
Bootstrap Maintainers Leave Twitter - pearkes
http://blog.getbootstrap.com/2012/09/29/onward/
======
coderdude
Wow, big news for Bootstrap. I think Matt and Jacob realize the huge impact
they've made on the web development community and the potential Bootstrap has
to become the jQuery of HTML. New developers may begin to ask, "should I learn
HTML or Bootstrap?" It's not a far-fetched idea because the same question is
sometimes asked by beginners when "deciding between" jQuery and (vanilla)
JavaScript. jQuery plugins are ubiquitous and are a large part its success.
Bootsnipp (<http://bootsnipp.com/>) could be the start of a "markup plugin"
community. Bootstrap has an impressive ecosystem for a front-end HTML
framework and I think that is what sets them apart from the rest. Good luck,
guys!

~~~
dmix
The whole "lets use jQuery without learning Javascript" thing didn't work out
so well for the community.

~~~
mattmanser
Given that for a long while many JavaScript answers on SO were 'use jQuery'
for very good reasons I can't help but think you're a bit out of touch.

Actually a bit is being kind. It's rare to come across a site not using
jQuery. I write a fair few personal scraping scripts and it's very rare I
actually have to add jQuery.

~~~
icelancer
<http://i.imgur.com/BVo3u.png>

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dguaraglia
Hm, I'll be the asshole and point out something that to me is kind of obvious:
Bootstrap isn't mainstream enough to warrant it's own foundation/organization.

Just looking at the caliber of other projects that have gone this way (at the
top of my head: Apache, Drupal, Django, Zope...) and looking at Boostrap I
don't think it's even _close_ to the userbase/clout needed to pull this off.
Even the maintainers of those other projects, successful as they are, tend to
have a day job.

I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I think it might be a
little to early to make this move. Just my 2c.

~~~
th
> Bootstrap isn't mainstream enough to warrant it's own
> foundation/organization

What do you mean by "not mainstream enough?" Organizations on Github are
simply a convenient place to put one or more projects that are collectively
worked on by a group of individuals and do not necessarily have a single core
maintainer.

~~~
stdbrouw
Yeah, that's what a lot of people seem to be missing here: there's mention of
an open-source organization on GitHub but no mention that fat and mdo want to
start working on Bootstrap full-time and make money off of it.

~~~
mark_story
I didn't see where in the post, or comments here where that was said. Do you
have a source?

~~~
stdbrouw
The grandparent of my comment, for instance.

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jscheel
I recall, from an issue I was dealing with, that a year ago Twitter didn't
really give @mdo and @fat any time to work on bootstrap during normal business
hours... yep, here it is
[https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/377#issuecomment...](https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/377#issuecomment-2330571)
(edit to fix link)

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jpadvo
This is great -- an open source project started within a company, then spun
off into its own independent entity. It's really great to see that.

Major kudos to the team and to Twitter for having the generosity to
acknowledge a responsibility to the community that extends past their
ownership of the project they've created. Thanks. :)

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markdotto
Bootstrap creator here.

tl;dr: <3, Jacob and I quit Twitter, he's going to Obvious, I'm going to
GitHub, it's been amazing, nothing but love, Twitter is great, no ill will,
Bootstrap is going to keep going, <3.

First, thanks for the love everyone! Jacob and I love seeing people as excited
about the future of Bootstrap as us. We're hopeful that this is just the
beginning of it. And now, onto answering some of the questions/comments folks
have brought up here thus far.

Jacob left over a month ago and my last day is next Friday (10/5). He's going
to Obvious, and (announcing it here for the first time) I'm going to GitHub.

The timing has nothing to do with a disagreement about Bootstrap (seriously,
none what so ever), and more to do with us both wanting a change in our own
lives for what we do day-to-day. Twitter, the company and product, are both
amazing and Jacob and I have worked there for 2.5 years. We're stoked for our
next things and we both want to keep working on Bootstrap no matter what. We
have an obligation to the community and know it could go much further. (Oh,
and yes, I screwed up the date on the post. My bad, yo.)

Bootstrap was created by me at Twitter as a means to make better looking
internal tools (I wrote about this on A List Apart awhile back:
[http://www.alistapart.com/articles/building-twitter-
bootstra...](http://www.alistapart.com/articles/building-twitter-bootstrap/)).
It started off as a simple HTML/CSS thing, then Jacob built plugins on top of
it, and we open sourced it together. We made it at Twitter, so when we wanted
to open source it, we went to Twitter to ensure it was good to go. Thus, it
was named Twitter Bootstrap (originally, "Bootstrap, from Twitter" actually).
Now, it's back to just "Bootstrap".

We don't really think of it as the next jQuery, Django, or Drupal. But you
can't deny there is something to front-end frameworks like Bootstrap, and
that's what we're excited about. HTML and CSS are the two easiest and most
basic building blocks of websites. Everyone knows and uses them, and that's a
big part of why Bootstrap has grown so much, and can continue to grow more.

No, we weren't "given time" to work on Bootstrap, but that's because it was a
project I started on my own to help other engineers. Jacob came in to shape it
into a proper open source project and then wrote all the JavaScript plugins
(Fun fact: before the jQuery plugins, he wrote a MooTools library on top of it
called Tit, which _is_ a type of bird). Anyway, we weren't given time because
it wasn't a company priority, naturally, and we're okay with that. We worked
on it, at the office or at home, whenever we wanted and folks were generally
okay with that as well.

The move to making Bootstrap its own project and organization is a joint one,
between myself, Jacob, and Twitter's Open Source team (@cra). The transition
will take time, but we need to grow Bootstrap beyond the two of us and
Twitter, and into something more. There is really _sooooo_ much potential for
making better things on the Web, and we're hoping we can keep that up with the
help of the community.

Anyway, we're both stoked to keep working on Bootstrap. It's a great project
that can be so much better, and that's pretty damned awesome to us. Twitter
has been amazing for both of us and will continue to down the road. We wish
nothing but the best for everyone we've worked with.

<3

~~~
chiefinstigator
Foundation Evangelist, ZURB's Chief Instigator here.

As a leader, it's often difficult to see your hard working employees move on
to other opportunities. And you hope deep down that the lessons they learn
from you along the way will be remembered as influencial in their career. Mark
had a great run at ZURB before Twitter. I wish him the best.

For ZURB's current employees, and the ones that put thinking into developing
Foundation, it's important for me to make sure they receive credit for the
contributions they have made to the design community that extend beyond what
Mark remember's Bootstrap to be (or wants it to be) or what Foundation has
become. The first iteration of Bootstrap emerged from the work ZURB did over
the last few years prototyping with our clients. In fact, the initial
Bootstrap push had direct lines of code and copy taken from ZURB's work on
what today is Foundation 1.0.

When you see Mark's history conveniently rewritten as "I developed Bootstrap,"
it's important for me to make sure that those who contributed to it's initial
core from ZURB are recognized. There were many ZURBians who put countless
hours into writing code and laying down the vision for a css framework before
Mark "envisioned" this solution for his Twitter engineers. Talented designers
at ZURB even shared that vision with Mark as part of our refinement of
Foundation 2.0 before it was launched.

Foundation (<http://foundation.zurb.com>) is fine and kicking and we benefit
from the global awareness of css-frameworks. ZURB is quite happy about that
and we'll continue to evolve our solution to benefit the community. I want to
make sure talented product designers like Jonathan Smiley and Matt Kelly, who
helped envisioned the idea, get credit for their contributions for making
stuff like this possible. These guys are my heroes and I hope that you see
that as well in the code they write and share.

~~~
jeswin
If you had invented Bootstrap, you would have invented Bootstrap.

Assuming what you are saying is true, credit would have been nice though.

~~~
ryanmolden
Because history clearly shows that the rightful people always get credit.
Ignoring things like Edison vs. Swan (invention of light bulb), or Marconi vs.
Tesla (invention of radio), and likely hundreds of others cases that could be
listed if I felt like typing that much. I know nothing about GP's post/claim,
but dismissing claims offhand with some glib line from a movie is not really
adding much enlightenment.

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andrewljohnson
Just speculating here, but this doesn't exactly sound like it was blessed by
Twitter: "Bootstrap will remain a Twitter project on GitHub for the time
being, but we've realized the project has grown beyond us and the Twitter
brand."

If this was something Twitter believed too, I imagine there would be some
fanfare around this, Twitter helping FLOSS and all that.

More to this story?

~~~
k-mcgrady
It sounds to me like the two guys left twitter and have decided to continue
work on bootstrap. Being open source is there a reason they can't? I don't
know much regarding the rules of open source but is it possible they could
just fork it and continue where they left off (without twitters blessing)?

~~~
pyre
This is true, but I imagine that they couldn't keep the Bootstrap name, though
that's up to Twitter if they want to force the devs out of Bootstrap
development and 'defend their mark.'

~~~
Evbn
It would take 2 days for a fork to replace bootstrap in that case. Look at
Hudson vs Jenkins.

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mratzloff
It's interesting that they both left at the same time. There must have been an
internal disagreement about their role in relation to Bootstrap--or perhaps
Twitter is just a really sad place to work these days.

~~~
howardr
They didn't. I believe Jacob left few weeks ago.

~~~
evanwalsh
It'd be one thing if the left between a few years of each other, but to only
be separated by a few weeks? The proximity of the events cannot be ignored.

~~~
danso
Yeah...assuming a standard two weeks notice policy, this doesn't seem to be
coincidental

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thehodge
I really hope they can move to bootstrap full / part time and really kickstart
it into something that merges bootswatch with wrapbootstrap.. I want to give
bootstrap money.. this is a good step :)

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gwf
Does this mean we can finally have semicolons?

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Cbasedlifeform
Bravo! I realise bootstrap isn't for everyone, but in my humble line of work
(specialist web apps in the ----- industry) it is an absolute godsend.

Great move away from Twitter. May the winds be forever at your backs.

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therealarmen
Hopefully their newfound time won't lead to unnecessary bloat for what is
currently a beautiful framework. Keep it simple, keep it small, keep it clean.

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NameNickHN
I wished there would have been something like Bootstrap 10-12 years ago. As a
developer it would have made my life a lot easier. Since design is not really
my area of expertise, I often struggled to make a decent
backend/administration area for my applications. I started to use Bootstrap
recently and can't believe how much fun it is to use and how much quicker I'm
getting results.

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nodesocket
Anybody else notice that the date in the post is set to Sept 29th? Do you
think this was supposed to be published tomorrow instead of today?

~~~
pearkes
Probably just a typo, I posted after reading this:
<https://twitter.com/mdo/status/251806421715390464>

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yagoogaly
With all of the great extensions people have developed for Bootstrap so far,
It's clear that they're really on to something. I can't wait to see what
direction they take it in after severing ties with Twitter.

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tylerlh
I'm very interested to see what direction the project moves toward, albeit a
little bit concerned. Best of luck to Jacob and Mark on their next steps.

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zaidf
Is it only me or does anyone else have an issue with the name "Bootstrap"?

I've now gone through multiple tutorials where the term is used to refer to
Bootstrap from twitter or the general idea of bootstrapping an app.

Now each time I read "bootstrap" I've to establish the context which gets
especially tricky when the same documentation or tutorial uses both Bootstrap
from Twitter and the verb "to bootstrap".

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outside1234
Bootstrap is a great starting point - please keep up the great work!

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jaequery
great move on their part, there is a huge future ahead of these guys. good
luck to them.

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gt5050
It would be great if Bootstrap becomes a part of Apache Software Foundation

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wilfra
Bootstrap badly needs a really good tutorial. I'm thinking of making one, if
anybody wants to help out, my email address is in my profile.

I was thinking I'd build a simple and attractive site from scratch and make
the tutorial a step-by-step of how it was done, so even somebody with no HTML
or CSS experience could do it - but also so that even experienced programmers
would quickly learn all sorts of cool things that Bootstrap can do.

This is how I'm learning Rails right now - the Rails tutorial is amazing.
Bootstrap needs something similar.

~~~
joshmlewis
Yes! Bootstrap has some hierarchy things you have to pick up on to get desired
effects. Some kind of guide would be nice. I'm not sure if they've updated it
since but a few months ago I was building a layout and had to resort to the
inspector tool to figure out the exact way they did things in the examples.

