
SleepyHead Project Is Shutting Down - janwijbrand
http://jedimark.net/2019/02/08/sleepyhead-project-shutdown/
======
CrazyCatDog
Two innovations have revolutionized my life—CPAP and Sleepyhead.

I volunteered to do a sleep study at the famous Stanford Sleep Clinic some 15
years ago hoping that they would tell me I’m superhuman and don’t need sleep.
They came back and told me that I sleep very poorly.

CPAP machines are (finally) wonderful, but the manufacturers don’t share any
of the data that their machines collect other than basics like hours slept.
For those of us with the intellectual curiosity to actually double click on
your sleep numbers, Mark’s work is invaluable. I have over 1,500 nights of
sleep logged in Sleepyhead...I learned the perils of drinking wine with
dinner, the value in tucking in at the same time every night, and which masks
work best for me—just to name a few benefits.

I use sleep medicine to improve my life, the same way that I use a screwdriver
to tighten screws—which is to say, I pay no attention to the sleep-apnea
forums and I suspect most users are the same. I’m sharing all of this here in
case Mark by chance frequents this forum—and hopefully if enough others like
me discuss the value that this free product creates every night for so many
millions of users, he may reconsider. I for one, would gladly pay for a
Sleepyhead subscription if that meant continued support.

Thanks Mark, your work is invaluable.

Link to vice motherboard article about why Sleepyhead matters:
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwjd4w/im-
possibl...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwjd4w/im-possibly-
alive-because-it-exists-why-sleep-apnea-patients-rely-on-a-cpap-machine-
hacker)

~~~
radar
Curious; what are the perils of drinking wine with dinner?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Drinking alcohol prior to sleep can cause poor sleep quality.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4666864/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4666864/)

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
So I should day drink instead?

~~~
jacobyoder
that's still 'before sleep', isn't it?

~~~
robryan
In the morning is optimal in terms of improving sleep. The alcohol will be
largely out of your system before you sleep.

------
tendencydriven
Read into this more, here
[http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic/t174687/SleepyHead-
Project...](http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic/t174687/SleepyHead-Project-
Takeover-Attempt-by-AB.html) and here
[http://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Thread-SleepyHead-
version-1...](http://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Thread-SleepyHead-
version-1-1-Release-plus-odd-posts-by-JediMark?pid=284578#pid284578)

Its not as black and white as it seems

~~~
lima
Well, they should've called their fork something other than "SleepyHead". From
what I could gather from these threads:

\- Maintainer disappeared for a while, people wanted their fixes merged.

\- ApneaBoard community made a "1.1.0" release of "SleepyHead" without the
author's approval, rather than forking it and calling it something else.

\- Maintainer unhappy about them using his trademark without his permission.

~~~
Tomte
As far as I read so far, AB did not fork the program. They mirrored the
original binary. With the original donation links to the original owner.

It's a mess.

------
pram
No idea what 'SleepyHead' is but I understand the sentiment. I've felt the
pain from the perception of not getting anything back after you've poured so
much of yourself into a thing. Especially when it's for free, the lack of
support starts to feel like ingratitude.

It might or might not be true. People might actually appreciate what you're
doing, but never explicitly say it. However, after a certain point, your mind
becomes so toxic and awful that nothing will convince you otherwise. It's
really better to walk away than become a shitty, bitter husk IMO. Good luck,
guy!

~~~
floatingatoll
There's a Vice article link elsewhere in the comments, and at the end of the
linked post, that explains what it is and why it mattered.

------
jonawesomegreen
Open source is hard. Being a maintainer is hard. I've seen a lot of good
people burn themselves out trying to maintain / contribute to open source
software.

I think this is a great blog post / talk (not mine) about the topic:
[https://snarky.ca/setting-expectations-for-open-source-
parti...](https://snarky.ca/setting-expectations-for-open-source-
participation/)

"Here's a bit of real talk for people: I think working in OSS has made me more
bitter and short-temperated".

Best wishes to the maintainer, hopefully time gives some perspective on the
problems in the community and perhaps some ways forward.

------
jonathankoren
From the linked blog post:

> Let it be known that the hosts of the ApneaBoard forum have finally
> succeeded in their efforts to hijack the SleepyHead project.

Sounds like it's not "shutting down" as much as forked, and he's upset. Also
it looks like the reason why it's getting forked is because critical bugs went
out. People are relying on this to live, and he's treating it like a hobby --
because it is to him.

His post is full of recriminations and cries about being betrayed. Even the
forum post someone found[0] in these comments supports this idea of a fork.

> ApneaBoard's recent "release committee" initiative is illegitimate and is
> seeking to undermine my years of work on SleepyHead and undermine my role in
> my own software project."

> If it's NOT SleepyHead, don't call it SleepyHead, and don't make it look
> like SleepyHead... it's that simple!

The code is GPLed[1]. It sounds like there were other people willing to
contribute. The code goes on, without him.

[0] [http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic/t174687/SleepyHead-
Project...](http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic/t174687/SleepyHead-Project-
Takeover-Attempt-by-AB.html)

[1] [https://gitlab.com/sleepyhead/sleepyhead-
code](https://gitlab.com/sleepyhead/sleepyhead-code)

~~~
cabaalis
> People are relying on this to live

As much as I want free software and all that, it seems like medical devices
have the best cause for DRM and all the protections it affords.

~~~
seabird
You know how bad codebases from huge, over-managed, "risk-averse" companies
can be. You know that the people that make medical devices are generally huge,
over-managed, "risk-averse" companies. I think you can put two and two
together, and I _really_ don't think you want to go in that direction.

------
nikkwong
Sleepyhead probably saved my life (literally) when I couldn't get any sleep
doctors to take my condition seriously. I can't thank him enough for his
contributions.

The software is quite good, too, with a better UX than a lot of enterprise
apps that I use on a daily basis. Might go to show how one person's ownership
can lead to the creation of great experiences in ways that the lack of
ownership often found in large software projects does not.

------
beck5
Motherboard did a nice writeup of what Sleepyhead is and an overview of the
Sleep Apnea echo system

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwjd4w/im-
possibl...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwjd4w/im-possibly-
alive-because-it-exists-why-sleep-apnea-patients-rely-on-a-cpap-machine-
hacker?fbclid=IwAR3zfnoX_waylvse7Pdc8_ZDuZVx3dkdUqoHj7Luqs0W8T2hqaQaOaEFDno)

------
dmuth
I have no knowledge of this issue, but there seems to be more background here:
[http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic/t174687/SleepyHead-
Project...](http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic/t174687/SleepyHead-Project-
Takeover-Attempt-by-AB.html)

First post is by Jedimark, which goes into more detail, and there are some
comments with other sides of the story.

~~~
quasse
For those who have only read the parent blogpost, I would suggest reading at
least the first page of this thread. There certainly seems to be another side
to this story.

The author seems to take any input or effort from others to improve his _open
source_ and _GPL licensed_ project as a personal attack.

If you're an open source project maintainer who has an ever growing foes list
of people who develop forks of your project or make suggestions you don't
like, you might want to re-evaluate yourself.

~~~
zokier
> you might want to re-evaluate yourself.

To his credit, that is exactly what he did, and the result of that evaluation
is visible right here; he decided that foss world was not for him.

------
iamwil
> If there is one tiny bit of hard learned advice I can leave behind from all
> this, it would be: Friends don’t let friends release full blown complex
> applications under the GPL – Keep it for hacks or corporate backed stuff.

Anyone know what the story is behind this? Is it that GPL is hard to monetize?

~~~
rincebrain
If you read the other posts in this discussion, with links to the forum
discussions, it appears that he thinks people having access to the source of
the program without him as a gatekeeper and sole steward is a mistake, and
allowed people to steal his work by forking the project when he was perceived
to be out of communication for months on end.

~~~
philpem
Looking at the whole situation from the outside... yeah.

In my experience there's only one reasonable way to deal with "friendly" forks
like that. Meet up with the folks who forked the project, thank them for their
work and ask if they're interested in reunifying the codebase and joining the
two teams.

And if that fails, you switch to "Okay I respect this is GPL/BSD/xyz'd OSS,
you have a right to fork the code. But can you please name it something else
so people aren't confused? And do you mind if I cherrypick some of your cool
features and fixes back into mainline?"

Maybe I'm just turning into an old pacifist, but I just don't see the point of
stoking hatred and arguments in an open community.

~~~
novaleaf
yes, but if you read those fourm threads, the author unfortunately has
absolutely no inclination to reconcile. Shame for this project, it seems to be
of tangible benefit to people with this disorder.

~~~
philpem
True enough -- but if a friendly fork is impossible and he's given up... I'd
consider that fair game for a less-friendly fork provided the licence allowed
it.

I know a few folks who use CPAP machines and would likely contribute to such
an endeavour.

------
czbond
Couldn't he just get a subscriber list that pay for the software and releases?
I get that it's free, and great, but ongoing support takes his time. Put up a
paypal link, or your preferred method, and get 300-500 people to sign up for
$100/yr (for example). If there are forums, there are paying customers.

~~~
zokier
As far as I can tell, the issue was not money but control. He clearly disliked
the community taking the software in their own hands without his input.

~~~
czbond
Ouch. It would seem his choices woudld be either open source with a strong
hand and commercial variant (a la Rails/Ruby Sidekiq) or open source and one
lets it be free.

------
helen___keller
A lot of small open source projects struggle with leadership and
organizational issues as they become more popular with a wider userbase (and
hence wider demands, such as in the case support for more CPAP machines).

It sucks but that's just how it works, and seems inevitable with the entire
project focused around the primary maintainer.

Seems like Jedimark is doing the right thing by removing himself from the
situation to focus on his life. It's open source so hopefully the community
can fork it and maybe find an organizational model that's more sustainable for
continued support.

------
ZeroCool2u
I recently read about this project in the Motherboard article. Seems like it
has had a really positive impact on a lot of people's lives. Unfortunate that
it has come to this.

Official Project Page:
[https://sleepyhead.jedimark.net/](https://sleepyhead.jedimark.net/)

Source Link: [https://gitlab.com/sleepyhead/sleepyhead-
code](https://gitlab.com/sleepyhead/sleepyhead-code)

------
DiabloD3
So, he says his software is GPL. Does this mean he has a Github repo
somewhere? Why isn't the community pushing important merge requests to him?

~~~
zimpenfish
This seems to be the most recent repo -
[https://gitlab.com/sleepyhead/sleepyhead-
code](https://gitlab.com/sleepyhead/sleepyhead-code)

------
gotocake
Mark, your work greatly improved my life. I completely understand you needed
to walk away from this though, and I’m sorry the least among us have taken so
much from you.

------
QuantumGood
Not so Black and White, e.g. from the apneaboard forum he trashes:

>The pattern goes like this:

1\. JediMark asks for feedback, development help etc. 2\. Folks step up to the
plate and help him out. 3\. The code is improved and released. 4\. Time
passes, bugs are found, new machines need support, so those that help Mark out
try to contact him to inform him of these needful things. 5\. Mark goes "dark"
and drops out of any online activity for MONTHS at a time. 6\. The "helpers"
get frustrated and keep trying to contact Mark for direction. 7\. Their
requests are ignored by Mark, repeatedly. 8\. The "helpers" start talking
about trying to help fix the code themselves, since users are clamoring for
the fixes with JediMark nowhere to be found. 9\. The "helpers" actually fix a
bit of the code and offer it up to those who would like to use a "fixed"
version, or install a patch. 10\. Suddenly, JediMark comes out of hiding, and
attacks the "helpers" for not allowing him time to fix the problems himself,
saying (basically) that "No one understands the code like I do, since I am the
creator of SleepyHead, and your efforts to 'fix' things only messes up my
progress!!!" and "You guys are trying to steal SleepyHead away!" 11\. The
"helpers" are stunned by Mark's attacks and slink off away into oblivion,
since they're offended that Mark thinks they are a bunch of "rebels". 12\.
More months pass with nothing being done. 13\. GOTO step 4 (1)

\-------------------

>I was your friend, for several years, until you decided that I was your enemy
because I suggested you talk to Pugsy about things that confused new users.
Things that confused them then, and things that _continue_ to confuse them
now.

At that point, you decided I was _out to get you " and trying to destroy
sleepyhead.

You've done the same with Arie, who's been helping you for far longer than I
had, and now you've decided that Apneaboard is against you.

The fact that people don't _agree* with everything you might think DOES NOT
MEAN THEY ARE AGAINST YOU!.

Your real friends aren't the sycophants that do nothing but shower you with
praise.

Your real friends are the ones that actually give enough of a shit to tell you
"hey, dude, you've got a problem.", or in the case of Sleepyhead "hey, what
you're doing is hurting the program, and everybody that uses it.

Go ahead and let someone else work on 1.1, if you don't like it, FINE, just
_ignore them_.

There's no reason for you to go off the deep end, making posts about how
everybody is out to get you.

BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT out to get you[/u][/i][/b], or, destroy sleepyhead.

For Gods sake, you and I worked for hundreds of hours, you told me endless
stories about your childhood and growing up and sent me pictures of your first
Christmas tree, and you wearing the T-shirt I had custom made for you.... but
when I suggested you talk to Pugsy about what confuses people... you were in
one of your paranoid phases, and suddenly, I was _THE ENEMY_.

The same thing is happening now.

If I didn't care, about you... I'd just laugh and say "he's off his rocker
again..." I'd really rather you get help though, so you can be a happier
person.(2)

(1) Apneaboard.com/forums/Thread-SleepyHead-version-1-1-Release-plus-odd-
posts-by-JediMark?pid=284578#pid284578

(2) [http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic/t174687/SleepyHead-
Project...](http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic/t174687/SleepyHead-Project-
Takeover-Attempt-by-AB.html)

~~~
DiffEq
Indeed this guy created his own problems and blames others for them. Maybe he
needs some more sleep.

------
goshx
His work will be missed.

It sucks that it came down to this and it reminds me of how many entitled
toxic pricks exist out there just to make the work of those voluntarily trying
to make the world a better place harder. It's sad that they've won this time,
but his wife and daughter won big time.

If you are reading this, thank you sincerely and I hope you find joy in your
future endeavors.

~~~
okmokmz
>how many entitled toxic pricks exist out there just to make the work of those
voluntarily trying to make the world a better place harder. It's sad that
they've won this time

While I generally agree with this sentiment, based on what I've read I don't
believe that is what happened here. The rantings and ramblings posted by Mark
really do sound like he may be struggling with a paranoid personality
disorder. During a period where he was seemingly absent and unresponsive the
community decided to continue to work on the project and try to iron out some
bugs. As far as I can tell no one tried to hijack his project or monetize the
work.

