time, but survives most of
the disturbances, with the first one doesn't.

So, please take a while and understand where you invest you efforts!

None of these two licensens has any money related restrictions!!!

The restictions are only in freedom related aspects!

Think!

Regards
Paweł Marzec
PS: Don't disturb the free beer with freedom, or even worse: the
freedom in exchange of free beer!

Wiadomość napisana w dniu 2012-12-01, o godz. 19:59, przez Isaac
Schlueter:

[Angel Java Lopez]

Hi people!

Sorry, Pawel, I missed your point.... The story of this thread (hook.io deleted, someone could republish, etc...) would be the same, being hook.io licensed GPL or MIT. AFAIK, hook.io was not closed to be continue with internal development, but abandoned.

And I don't get your point with "but survives most of the disturbances, with the first one doesn't.". GitHub is plenty of project that "survives most of the disturbances" that are MIT licensed. Node.js is an example.

Sorry if this mail feeds an maybe-offtopic discussion.

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[Paweł Marzec]

Hello!

Angel, You are right: the license solely doesn't propel/develop any
project,
and every one could be down.

I'm not telling that I have oracle's knowledge ;) -> so I expect a lot
of criticism.

Maybe,
somebody with more/less expirence than I have,
would share the memories/facts that choosing
GPL or MIT or BSD or whatever open like license
is the major/minor factor
for project to be better equipped/prepared
in case of 'disturbances'...

Maybe
it is the question to be post elswere

Maybe
it shouldn't be pin to hook.io,
but story of it (hook.io) and it's thread here have symptoms
to me that choosing license type could/should be important...

Regards
Paweł Marzec

Wiadomość napisana w dniu 2012-12-01, o godz. 22:32, przez Angel Java
Lopez:

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[George Snelling]

I can't resist.  A fable:

Richard Stallman, author of the GPL, is like Karl Marx.  Well meaning, pissed off, and a little nuts. GPL says use all my code for free, but if you do, you must make all your code free too.  Much gazing at the word 'use'.  

Martin Mickos is like Vladimir Lenin.  He saw how many people liked Richard's licence and gave it an evil little twist in exchange for a kingdom.  He was the CEO of mySQL who established Dual Licensing:  you can use our awesome database for free if you make your code available for free, OR you can pay me for my awesome database and keep your code private.  Developers clicked the free licence.  The people who paid the developers received a call from a mySQL salesperson.  More gazing at the word 'use'.  Checks written.   

Larry Ellison is like Joseph Stalin (going with Isaacs here).  He saw how great Lenin was doing and simply killed him, or paid him off our story. When Oracle bought Sun it bought mySQL too and Martin walked away very wealthy.  Larry loved the model that Martin created. He found it much more lucrative if one dispensed with any pretense of helping human kind and simply added an army of bloodthirsty lawyers.  Oracle now licenses Java, Solaris, and mySQL this way.  Free!  Open Source!  Stallman, unlike Marx, has endured the sad misfortune of living to see his beautiful idea twisted into the weapon of his enemy.  

Node thrives because its leaders share a few simple values, established by Ryan, articulated by Isaac, and backed by the daily work of the core team and the module community:  simplicity, transparency, performance.  Given these values the community has chosen to bypass all the GPL free beer drama and settle, by convention, not fiat, on the MIT licence.  No surprise. The MIT license is a lot like node: small, clean, effective.

In the real world Isaac is of course right.  If you depend on it prepare to own it.  With the exception of the GPL / Dual Licence trick, or really big projects like Android where you prepare from the outset to fight Larry in court, the specific terms of which open source licence you choose rarely matter. Far more common and important, as in this case, is the motivation, or lack thereof, of the people behind the code.

George

[MikeB_2012]

Just wondering, if hook.io is dead, can anyone recommend a replacement with similar functionality?  .

[Arunoda Susiripala]

hook.io tries to solve the problem of inter process communication in node.

So you have several other options

• kue - Redis based Job Queue
• rabbitmq with node-amqp
• zero-mq
• nssocket
• dnode

Hope this helps.

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 11:39 PM, MikeB_2012 <majb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just wondering, if hook.io is dead, can anyone recommend a replacement with similar functionality?  .

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[Brian Link]

I'll toss amino in here too :)

http://cpsubrian.github.com/amino-nodedc/#/

https://github.com/amino/amino

Has plugins for pub/sub (via redis), request/respond, and queue (via rabbitmq).

[Tauren Mills]

You could check out Marak's latest framework:

https://github.com/bigcompany/big

[Marak Squires]

I'd rather people didn't check out Big. It's not meant for most of the people on this list. 

Any developer reading this list should just ignore it and research the other tools posted.

[Arunoda Susiripala]

Hi Marak,

What is reason for that?

Is big is something private?

[Tauren Mills]

I don't understand your statement either, Marak. You sent out an email to this list a while back about the Bangalore JS meetup. As a user of hook.io, of course this interested me. At the meetup you announced Big. So how is it not meant for people on this list?

With hook.io no longer maintained, I've been considering my options. Should I take your statement to mean I should not consider Big and look for another solution? Why build it and open source it if it is not for general consumption?

Or is it just that Big is pre-alpha and you don't want people to become dependent on it in this early state? That is completely understandable.

[Marak Squires]

Big is not targeted for most of the people on this list.

Use whatever software you want, just don't use Big, it's not for you.

[Arunoda Susiripala]

Wow. Okay we'll stay away from it.

This is first time I saw a statement like this in this list :)

[Berger Kennedy FOTSO]

@Marak,

This isnt nodejs-dev.

[Angel Java Lopez]

Ummm... Marak, can you elaborate? 

Small interest in Big? (yes, pun intended ;-)

[Hannes kock]

wow

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

[Angel Java Lopez <ajlop...@gmail.com> (2013-02-05 11:31:00 UTC)]

> Ummm... Marak, can you elaborate?

It's becoming quite clear that he won't.
So let's stop badgering him about it and move on.

- Harald

[Eric Muyser]

Reverse psychology

[Marak Squires]

Featuring the all new resource engine!

https://github.com/bigcompany/resource

And no one is allowed to use it, especially Stan and Kyle.

[Angel Java Lopez]

Interesting!

I still need to get the uses cases (why not direct JavaScript/NodeJs/require?).... maybe I should read in detail the link at bottom

https://github.com/bigcompany/resources

I guess the "new thing" is the persistence of a resource: the "model" added to a object as a resource helps to implement the persistence methods (for query, etc...), even in memory. 

I didn't get the use case for a resource wo/persistence, yet, beyond some resource.use('....') that could be resolved by a require. For example: