[IronPython] Ironpython 0.7 released!

[Ryan Williams]

This sounds a little shady to me, and not altogether "benevolent".

Why the licensing change?  I think that it would probably work out
better if ironpython remained open source...

Why switch to gotdotnet?  Personally, I'd prefer a mailing list (like
this one), and a public cvs/svn server someplace.

You mention not accepting external contributions, "to make all the
lawyers happy here"...does this mean that ironpython is now a microsoft
thing?

On Thu, 2005-03-24 at 18:59 -0800, Jim Hugunin wrote:
> Hi Miguel,
> 
> Are there any problems that you have with the terms of the IronPython
> license, or is it just the lack of the OSI stamp?  I think the terms of
> the license are both clear and quite open.  If it's just a matter of the
> OSI stamp, I'm not going to be much help there.  You should give this
> feedback to Jason Matusow, the director of Shared Source at Microsoft.
> Jason has a fairly new blog here http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonmatusow/.
> Jason talks a lot on his blog about the notion of "open" as well as
> about the extremely wide range of different projects that are released
> under the Shared Source umbrella. 
> 
> IronPython is going to be run as a very transparent and interactive
> project.  I expect to have lots of active discussions with our user
> community about different features and about what they're trying to do
> with IronPython.  I've been having a great time doing that f2f with
> people at PyCon and when I get back from DC I'll want to continue this
> process online.  In our first day of release we've already had 6 bugs
> filed in the bug database and 5 of them are now marked fixed.  To really
> close this loop we also need to make very frequent releases - at a
> minimum every 2 weeks and ideally more often.
> 
> That said, we're not going to be accepting any external code
> contributions to the core engine at this time.  One reason not to do
> this is that we want to be careful with the IronPython code to keep the
> IP very clean so that it can be comfortably used both by small projects
> as well as by large commercial projects.  There would be a lot of legal
> work for me to get the right sort of contribution process setup to do
> this carefully enough to make all the lawyers happy here.  I think my
> time could be better spent driving the implementation of IronPython and
> working with the user community to come up with the best set of features
> to solve their problems.
> 
> The best way to contribute to IronPython today is by submitting simple
> easy to reproduce bug reports and well thought out and clearly explained
> feature requests.  Thanks to those of you who've already done that.
> Given the early and rapidly changing state of IronPython, as a developer
> I'd much rather have a clear test case than a patch file for almost any
> bug because I can usually develop the fix myself faster than I can
> understand and validate an externally submitted patch.  Often bugs will
> be in areas under rapid development and the right fix requires
> understanding not just the code where it is, but the model in my head of
> where the code should be going.  Based on my experience with both
> AspectJ and Jython I'm rather confident that at this stage of the
> project external code contributions would slow things down rather than
> speeding them up.  BTW - I'm also confident that the higher quality and
> easier to reproduce bug reports we can get from the community the faster
> we'll be able to get to a solid 1.0.
> 
> Another place that people should be able to contribute is with building
> some of the C-based Python extension modules for IronPython.  I don't
> think that we're quite ready for that kind of help just yet, but in a
> month or so I'd like to reopen a discussion about how we could structure
> that project so that it would work for both the core IronPython
> developers and for others in the community who would like to contribute.
> 
> I believe that the best software projects are those with a central
> architect/benevolent dictator who can drive a consistent vision for the
> overall design and implementation of a system.  The only weakness of
> this system is that you have to trust that this dictator will remain
> both actively working on the project and benevolent.  I could write a
> lot of text asking you to trust me that this project will be run that
> way; however, I prefer to convince people by actions rather than words.
> 
> I personally believe that the single best thing about a BSD-style
> license is that it provides the community with the ultimate check on the
> project leadership.  If their concerns and needs aren't being addressed
> then the community can fork the code base and go their own way.  Forks
> are a terrible thing for projects and happen pretty rarely.  Forks are
> also expensive for the community because they now have the whole code
> base to grow and maintain.  Good projects should always be responsive to
> their community of users, and the ability to fork is one way to make
> sure this happens.
> 
> Thanks - Jim
> 
> Miguel de Icaza wrote: 
> > Hello,
> > 
> >     Congratulations on the release of IronPython 0.7, it was a long
> > awaited improvement.   There are many outstanding questions on my
> part.
> > 
> >     It is a bit of a shame that the license is stamped as "Shared
> > Source" because there are so many licenses labeled as "Shared Source"
> > that this will introduce questions that are not necessary.
> > 
> >     It would also be nice if this was submitted to OSI for approval,
> to
> > get a rubber stamp from them in terms of whether IronPython 0.7 will
> be
> > possible to redistribute in the future on open source operating
> > systems.
> > 
> >     What will be the process to contribute to IronPython?  Patches to
> > get IronPython working out of the box on Mono used to be on this list,
> > but they do not seem to be integrated (understandably, it has been a
> > long time), but what will be the policy now that IronPython is
> > copyrighted by Microsoft?
> > 
> >     Is this a Microsoft project, that happens to have its source code
> > published, or is this is an open source project that happens to be
> lead
> > and funded by Microsoft?
> > 
> > Miguel.
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