
Mongrel2 Is Now BSD Licensed - jcsalterego
http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1279561382.html
======
petercooper
Like others on here yesterday, I also hoped the big announcement was a
corporate sponsorship/hiring of some sort to let Zed just get on with the tech
without any hassles.. :-) (Hello VMware?) Ah well, this is still good.

Just one "but":

 _I believe that Mongrel2 has the chance to break the religious hold that
programming languages have on organizations, businesses, and the average
working programmer._

Aren't most open source infrastructure and HTTP based projects programming
language agnostic? (Incumbents Apache, lighttpd and nginx, for example, as
well as proxies like Varnish and Squid.) What's the deeper idea behind this
statement that warrants presenting it as a new concept? I'm all for bold
attempts to break the status quo but the way I interpret what he's proposing
_is_ the status quo..

~~~
zedshaw
Technically, any protocol if it's going to succeed is language agnostic. It'd
be retarded to do a language specific protocol unless you're like Erlang and
don't have to care about other languages as much.

The difference is Mongrel2 makes this assertion _explicit_ and does everything
it can to stay simple but still support languages you need to use. It does
this by having a simple base protocol for doing fast async backends with 0MQ
or HTTP, and by making the configuration system language agnostic as well.

That means if you run a Perl shop, then you can keep using your existing Perl
HTTP setups with Mongrel2, write new stuff as 0MQ where needed, change parts
to C++, and write configuration automation for your Mongrel2 clusters in Perl.
Or any language. It doesn't care.

Compared to other servers, which still try to embed some specific language or
write their own (Node, Varnish VCL), or have some odd config file only they
understand, or force you to mod_* install languages, or use FastCGI in some
bastard way, or hack up proxy configs to get page caching, ... this makes
Mongrel2 much more agnostic.

But more importantly it comes down to the project's philosophy. I have a
specific goal that no language will be king, so I'm going to architect the
server so that nobody dominates. Same thing I did with Mongrel1 where I
refused to let Rails dominate.

~~~
nailer
One of the things I really like with Tornado is that there's a handful of test
apps that ship in every release. This means people learning it always have a
definitive, up - to - date demo of the code, rather than relying on some blog
from 6 months ago which uses the previous API.

It would be super sweet if your minichat examples in various langages were
shipped in the base Mongrel2 package. If you're about to say I should do this
myself, you're right, and I might try it once I've finished shipping my app
and have time to investigate.

------
maxklein
I like the BSD license. I made my first money on the nets by benefitting a lot
from BSD licenses, and all open source software I ever write will be BSD.

I believe - if you want it to be free, make it free. If you want it to be
closed, then make it closed. The in-between that is the GPL is not cool.

I do wonder though, how many people have contributed to this project? It seems
to me it would be a better idea to have a single sponsor than several big
sponsors. Someone who has a vested interest in making Mongrel2 work.

~~~
alnayyir
What little I've managed to open source so far, is licensed under what amounts
to a 2-clause BSD + what I call the "Diane Bruce clause".

[http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/bsd-guru/have-we-lost-the-
fun-21...](http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/bsd-guru/have-we-lost-the-fun-21360)

* db@FreeBSD.ORG wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you * can do whatever you want with this code, except you may not * license it under any form of the GPL. * A postcard or QSL card showing me you appreciate * this code would be nice. Diane Bruce va3db

~~~
protomyth
Where in the BSD License does it say you can re-license the code? Or does this
just mean no including this code with GPL code?

~~~
alnayyir
There have been multiple cases where GPL fanatics stole BSD code and
relicensed it without discussing it with the original creators, which is
technically permitted, but dirty as hell.

Some wireless drivers for Linux derived from this theft. (Broadcom, being one)

~~~
caf
There is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance evident here.

The whole _point_ of favouring the BSD license over the GPL is that you don't
care how people license the code that they incorporate your code into. It
makes no sense at all to be happy with someone "stealing" BSD code and putting
it into a closed-source product, but not be happy with them putting it into a
GPL-licensed product.

~~~
alnayyir
The whole point of favoring BSD over GPL, in addition to prohibiting a GPL
fork, is that I want the code and all derivations to be free for personal and
commercial use with no obligations made upon the user/re-implementer.

~~~
caf
Then you have chosen completely the wrong license, because that is not what
the BSD license provides. The BSD license allows derivations to be
unmodifiable, or to be useable only with a fee paid, or any other restriction
the copyright holder (of the derivation) cares to add.

For example, a derivation of your code could be licensed under the
hypothetical ICBINTGPL License ("I Can't Believe It's Not The GPL") that was
the same as the GPL in all but name.

The tension in what you want is evident in your comment: you "want the code
and all derivations to be [list of attributes]", which implies obligations on
the user of the code (amusingly, GPL-like obligations!); but you also want "no
obligations made upon the user/re-implementer". So you want obligations that
there be no obligations. That's the problem I'm trying to point out.

~~~
alnayyir
>Then you have chosen completely the wrong license, because that is not what
the BSD license provides.

You're silly, you haven't read the license. It's not BSD.

<http://github.com/bitemyapp/Scroot/blob/master/LICENSE>

There's no problem, and you aren't going to argue this into anything
productive.

I've made my decision, I'm going to let people do anything they want except
relicense it in GPL or sue me.

There is no debate here. I'm sorry I shared it in a fit of feeling 'cute'.

------
steveklabnik
Zed, this is great. It seems we've both come to the same conclusion; as much
as I respect what the Free Software movement has done, if I create something
awesome, I want as many people to use it as possible. There is enough crappy
software out there that I'd rather have it improved for everyone than worry
about ekeing out every last possible cent.

~~~
zedshaw
As well as language religion, I hate license religion. I GPL things I think
will only attract douchebags if it were totally free, like with Lamson. I AGPL
things mostly as a joke, like I did with MulletDB.

In this case, I believe the cause of getting languages out of my damn web
server operations is strong enough that BSD is a better choice.

~~~
steveklabnik
Licensing things as a joke is generally why I use the WTFPL over 'real' BSD.

------
jcsalterego
I need to start signing my emails with "And I promise not to buy guitars with
it,".

~~~
zedshaw
Don't lie, you know you couldn't keep that promise. :-)

------
mathgladiator
Isn't "break the religious hold that programming languages have on
organizations," kinda-well-I-dont-know religious?

I don't know about you, but I just had a religious experiences reading the
post. I got the experience when I used <http://kayakhttp.com/> for the first
time. It changed my life!!!

Programming languages have religious backing not due to HTTP or anything
technology related but due to management fearing polyglotism/increased
complexity by redundant code/multi-deployment/multi-service management/other
people issues.

To end the religion that infests programming is to end humanity. And, unless
Mongrel2 has skynet built into it, it's not going to break the religious hold
that programming languages have on organizations.

But, I'll drink some of zed's koolaid and hope to live in a state of denial.

~~~
zedshaw
Yes, any human belief is a religion and temporary. This is just a religion
that tries to accept all of them, kind of like Unitarians. :-)

(BTW, obvious troll is obvious).

~~~
stcredzero
The world might be a better place if the norm were meta-religions like, "A
Alphabetic Unitarianism," wherein adherents practice all religions in
alphabetic order.

------
Flow
"Copyright (c) 2010, Zed A. Shaw and Mongrel2 Project Contributors."

Couldn't this be some sort of loophole that "Mongrel2 Project Contributors"
isn't defined right there in the license?

I know, it's BSD license, not much point in finding a loophole, but still.

------
kunley
The voice of reason on the desert of political correctness.

------
16s
How does this guy get any coding done? He's always writing rants and waving
his hands to get attention. He writes, "Send an email and I'll add your name
to the donation page." I hope he doesn't get a million donation emails asking
to have their names listed. If so, he'll never be able to code another line.

~~~
zedshaw
Well, actually if I got a million donations I'm pretty sure I could:

A) Hire a bunch of people to enter them in, if it were important.

B) Just use my lamsonproject.org software to automatically make a list of
contributors.

Because, you see, at that point I'd be both rich as hell and a bad ass
programmer who can automate things, while you'll still be a troll. :-)

~~~
16s
OK, so I'm a troll, but how _do_ you get any coding done while doing all this
other stuff?

~~~
doki_pen
No need to down vote. This is a thinly veiled compliment. It's a good
question. Zed's output has been insane for the past few months. How he manages
to keep up the pace is a very valid question.

