[vim/vim] Regarding the Warp ad (Discussion #18153)
Damien Lejay
This morning I have noticed that a big ad for Warp has been added to the README.md of the repo, in first position, even before the Vim logo.
I don’t know the terms of the deal with Denver Technologies, Inc. but what I see does not make me feel good.
The Ladybird project has a monetisation policy that I find interesting :
They have no ads on their GitHub repo.
A list of contributors is shown at the bottom of their website.
And they thank new sponsors in their monthly Youtube video.
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Maxim Kim
I can see it in a couple of other random github projects and it is a bit annoying.
So I blocked it :)
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Andrew Radev
@habamax I feel that it should be obvious, but I don't believe the problem is personally having to see the ad. The problem is what this says about the Vim project. Is Vim, the 35-year-old, open source, community-driven editor, promoting a corporate entity now? Particularly for a toxic technology that is meeting active backlash in other programming communities, e.g. Servo, MDN, FOSDEM to pick a few clear examples? What are the terms of this deal? How long will this banner stay above the Vim logo? Months, years, forever? If a crypto scam company sends money to ICCF, do they also get a banner ad?
If Warp want to support either open source and/or charity, I'm sure they could issue an anonymous donation, but instead they're forcing the project to make a statement that they're "the number one coding agent" in exchange for a certain amount of money. Or does @chrisbra personally wish to promote this project in his capacity of Vim project lead?
I have no say in what the Vim project chooses to do, obviously. I can only second the opinion of @dlejay that it "does not make me feel good". I have held Vim in very high esteem for more than 3 decades of (to my knowledge) independence of corporate interests. I write Vimscript to solve my own problems and try to help others with theirs, and I believe that many others in the community do the same. This is very, very different than, for instance, VSCode, which is theoretically open source, but you need their binary (which comes with "telemetry") in order to run certain microsoft-owned extensions.
Companies come and go, hype cycles come and go, we've had crypto, the metaverse, self-driving cars... Vim kept quietly working and getting better, because of the community. I would like to believe that this can continue without the project opening itself up to advertising and LLMs in a similar way that Mozilla have been doing.
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Christian Brabandt
Thank you for sharing your concerns. Let me clarify a few things regarding the sponsorship and the banner:
- The ad you see is part of the sponsorship agreement.
- The sponsorship is limited to 4 months. After that, the banner will disappear unless the sponsorship is prolonged.
- Given the feedback and criticism expressed, I may choose not to extend the sponsorship beyond this initial period.
- I personally think it is a fair deal to provide a sponsor with some visibility in return for their support.
- This is not without precedent: Vim has previously accepted donations on its homepage in exchange for contributions to the ICCF.
I appreciate the input from the community and will keep it in mind when considering any future arrangements.
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Andrew Radev
Thank you for the clarification on the sponsorship agreement, and for this statement:
I appreciate the input from the community and will keep it in mind when considering any future arrangements.
I don't disagree with sponsorship in principle, but it does require careful case-by-case consideration. My personal judgement is that anything AI-related at this point in time should trigger immediate (polite) rejection, especially at this level of visibility. But, again, that's just my judgement. I hold out hope that the bubble pops soon and all the VCs at least give us some time to breathe before jumping on the next hype train :)
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D. Ben Knoble
Is it possible to see the other terms of the sponsorship agreement? If the issue is funding Christian's work, I'm happy to donate what I can given a method to do so, and I suspect others are too. Maybe I've missed it as I only skim the mailing list these days, but I wasn't under the impression that Vim needed further financial sponsorship (as it sounds like @AndrewRadev was too).
I'm happy to be enlightened if that's changed, and I agree that sometimes other forms of sponsorship are useful and warranted (I don't think it's feasible for individual financial contributions to keep open source alive, but that's a bigger conversation).
Reputation, of course, matters :) as I wrote elsewhere, I think it would be a mistake for Vim's core to become too tangled with [interests] outside of text editing.
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Christian Brabandt
There is no other term of the agreement and it does not sponsor my work but the money goes directly to the ICCF.
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Christian Brabandt
Closed #18153 as resolved.
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Christian Brabandt
It is now removed again.
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