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Node.js Forked By Top Contributors
New submitter jonhorvath writes: Several of the top contributors to Node.js, a popular open source run-time environment, have decided to fork the project, creating io.js as an alternative. The developers were unhappy with how cloud computing company Joyent was directing work on Node.js. Mikeal Rogers said, "We don't want to have just one person who's appointed by a company making decisions. We want contributors to have more control, to seek consensus." Here's the new repository, and a README file to go with it. A developer at Uber tweeted that they've already migrated to io.js on their production systems. It'll be interesting to see how many other sites follow.
If these guys know how to play it right, Node.js is history. He had the same thing with the Mambo Fork Joomla. Hardly anyone remembers Mambo anymore, and Joomla is a leading project.
I hope this new project knows how to manage things and do good marketing.
Thumbs up. Let's see where this goes.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
That's not what the post said. It said that if you insist on using masculine pronouns to the point of rejecting pull requests which contain non-masculine pronouns, you are not being a very nice person.
Wow, after reading that blog post, I suddenly understand exactly why they're forking themselves away from Joyent. And to be honest, I'm now expecting that Io.js will become dominant over Node.js in time, which is the opposite of what I thought yesterday.
Apparently Joyent doesn't want to focus on the product. 99% of people who depend on Node.js don't give a flying fart about what pronouns are used in COMMENTS in the library.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
The scourge of Open Source disguised as choice..
I disagree over the degree of which this would be a problem - think of it more like the free market. Under ideal conditions, the best ideas with the broadest appeal tend to win, grow and evolve, while the worst ideas with little appeal tend to fade away relatively quickly.
It also provides a very useful ejection seat of sorts in case of corporate asshattery (see also OpenOffice/Libre Office), patent follies, or worse. Also, consider this: Closed-Source/proprietary software can be just as prone to this kind of internal dissent as OSS, but you the end-user will never have a say in the results.
Forking is awesome to have as an option - either as a threat or as an actuality. A company who knows that their shit could be forked will either behave themselves, or they will lose control of their product. IMHO that's a damned good thing.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
[...] to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. On the one hand, it seems ridiculous (absurd, perhaps) to fire someone over a pronoun -- but to characterize it that way would be a gross oversimplification: it's not the use of the gendered pronoun that's at issue (that's just sloppy), but rather the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered. To me, that insistence can only come from one place: that gender—specifically, masculinity—is inextricably linked to software, and that's not an attitude that Joyent tolerates.
This is about replacing "he" with "they" somewhere. Noordhuis' single response in the comments section to this change was "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that.", and a flamewar that is as stupid as it is predictable ensues. Joyent then jumps to the conclusion not just that rejecting a trivial change like this constitutes an insistence on principle that pronouns should be gendered, but that such insistence springs from the notion that masculinity is inextricably linked to software. And this is a sacking offense? MikeRT called it right when he used the term "SJW tools". To me, this would at most be cause to remind the employee of whatever Diversity policies the company has in place.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I disagree over the degree of which this would be a problem - think of it more like the free market. Under ideal conditions, the best ideas with the broadest appeal tend to win, grow and evolve, while the worst ideas with little appeal tend to fade away relatively quickly.
That's fantasy. The best ideas often wither while mediocre - even bad ones - flourish. It also makes the foolish assumption that "best" conflates with "broadest appeal".
MacDonalds didn't get where they were because their products were the best. Their milkshakes taste like library paste. They got there because once they'd achieved critical mass in the market - as the old saying goes: Nothing Succeeds Like Success. Once customers knew that they could obtain a consistent product from coast-to-coast, even though it was consistently second-rate, growth was assured.
Or perhaps an example closer to home. The Commodore Amiga. The first mass-market computer to include Total Harmonic Distortion and Stereo Separation specs on the outside of the package. The first mass-market computer to come out-of-the-box with color graphics (accelerated), Hi-fi stereo sound and full pre-emptive real-time multi-tasking. Even most modern-day systems aren't real-time.
This was the company that "succeeded in spite of itself". Demonstrating that incompetent government isn't the only way to kill competitiveness, Commodore fielded a superior product which could have been even more successful if they hadn't been cursed with incompetent management.
But bad management or not, I'm really doubtful that they'd own the market today. The Wintel platform was already too well entrenched and "Nobody Ever Got Fired for buying IBM/Microsoft/Intel". Even Apple is just an also-ran. The competiton was inferior, but it was sufficient and these days only a few tattered remnants are all that remains of the Amiga.
I don't care who is 'right' or 'wrong,' but I can tell you:
If I ever worked in a place that had so much drama over pronouns, I would be looking for another job. That's a hostile work environment.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."