RE: join project

[Keith Elder]

(for those not following along, this started on Twitter and is now moving to
this discussion thread)

First let me say hello. I'm Keith. And you are?

You previously said in Twitter that you tried to join this project before
forking it.

http://twitter.com/tweet_feeds/status/1649708905

I'm not saying you didn't try to join the project, but this mailing list is
the place to start to join in on the conversation. If you wanted to join
the project and express interest you start here first. Join in on the
discussion, introduce yourself, push out your ideas, etc.

I don't know how you tried to join the project previously, but whatever you
did wasn't the correct way. All of us are listed on the project site with
our twitter handles and several of us are so easy to find on the Internet,
it is extremely easy to contact us. A simple @reply via twitter to a few of
us would have been helpful to start with.

Here's how you join this project.

1. Introduce yourself. Tell us who are you, what do you do. This is of
course optional but it helps to build back trust since you forked our
project.
2. Then, the first thing you do to "join" is start submitting patches to
the existing project. You don't have to "Join" anything to contribute to
this or other projects. Just submit patches. Start there first and build
up trust with those of us involved with the project. Those of us that have
commit access via SVN will apply them and credit you for your work.
3. Repeat #2 as often as possible.
4. At some point in time after that we will add you as a project member
once you have contributed some work, BUT NOT BEFORE.

Just like every other member in the "Project Members" list they started by
submitting patches FIRST and going from there.

I would also suggest the fork of the project you made be removed and taken
down. There is no point to it as obviously you can work with us on the
original (which we have a lot of plans for).

Hope this clears things up, and we look forward to those patches.

--
Keith Elder
Microsoft MVP
INETA Speaker
Podcast: http://deepfriedbytes.com
Blog: http://keithelder.net
Mobile: 601.467.9744


-----Original Message-----
From: wittyt...@googlegroups.com [mailto:wittyt...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of TweetFeeds
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 10:40 AM
To: WittyTwitter
Subject: join project


can i join this project?

[Keith Elder]

What I mean is that there's just no reason to fork this project at all. I
honestly don't think you really know the protocol when it comes to "forking"
a project.

The project is being actively developed on, it isn't abandoned. Plans are
being made for newer releases / updates / etc. Maintainers are taking
patches and turning them around and no one is in a pissing war over
anything.

Thus THERE IS NO REASON TO FORK IT.

--
Keith Elder
Microsoft MVP
INETA Speaker
Podcast: http://deepfriedbytes.com
Blog: http://keithelder.net
Mobile: 601.467.9744


-----Original Message-----
From: wittyt...@googlegroups.com [mailto:wittyt...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of TweetFeeds

Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 11:23 AM
To: WittyTwitter
Subject: Re: join project


cool, will consider following the steps outlined and your suggestions.
I am curious about something though, you said "there is absolutely no
point in forking a project like this." What do you mean by that?

[Keith Elder]

The first thing you do is start a public discussion with the original
maintainers and members of the software and go from there.

--
Keith Elder
Microsoft MVP
INETA Speaker
Podcast: http://deepfriedbytes.com
Blog: http://keithelder.net
Mobile: 601.467.9744


-----Original Message-----
From: wittyt...@googlegroups.com [mailto:wittyt...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of TweetFeeds
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 3:42 PM
To: WittyTwitter
Subject: Re: join project

oh ok, What is the protocol when it comes to "forking" a project?

[Josh Holmes]

TweetFeeds,

 

I'm really curious as to your motivations here?

 

You're absolutely right that you can take the source and go make your own modifications to it and redistribute it however you want. Those are rights granted under the BSD license that Witty is released under.

 

But why would you want to do that before even having a discussion with the core team about their roadmap and how that maps up with the feature set that you are interested in? That just sounds like a backwards way to go about things.

 

Josh

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 5:28 PM, TweetFeeds <tweet...@gmail.com> wrote:

Free or open source software may be forked with no prior permission,
per the definitions of "free software" ("Freedom 3: The freedom to
improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so
that the whole community benefits") and "open source" ("3. Derived
Works: redistribution of modifications must be allowed. (To allow
legal sharing and to permit new features or repairs.)"). ....

I thought Forks are considered an expression of the freedom made
available by free software...

Where are you getting your "protocol" from? do you have a link?

On Apr 30, 4:11 pm, TweetFeeds <tweetfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> go where? is there a link?

[Keith Elder]

While you are certainly in your rights to fork the project based on the
license, there is a social protocol that is typically followed by those that
want to fork something. You won't find this social protocol written down
anywhere in an official "do this document". It boils down to common courtesy
and for the same reason you shake hands when you are introduced, say hello
when you answer the phone, open a door for a lady, and so on.

Make no bones about it, what you did was socially wrong in my book (and I
know others on this list that are remainly silent right now) and goes
against the principles of what open source projects are trying to
accomplish. Forking is not a good thing and causes too many cooks in the
kitchen. What if every tom dick and harry forked the Linux kernel? What
would be the point without the contribution of the masses and it's leader,
Linus. There wouldn't be one.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

So while you are technically in your rights based on the license to fork the
project, the point is that this is a community driven piece of software.
You sir are in the community as well. So just drive the project from one
spot.

I do not wish to continue this thread any further. I've said my peace.
Someone else is welcome to jump in.

--
Keith Elder
Microsoft MVP
INETA Speaker
Podcast: http://deepfriedbytes.com
Blog: http://keithelder.net
Mobile: 601.467.9744


-----Original Message-----
From: wittyt...@googlegroups.com [mailto:wittyt...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of TweetFeeds
Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 4:29 PM
To: WittyTwitter
Subject: Re: join project

Free or open source software may be forked with no prior permission,
per the definitions of "free software" ("Freedom 3: The freedom to
improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so
that the whole community benefits") and "open source" ("3. Derived
Works: redistribution of modifications must be allowed. (To allow
legal sharing and to permit new features or repairs.)"). ....

I thought Forks are considered an expression of the freedom made
available by free software...

Where are you getting your "protocol" from? do you have a link?

On Apr 30, 4:11 pm, TweetFeeds <tweetfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> go where? is there a link?
>
> On Apr 30, 4:05 pm, "Keith Elder" <ke...@keithelder.net> wrote:
>

[Warren Henning]

Obvious troll is obvious.

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 5:32 PM, TweetFeeds <tweet...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Keith: caps is SHOUTING in my arbitrary web protocol and that's
> considered rude.Your social protocol is arbitrary and presumptuous and
> you are rude, disrespectful and verbose. My arbitrary social protocol
> is usually intolerant of swearing. I have often found that people that
> swear a lot usually lack substance in the conversation hence the shock
> effect. I call them ignoramuses. I will probably get more comfortable
> with swearing sometime but currently my stereotype for lots of
> cursing, is that the swearer is ignorant. I usually hope that anything
> i can say online i can say everywhere even when there are children.
> Do you have some project vision, development plans, etc

[Josh Holmes]

Tweet,

 

I'm still trying to understand your motivations. I understand that you are interested in writing software that you can use and share but to what end?

 

Is there a specific feature that Witty doesn't implement that you are interested in?

Is there a feature that you woud like to modify the behaviour of?  

 

As Warren said, you are behaving very much like a troll. That means that you are only posting on this list to stir up arguements and trouble. There are several things that contribute to that appearance including the fact that you are not willing to share your real name.

 

Until you are more forthcoming with our motivations and identity, I'm done with this thread as well.

 

Josh

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 7:52 PM, TweetFeeds <tweet...@gmail.com> wrote:

Josh: My name is Tweet, Thanks for respectfully asking why I forked
the project. My motivations are to write software that i can use and
share (licenses permitting). While Keith is educating me on some
arbitrary social protocol, i could be working on the project, but he
would rather reprimand me for doing something that he clearly admits
was completely acceptable, proper and legal.
Developers have the option to collaborate and pool resources with free
software, but it is not ensured by free software licenses, only by a
commitment to cooperation.
So...you want to share the project vision, development plans, etc I
could start contributing right away.

[Michael Minutillo]

For those interested in project forking etiquette here are a few interesting resources:

http://geeketiquette.com/archives/2005/04/19/patches-forks-and-takeovers/

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/

specifically 

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/ar01s09.html

Tweet, you are correct in saying that forking this project is legally correct but I think that you'll find that it is culturally considered not right. People generally do not fork projects that they have had no prior participation in. 

Forking is normally done when the fork'er and the project owners cannot come to some agreement on the future of the project and the fork'er believes that they have produced functionality that could be of significance to other users and that that functionality requires significant divergence from the original code base. It is also considered polite to include some indication of the forked projects origins. In this case the details of the New BSD License (which is WittyTwitters license) specifically require that all redistributions in source and/or binary form retain a copy of the license (which contains a copyright notice belonging to the original authors). There is a template of the license here http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

Interestingly enough the original distribution of Witty does not include a copy of this license but as the license only stipulates that it must be present in "redistributions" I guess that is OK.

Lastly, I think that it is reasonable that people would be unaware of the cultural expectations when forking software. Tweet, if you have ideas about the way in which you see WittyTwitter evolving then I would guess that the project coordinators would love to hear them. I'm sure that they would especially love to hear suggestions that come with code patches attached. 

Guys. keep up the good work. It was a pleasure to meet many of you at MIX09 this year and I look forward to seeing the next version of WittyTwitter.

--
Michael M. Minutillo
Indiscriminate Information Sponge
Blog: http://wolfbyte-net.blogspot.com