About a year ago I posted "node.js needs a new home" on the mailing list. It started a minor s### storm and a couple of local IBM guys went down to talk to Joyent, which eventually led to the whole advisory board / foundation initiative. Mostly it was all back-room discussions between companies taking place in private from the wider community. They're great people, but that isn't really what I had in mind.
IBM's cloud offering runs on the PowerPC architecture, and older versions of V8 won't run on it, so they can't offer Node hosting. They ported a private build of Node to run on PowerPC using a new version of V8, but Joyent has so far refused to upgrade V8 despite having a pull request with all the work done. It looks a lot like Joyent has been dragging their heels on V8 updates just to fend off an IBM cloud service for node.
The first five words of the announcement are: "Joyent, IBM, Microsoft, PayPal, Fidelity". That says a lot right there. StrongLoop, NPM and a bunch of others are excluded, the whole thing seems to have been baked up in private by people who aren't core contributors, and then sprung on the community like it's some great thing.
Maybe it's a step in the right direction, but as it stands I'd expect this foundation to be about as useful as another hole in the head. I've seen enough corporate bad behaviour from some of them to not care about their special little club right now, and I don't think it will win too many people over.
It baffles me how little they acknowledge io.js in their public communication. Node is a weirdly paradoxical community composed of a small, really smart core surrounded by a vast but shallow sea of lip service and hype. With this fork io.js has won pretty much all the mindshare of the small core, whereas Joyent is left with the hype, which is a house of cards waiting to fall. They ought to be chumming up to the really smart core if they don't want to fade into complete irrelevance soon.
It's kind of like when a kid has something taken away for being an asshole, the apologies and promises come quick and fast but you know they are disingenous.
I can't imagine Joyent doing anything in good-faith, they are scared of losing relevancy and are looking to protect their interests, they don't give a flying cow about anything else but themselves.
This would not have happened if io.js was not on the scene, call me cynical but I don't trust them.
They bought Node on the off-chance it would be as big a cultural phenomenon as Rails, and they would own it and have control, rather than losing their golden blessing to Engine Yard back in the day.
That's pretty much how I read this. I don't see anything about them actually doing anything. Establishing a foundation? Why? "To get together!" To do what? "Partner with leaders in the industry!" No I get it, but what are you going to do, what is your trajectory? "Just ask these top names..."
> So, they're making noise and dropping names to try to reinspire confidence
Have to say, the names they're dropping do not inspire confidence in me. Nobody on that last is well known for their stewardship of open source projects, to say the least.
I realize this is biased, but for me Joyent's involvement in anything is reason to be suspicious. Back in 2004 me and several hundred others fronted the money to get Joyent (aka TextDrive) off the ground. The marketing was fabulous, they had A-list blogger Dean Allen as founder and spokesperson, and Jason Hoffman as CTO spouting off an unending stream of pie-in-the-sky ideas about how awesome the tech was going to be.
Over several years it became clear that Jason was only interested in playing with cool technologies and a lot of public self aggrandizement in the process. However, never did they seem to deliver any stable game changing technology to the level they had hyped. It seems like they eventually they sort of limped out with an alternative platform that could be competitive if you squinted hard enough, and then sold it by means of aforementioned marketing skills. But for those of us who got the company off the ground, we basically all got screwed. And even though Jason has left Joyent, to me their DNA is suspect, and I would never trust them as stewards of an open source project.
Note that nowhere do they mention io.js--that's just kind of classy, right?
Second, their tone seems aimed at reassuring senior-level folks that might have heard murmurs of dissent from underlings about node--this release doesn't feel like it's targeted to developers at all.
Lastly, notice Microsoft being on board. I do wonder if they'll push for movement off of V8 and onto a better-documented, better-maintained platform.
1. Shows that the io.js people correct when they identified the problem
2. Doesn't solve the problem
Prior to this announcement you could say "the io.js people are crazy; just trust in Joyent". (Not saying you'd be right, just that you could say it and no be obviously wrong. Isaacs, for example, was a proponent of this view.) Now, even Joyent is admitting that there's an issue. But it's pretty damn hard to see how the issue could be solved by this specific proposal. Joyent, IBM, Microsoft, PayPal, Fidelity? Right, that totally solves the worries about stagnation, corporate control, or excessive Joyent influence.
This move surprises me, because Bryan Cantrill doesn't seem to like governance and foundations for open-source projects. I wonder if he was overruled on this.
That's a very fair question. When I first presented my corporate open source anti-patterns talk at FISL in 2012[1][2], I closed by saying that I was certain that we (Joyent) were making mistakes, and that they would have to come back in 2022 to hear what they were. Suffice it to say that after the developments of the last year -- which include not just the io.js fork but also us open sourcing our entire stack[3] -- I'm really looking forward to doing that update, and hope to do it much earlier than 2022. ;)
To answer your question: no, I was not overruled -- it's been clear to me for quite some time that node.js would be best served by a foundation. That said, getting the mechanics of that foundation established has taking (is taking) a long time (and, it must be said, involves a lot of hard, thankless work from a lot of people). Foundations might feel "easy", but they aren't: 501(c)(3) organizations are highly regulated entities that require not just a lot of groundwork and forethought but extensive maintenance. Fortunately, we have made great progress (and we have built a terrific collection of founding members), and we are getting the node.js community what it needs: a foundation that can assure the consensus-driven advancement of the technology, in perpetuity.
Weird that Google isn't a founding member being that V8 is their creation. But I guess the reasoning is that Node isn't used internally at Google as they favor Go for server side code.
Google is working in coordination with io.js and have expressed that they believe it is the future. They're moved their integration and effort from Node to io.
node.js and io.js really need to merge or one has to die. I can't see this turning out well unless one or the other happens.
io.js is trying to push the envelope by supporting ES6, more APIs, etc while node.js isn't focusing on that. This eventually means if I write my module for node.js it should still work for io.js but if I write it for io.js, even if it does take advantage of better performance, ES6 syntax, etc, it won't work for node.js.
I can't imagine anyone wants that kind of fragmentation.
It's sad, too, that Joyent and/or moderator Forest Norvell are rejecting posts to the Google Groups which are non-supportive of the new "Foundation". Doesn't seem like they really have the interests of the "community" in mind, IMO.
While I am responsible for moderating the [nodejs] Google group, I'm not the only moderator, and have been too busy to spend much time on it recently. It's not my intention to squelch discussion, and I'll touch bases with the other moderator to make sure that we're at least being consistent.
At the same time, one of the primary reasons for moderating the list in the first place was to ensure that the group is constructive and useful, and not just a venue for flamewars. This has been a problem when discussions around foundations, Joyent, forks, and the like have happened in the past. In fact, it nearly killed the group last time this discussion happened (a lot of longtime community members with a lot to contribute gave up on it in disgust), so I'm not going to claim that we're not going to step in if things get overly heated.
Why all the negativity for Node? Seriously, lots of good developers have spent their time developing this project and all these comments are just about how io.js is so great or node failed at x. As far as I can see this looks like good news:
"... to establish the Node.js Foundation, which will be committed to the continued growth and evolution of Node.js, while maintaining a collaborative environment to benefit all users."
An open source project is getting a stable backbone. Come on people, this is great news for developers.
This attitude is tiresome. Maybe, some of the negativity is coming from people who have a reason to be negative.
I don't like the idea that accomplishments mean a force-field against criticism. (Actually, I hate it.) Plus a lot of the negativity is not about the work itself but about how the project structure prevented work from happening.
I think for quite a lot of time Node wasn't doing much. The rebellion formed IO.Js. But what they forgot is still IO.JS is fork of Node. Only people like us who follow Node closely aware of IO.js thgh. Node is still preferred everywhere. It can still catch up with all the new features like ES6/7.
Listening to panel discussion at Node Summit now, it was discussed by Scott Hammond that Node.js Foundation corporate membership costs $5k to $250k, vague on individual membership
[+] [-] drderidder|11 years ago|reply
IBM's cloud offering runs on the PowerPC architecture, and older versions of V8 won't run on it, so they can't offer Node hosting. They ported a private build of Node to run on PowerPC using a new version of V8, but Joyent has so far refused to upgrade V8 despite having a pull request with all the work done. It looks a lot like Joyent has been dragging their heels on V8 updates just to fend off an IBM cloud service for node.
The first five words of the announcement are: "Joyent, IBM, Microsoft, PayPal, Fidelity". That says a lot right there. StrongLoop, NPM and a bunch of others are excluded, the whole thing seems to have been baked up in private by people who aren't core contributors, and then sprung on the community like it's some great thing.
Maybe it's a step in the right direction, but as it stands I'd expect this foundation to be about as useful as another hole in the head. I've seen enough corporate bad behaviour from some of them to not care about their special little club right now, and I don't think it will win too many people over.
[Update: Fedor posted about it here https://medium.com/@iojs/io-js-and-a-node-js-foundation-4e14... ]
[+] [-] yessed|11 years ago|reply
So, they're making noise and dropping names to try to reinspire confidence, without actually promising anything.
Joyent doesn't trade, but if they did they'd be losing a few percentage points today.
[+] [-] _greim_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryan-allen|11 years ago|reply
I can't imagine Joyent doing anything in good-faith, they are scared of losing relevancy and are looking to protect their interests, they don't give a flying cow about anything else but themselves.
This would not have happened if io.js was not on the scene, call me cynical but I don't trust them.
They bought Node on the off-chance it would be as big a cultural phenomenon as Rails, and they would own it and have control, rather than losing their golden blessing to Engine Yard back in the day.
[+] [-] adamkochanowicz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lazare|11 years ago|reply
Have to say, the names they're dropping do not inspire confidence in me. Nobody on that last is well known for their stewardship of open source projects, to say the least.
[+] [-] hayd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasil003|11 years ago|reply
Over several years it became clear that Jason was only interested in playing with cool technologies and a lot of public self aggrandizement in the process. However, never did they seem to deliver any stable game changing technology to the level they had hyped. It seems like they eventually they sort of limped out with an alternative platform that could be competitive if you squinted hard enough, and then sold it by means of aforementioned marketing skills. But for those of us who got the company off the ground, we basically all got screwed. And even though Jason has left Joyent, to me their DNA is suspect, and I would never trust them as stewards of an open source project.
[+] [-] Lazare|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angersock|11 years ago|reply
Note that nowhere do they mention io.js--that's just kind of classy, right?
Second, their tone seems aimed at reassuring senior-level folks that might have heard murmurs of dissent from underlings about node--this release doesn't feel like it's targeted to developers at all.
Lastly, notice Microsoft being on board. I do wonder if they'll push for movement off of V8 and onto a better-documented, better-maintained platform.
[+] [-] Lazare|11 years ago|reply
1. Shows that the io.js people correct when they identified the problem
2. Doesn't solve the problem
Prior to this announcement you could say "the io.js people are crazy; just trust in Joyent". (Not saying you'd be right, just that you could say it and no be obviously wrong. Isaacs, for example, was a proponent of this view.) Now, even Joyent is admitting that there's an issue. But it's pretty damn hard to see how the issue could be solved by this specific proposal. Joyent, IBM, Microsoft, PayPal, Fidelity? Right, that totally solves the worries about stagnation, corporate control, or excessive Joyent influence.
[+] [-] serve_yay|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordbusiness|11 years ago|reply
https://medium.com/@iojs/io-js-and-a-node-js-foundation-4e14...
This would be my wish.
[+] [-] WalterSear|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mwcampbell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bcantrill|11 years ago|reply
To answer your question: no, I was not overruled -- it's been clear to me for quite some time that node.js would be best served by a foundation. That said, getting the mechanics of that foundation established has taking (is taking) a long time (and, it must be said, involves a lot of hard, thankless work from a lot of people). Foundations might feel "easy", but they aren't: 501(c)(3) organizations are highly regulated entities that require not just a lot of groundwork and forethought but extensive maintenance. Fortunately, we have made great progress (and we have built a terrific collection of founding members), and we are getting the node.js community what it needs: a foundation that can assure the consensus-driven advancement of the technology, in perpetuity.
[1] http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/corporate-open-source-an...
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhgXQFk9noI
[3] https://www.joyent.com/blog/sdc-and-manta-are-now-open-sourc...
[+] [-] filereaper|11 years ago|reply
This is the closest entry I could find on his blog regarding node.js and its governance: http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2014/06/11/broadening-nodejs/
[+] [-] bhouston|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inglor|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Touche|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbody|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BinaryIdiot|11 years ago|reply
io.js is trying to push the envelope by supporting ES6, more APIs, etc while node.js isn't focusing on that. This eventually means if I write my module for node.js it should still work for io.js but if I write it for io.js, even if it does take advantage of better performance, ES6 syntax, etc, it won't work for node.js.
I can't imagine anyone wants that kind of fragmentation.
[+] [-] neumino|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cwmma|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oso2k|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] othiym23|11 years ago|reply
At the same time, one of the primary reasons for moderating the list in the first place was to ensure that the group is constructive and useful, and not just a venue for flamewars. This has been a problem when discussions around foundations, Joyent, forks, and the like have happened in the past. In fact, it nearly killed the group last time this discussion happened (a lot of longtime community members with a lot to contribute gave up on it in disgust), so I'm not going to claim that we're not going to step in if things get overly heated.
[+] [-] aredridel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PLenz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfaucett|11 years ago|reply
"... to establish the Node.js Foundation, which will be committed to the continued growth and evolution of Node.js, while maintaining a collaborative environment to benefit all users."
An open source project is getting a stable backbone. Come on people, this is great news for developers.
[+] [-] serve_yay|11 years ago|reply
I don't like the idea that accomplishments mean a force-field against criticism. (Actually, I hate it.) Plus a lot of the negativity is not about the work itself but about how the project structure prevented work from happening.
[+] [-] dkarapetyan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpeterso|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsbits|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayshan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dodyg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aravan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mplewis|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RRRA|11 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IOukA10QeQ
[+] [-] epx|11 years ago|reply
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