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Comment by jarpadat | Hacker News Reader

I don't know anything about Hudson. But when I see stories like this (big bad corporate imposes their will on open source), I always think the drama queens (on both sides) are busy having "meetings" instead of doing actual work.

Want to fork? Then fork! You don't need anyone's permission. In this day of DVCS it's about two commands to fork back should relations improve. Using github is different only in degree, not in kind, from using a different IDE on your local machine. You don't have to have a holy war about it. If your development is better as a result you will win, if not you won't. It might be fun to throw a little tantrum, but it won't make the code any better.

If I'm a developer, especially a developer on a project for which I'm not getting paid, I'll do the development using whatever the hell tools I want, thanks. And if someone tells me I can't, frankly, it's not really up to them.

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> I don't know anything about Hudson. But when I see stories like this (big bad corporate imposes their will on open source), I always think the drama queens (on both sides) are busy having "meetings" instead of doing actual work.

>If I'm a developer, especially a developer on a project for which I'm not getting paid, I'll do the development using whatever the hell tools I want, thanks. And if someone tells me I can't, frankly, it's not really up to them.

This is exactly the position of the Hudson developers, so why call them drama queens? They can't "just fork it". It's a large open source project with 100+ developers. They need to plan, get consensus, etc. Those "meetings" you seem to disdain aren't just for people to bitch.

I hope they do change the name and fork it. Oracle needs to learn a lesson here and they are absolutely powerless (for once) other than having the TM on Hudson.

In the email from the Oracle VP, he pretty much invites the developer community to fork the project under a different name:

Because it is open source, we can't stop anybody from forking it. We do however own the trademark to the name so you cannot use the name outside of the core community. We acquired that as part of Sun.

The issue though is of course not that cut and dry. The community would want to think over and debate any such move as it would have a long-term impact on the overall working relationship with Oracle, Sonatype, other Hudson contributors/sponsors, etc...

Invitations are usually welcoming. "We can't stop you" doesn't really strike me as such.

I dunno, maybe I'm reading into this too much, but it almost sounds like a "hint" so as not to upset others at Oracle. Kinda like "I don't have that thing you're looking for, but if I did, it would be in my unlocked office in the third desk drawer on the left. I have to go to lunch now."

I'm not sure I can see that, since the sentence following that quote is »We hope that everyone working on hudson today will do as they claim to want, and work with us to make hudson stronger.« This reads quite passive-aggressive to me, indicating that either you go the Oracle way, or you're clearly not really interested in bringing the project forward.

And even if the above were a subtle hint intended to be below the Oracle radar, it would be a suggestion or opinion of a single person, not an invitation.

I also read a bit of sarcastic "good luck making a Hudson without the name, we'll still have it". Presumably there would not be any Oracle changes that break plug-ins, so a lot of users would have to manually migrate to a fork. I'm guessing Oracle feels that puts them in a good position.

> Those "meetings" you seem to disdain aren't just for people to bitch.

Yes they are. If you read through the posts in the actual mailing list, consensus has been built--the consensus is "move to github".

See several developers' comments here: http://groups.google.com/group/hudson-users/msg/5c6ec5888594...

http://groups.google.com/group/hudson-users/msg/02a9ca4abd7d...

http://groups.google.com/group/hudson-users/msg/9d4c44b83a1a...

This entire thread:

http://groups.google.com/group/hudson-users/browse_thread/th...

http://groups.google.com/group/hudson-dev/browse_thread/thre...

The only reason it hasn't happened already is because Oracle wants to bitch. I'm calling the developers drama queens too because instead of forking after consensus was built, which was the logical thing to do, they are still talking to Oracle and/or blogging about what Oracle will or will not let them do.

A move to github doesn't constitute a fork, though, does it?

>Those "meetings" you seem to disdain aren't just for people to bitch.

As Cory Doctorow put it in For The Win, [1] meetings, and everything that go with them are the price of being superhuman. (Where "superhuman" is defined as "not just sitting in a tree eating berries".)

[1] http://craphound.com/ftw/Cory_Doctorow_-_For_the_Win.htm

My guess is that many of the active, non-Oracle developers have a significant financial interest in the project's continued success and open-ness. Either they themselves make money via Hudson (consulting, add-ons, etc.) or their employers have many projects depending on Hudson.

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