« Some admin options required
[FAQ] Is it a friendly fork?
Improvement to drafts (and posting, actually) I need to do »

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,080
[FAQ] Is it a friendly fork?
« on November 9th, 2010, 01:57 PM »Last edited on August 29th, 2011, 12:20 AM by Nao
It is friendly -- to end users and anyone who happily embraces the software. It may be seen as a hostile fork of SMF, though, in the sense that currently the license we chose is set to prevent SMF from re-using our implementations. Our choice of license was dictated by a few events that, while regrettable in a sense, contributed to the birth of Wedge, and its subsequent good health.

In the first two months of the project lifetime, while we were building Wedge in private, we were in touch with the SMF team and were providing bug reports and fixes that we had done in Wedge. At the time, we thought of Wedge as a "laboratory" to allow experimenting outside of the SMF codebase. Our new code was supposed to be able to be merged back into the SMF codebase.

However, after more internal conflicts with the team, we decided that the SMF team didn't do anything to deserve our help. While we can understand that many people might have thought that our apparent leaving of the active SMF community might be reason enough to blame us for whatever conflict happened between the SMF team and us, fact is, we *were* active, and actually way more active than the SMF team itself, providing many, many bug fixes and helping speed up the releases of SMF 2.0 RC4 and RC5 among other things.

In the future, when Wedge is stable enough, then we will reconsider what our final license is. But as much as we'd like to license our code as BSD, it is unlikely to happen until we feel comfortable sharing more than a few fixes with the SMF team again. I guess we can say the ball is in their camp at this point. :)
[FAQ] Re: Is it a hostile or friendly fork?
« Reply #1, on November 26th, 2010, 11:22 AM »Last edited on August 29th, 2011, 12:20 AM by Nao
A note for those interested in the conflicts that led us into going closed source.

If you're interested in some reading, check out the topic at Runic's.
[FAQ] Re: Is it a friendly fork?
« Reply #2, on June 25th, 2012, 03:11 PM »
To be honest, as a developer looking for a suitable forum software, this is a no-go. Just go open source and ignore the SMF team if they annoy you so much. And not when you're at 1.0, but now! I also suggest using a distributed source control system like Mercurial or Git. It will be a lot easier for others to contribute and in fact many won't otherwise. Think about it.

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
[FAQ] Re: Is it a friendly fork?
« Reply #3, on June 25th, 2012, 03:22 PM »
Quote
Just go open source and ignore the SMF team if they annoy you so much.
You do realise that this thread was started almost two years ago and that a lot of things have changed since then, right? That's why, for example, I've been posting over there lately.
Quote
And not when you're at 1.0, but now!
Why? And if the answer is anything other than 'because I want it now', I'd love to hear it.
Quote
It will be a lot easier for others to contribute and in fact many won't otherwise. Think about it.
What makes you think we're actually that interested in accepting contributions from others? As it is, almost two years on, we've still not actually accepted much into the core even from people we know very well and trust heavily. Opening it up to all and sundry is not a good idea.

Doubly so because it means people who should not be using bleeding-edge software will be using it and that could lead to all sorts of trouble.


Let me put it this way: I have seen an awful lot of crappy code from simplemachines.org users. The last thing I want to do is encourage people who don't really know what they're doing to be able to mess with something that Nao and I have spent many many hours working on.

In case it wasn't obvious, this has been a labour of love, and we're extremely protective of it. It isn't SMF generally that got up our nose, it's certain and very specific people. People who stole our money, for example. We don't want them stealing our work and making money off it, because given the opportunity we have a feeling they would.
When we unite against a common enemy that attacks our ethos, it nurtures group solidarity. Trolls are sensational, yes, but we keep everyone honest. | Game Memorial

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,080
[FAQ] Re: Is it a friendly fork?
« Reply #4, on June 26th, 2012, 07:02 AM »
There are other discussions about this, some recent mentions made in public too, but the bulk of it was done in private boards where I'm actually pushing these days for Wedge to be released in LGPL or EFL. (Even GPL when I'm evil enough :P)
I don't like people telling me what to do, though...! And just for that I'd be capable of dropping the idea altogether :lol:

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
[FAQ] Re: Is it a friendly fork?
« Reply #5, on June 26th, 2012, 03:03 PM »
I still reckon the main reason it was asked for was a really a masked version of 'I want it now', something I got very very good at spotting when working with SimpleDesk, as most of the people who wanted to be beta testers didn't want to be beta testers, they just wanted it and didn't want to really go hunting for bugs.

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
  • Posts: 16,080

tfs

  • Wow! You guys have been busy beavers. :)
  • Posts: 78
[FAQ] Re: Is it a friendly fork?
« Reply #7, on June 26th, 2012, 05:26 PM »
Quote from Arantor on June 26th, 2012, 03:03 PM
I still reckon the main reason it was asked for was a really a masked version of 'I want it now', something I got very very good at spotting when working with SimpleDesk, as most of the people who wanted to be beta testers didn't want to be beta testers, they just wanted it and didn't want to really go hunting for bugs.
I was oblivious to that when I first started testing for SD, but it happened again and again.  It was easy for me to believe people when they said they were motivated to help, because I was motivated to help.
"God is dead." -Nietzsche 1883
"Nietzsche is dead." -God 1900

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
[FAQ] Re: Is it a friendly fork?
« Reply #8, on June 26th, 2012, 06:31 PM »
Yeah, the vast majority of beta testers were not in the 'motivated to help' category.

Dismal Shadow

  • Madman in a Box
  • Me: Who is Arantor? Cleverbot: It stands for time and relative dimensions in space.
  • Posts: 1,185
[FAQ] Re: Is it a friendly fork?
« Reply #9, on June 26th, 2012, 08:25 PM »
Quote from Arantor on June 26th, 2012, 03:03 PM
I still reckon the main reason it was asked for was a really a masked version of 'I want it now', something I got very very good at spotting when working with SimpleDesk, as most of the people who wanted to be beta testers didn't want to be beta testers, they just wanted it and didn't want to really go hunting for bugs.
But I am not one of them, you know me better than anyone in SD and even in Wedge that I am capable enough to be a great tester but I sway away for so long I lose motivation due to moving, new life and a new job, I rarely have time to invest into it. :(
“I will stand on my ground as an atheist until your god shows up...If my irreligious bothers you much, and if you think everything I do is heresy to your god I don't care. Heresy is for those who believe, I don't. So, it isn't heresy at all!


   Jack in, Wedge,
   EXECUTE!

Arantor

  • As powerful as possible, as complex as necessary.
  • Posts: 14,278
[FAQ] Re: Is it a friendly fork?
« Reply #10, on June 26th, 2012, 09:08 PM »
Yeah, I know you weren't one of those people. But there were an awful lot of applications that we simply refused, far more than most people ever knew about.

live627

  • Should five per cent appear too small / Be thankful I don't take it all / 'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah I'm the taxman
  • Posts: 1,670
[FAQ] Re: Is it a friendly fork?
« Reply #11, on June 26th, 2012, 11:29 PM »
Quote from Nathan Sparrow on June 26th, 2012, 08:25 PM
But I am not one of them, you know me better than anyone in SD and even in Wedge that I am capable enough to be a great tester but I sway away for so long I lose motivation due to moving, new life and a new job, I rarely have time to invest into it. :(
Oh, I know you can be a wonderful beta tester :)
A confident man keeps quiet.whereas a frightened man keeps talking, hiding his fear.

Norodo

  • Oh you Baidu, so randumb. (60 sites being indexed at once? Jeez)
  • Posts: 469
[FAQ] Re: Is it a friendly fork?
« Reply #12, on June 27th, 2012, 12:56 PM »
I'm one of those people who go through phases of WOHOO, LET'S TEST AND WORK and then suddenly I feel less inclined to do so and more inclined to rewatch the third season of The Simpsons. What I can say is that when I apply to do something I never do so just to get access to the code, and even less so in the case of Wedge, where one can't really reliably use it before a public release is made anyway (which is why I don't see why people would even really want to get their hands on the code just to get their hands on the code). It'd just be too much work to follow updates and changes to the database and all that jazz.

On that note I should probably check over the Wiki again, see if there's anything I miss there. What better time to do so than at a desk at a job with little to do.
« Some admin options required
Improvement to drafts (and posting, actually) I need to do »