Re: Updating http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html

On Monday 28 April 2008, Richard Foley wrote:
> On Sunday 27 April 2008 21:43:35 Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > the conversion to XHTML
> > 1.1 (valid now) etc. the patch will be very huge, so I'll just send
you
> > the new file. You can find it here:
> >
> > http://www.shlomifish.org/perl-timeline-temp/PerlTimeline.html
>
> Excellent work.
>

Thanks.

> > All that was said, I would still to contribute to the new Perl history
> > effort
> > on the TPF wiki. While I highly commend you for the effort you've put
> > into the existing timeline, it's highly possible a collaboration
between
> > Andy Lester, Chris Dolan and I (and other people of the Perl
community)
> > can yeild something substantial and under a more usable licensing
terms.
> > We are going to respect the copyrights owner****p of the existing
timeline
> > and not re-use material from there directly, without your permission.
>
> It's a real shame the perl6 people seem to be incapable of using the
work
> from the perl5 people - or have I misread the thread?
>

No, it's not about perl6 vs. perl5. It's about the original Timeline by
Elaine 
vs. a new timeline (for Perl, probably both 5 and 6, though we'll have to
see 
how everything progresses). Both timelines cover Perl. The differences
are:

1. The original timeline was a static HTML page, while the new timeline is

maintained as a wiki page.

2. The new timeline has a different licence. (Open-content, probably).

3. The new timeline is still much more incomplete and is in its infancy.

I'm planning on contributing to both timelines.

> I mean, Elaine sounds a bit pissed off, but I'm not really surprised
when
> she gets her project whipped from under her feet.  

That was not my intention, but may have seem like it. 

> Never mind that it's not 
> been updated for a while - surely we should respect her 'owner****p' of
that
> corner and work to get co-editing facilities of it in some way, much
like
> when Michael gave out commit bits for the Test::More code to a choice
group
> of interested individuals some time ago.  This kind of thing happens all
> the time, it's called co-operation.
>

Yes, my intention was to update the timeline myself, and send my
modifications 
upstream. I didn't raise the wiki was not my idea, though I admit it
sounds 
tempting.

> I don't see why we have to trash the old stuff, just because certain
people
> have positions of power and can (ab-)use it to side-step the issue.

We're not going to remove the old timeline. Also, I'd like to continue 
updating it, and hopefully Elaine will accept my modifications. Of course,

one problem with the old licencing terms is that it is not clear whether
one 
can fork the do***ent into a new modified one while still preserving the 
originator's owner****p of the do***ent. Maybe it's completely forbidden
(i.e: 
if the do***ent was CC-by-nc-nd for example.) 

What we are planning to do is to continue maintaining the old timeline
while 
in the meanwhile working on a new one. This is similar to a software
project 
still maintaining its old version while starting a complete
re-implementation 
or a much grander refactoring. E.g: perl5 vs. Perl 6 (Pugs/Rakudo/etc.),
or 
Bazzar "baz" which was a fork of Arch vs. Bazaar-NG "bzr" which was a 
re-implementation. (or Apache 2, etc.).

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
The Case for File Swapping - http://xrl.us/bjn7i

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