

An important announcement to the Vert.x community - qmx3
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/vertx/gnpGSxX7PzI

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davyjones
Very concerning because redis is also sponsored by VMWare.

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antirez
I don't think something like that can happen with Redis. I don't want to focus
on the technical reasons why this is impossible, but even just from the point
of view of "handling" this stuff in the best way from both sides:

1) I'll not leave VMware for another company. I received several offers from
other companies, and I never ever investigated what the salary or stocks or
conditions could be. It is as simple as that: VMware provided huge value to
the Redis community _for several years_ and is extremely supportive. There is
no reason for me to go to another company.

2) But VMware may fire me. If this will happen it can only happen because
there is a lost of interest about Redis for some reason. In this case it will
be natural for me to continue in some other way the development, and if VMware
will be no longer interested in Redis, it is unlikely it will be against me
continuing the development in alternative ways.

Btw about the current issue with Vert.x, what I see is that a developer signed
some contract where the IP is transfered to VMware, and later joined what can
be considered a competitor. My feeling is that the current evolution was a bit
expected or at least not so unlikely.

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pilif
Being cynical here, but there's always option 3) you forgot: they might want
to ride the Enterprise NoSQL wave, make redis fully proprietary, fire you and
then do the lawyer stunt outlined in the original article, possibly even
trying to not just get the trademark but also the copyright on the code.

I'm not saying they are going to do that, it's just a third option that's
possible in my opinion and which had just become a bit more likely now that
they have shown how they are willing to do with projects they own^Wsponsor.

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pygy_
They can claim copyright on the code, but its license ensures that it can
still be forked, no matter who owns it.

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pyre
True, but _something_ is lost though, as only the copyright-holder can publish
it under a different license.

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TeeWEE
I hope they fork it. Big Enterprises like VMWARE shoudnt do this, they should
open source it, and they can thrive more. Look what happened to Hudson.

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weego
It is open source, they want the rights to the name that the project was run
under transfered to the company now that the employee that was running the
project (effectively on their behalf if his salaried time was given over to
the product) has left. It doesn't seem really that it is too unrealistic an
expectation and should have been thought out in advance really.

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paulbjensen
Sorry to hear about this, it looks like a fork of the project might be the
only way forward, ala Hudson -> Jenkins.

My former colleague was in the position that AOL wanted copyright ownership of
a very popular project's name he was in charge of; thankfully he refused.

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rfinley
I thought the project was funded by vmw, I can understand their decision
then...

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clavalle
Understandable but poorly handled.

Perhaps VMWare could find an internal product owner for vert.x. From there
they could meet with Tim Fox and discuss the roles he will be allowed to
occupy within the community while, understandably, protecting their interests.
I'd imagine this would be some level of admin level role while funneling most
important items through the new product owner.

If VMWare had gone this route and then made an announcement while introducing
this new product owner/internal advocate with Tim Fox at their side I think it
would have gone a long way to smooth the transition.

As it stands my first reaction is...'Uh oh, better fork it'.

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pidster
Actually, your suggestion is not far off what we were trying to do when Tim
posted that message.

Here's the official statement:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/vertx/gnpGSxX7PzI/qbP2...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/vertx/gnpGSxX7PzI/qbP2DYQm8jcJ)

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marshray
I don't see where on the Vert.x site that it mentions that it's "VMware's IP".
I wonder if TM's will soon start popping up everywhere now that corporate
lawyers are owning it.

This is disconcerting to anyone who considers the personal project leadership
when deciding what open source projects they're going to use in their stack.

How do we know this won't happen to, say, Python now that GvR has left Google
for Python? Google certainly seems to be more clueful than EMC/VMware, but how
do we know?

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stuaxo
Python has been around since the early 90s, the website is run by the python
foundation - not sure how this could ever work.

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marshray
OK, so if the project has a 501c3 non-for-profit corporation holding the
website and trademarks, that's a good sign.

What about all the other open source projects?

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niggler
I'm surprised people use vert.x -- I thought nodejs "won" the love of the
hivemind

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scanr
I think vert.x looks pretty cool and was just about to try it out before this.
I'm doing some work that requires a neat Java based NIO web server. I've done
a lot of work on top of Netty directly but vert.x looks like a nice higher
level abstraction (e.g. routing etc.).

nodejs is great but having the JVM and it's vast set of libraries is pretty
compelling.

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jbooth
I'd respectfully suggest that what you actually need is a java-based
performant web server, whether that's NIO or a threadpool and accept loop.

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scanr
That may well be the case. I haven't benchmarked regular IO vs. NIO recently.
Certainly when I did before, there wasn't too much in it but I did get more
reliable latency from NIO and the rest of the stack is non-blocking so it's a
neat fit.

In theory NIO scales better than regular IO for the 100,000 connections case
but that's not one that I need in my particular scenario.

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spullara
Try webbit.

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Mahn
What kind of contract does VMWare use to sponsor open source projects? Because
up until now I thought sponsoring and buying ownership were different things.

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ChuckMcM
There is a very subtle but important point here. He worked for VMware so he
had an employment agreement with VMware. That may have conveyed rights to
things he worked on to the company, so even working on an open source project,
his work is 'owned' by the folks who pay him.

I am not a lawyer, personal circumstances led me to do a lot of research on
this topic and consult with both a lawyer who was versed in employment law and
one who specialized in Intellectual Property law to see what was what. And in
California your employer can claim ownership of anything you create or
"enhance" which is either done on company time, or with company resources, or
(and this is the tricky bit) associated with the business or goals of the
company.

From the posting it sounds like this is what VMware is alleging which is that
they 'own' this work he did and have asked him to transfer it back to the
company. I know that sounds weird to someone who might think they were working
on a free software project but it is the way the law is structured.

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jbooth
But if it was released under an OSS license, anyone who wants can fork, rename
if necessary due to trademark, preserve a little (c) vmware in the source
files and do whatever they want, right?

Basically, can vmware retroactively revoke that open source license?

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EwanToo
They can't retroactively revoke the licence, but they can claim the ownership
of the brand and the various systems like the bug tracking database, which
appears to be what they're doing.

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rurounijones
Guess VMware are reading "How to manage open-source projects" By Larry
Ellison.

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nodata
s/VMWare/VMware/g;

