A conversation about open source licenses | Hacker News Reader

A conversation about open source licenses

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It is sad how this has been misrepresented.

First of all, this was an email conversation between Ryan Dahl and Zed Shaw. That you know. What you probably don't know is that Ryan first posted this tweet [0] about rewriting Zed's http parser. Zed then responded twice [1] & [2], vehemently. Ryan then responded with a single "?" to Zed's outbursts. That is when Zed said this: "@ryah And don't make me bust out the fucking email you sent me trying to trick me into giving you a MIT license. I swear I'll trash you." [3] Then shortly after another attack [4]. Ryan then again responded somewhat confused: "@zedshaw http-parser uses nginx's url parser, and your external c api (it's a good api) but it's not a modified ver. of mongrel's http11. ??" [5] After that he offered up the above link with the email conversation Zed alluded to [6].

If you know anything about the http parser, you would know that it was written by Ryan and is no longer an issue. That is why the license was changed, why give attribution to Zed if he didn't write anything? Not to mention after the above outburst.

The title of this post is wrong, misleading, and linkbait.

[0]: https://twitter.com/ryah/status/69557901546631168

[1]: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/69583774119239681

[2]: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/69584110305284097

[3]: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/69584284339544064

[4]: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/69618172252274688

[5]: http://twitter.com/ryah/status/69620659650699264

[6]: http://twitter.com/ryah/status/69624489893314560

http://bettween.com/ryah/zedshaw/May-07-2011/May-15-2011/asc is far more readable ;)

But back on topic... Even if Ryan really rewritten all of the original mongrel's code by hand, then there is still issue with nginx-based portions. Why there is no attribution to Igor Sysoev?

Yeah, but what is the fun in that?

If it was rewritten, with all new code, why would there need to be attribution?

Ryan said that the current version uses nginx's URL parser, so clearly not everything is new code.

Here you go: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2549813

Here you go: https://github.com/ry/http-parser/commit/8dabce6ec7142319bc5...

Awesome, that clears that up.

It's funny that Zed threatens to "trash" Ryan, but this conversation really makes him look bad more than anything else.

I haven't done much open source (all I've got out there is a thing to suck a small newsfeed from an NNTP server, a simple NNTP cache, three Warhammer Online add-ons, and a Talisman calculator for Wahammer Online), as my job at a mostly closed source company raises enough challenges to occupy all of the time I have for programming.

However, Zed Shaw really tempts me to make time to get involved in open source, especially in projects that will have some tangential connection to him. That's because I haven't been in a really good flame war with a worthy opponent since the old usenet days. From what I've read, it seems he would be more than worthy and not too hard to provoke. :-)

That's because I haven't been in a really good flame war with a worthy opponent since the old usenet days.

That's easily the most bizarre motivation I've heard to get into open source(!) :-)

Yes, we all know that Open Source is the place to be to get away from those pesky flamewars.

Oh you're one of those guys who thinks that you're somehow trolling by just being a dipshit. As if my reaction to your stupidity is somehow causing me great pain, when the truth is it's just damn funny to tell someone who insults me to suck a goat cock and then watch them flail at words.

Just being wrong and giggling when people correct you is level 0 trolling. If you really want to troll you gotta step up your game and do something like any of these:

http://mulletdb.com/ http://livingdouchebag.com/ http://programming-motherfucker.com/

If you can pull off projects like that, and open source them, then I'll be one of your fans. If all you do is try to provoke me, then I'll just end up making you look like the dumbass you actually are.

(So something like that is what you want? :-)

EDIT: mulletdb.com is better.

Oh no, now he has no motivation to do any open source! :-P

Have you considered developing some proprietary code? :-)

I do, but it's not as fun.

If that's your motivation, I hope you never write another piece of open source software.

This "Zed" guy has a "oh, cool" to "I WILL FIGHT YOU" transition time of about five minutes. It's sad that his short temper colors his excellent work so much. [1] Especially when this started with a compliment [0]...

[0]: https://twitter.com/ryah/status/69554939323629568

[1]: Oh crap, now Zed Shaw's gonna challenge me to a duel.

Seems like Ryan re-opened the can of worms by tweeting about Ragel with a subtle jab at Zed ("Ragel was hindering. Needs a better 'when' operator.").

It sounds like Ryan is saying that he re-wrote it because of technical reasons, when from the email exchange, it is really because of licensing. That's kind of sketchy to me.

Right or wrong, I think that if node was using mongrel/nginx stuff at any point they should still give some attribution. It certainly seems like the code was helpful in getting the project started regardless of the fact that all the code has been rewritten in later releases.

It's hard to know anyone's actual intentions from the outside, but I think Zed has a point.

It's interesting that Ryan works for Joyent, who is doing a major push into Node.js services–including "Commercial Node.js distribution" ... I'm not a license expert but it seems that MIT would be better for that.

Can someone explain what was the fuss about ? So Zed was cool to relicense it thinking it was about some project X and got pissed off when he learned it was going to be (also) used in project Y ? WTF ?!

It looks like Zed is pissed about Ryan trying to hide his intentions to profit from Zed's work through Node.js (Node.js has commercial activities attached to it). Zed is not pissed about whether or not Ryan actually profits from it, only the way he appears to be doing it in a sneaky way.

Node.js had no comercial activities in Nov 2009. In fact, this exchange happened right after JSConf 2009 which is when the world at large learned about node.

This feels like a simple misunderstanding. I think Ryan just assumed that Zed knew they were already talking about Node.js. With that assumption in mind, when Ryan wrote, "this is included in some of my other projects," he really meant, "this is also included in some of my other projects." That seems a more likely interpretation than Ryan trying to trick Zed into re-licensing the code.

I assume this is somehow related the joyent's assumption of copyright on the node code (stewardship).

Is there any background on why this was posted in a gist (and why it was submitted to HN)?

>> Is there any background on why this was posted in a gist

http://bettween.com/ryah/zedshaw/May-07-2011/May-15-2011/asc

Thanks!

http-parser is based on parsers from mongrel and/or nginx (at least in parts), yet the LICENSE file says Joyent, Inc. and other Node contributors.... No mention of the original copyright holders (Zed Shaw and/or Igor Sysoev) tsk tsk

There isn't a shred of the original mongrel parser left. I'm not 100% sure but http-parser looks more like it's inspired by nginx than that it actually contains nginx code.

Disclosure: I know both http-parser and nginx fairly well. I'm one of the 'other Node contributors'. :-)

But it was Ryan who said that it does: http://twitter.com/#!/ryah/status/69620659650699264

If you read to the bottom of the email chain here: http://twitter.com/#!/ryah/status/69624489893314560, ry says he rewrote the parser.

You've missed the fact that this e-mail is from 2009 and tweet is from yesterday. Surely a lot changed in the meantime.

Anyway, Igor Sysoev was just added to the LICENSE file, so EOT.

The NGINX contribution has been noted now; https://github.com/ry/http-parser/commit/8dabce6ec7142319bc5...

Thank you.

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