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Hudson Community Proposes Rename to Jenkins

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As covered a fortnight ago, the core Hudson commiters were considering whether to rename to Jenkins. The problem rested on the fact that Oracle had applied for a trademark and could not give any guarantees that it could be used.

In response, Oracle posted a process summary of how they saw the Hudson project continuing to evolve under the same name. They assert that “they have made no claim against anyone using the Hudson trademark” – but since they don't legally own the trademark yet, to do so would be impractical anyway.

Others are less keen on Oracle's proposed plan. The creator of Hudson, Kohsuke Kawaguchi, has this to say:

This “our way or highway” theme can be seen in many places throughout our conversation. They are going to dictate their will on us, when they contribute less than 1% of commits since I left Oracle. They think they have a proven record of leading open-source projects, when the record shows otherwise.

Not only that, but Oracle seems keen to break Kohsuke's hold on Hudson:

When the representative of Oracle says it to my face that I should just go find something else to work on, or that I need to immediately stop making [infrastructure] changes or the next email I will receive will be from their lawyers, or when you hear him describe me as a hurdle to the community, I think writing on the wall is pretty clear to me.

As a result, the Hudson community has stood by its plan to rename, with the first part being a ballot to rename on the existing dev list. Andrew bayer posted:

The vote between renaming and status quo starts now. Anyone currently subscribed to either hudson-dev or hudson-users as of when I send this email out is eligible to vote. You can only vote once - if you vote multiple times, only your last vote will be counted. The voting will run for 72 hours, until noon PST on Saturday, after which I will announce the results.

The membership requirement was to stop ballot stuffing (from either side) and only allow those dev members who participate in the development of Hudson to make a decision as to what to do.

The results will be announced tomorrow.

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Community comments

  • it's a fork

    by Christopher Brind,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    OMG - it's a fork! Why are they being so up themselves?

    Oracle are going to continue "Hudson" on the existing code base. Jenkins will take the existing Hudson code and take it in a new direction with a new name... clearly a fork by any definition of the word regardless of which members of the community are going along with it.

    Get over it!

  • Re: it's a fork

    by Ingo Boegemann,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Yes it is.
    But to be philosophical, if the majority of committers moves, is the original (Hudson) or the new branch (Jenkins) the actual fork?

  • Re: it's a fork

    by Glenn Keith,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    Yes it's a fork but I don't believe they are being up themselves.

    I believe they are taking a management decision to involve the community in manner which highlights the difference in the project management style to that of Oracle.

    I believe they doing this to ensure that 1. the project is inclusive of the community without some sort of "veto" ability by a higher member and 2. to make a small but critical example of how oracle has taken the wrong tack in terms of open source community management.

  • Irresponsible

    by Cameron Purdy,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    > "Oracle seems keen to break Kohsuke's hold on Hudson"

    We need to avoid making every minor detail of this saga into some polarizing, "us versus them" drama.

    There is nothing wrong with fighting for what's important to you, and sticking to your beliefs, but the amount of negativity on this topic (with parties trying to monetize both sides of the debate) makes me sick.

    Peace,

    Cameron Purdy | Oracle Coherence
    coherence.oracle.com/

  • Re: Irresponsible

    by Chris Treber,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    I am sure threats to either stop making changes to the software you created or getting an email from a lawyer has a negative connotation to most people. I certainly would feel pretty polarized.

    Chris

  • Re: it's a fork

    by Tim Vernum,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    It's a "fork" in that there is a divergence between 2 streams (& teams) of development, but it's not clear that either branch can be considered the "real" version.

    The "Hudson" version keeps the name, but looses the developers.
    The "Jenkins" version changes name, but keeps the developers.

    This is most definitely a "fork" in that the code will diverge and users will have to pick whether to run Hudson or Jenkins, but


    • Apache was a fork of NCSA httpd
    • X.org was a fork of XFree86
    • EGCS was a fork of gcc
    • FreeBSD was a fork of 386BSD


    Forks aren't necessarily bad and the version that keeps the name isn't necessarily the "better" one.

  • Re: Irresponsible

    by Cameron Purdy,

    Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.

    I am sure threats to either stop making changes to the software you created or getting an email from a lawyer has a negative connotation to most people. I certainly would feel pretty polarized.


    Chris, that's the type of negativity that I'm describing. Hudson is open source with a very specific license, and no one (to the best of my knowledge) has suggested that people can't use it or modify it. My understanding (again, I could be wrong) is that the project contributors' concern was over the fact that Oracle's official response regarding suggested infrastructure changes (e.g. where the project would be hosted and in what way) was that Oracle could make (or reject, or override) those decisions unilaterally.

    Whether or not you agree with that (and the majority of votes for the "rename" obviously did not agree with that), it's important to keep the issue crystal clear, and not add to the flames by claiming that people were threatened if they just attempted to "change the software" (e.g. contribute code, fix bugs, add features). And if they were threatened in that manner, then I would like to know that so that I can raise that issue internally; that seems completely unacceptable.

    Peace,

    Cameron Purdy | Oracle Coherence
    coherence.oracle.com/

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