I was about to go into my session in JAX 2011 when I learned that Oracle made a proposal to move the Hudson project to the Eclipse foundation. Needless to say, I was quite surprised!
One one hand, I think this definitely shows the great success of the Jenkins project post divorce. As I discussed in these slides with concrete numbers. Were it not for the succcess of Jenkins, they wouldn’t be giving up the project.
But at the same time, I just wish Oracle saw that coming a few months earlier, while we were still seeking the middle ground. We were very interested in having the trademark moved under the custody of a neutral 3rd party, but they were very clear that that’s not acceptable to them. And it also disppoints me that they decided not to reach out to the Jenkins community about this move, when we’ve been conducting our governance meeting all open out there for anyone to join. But I guess they are never really interested in working with us.
I’m also curious how they intend to handle some IP related issues. Two things come off the top of my mind. The current logo, which is a Microsoft clipart. We’ve mentioned that to a representative in Oracle some time ago, but we haven’t heard back. Then there are about 6-month worth of my contributions after I left Oracle, which I don’t think Oracle can unilatelarly donate to the Eclipse foundation.
KK,
Sorry the announcement came as a surprise. This is just the start of the proposal phase to bring Hudson to Eclipse.
We want to reach out to everyone and anyone that might be interested in participating. If you or anyone is interested in working at Eclipse please feel welcome.
I realize you and others have done a great job getting the Jenkins community going so I don’t expect you to abandon the work you have done but please don’t feel you are not welcome.
Regarding the IP related issues, we have a very well defined process that I am sure will address any issues that might arise.
It was an interesting and surprising move! Cynical observers might feel that Oracle are only willing to hand it over to the Eclipse foundation as they see the EF as more of a large corporation friendly foundation. Also of interest is VMWare and other vendor’s stepping up to support Hudson, I wonder why they thought Jenkins was not the choice for them? I suspect the speculation will run rife for some time :-).
I was disappointed that Oracle didn’t come and re-approach the Jenkins community and perhaps forge a path together again. I’ll certainly be passing that on to the Oracle JUG community team. It’s really an annoying dilemma for many software teams as they will be forced to choose between the two, when so many of the bugs and feature requests are shared amongst them.
I did see a separate blog entry by a developer who’d figured out how to still build his plugins for both systems. But it’s already frustrating to see that mechanism moving far away from each other.
You’re quite correct about the clip art and your contributions, I think the Oracle lawyers and the EF lawyers may need to look at that carefully. Whether you give your permission is of course your personal decision!
Looking forward to meeting you in London!
Cheers,
Martijn (twitter: @karianna @java7developer)
@Ian Skerrett
With all due respect, is this not a case where in the interests of the community (and some would say even common courtesy) that KK and the Jenkins community could/should have been approached in the first instance?
I see it as a pretty major communication oversight at best, and I’m afraid others will see it in a far less flattering light.
I’ll happily state that I think Hudson moving to an independent foundation is a fantastic thing, full credit for that! However, it’s my personal opinion that the way this event has been handled is not in the spirit of how the wider Java community operates. Hmm, that didn’t probably come across quite right, but I can’t find more accurate wording at this stage :|.
Cheers,
Martijn (@karianna @java7developer)
Note that Sonatype is very much engaged with and committed to the Eclipse Foundation as a venue. While obviously they are the smaller partner in Hudson now compared to Oracle, they have a footprint. Given, on the other hand, the very strict IP policies at Eclipse, and the not very strict IP management of Hudson before the
split, they may have a long road ahead of them.
I think I should address some of these concerns and questions early to avoid any confusion.
> But at the same time, I just wish Oracle saw that coming a few months
> earlier, while we were still seeking the middle ground. We were very
> interested in having the trademark moved under the custody of a
> neutral 3rd party, but they were very clear that that’s not
> acceptable to them.
I clarified this in an email to the hudson users mailing list, but we did propose both Eclipse and an Eclipse-like process to you all back in December. It was deemed “too heavyweight”. The trademark discussions ended up being a separate thread that came up after it was decided not to move to a more structured format. One without the other didn’t make sense to us.
> And it also disppoints me that they decided not to reach out to the
> Jenkins community about this move
(Martijn, I think you have a similar concern)
I answered a similar question in the Eclipse forums. As you know, we have not been communicating or collaborating about process between the two projects. This step this morning is a proposal that welcomes anyone and is currently out for review. I think we needed something solid to talk about before discussing. We have that now.
> I’m also curious how they intend to handle some IP related issues.
As Ian mentioned, Eclipse has a very rigorous process for vetting IP. The good news is that for the people who contributed to the Hudson project at java.net and didn’t sign an SCA/OCA like you did, the terms of use for java.net state that those contributions are made under the project’s license. In the case of Hudson that would be MIT. Anyway, I am not a lawyer so I will let them work through all of this during the review, but thought I would provide insight to your questions. I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Ted Farrell
Oracle Corporation
@Martijn Verburg
I am sorry people are disappointed in how this was communicated.
However, I want to stress this is just the start of a process to create a project; it is not the final step. There is lots of room for discussion in an open forum. That is the whole idea of the proposal phase of the Eclipse project creation process.
If you want to participate, it would be great to have you.
Well, if the EF really owns it all, maybe they can then hand it over to the Jenkins leadership 🙂 . If that is not an option, it is probably an indication of continued restrictions on the choices of the new governing board.
So let me ask point-blank.. will the Hudson and Jenkins sides be able to put aside their differences over project leadership and work together, bringing the forks together again? Are talks happening beyond the exchange about poor communication on this blog? That’s what people want to know!
@Ted Farrell
Thanks. Yes, the code is under MIT. So you’ll take those under the MIT license instead of relicensing everything under EPL? Because it being MIT doesn’t mean someone else can relicense it, or transfer the copyright to another party.
@Brock
I take your remark as a joke but I would like to clarify that the EF doesn’t own it all. Developers who contribute to Eclipse projects retain copyright ownership to their code, they license the code under the Eclipse Public license. The Hudson trademark and domain name will be transfered to the EF. I hope this makes sense…
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and again and again – the Jenkins community would *love* for Oracle and Sonatype to rejoin the community. The door is always open.
People don’t even seem to be reading the title of Kohsuke’s post. The only thing that has happened so far is a proposal.
The process of moving a project to Eclipse takes *months*, and its completion is by no means inevitable. This is certainly not some kind of “our-way-or-the-highway” announcement that Oracle has dumped on the Java world.
@Andrew Bayer
fwiw, I don’t think anyone was expecting the Jenkins community to pack up and join back with Hudson. You guys have done a great job with Jenkins and it would be insulting to think you would just walk away from it.
I just want to respond to KK comments about no one reaching out to the Jenkins community. If the EF can help with the communications, I am hoping we can be of service.
@Ian and @Ted – Thanks for responding, @Neil is also quite right in that this is only a proposal at this stage. Indeed it could be a very good step to hopefully bring the communities back together.
I’ll certainly get involved with patches etc if that can occur. If I’m completely honest, the selfish part of me doesn’t want to have to fix issues in what is currently two places!
I guess I simply would’ve liked to seen it handled a little differently, but again at the end of the day I applaud Oracle’s decision to put in this proposal and I think a majority of the developer community will feel the same way.
I’ll simply add my hope/wish that what many of us secretly have hoped will come to pass, a unified project once more with KK as well as others heavily involved.
@kohsuke
KK, again I am not a lawyer so I can’t really comment on that. Our lawyers have looked at it as will the Eclipse folks.
One clarification though, we are not talking about ownership or copyright. Just licensing. The MIT License does allow for re-licensing the software. It actually states “to deal in the Software without restriction”.
Again, I’m not a lawyer. I am just trying to avoid any confusion. Any deeper analysis should probably be interpreted by someone who does that for a living.
It’s good to see active discussion, hopefully people will start talking TO each other rather than AT each other. At the end of the day, this is all about the customer. They want competition, not forks.
@kohsuke
The MIT license allows for sublicensing, so, yes, any code can be relicensed under EPL. Copyright is still maintained with the original author, what is not an issue, since the Eclipse Foundation does not require copyright assignments. Once under the EPL though, any code contributed to EF under EPL would not be able to be re-licensed back to MIT…
@Martijn Verburg
> I’ll certainly get involved with patches etc if that can occur.
> If I’m completely honest, the selfish part of me doesn’t want
> to have to fix issues in what is currently two places!
>
> I guess I simply would’ve liked to seen it handled a little
> differently…
KK, the above are exactly what I have kept hearing over and over throughout this fork. To echo the opinions of all the pragmatists wanting to move Hudson/Jenkins along to the next stage of the technology lifecycle, if you keep waving the flag of the interests of the community, this needs to be fixed. Suggesting that everyone to join Jenkins is one approach. But all of the evidence to date indicates that there is a genuine Emacs/XEmcas type fork happening here. Given Tasktop’s neutral role in ALM, I will go as far as to say that we will get stuck supporting any outcome on this front. But when it comes down to our Scrum meetings and desire to innovate CI with our efforts on Mylyn, we are in the exact same position as Martijn. Given that on our JAX panel today you communicated that a fork of the Hudson and Jenkins plug-in models was inevitable, I think that you either take this opportunity to find a path to combine efforts, or you permanently make people choose.
Some related discussion is happening on: http://tasktop.com/blog/eclipse/proposal-hudson-eclipse/
Agreed! Almost immediately these threads become embroiled in a discussion of “it would have been nicer if” and “my feelings are still hurt” posts from one side or another. I’d like to think everyone here is adult enough to suck it up and address the merits of one proposed future vs. another. As a simple user I’ll take my “business” to whichever tool best addresses my needs. That used to be Hudson. Presently it is Jenkins. If it is a new united version, then so be it. I just want some clarity and to see the best tool emerge from all this.
My Lord, can you folks not read what the Oracle employee is saying in clear English?
He is saying this:
” Let me prevent any confusion. We will not tolerate there being 2 things to talk about. There will be one thing to talk about, and you will be required to license that from Oracle. And we will crush your silly legal concerns KK. “
Oracle would never rejoin the Jenkins community. If they did, they would admit to being defeated. They have a pride to maintain.
Jenkins would never rejoin Oracle. If they did, they would admit to being wrong. They have a pride to maintain.
At the end of the day, it is all about arrogance and pride from both sides.
I definitely agree with Daniel K. Try to give us (users) clarity as soon as possible. We still use Jenkins.
well, an open source project belongs to the community and community has moved the porject to jenkins so hudson is a dead piece of code.
if eclipse has any respect and human feeling to open source community and right ownership justice then when oracle proposed them to offer hudson they shoud have refused and rather have asked first to jenkins community to join eclipse.
here i see first culprit was oracle and now second culprit is eclipse who is joining now to oracle to kill jenkins by biasing hudson.
backoff eclipse
There is all this talk about community followed almost immediately by claims of ownership. It’s double talk. I don’t care who wrote my CI system. I don’t care who keeps it running. I just want good software. The creators started out helping me solve problems. Thank you for that! But now you’ve become one of my problems. Why doesn’t the Jenkins camp want to cooperate with Oracle, Eclipse, IBM, TaskTop, VMWare or anyone else? Everyone please sit down at the table and make nice. Less talky, more codey.
Hi JD. The two issues (good software and who/how it is written) are correlated. One can believe that Eclipse is the best option or Jenkins or something else, but you can’t separate the two issues.
Bravo JD. This is way too much about pride. Continued separatist mentality on either side will just guarantee people end up going to Bamboo or something else. I will if this continues. It’s naive to argue that the community went w/ Jenkins, so Hudson is dead code when there are developers (and industry leaders like Sonatype) contributing to the Hudson line. I bet Team City is loving this drama.
I don’t think the real hard core Jenkins split backers realize that some shops/users can’t just switch CI systems anytime they want to, or that features over bug fixes/stability is always a good thing. Look at the last set of community reviews from pre-split Hudson, from 1.378 on. There’s nothing to beat your chest about there.
@Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart – Are you suggesting that Eclipse can’t create good software? If you are, I will have to completely disagree. If you are suggesting that the Jenkins camp can produce better software? I would have to say, maaayyyybbbbeeeee, but the jury is still out. As for which piece of software is currently better, Hudson and Jenkins are about the same to me right now. The real deciding factor for me is what happens in the future. Eclipse is large and established. As is Oracle, Eclipse, IBM, TaskTop, VMWare, etc. All of these companies have figured out how to make software that is both featurefull and reliable. And then there is CloudBees, the creators of….??? Maybe they’ll pull it off. In the end, I just don’t care. It’s a CI system. A tool. Not my baby or my friend. Just a tool that whirs away while I work on what is really important to me. I wish both sides would stop distracting me from that stuff with their flag waving ridiculousness. Less talky, more codey.
I wrote “good software and who/how it is written… are correlated”. Of course Eclipse can and does create good software. There are many ways to write code, and many good developer teams.
Hudson, as you use it today, with its core and its plugins, is largely the result of how Kohsuke led the project. He also wrote over 80% of the core [1], but it was very important that the whole DEV community worked very well together.
How would Hudson be at Eclipse? I don’t know. But if Eclipse accepts it and it succeeds, it will be because of the team of people working there. Eclipse is an abstraction; its only role is to enable the community.
[1]http://pelegri.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/hudsons-secret-kohsuke/
@Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart – So you’ve convinced me that both KK and Eclipse can create good software. I’m back to the problem of trying to figure out who to go with. If all quality metrics are equal then what should I look at to make my decision? I see a number of large vastly successful companies aligning on one side and tiny unknown startup on the other. Maybe KK is the special sauce. If he is, then why all the bluster about “the community”. That’s the double-talk that makes me think this is all about pride. Like I said, it doesn’t matter to me what happens. I don’t have a dog in this hunt. I just want to focus on my project. I don’t care who’s in charge. Sit down, play nice, and get back to making software.
No offence to Oracle, it’s employees and owners. Oracle is an established success we all envy.
But this H/J story, i look at it as Oracle’s attempt to squeeze some juice out of this riping fruit.
But human nature is they love stands, bigger the opponent is, more support the other will get.
Oracle’s Hudson, meeting this consequence was inevitable due to above reason. Their move towards eclipse and open source is just like taking coals back to new castle… was it not free with KK?
like KK said, after their previous arrogant behavior and again showing disrespect for the visionary and the worker bee, they have lost respect from people in this matter.
KK has minds and hearts of Hudson(aka Jenkins) community, so his project will be followed. And it should be on his discretion whether to make his idea and Product open source or not.
My humble suggestion to Oracle guys, make big decision like big leaders do, and return copyrights back to KK. The good will they can earn out of it will be much greater than the profit they can earn without KK’s support.
Regards, Salman Awan (Hudson and now Jenkins fan)
There being humans involved, there is probably pride involved…
But, that said, these are people and they need to work together as a team. I’ve been in the industry quite a while, and I’ve seen projects with great individuals fall apart because they could not work together.
Comparing the resources is not as easy as it seems; for example, the number of people currently contributing to Jenkins is much larger than those at Hudson. That’s only talking about the core; currently the plugin DEV community is almost all on the Jenkins side (and Hudson/Jenkins is all about the plugins).
Anyhow, if you are on the fence right now, I’d suggest you stay on the fence for a bit longer. The Jenkins community meeting this week started discussing what to do moving forward; I’d expect the chips to settle down in a few weeks. Also, at this point Hudson@Java.Net and Jenkins are quite compatible, so you can move from one to the other very easily; although I doubt that will continue to be the case if the split remains.
@Salman Awan – I thinking you are romanticizing things a bit. Maybe I don’t have all the details. Like I said. I spend most of my time working on my project. Correct me if I’m wrong, but KK was receiving a paycheck from Oracle for how many years? Also, maybe I’m wrong but I think Sun had something to do with KK and Hudson before Oracle? I’m pretty sure KK received paychecks from them too. How many company’s who pay employees to work on projects turn over those projects to the employees upon demand? I’ve never heard of it happening before. I live a fairly sheltered life though. Can someone correct me?
@Eduardo Pelegri-Llopart – Yeah, I’m on the fence and still irritated by the drama. I don’t want to have to make a decision. There should be one project. This is all stupid.