I was dismayed to read about Ben Tilly's plight.
Not only is this bad news for the Open Source community it is a loss for Perlmonks. Very few people there demonstrate or even aspire to his rigour.
My new Monks voting strategy is to locate one Tilly post I haven't voted on a day and upvote it. I'm kind of hoping others are doing the same. It's not much, but I get the feeling he doesn't want anything too vocal done about it.
Re:Tilly
TorgoX on 2002-03-26T22:38:17
Can't I just quietly kill the people who are annoying him? I can get out my ice-axe, and make it "look like an accident". Granted, an accident with an ice-axe. But as always, it's the thought that counts.I wonder what on earth his tormentors think they can gain. Do they plan to try to sell the patches he made to Exporter? Ridiculous!
Re:Tilly
chromatic on 2002-03-27T01:51:13
In the spirit of universal brotherhood (and, hfb, I'm tutoring multiple promising females in the ways of Perl), I hereby forsake the ways of Exporter and resolve to mess with typeglobs on my own forevermore!Okay, it's not a *big* sacrifice. Still, I'm showing someone.
Sean, you can drop a huge pile of deprecated FILEHANDLE slots on them.
Re:Tilly
arhuman on 2002-03-27T16:57:58
Okay, we can't do much...
But is it possible to get the company name, start an 'Open-Crusade' ?
Companies PAY to get good relation, let just make this company loose as much reputation as possible.
AFAIK, telling a company is not fair isn't a crime, tell it everywhere to every programmer, find every LEGAL way to bug them
(Hope they respected all open-licence term is they use open source product (and they did as Tilly use Perl))
What about ditributed SPAM (If I send a mail telling them how bad it is it's not a SPAM, what If I ask thousands people to do the same the same day ? SPAM ? DDOS ? Freedom of speech ?)
... (fill here with your suggestion)
Please just don't let tilly in this mess !
Let's find LEGAL way to make them retreat WITHOUT CAUSING MORE TROUBLE TO TILLY
Re:Tilly
pudge on 2002-03-27T20:29:03
Heh... and if you do that, what's to stop the company from responding by trying to force Perl to stop using Exporter.pm and Carp.pm? They said they wouldn't, but they still have the legal right to do it, from their perspective, probably.
Although, for the life of me I can't see why you would even want to do this. This company is not hurting anyone. Leave them be.Re:Tilly
arhuman on 2002-03-29T11:07:09
This company is not hurting anyone.
I may seem to overreact, but as a (ex?)perlmonks regular,
I've learnt a lot from Tilly.
I REALLY mean a lot.
I was hurted, beccause I won't benefit from his wise advices...
And reading the answer to his post on perlmonks, I was not the only one...
Furthermore according to the tone of his posts, I don't think he was in a pleasant situation.
(Are you sure he wasn't hurted ?)
Finally, the Perl community was hurted, for this company prevents one of its active member to contribute.
Leave them be.
Yeah, you're right...
Let's give up as always, we're only coders...
No I'm wrong we're just nothing in front of this biz/legal machinery.
Thanks, but No thanks...
Hope you won't take it personnally pudge, call me idealist/hacktivist/naive/whatever but this really makes me sick !Re:Tilly
pudge on 2002-03-30T04:48:09
People keep forgetting that not only did Tilly sign the contract willingly -- so anything you claim the company is guilty of by forcing him to abide by it is really something that he is guilty of, not the company -- but the company let him off the hook for past trespasses in regard to his contract.
The lesson here is not that some companies are Bad -- if anything, by allowing his existing code created under contract to remain free this company is being Good, not Bad, and should be applauded, not criticized -- but that when you don't read or abide by your contracts, then bad things can result.
Re:Tilly
chaoticset on 2002-03-29T20:08:40
I have to disagree. Pulling people out of the community hurts the community; even if Tilly is able to keep on top by passively reading, he is hurt in this because he cannot interact with the community, and we can't learn anything from him anymore.Furthermore, it feels as though it sets a precedent. "Eh, we shoved Ben Tilly out of Perl. If any of those other Perl people starts talking intellectual property, we'll threaten them too." Smacks of censorship, if you're prone to extremes (like me).
