[Twisted-Python] the Foundation Litmus Test

Sergio Trejo serj_trejo at hotmail.com
Tue Aug 3 03:43:39 EDT 2004


Thank you Glyph for your time authoring this email which was quite 
professional, eloquent, and well reasoned. I may have been over zealous and 
got a little hyper, but I certainly didn't intend to offend anyone. Perhaps 
another year should pass and then the community can raise the question 
again.

Cheers,

Serg

P.S. (But let us not forget about the book ;-)

>From: Glyph Lefkowitz <glyph at divmod.com>
>Reply-To: Twisted general discussion <twisted-python at twistedmatrix.com>
>To: Twisted general discussion <twisted-python at twistedmatrix.com>
>Subject: [Twisted-Python] the Foundation Litmus Test
>Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 02:49:14 -0400
>
>On Aug 3, 2004, at 10:50 AM, Tim Stebbing wrote:
>
>>My last email was possibly taken out of context, I was suggesting that I 
>>didn't oppose you going off and doing these things, some of which I didn't 
>>think where bad ideas, but you cant expect any help for free, Noone else 
>>is interested, or seems to see a need.
>
>This is almost, but not entirely how I feel about the issue.
>
>I do see a need for the Twisted foundation.  I am the progenitor of the 
>project, but I am not the principal author any more.  I can barely keep up 
>with the fantastic team, and larger community, that has grown up around the 
>project.  To my great relief, I receive very few personal messages about 
>the framework, which must mean that the world at large (correctly) 
>identifies the community at large with the maintenance of the project and 
>not me personally.
>
>I have no interest in holding a large body of other peoples' work hostage, 
>either on purpose or by accident.  I want the Twisted community to flourish 
>and for the framework to become a standard in the software development 
>industry.  After all, I wrote Twisted in the first place as just _one_ 
>layer of infrastructure for a multi-decade-long project; the whole point is 
>to offload the maintenance so that I can work my way up the tiers of 
>abstraction to the singularity lurking just around the bend.
>
>However, a foundation is a lot of work, and a lot of that work falls 
>necessarily upon me as both the original author and principal copyright 
>holder.  You can think of this overhead as a litmus test.
>
>I promise you this: I am never going to take the first step to start a 
>foundation.  I have lots of other things to do; even if I weren't 
>monumentally busy with work, I have a beautiful woman who lives with me 
>that I see far too little of.  I have thousands of hobby projects I could 
>be working on.  I have lots of friends who could use my volunteer 
>assistance, both on their companies and on their charitable projects.
>
>I also have about ten years of sleep to catch up on.
>
>So, if I am going to spend time on the Twisted project, I am going to do 
>what I do best, which is to implement the huge laundry list of features 
>that remain.  I am not going to file legal paperwork to fill some 
>ambiguous, long-term goals that are never going to be personally important 
>to me.
>
>So here is the litmus test - a challenge, if you like - for the maturity of 
>the Twisted community.  If you are interested in a Twisted foundation to 
>hold the copyrights, finance development, accept donations, etc., take 
>responsibility for organizing a group to do this, and come to me with a 
>proposal.  Be organized enough so that I don't have to do a lot of the 
>work, and be prepared to compensate my company for the time that I do have 
>to spend.  Normally I don't do consulting, but I will persuade my 
>co-workers and management to give me the time to do this, since I do think 
>it is a worthy cause, if at least the proto-foundation will cover the 
>nominal costs.
>
>Until a sufficiently large group of people in the community and in funded 
>organizations (for- or non-profit) see a real need for such a foundation, I 
>don't think that the community is mature enough to get any benefit from 
>one.  Furthermore I think that the organizational overhead that a 
>foundation would impose would actually be a *detriment* to the community 
>until the community itself is sufficiently organized to be able to muster 
>the infrastructure which surrounds a successful foundation.
>
>Such infrastructure includes both organized, knowledgeable, self-motivated 
>volunteers who are aware of the legal and technical requirements to get 
>started, and enough money to keep the foundation alive and functioning for 
>a good long while.  A dead foundation holding the copyrights is almost as 
>bad as a dead corporation.
>
>Such an organization would find the initial expenditure for my services 
>(and those of the other principal Twisted contributors, which I'm sure 
>you'll need for one reason or another) to be a pittance.
>
>Good luck on organizing one, but I don't think the community is quite there 
>yet - I would estimate one more year before we reach critical mass.   If we 
>make it by then, keep in mind that four years is doing VERY VERY well.  
>Most projects which don't immediately as foundations don't reach this point 
>for about ten years.
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