I saw the video. It seems a very silly thing to do -- ever since I first saw that video I've been trying to understand Crockford's angle, and I just cannot. However, feronull seems in favour of it, so I'd like to know why.
Forking a project isn't a healthy thing to do, unless there's something seriously wrong with the existing community (e.g. XFree86). As far as I can tell:
* The nodejs community is healthy and vibrant.
* There are no systemic problems with contribution.
* Isaac Schultner has his head on straight, has reasonable priorities, and is a pleasant character.
* Much, if not most, of node's development is happening outside Joyent anyway.
* Nothing is stopping Yahoo from contributing to the existing project.
Even if all of the above were false, why does Crockford think the remnants of Yahoo's engineering can do better? Joyent is filled with Sun's top talent, and the engineering division is run by an enlightened alpha engineer.
I cannot help but think this is a case of sour grapes by Crockford, because there just doesn't seem to be a good reason for his stance.
Edit: as an aside, his idea of rewriting everything in node is a bit ridiculous too. I've been a part of several projects to rewrite code, for smaller things than all of Yahoo's online assets, and it sure took longer than one year to do a good job even with excellent engineers. This is a long-term project, not something you do to fix the immediate bleeding. This, and forking node, are very strange things to focus on right now given Yahoo's difficulties.
Wow, I think that might be highest compliment I've ever been paid -- thank you! And though I am now clearly biased by your generous assessment of Joyent engineering and of me personally, I believe that your other comments are (of course?) spot-on. For whatever it's worth, we reached out to Crock to see if we could dissect whatever wasp had crawled into his underwear, but (no surprise) we were met with deafening silence. Even assuming that his was an entirely emotional response to some perceived slight in the distant past, we still have no idea what he's talking about. If anyone knows what he was referring to when he called our stewardship "amateurish", please, enlighten us!
Forking a project isn't a healthy thing to do, unless there's something seriously wrong with the existing community (e.g. XFree86). As far as I can tell:
* The nodejs community is healthy and vibrant.
* There are no systemic problems with contribution.
* Isaac Schultner has his head on straight, has reasonable priorities, and is a pleasant character.
* Much, if not most, of node's development is happening outside Joyent anyway.
* Nothing is stopping Yahoo from contributing to the existing project.
Even if all of the above were false, why does Crockford think the remnants of Yahoo's engineering can do better? Joyent is filled with Sun's top talent, and the engineering division is run by an enlightened alpha engineer.
I cannot help but think this is a case of sour grapes by Crockford, because there just doesn't seem to be a good reason for his stance.
Edit: as an aside, his idea of rewriting everything in node is a bit ridiculous too. I've been a part of several projects to rewrite code, for smaller things than all of Yahoo's online assets, and it sure took longer than one year to do a good job even with excellent engineers. This is a long-term project, not something you do to fix the immediate bleeding. This, and forking node, are very strange things to focus on right now given Yahoo's difficulties.