C++/C IDE - Cmake - CLion

[cmcavoy]

anyway, I’m using a 30 day trial, initial project import, debugging and refactoring session on macOS was pretty good, so its definitely looking promising

Is it free for open source projects? Intellij licensing confuses me. Also I say intellijel in meetings sometimes when someone brings up intellij. #modularproblems

[TheTechnobear]

Is it free for open source projects? Intellij licensing confuses me

yes, you can apply for a free license if you run an open source project, but there are ‘constraints’ and you have to apply each year… see here
conditions are not onerous, though, honestly for the cost of the individual license, I’m not sure its worth the hassle , for a single developer.
I suspect its mostly useful, if you want to provide licenses for many developers on the open source project… I need to check this, as this might be a reason for me to apply.

[cmcavoy]

I suspect its mostly useful, if you want to provide licenses for many developers on the open source project… I need to check this, as this might be a reason for me to apply.

Or maybe we apply collectively for folks using it to work on Monome firmware.

[zebra]

that would be cool… haven’t tried clion, but jetbrains other stuff is best-in-class.

however:

Projects that are sponsored by a commercial company or organization, or those with employees paid to work on the project are not eligible

so i dunno.

[cmcavoy]

@tehn - are you ok if we email Intellij and invoke monome to see if we can be approved for their open source license program?

[TheTechnobear]

been using a CLion quite extensively for last few days and have to say I really like it, and decided to stick with it.

so, for one of my open source projects (MEC) I applied for an open source license, and they granted within a couple of hours , effortless/painless very simple form to fill in, definitely worth the minor effort involved

(you get a full toolbox license, so all products including IntelliJ/CLion, valid for a year, and you just re-apply at end of subscription)

basic process is, get the Project Owner/Lead to apply, they take a look at your repo/license etc, and then it seems they will then grant a number of licenses for ‘active’ contributors.

for active contributors, one thing was a bit unclear, it looked like with my project, they only looked at the active/default branch (probably they just use the GitHub insight page), as they didn’t count one of my contributors, who has been working on a separate branch. though, Im sure you can probably discuss this with them if necessary.
(though, I can just merge his work, which was planned anyway… then ask them for an additional license)

anyway, hats off to JetBrains for supporting open source projects

[tehn]

go for it. worth a shot.

[cmcavoy]

go for it. worth a shot.

Submitted a request today. I think we’re probably going to be rejected because of their not for companies restriction, but figured monome is novel enough and committed to open source enough that they might make an exception. /shrug

[tehn]

well, the lines community is not a company (?)

maybe this is a problem with nomenclature. teletype is open source. i need to get around to cleaning up the schematics and release the hardware side, then maybe that’ll be even more compelling?

[TheTechnobear]

the relevant agreement term is:

Your OS project may not offer paid sponsorship; receive funding from commercial companies or organizations (NGO, education, research, or governmental). You do not provide any paid support, consulting or training services for your OS project, and you do not distribute paid versions of your OS software. Contributors who are paid to work on the project are not eligible.

from here

the unclear bit here, I think is, ‘Your OS project’ , it raises the question, does Monome own the project…

Id have thought, its worth discussing with them, for unpaid contributors on a ‘small’ project, seems a reasonable request.

[cmcavoy]

Good points from both of you (@tehn / @TheTechnobear). I agree with you both. We’ll just need to see who we get to evaluate the request. I haven’t heard anything back from them yet.

[sam]

it raises the question, does Monome own the project…

Speaking for the Teletype code base (and libavr32), I don’t think any single entity owns it anymore. No copyright assignments have been asked for (or given), so it ‘belongs’ to each of the contributors.

[TheTechnobear]

I don’t think any single entity owns it anymore. No copyright assignments have been asked for (or given), so it ‘belongs’ to each of the contributors.

yeah, that crossed my mind… when I said ownership, my mind immediately questioned what does ‘ownership’ mean in the world of open source?
(where someone can fork a repo, and then redistribute)

my guess/understanding is… there is always an original source/repo, and there, someone decided on the licence, so I guess that entity is the owner. even if contributors own their own contributions (*).

I’m sure there is a technical meaning/definition somewhere… but I’m more interested in ‘popular understanding’.

(*) does a contributor always own their contribution - even then seems clear for a new file, but a change, is this some kind of ‘percentage change’… when is something significantly different?

(funny I contribute to open source projects, make my own projects open source, but I think often I don’t understand many of the implications )

edit:
as an aside, I know that Eigenlabs (Eigenharp) were keen to transfer the ownership of its open source codebase over to a new ‘trust’ , but it never happened, due to the legal efforts needed to do this transfer.

in todays world, does someone/something have to always own a thing (like software)?
can it be un-owned? managed by a collective with no legal entity?

[murray]

in todays world, does someone/something have to always own a thing (like software)?
can it be un-owned? managed by a collective with no legal entity?

I’m interested in answers to this.
Seems like someone always comes along to say “this is here?, it must be mine”.

[TheTechnobear]

Seems like someone always comes along to say “this is here?, it must be mine”.

I think ownership is also insisted on by ‘others’ i.e. where does liability lie?

[jasonw22]

Unfortunately, all too often, issues and concepts around ownership in open source projects end up being determined by the mechanics of source control management systems (rather than via explicit public decision making).

Open source is not necessarily a democracy. That much is clear. What it is instead is frankly quite a bit less clear, and can vary wildly from one project to another.

[TheTechnobear]

agreed @jasonw22 and as such I don’t have an issue with this… I think open source tends to be more about what you can do with the code… rather than transferring ownership to the ‘world at large’.

(not saying the later is a not a great goal, just doesn’t seem to be the aim of open source)

[jasonw22]

I think open source tends to be more about what you can do with the code… rather than transferring ownership to the ‘world at large’.

I agree. I’ve probably spent a little longer thinking about “ownership” issues around open source as a result of having once ('99-'00) worked for a company that was selling a dual license open source product to enterprise customers. An unusual situation that in hindsight isn’t entirely in the spirit of open source, in my honest opinion.

But I also wonder about certain efforts around open source projects with my current employer. Sometimes companies will take an open source project, slap a very thin UI on top of it, and some authentication and payment mechanism, and then rent it out as a SaaS. In effect, the company has taken some “ownership” of the thing. It’s odd.

[sam]

(*) does a contributor always own their contribution - even then seems clear for a new file, but a change, is this some kind of ‘percentage change’… when is something significantly different?

IANAL… but I think the default is that you own your own copyrights. Some open source projects include a contributing document that suggests any PRs (or similar) imply either a transfer of copyright ownership or some sort of license that allows the owner to do whatever they wish. GNU make you sign papers before you can make non-trivial contributions.

in todays world, does someone/something have to always own a thing (like software)?

can it be un-owned? managed by a collective with no legal entity?

On the one hand ‘un-owning’ it is to place it in the public domain. Doing so is a bit murky though. I think you can use the CC0 license to do it.

But that’s not really what we want. The Linux Kernel is somewhat ‘un-owned’, as in there are so many different copyright holders as to make it unmanageable to ever change it’s copyright status.

[cmcavoy]

Got a response from Jetbrains today,

We have checked your Open Source project to see if it meets all the requirements of JetBrains’ Open Source License Program.

As you correctly wrote in your application, we cannot support OS projects that provide commercial services. We believe that once the rules are set they should be applied for everyone, therefore unfortunately I cannot approve your request even though the project looks very inspiring.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Should you have any further questions - we are happy to help.

Not really surprised. If there’s other reasons to change the relationship between monome and the open source projects, then this would be a side benefit. It’s not worth changing just for this software, I’m not sure there’s any benefits to changing it otherwise, so - keep on keeping on?

Also - I started playing around with Xcode, seems like a very reasonable C dev environment. Though given my level of non-expertise, I’ll probably just stick with Atom or Emacs until I know enough to take advantage of a full blown IDE.