Comment by RestartKernel 4 days ago
Bit premature to post this, especially without some manifesto explaining the particular reason for this fork. The "no rugpulls" implies something happened with Zed, but you can't really expect every HN reader to be in the loop with the open source controversy of the week.
I can’t speak for Zed’s specific case, but several years ago I was part of a project which used a permissive license. I wanted to make it even more permissive, by changing it to one of those essentially-public-domain licenses. The person with the ultimate decision power had no objections and was fine with it, but said we couldn’t do that because we never had Contributor License Agreements. So it cuts both ways.
You seem to be assuming that a more permissive license is good. I don't believe this is true. Linux kernel is a great example of a project where going more permissive would be a terrible idea.
Saying I believe one specific project—of which I was a major contributor and knew intimately—would benefit from a more permissive license in no way means I think every other project should do the same. Every case is different, and my projects have different licenses according to what makes sense. Please don’t extrapolate and assume someone’s general position from one example.
I’m not sure where this belief came from, or why the people who believe it feel so strongly about it, but this is not generally true.
With the exception of GPL derivatives, most popular licenses such as MIT already include provisions allowing you to relicense or create derivative works as desired. So even if you follow the supposed norm that without an explicit license agreement all open source contributions should be understood to be licensed by contributors under the same terms as the license of the project, this would still allow the project owners to “rug pull” (create a fork under another license) using those contributions.
But given that Zed appears to make their source available under the Apache 2.0 license, the GPL exception wouldn’t apply.
Indeed, if you discount all the instances where it is true, it is not true.
From my understanding, Zed is GPL-3.0-or-later. Most projects that involve a CLA and have rugpull potential are licensed as some GPL or AGPLv3, as those are the licenses that protect everyone's rights the strongest, and thanks to the CLA trap, the definition of "everyone" can be limited to just the company who created the project.
https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/crates/zed/C...
Good catch on the license in that file. I went by separate documents in the repo that said the source is available “under the licenses documented in the repository”, and took that to mean at-choice use of the license files that were included.
I think the caveat to the claim that CLAs are only useful for rug pulls still important, but this is a case where it is indeed a relevant thing to consider.
CA means: this is not just a hobby project, it's a business, and we want to retain the power to make business decisions as we see fit.
I don't like the term "rug-pull". It's misleading.
If you have an open source version of Zed today, you can keep it forever, even if future versions switch to closed source or some source-available only model.
If you build a product and a community around a certain set of values, and then you completely swap value systems its a rug pull. They build a user base by offering something they don't intend to continue offering. What the fuck else do you want to call it?
CLAs represent an important legal protection, and I would never accept a PR from a stranger, for something being developed in public, without one. They're the simplest way to prove that the contributor consented to licensing the code under the terms of the project license, and a CYA in case the contributed code is e.g. plagiarized from another party.
(I see that I have received two downvotes for this in mere minutes, but no replies. I genuinely don't understand the basis for objecting to what I have to say here, and could not possibly understand it without a counterargument. What I'm saying seems straightforward and obvious to me; I wouldn't say it otherwise.)
I think the proper way to do this would be a DCO. https://developercertificate.org/
I upvoted your comment. I share your view and just wanted to say you're not the only one who thinks this way.
It was, some see the GPL2->GPL3 as a rug-pull... but it doesn't matter today as the FSF stopped requiring CAs back in 2021.
IANAL but their official reason for the CLA seems pretty reasonable to me: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
tl;dr: If someone violates the GPL, the FSF can't sue them on your behalf unless they are a copyright holder.
(personally I don't release anything under virus licenses like the GPL but I don't think there's a nefarious purpose behind their CLA)
Zed is quite well known to be heavily cloud- and AI-focused, it seems clear that's what's motivating this fork. It's not some new controversy, it's just the clearly signposted direction of the project that many don't like.
Seems like it might be reacting to or fanned to flame by: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/36604
This is correct. The fork and the pitchforks are not causally related
That's not a rug pull, that's a few overly sensitive young 'uns complaining
"You're doing business with someone whose views I dislike" is not harassment, nor do I believe that the person who opened the issue is arguing in good faith. The world is full of people with whom I disagree (often strongly) on matters of core values, and I work with them civilly because that is what a mature person does. Unless the VC firm starts pushing Zed to insert anti-Muslim propaganda into their product, or harassing the community, there is no reasonable grounds to complain about the CoC.
Boycotting a text editor because the company that makes it accepted funding from another company that has a partner who holds controversial views on a conflict in Gaza where children are killed is going a bit far I think.
In a perfect world, children don't get killed, but with that many levels of indirection, I don't think there is anything in this world that is not linked to some kind of genocide or other terrible things.
> Are they really boycotting jews now?
Just because they're boycotting someone who happens to be Jewish doesn't necessarily mean they're boycotting them because of it.
> Zed just announced that they are taking money from Sequoia Capital, which has a partner, Shaun Maguire, who has recently been publicly and unapologetically Islamophobic. It seems hard to believe that the team didn't know about this, as it was covered in the New York Times. In addition, Maguire has been actively pro-occupation and genocide in Palestine for nearly 2 years.
> How can anyone feel like the Code of Conduct means anything at all, when Sequoia is an investor? I'm shocked and surprised at the Zed team for this - I expected much better.
Reads like it has more to do with what they said and done in the past which seems reasonable.
They got a VC investment.
But a fork with focus on privacy and local-first only needs lack of those to justify itself. It will have to cut some features that zed is really proud of, so it's hard to even say this is a rugpull.
> It will have to cut some features that zed is really proud of
What, they're proud of the telemetery?
The fork claims to make everything opt-in and to not default to any specific vendor, and only to remove things that cannot be self-hosted. What proprietary features have to be cut that Zed people are really proud of?
https://github.com/zedless-editor/zedless?tab=readme-ov-file...
As far as I know, the Zed people have open sourced their collab server components (as AGPLv3), at least well enough to self-host. For example, https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/main/docs/src/dev... -- AFAIK it's just https://github.com/livekit/livekit
The AI stuff will happily talk to self-hosted models, or OpenAI API lookalikes.
Contributor Agreements are specifically there for license rug-pulls, so they can change the license in the future as they own all the copyrights. So the fact that they have a CA means they are prepping for a rug-pull and thus this bullet point.