> New Session Manager was created as a fork because Non Session Manager grew stale and Jonathan was very abrasive to work with [..] getting PRs/patches merged didn't go anywhere.
> Also Jonathan (the Non suite creator) removed all his repos [..], which is something that's obviously not acceptable behavior.
The truly surprising behavior to me is choosing to name the forked project nsm.
Fork the heck out of anything for any reason you like. Say critical things on mailing lists. Fight over who's right and who's a jerk. But actions which lead to less clarity -- like, say, polluting a claimed name in the process of making a fork -- doesn't look like good faith to me.
After that is a number of fixes. Unfortuantely, from this list of "immediate" changes, it reads like the Argodejo developers decided they would be the preferred GUI, and decided to fork the project to abandon the current GUI. The README was even modified to this end: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/7f23... They also forced the project onto a different build system, and made new (and possibly incorrect) assumptions about installation. If the fixes came first (build fixes, etc.) and the other work came later, I would have a more-charitable view of this fork. Unfortunately, the immediate changelog sort of speaks for itself: they forked NSM, filed off all the names, changed over the licensing and build system, and ripped out the GUI. Then, a few months later, they actually started fixing bugs. The motivation here really seems to be subsuming ownership and default UI. This really just looks like a classic internet slap fight.
Of course, this is only conjecture from the git commit history, but... it's supported by the git commit history.
I've read the Mail vom J. Lilies with interest. It reflects to some
degree similar issues I've encountered. Banning the OP because of this
mail is insane. It gives hints on that Filipe Coelho is disliked also by
others, because of several actions and deficiencies.
So that's why I ask you David Runge to undo the ban. The OP is not the
core of the problem. By removing OP, you remove symptoms only."
NSM is a decent session management API. Currently recommended for any kind of session management in PipeWire.
Unfortunate that JML imploded like this, his work is legendary and software elegant.
All smear campaigns aside it's really crap to see this continuing hostility. Free Software also means moving on after a conflict and learning from past mistakes, and fork when necessary. Not to throw a tantrum and destroy all your work.
RaySession kinda unilaterally pushes the spec for advanced features, but there was stagnation in the core NSM because the main dev essentially refused to work with most other developers.
Now there is the community NSM and the spec is slightly tighter and the reference client is a bit more reliable.
The fact of using the same binary names makes it totally shady.
They seem to have taken advantage of the fact that the original author did not create official packages to basically steal the name in Ubuntu launchpad.
If the forkers are sincere they should not use the same binary names, eg "nsmd". That is totally unethical, and is technically a trojan as it misleadingly replaces on program with another without making it clear to the existing users that is a new package by a new team altogether.
libreav.org is my site, and that's an edge-case artefact of the github release feed for the new-sm project and/or the way I have configured the aggregation so far
I'm not up on my open source community politics, but I'm intrigued by the motivations. Let's take it as a given that everything in this post is 100% correct. It certainly sounds like a common enough occurrence. Those 3 antagonists are acting out of malice and greed.
What's the play here? What does one do once one has acquired control of a linux tool or a mailing list or a consortium? Is it just to have power over something? Or is that power useful to some further goal?
Or maybe there is just a varied group of enthusiastic geeks that just want to collaborate on common tooling like APIs, libraries, frameworks, packaging, and distribution.
It may "seem" that there's some sort of "take-over", it's just that people are actually coordinating on these common goals of free software audio tools.
Years ago I wrote a p2p file sharing program and open-sourced under GPL. Soon a group contacted me for forking the project; I gave them my blessing and wished them luck.
Later I looked at their fork. All they did was adding their names to the copyright and the new project name to the comment section for all the hundreds of files. I was frustrated as this was a clear case of taking copyright ownership for the software. I asked them to remove their names from the copyright unless it's new changes by them but they said GPL allowed it. I contacted FSF for clarification and FSF replied that it's allowed as changing the comment constituted a new change. It's a bunch of BS. It took the rosy glasses off my naive self and soured my view on open sourcing my software in the future.
If you asked me 5 years ago if I thought something like this could happen I'd have said no. Then I relocated to SiValley and experienced Machiavellian engineers for the first time in my 20+ year career. It's good to remember that not everyone puts technology and community first. Some people will do whatever it takes to make a name for themselves, even if that just means being slightly less forgotten than they would have been previously.
As is said of academic politics: the battles are so fierce because the stakes are so small.[1]
Back at the dawn of the dot-com age, just as Linux was starting to boom, and the first IPOs (Red Hat, VA Linux) were occurring, a company appeared out of nowhere^WReno, Nevada (same thing), called "Linux One", claiming to have their own novel Linux distro. Oh, and plans for its own IPO.
It proved to be little more than a search-and-replace of "Red Hat" with "Linux one", though there were also some contributions from MandrakeSoft, another distro at the time. Stealing is copying from one source, curation is copying from several....
The thing is that, at least so far as the software is concerned, that's pretty much perfectly kosher under the GNU GPL and other Free Software / Open Source licences which comprised the scope of Red Hat's offering. In terms of copyright and licensing ... there was nothing actually wrong with this. Skeevy as all getout, yes. But not a GPL (or BSD, or MIT, or Apache, or ...) violation. (The company may have failed its source provision obligations for the GPL, however.)
The robustness of the IPO failing, er, filing, might have raised a few eyebrows elsewhere though. I seem to recall it being cancelled rather quietly, there's
I'm interested in audio on Linux, especially recently and I know neither who those people are nor what NSM / Non does. It's a bizarre post that could use a lot more context.
The title is also weird - not only is Linux audio not dead, it's doing better than ever with the recent pipewire work.
As a guess, the past year or eighteen months has probably been worse than usual. With a global pandemic on, people were stressed and people who feel helpless about very real and large problems often get controlling and nitpicky about anything they feel they actually can control.
When all parties to a drama are equally stressed and handling it similarly, it's a recipe for escalation with little hope of real solutions.
Whilst such things have been common in large corporation office political culture for decades, too see it play out in the wild like this in open source, is just shocking.
Sadly it does seem to be becoming more and more, more since some view open source/projects as potential revenue streams and be it irc, or some carefully nurtured project that has grown over a lifetime, to be rug pulled by such `political games` all in the end for what I dare say be some agenda greed. It just saddens us all.
Kind of. Big scraps? No, however it is worth pointing out that small open source communities can be a melting pot of really clever often contrarian/polemical developers who are kind of bound to clash at one point or another.
I understand that this title is just verbatim taken from the blogpost, but could we switch it to something more suitable like "Linux Audio Moderation Accused of Misconduct"? The current one just seems silly given how trivial the contents of the article are.
It appears that Fedora dumped this guy's version in favor of the fork some time back: they package new-session-manager, not NOM. Seems the fork was years ago.
The article says this all started in "early 2020"; about a year and a half ago. Indeed, looking at the new-session-manager commit history, the fork was started in April 2020[1], and first announced in June 2020[2].
> It appears that Fedora dumped this guy's version in favor of the fork some time back
So did Arch Linux. Notably, the Arch Linux contributor who did it is David Runge, one of the 3 people called out in the article.
The allegation is that the "Linux Audio" consortium (linuxaudio.org, github.com/linuxaudio) is compromised, and therefore "dead". The new-session-manager announcement emails come from [email protected]. new-session-manager lives at github.com/linuxaudio . The moderators of the linuxaudio.org mailing lists are banning non-session-manager messages. new-session-manager may be one project, but its leaders have infiltrated the Linux Audio organization.
NSM is an API to launch and manage JACK audio applications to store connections and program state.
NON is the "groupware" DAW project of Jonathan Moore Liles from which NSM originated.
[+] [-] chmod775|4 years ago|reply
Then there's also this reddit comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxaudio/comments/lk3u74/non_sess...
> New Session Manager was created as a fork because Non Session Manager grew stale and Jonathan was very abrasive to work with [..] getting PRs/patches merged didn't go anywhere.
> Also Jonathan (the Non suite creator) removed all his repos [..], which is something that's obviously not acceptable behavior.
The "new session manager" appears to be on GitHub: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager
Please also note that this drama is months old at this point.
[+] [-] wwweston|4 years ago|reply
Fork the heck out of anything for any reason you like. Say critical things on mailing lists. Fight over who's right and who's a jerk. But actions which lead to less clarity -- like, say, polluting a claimed name in the process of making a fork -- doesn't look like good faith to me.
[+] [-] discardable_dan|4 years ago|reply
That seems like the crux of the entire tiff, and without that knowledge it's very difficult to discern which side is more reasonable.
Edit: Honestly, some of the initial commits to the new repository are more in line with Liles' account: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commits/mas...
Starting in April 2020, changes include:
- Dumping the timeline, sequencer, and mixer: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/80e9...
- Removing any thing with logos or icons, e.g., "filing the serial number off": https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/7992...
- Enable debug mode / verbose mode by default: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/3975...
- Change project build system over to meson: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/e431... (plus others)
- Update build system to exclude current GUI / make it optional: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/63e6...
- Set up symlinking by default in install: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/3681...
- Force the project onto GPL3, more serial numbers filing: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/2731...
After that is a number of fixes. Unfortuantely, from this list of "immediate" changes, it reads like the Argodejo developers decided they would be the preferred GUI, and decided to fork the project to abandon the current GUI. The README was even modified to this end: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/7f23... They also forced the project onto a different build system, and made new (and possibly incorrect) assumptions about installation. If the fixes came first (build fixes, etc.) and the other work came later, I would have a more-charitable view of this fork. Unfortunately, the immediate changelog sort of speaks for itself: they forked NSM, filed off all the names, changed over the licensing and build system, and ripped out the GUI. Then, a few months later, they actually started fixing bugs. The motivation here really seems to be subsuming ownership and default UI. This really just looks like a classic internet slap fight.
Of course, this is only conjecture from the git commit history, but... it's supported by the git commit history.
[+] [-] mastrsushi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beprogrammed|4 years ago|reply
This pains me greatly.
[+] [-] pubby|4 years ago|reply
Coelho's reply: http://linux-audio.4202.n7.nabble.com/Clarifications-and-bac...
[+] [-] beprogrammed|4 years ago|reply
"OMG, so silly.
I've read the Mail vom J. Lilies with interest. It reflects to some degree similar issues I've encountered. Banning the OP because of this mail is insane. It gives hints on that Filipe Coelho is disliked also by others, because of several actions and deficiencies.
So that's why I ask you David Runge to undo the ban. The OP is not the core of the problem. By removing OP, you remove symptoms only."
[+] [-] drmr|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunate that JML imploded like this, his work is legendary and software elegant.
All smear campaigns aside it's really crap to see this continuing hostility. Free Software also means moving on after a conflict and learning from past mistakes, and fork when necessary. Not to throw a tantrum and destroy all your work.
Btw most NSM stuff works pretty good under PipeWire. RaySession is a nice tool for that: https://github.com/Houston4444/RaySession
[+] [-] ncmncm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mxmilkiib|4 years ago|reply
https://www.laborejo.org/agordejo
RaySession kinda unilaterally pushes the spec for advanced features, but there was stagnation in the core NSM because the main dev essentially refused to work with most other developers.
Now there is the community NSM and the spec is slightly tighter and the reference client is a bit more reliable.
[+] [-] Craighead|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vfclists|4 years ago|reply
They seem to have taken advantage of the fact that the original author did not create official packages to basically steal the name in Ubuntu launchpad.
If the forkers are sincere they should not use the same binary names, eg "nsmd". That is totally unethical, and is technically a trojan as it misleadingly replaces on program with another without making it clear to the existing users that is a new package by a new team altogether.
Even the page at https://libreav.org/software/new-session-manager has broken links to files dated 2017 clearly named "non-session-manager"
[+] [-] mxmilkiib|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CobrastanJorji|4 years ago|reply
What's the play here? What does one do once one has acquired control of a linux tool or a mailing list or a consortium? Is it just to have power over something? Or is that power useful to some further goal?
[+] [-] techrat|4 years ago|reply
If Freenode is anything to go by...
Greed, ego, self importance, the need for control... and cocaine.
[+] [-] ww520|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] drmr|4 years ago|reply
It may "seem" that there's some sort of "take-over", it's just that people are actually coordinating on these common goals of free software audio tools.
[+] [-] MattGaiser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ww520|4 years ago|reply
Later I looked at their fork. All they did was adding their names to the copyright and the new project name to the comment section for all the hundreds of files. I was frustrated as this was a clear case of taking copyright ownership for the software. I asked them to remove their names from the copyright unless it's new changes by them but they said GPL allowed it. I contacted FSF for clarification and FSF replied that it's allowed as changing the comment constituted a new change. It's a bunch of BS. It took the rosy glasses off my naive self and soured my view on open sourcing my software in the future.
[+] [-] 01100011|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|4 years ago|reply
As is said of academic politics: the battles are so fierce because the stakes are so small.[1]
Back at the dawn of the dot-com age, just as Linux was starting to boom, and the first IPOs (Red Hat, VA Linux) were occurring, a company appeared out of nowhere^WReno, Nevada (same thing), called "Linux One", claiming to have their own novel Linux distro. Oh, and plans for its own IPO.
It proved to be little more than a search-and-replace of "Red Hat" with "Linux one", though there were also some contributions from MandrakeSoft, another distro at the time. Stealing is copying from one source, curation is copying from several....
The thing is that, at least so far as the software is concerned, that's pretty much perfectly kosher under the GNU GPL and other Free Software / Open Source licences which comprised the scope of Red Hat's offering. In terms of copyright and licensing ... there was nothing actually wrong with this. Skeevy as all getout, yes. But not a GPL (or BSD, or MIT, or Apache, or ...) violation. (The company may have failed its source provision obligations for the GPL, however.)
The robustness of the IPO failing, er, filing, might have raised a few eyebrows elsewhere though. I seem to recall it being cancelled rather quietly, there's
The Register published an investigation of the episode at the time: https://www.theregister.com/1999/11/02/linuxone_takes_more_t...
________________________________
Notes:
1. See: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/
[+] [-] viraptor|4 years ago|reply
The title is also weird - not only is Linux audio not dead, it's doing better than ever with the recent pipewire work.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|4 years ago|reply
When all parties to a drama are equally stressed and handling it similarly, it's a recipe for escalation with little hope of real solutions.
[+] [-] beprogrammed|4 years ago|reply
Where we used to have the good will of others we now have a tide of ill intents it would seem.
[+] [-] Zenst|4 years ago|reply
Sadly it does seem to be becoming more and more, more since some view open source/projects as potential revenue streams and be it irc, or some carefully nurtured project that has grown over a lifetime, to be rug pulled by such `political games` all in the end for what I dare say be some agenda greed. It just saddens us all.
[+] [-] mhh__|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistrial9|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6f8986c3|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1MachineElf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoldesu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6f8986c3|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] not2b|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LukeShu|4 years ago|reply
The article says this all started in "early 2020"; about a year and a half ago. Indeed, looking at the new-session-manager commit history, the fork was started in April 2020[1], and first announced in June 2020[2].
> It appears that Fedora dumped this guy's version in favor of the fork some time back
So did Arch Linux. Notably, the Arch Linux contributor who did it is David Runge, one of the 3 people called out in the article.
[1]: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/6352... (the first commit after the last commit from Jonathan Moore Liles)
[2]: https://lists.linuxaudio.org/archives/linux-audio-user/2020-... (1.3 is the initial version of the fork, as at the time 1.2.0 was the latest version of non-session-manager)
[+] [-] drmr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistrial9|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greyhair|4 years ago|reply
The original is the real NSM, the fork, if they really want to be seen as legitimate, should do a full scale rename.
It really is that simple. All the rest of the comments are noise.
[+] [-] shadowgovt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imwillofficial|4 years ago|reply
This article broke my heart, because it’s indicative of a greater problem in our beloved Linux community.
[+] [-] Snarwin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drmr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bolangi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LukeShu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] synergy20|4 years ago|reply
is this similar to JUCE?
[+] [-] drmr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] young_unixer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Black101|4 years ago|reply