Non Session Manager vs New Session Manager
non.tuxfamily.org
non.tuxfamily.org
Then there's also this reddit comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxaudio/comments/lk3u74/non_sess...
> New Session Manager was created as a fork because Non Session Manager grew stale and Jonathan was very abrasive to work with [..] getting PRs/patches merged didn't go anywhere.
> Also Jonathan (the Non suite creator) removed all his repos [..], which is something that's obviously not acceptable behavior.
The "new session manager" appears to be on GitHub: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager
Please also note that this drama is months old at this point.
Fork the heck out of anything for any reason you like. Say critical things on mailing lists. Fight over who's right and who's a jerk. But actions which lead to less clarity -- like, say, polluting a claimed name in the process of making a fork -- doesn't look like good faith to me.
I think the point was having the binary be of the same name, so it could work as a drop-in replacement that is compatible with existing software.
I agree with the posted article that saying "X doesn't have Y" from the fork implies that it is a differentiating factor, but it doesn't strike me as an intentionally malicious act. More of just not being familiar how such release blurbs would be read when applied to a forked project.
This is a long solved problem, you don’t use the same name. That’s very bad joojoo.
That seems like the crux of the entire tiff, and without that knowledge it's very difficult to discern which side is more reasonable.
Edit: Honestly, some of the initial commits to the new repository are more in line with Liles' account: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commits/mas...
Starting in April 2020, changes include:
- Dumping the timeline, sequencer, and mixer: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/80e9...
- Removing any thing with logos or icons, e.g., "filing the serial number off": https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/7992...
- Enable debug mode / verbose mode by default: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/3975...
- Change project build system over to meson: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/e431... (plus others)
- Update build system to exclude current GUI / make it optional: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/63e6...
- Set up symlinking by default in install: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/3681...
- Force the project onto GPL3, more serial numbers filing: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/2731...
After that is a number of fixes. Unfortuantely, from this list of "immediate" changes, it reads like the Argodejo developers decided they would be the preferred GUI, and decided to fork the project to abandon the current GUI. The README was even modified to this end: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/7f23... They also forced the project onto a different build system, and made new (and possibly incorrect) assumptions about installation. If the fixes came first (build fixes, etc.) and the other work came later, I would have a more-charitable view of this fork. Unfortunately, the immediate changelog sort of speaks for itself: they forked NSM, filed off all the names, changed over the licensing and build system, and ripped out the GUI. Then, a few months later, they actually started fixing bugs. The motivation here really seems to be subsuming ownership and default UI. This really just looks like a classic internet slap fight.
Of course, this is only conjecture from the git commit history, but... it's supported by the git commit history.
“We already had history with Jonathan; when we tried to do a few things that were useful to us but not within his design, sometimes even minor things like allowing to use 64x64 icons or having an option to export the whole session as a tar file, we were met with insults.”
I'm not seeing any insults in there, just a detailed explanation from Jonathan for why he didn't want to merge it. I don't understand the full technical details, but it's clear he gave it a lot of thought and there was a difference in project philosophy.
Lol. That's what made his software so great, he kept it non. But I can see the problem when others start wanting to add features via bloat. Two contrasting desires, does he stick with the thing that made his software great, or add any feature someone wants?
disclaimer - I am one of the github users in the linked thread.
Pretty sure this isn't allowed. The terms of GPLv2 allows the recipient of the software to modify and distribute the software under terms of GPLv2 or later. The software isn't public domain, someone owns the IP. You can distribute your own changes as you please. You cannot strip the IP owner's license and replace it wholesale.
The previously existing code will still be GPLv2 or later, but you’ll have to trawl the commit history to find out what’s also available under GPLv2 or later.
So it is perfectly legal to relicense under GPLv3 or later, it’s just rude: https://www.draketo.de/english/politics/relicensing-gpl2plus...
I think the comment was addressing a misconception around how the project as a whole is licensed and its individual contributions or past versions are licensed and the fact that GPLv2-or-later works cannot be revoked as the user can always freely chose between the GPLv2 and the "later".
Do you even know what NSM is?
And no, I don’t know what NSM is, and I might be totally wrong on GPS intention.
This pains me greatly.
Coelho's reply: http://linux-audio.4202.n7.nabble.com/Clarifications-and-bac...
"OMG, so silly.
I've read the Mail vom J. Lilies with interest. It reflects to some degree similar issues I've encountered. Banning the OP because of this mail is insane. It gives hints on that Filipe Coelho is disliked also by others, because of several actions and deficiencies.
So that's why I ask you David Runge to undo the ban. The OP is not the core of the problem. By removing OP, you remove symptoms only."
Unfortunate that JML imploded like this, his work is legendary and software elegant.
All smear campaigns aside it's really crap to see this continuing hostility. Free Software also means moving on after a conflict and learning from past mistakes, and fork when necessary. Not to throw a tantrum and destroy all your work.
Btw most NSM stuff works pretty good under PipeWire. RaySession is a nice tool for that: https://github.com/Houston4444/RaySession
https://www.laborejo.org/agordejo
RaySession kinda unilaterally pushes the spec for advanced features, but there was stagnation in the core NSM because the main dev essentially refused to work with most other developers.
Now there is the community NSM and the spec is slightly tighter and the reference client is a bit more reliable.
Heck, now that Jonathan removed _all_ Non project repositories basically no longer exists. Only in the git history of the fork. At this point in time we do not have a Non-SM other than legacy packages and forked repositories, but the NSM API lives on.
The NSM design is sound, people are using it. Thank you Jonathan
They seem to have taken advantage of the fact that the original author did not create official packages to basically steal the name in Ubuntu launchpad.
If the forkers are sincere they should not use the same binary names, eg "nsmd". That is totally unethical, and is technically a trojan as it misleadingly replaces on program with another without making it clear to the existing users that is a new package by a new team altogether.
Even the page at https://libreav.org/software/new-session-manager has broken links to files dated 2017 clearly named "non-session-manager"
What's the play here? What does one do once one has acquired control of a linux tool or a mailing list or a consortium? Is it just to have power over something? Or is that power useful to some further goal?
It may "seem" that there's some sort of "take-over", it's just that people are actually coordinating on these common goals of free software audio tools.
I am very happy with the free and open tools I have at my disposal. Even with the numerous rough edges, duct-tape and hacks to keep some things together.
This is Hacker News, right?
If Freenode is anything to go by...
Greed, ego, self importance, the need for control... and cocaine.
Where we used to have the good will of others we now have a tide of ill intents it would seem.
The X vs Wayland fight is polite to a fault in comparison.
I expect Linux audio to converge on PW (unifying alsa, jack, and pulse in the process).
Linux video has this split with Wayland which is a whole different problem (I want my fluxbox :/). PW originates as Pulse Video, and designed to work with gstreamer pipelines and wayland compositing. aiming for better userspace separation of hardware and applications. I really love the idea of having JACK, but then for video. (no more vloopback hacks, named pipes or random socket servers to bounce framebuffers between applications)
JACK will then live on for dedicated Pro Audio applications and hopefully on win and macos as the old-skool "this also works" audio API that really only a small niche uses (and can break at the snip of silicon valley's fingers).
That's what alsa, JACK, and pulse said. That's what they all said, except perhaps OSS, because nothing proceeded it.
The title is also weird - not only is Linux audio not dead, it's doing better than ever with the recent pipewire work.
Sadly it does seem to be becoming more and more, more since some view open source/projects as potential revenue streams and be it irc, or some carefully nurtured project that has grown over a lifetime, to be rug pulled by such `political games` all in the end for what I dare say be some agenda greed. It just saddens us all.
I can point at it happening in the scuba diving industry.
High school never ended for some people.
When all parties to a drama are equally stressed and handling it similarly, it's a recipe for escalation with little hope of real solutions.
Later I looked at their fork. All they did was adding their names to the copyright and the new project name to the comment section for all the hundreds of files. I was frustrated as this was a clear case of taking copyright ownership for the software. I asked them to remove their names from the copyright unless it's new changes by them but they said GPL allowed it. I contacted FSF for clarification and FSF replied that it's allowed as changing the comment constituted a new change. It's a bunch of BS. It took the rosy glasses off my naive self and soured my view on open sourcing my software in the future.
I would also say that "legal" is not always the same as "ethical", particularly in this circumstance.
As is said of academic politics: the battles are so fierce because the stakes are so small.[1]
Back at the dawn of the dot-com age, just as Linux was starting to boom, and the first IPOs (Red Hat, VA Linux) were occurring, a company appeared out of nowhere^WReno, Nevada (same thing), called "Linux One", claiming to have their own novel Linux distro. Oh, and plans for its own IPO.
It proved to be little more than a search-and-replace of "Red Hat" with "Linux one", though there were also some contributions from MandrakeSoft, another distro at the time. Stealing is copying from one source, curation is copying from several....
The thing is that, at least so far as the software is concerned, that's pretty much perfectly kosher under the GNU GPL and other Free Software / Open Source licences which comprised the scope of Red Hat's offering. In terms of copyright and licensing ... there was nothing actually wrong with this. Skeevy as all getout, yes. But not a GPL (or BSD, or MIT, or Apache, or ...) violation. (The company may have failed its source provision obligations for the GPL, however.)
The robustness of the IPO failing, er, filing, might have raised a few eyebrows elsewhere though. I seem to recall it being cancelled rather quietly, there's
The Register published an investigation of the episode at the time: https://www.theregister.com/1999/11/02/linuxone_takes_more_t...
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Notes:
1. See: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/18/acad-politics/
The article says this all started in "early 2020"; about a year and a half ago. Indeed, looking at the new-session-manager commit history, the fork was started in April 2020[1], and first announced in June 2020[2].
> It appears that Fedora dumped this guy's version in favor of the fork some time back
So did Arch Linux. Notably, the Arch Linux contributor who did it is David Runge, one of the 3 people called out in the article.
[1]: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager/commit/6352... (the first commit after the last commit from Jonathan Moore Liles)
[2]: https://lists.linuxaudio.org/archives/linux-audio-user/2020-... (1.3 is the initial version of the fork, as at the time 1.2.0 was the latest version of non-session-manager)
The original is the real NSM, the fork, if they really want to be seen as legitimate, should do a full scale rename.
It really is that simple. All the rest of the comments are noise.
This article broke my heart, because it’s indicative of a greater problem in our beloved Linux community.
The New-SM repo is hosted here: https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager
https://github.com/jackaudio/new-session-manager was originally named https://github.com/linuxaudio/new-session-manager and has since been renamed (you can tell because of the redirect).
The github.com/linuxaudio URL is the one they were using as recently as January this year: https://lists.linuxaudio.org/archives/linux-audio-user/2021-...
When I wrote the parent comment, I did not notice that I was being redirected from github.com/linuxaudio to github.com/jackaudio; I apologize for that mistake.
is this similar to JUCE?
https://github.com/dheera/scripts/blob/master/config/install...
if you want your audio to sound better than a snake in a swimming pool, and nobody will ever tell you that. On iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, bluetooth headsets pretty much "just work".
I'm a Linux fan and all my computers run Linux but Bluetooth audio IS broken.
https://github.com/dheera/scripts/blob/master/jabra-stop-cha...
Also, if you didn't do what my parent post's script did, you probably have shitty audio on your Jabra.
My biggest gripe is that I can't use the microphone at the same time as the headphones, without switching to tin can mode.
And there are fixes at the protocol layer already, you just have to use nonstandard extensions. This is how airpods work.
If your going to do wireless on windows, either get a separate mic, use a corded headset, or a headset with a USB-wireless adapter unless you want it sounding like a tin can.
The headset modes haven’t appeared under Linux at all, which happens to suit me just fine, so I haven’t investigated the lack. A couple of times I’ve had issues with connecting at the BlueZ level, but putting the laptop to sleep and waking it up again has resolved it. (Just restarting bluetoothd doesn’t help.)
I was running PulseAudio for a few weeks, then I switched to PipeWire. I no longer get the Bluetooth indicator on it in waybar, but other than that the switch was fairly uneventful. One point is an improvement: it now seems to remember which devices I like to use, so that when I plug in my Yeti microphone it doesn’t switch audio output to it (it has a 3.5mm monitor port and can feed audio from the computer through that too), which it had always done under PulseAudio and I hadn’t yet gone to the trouble of figuring out how to stop it from doing that. One point in the Bluetooth device handling is potentially a slight regression: when silence should be being fed through the connection, I observe extremely quiet whine which I didn’t under PulseAudio. Not sure what’s at fault there.
An older latitude works perfectly.
I wouldn't go that far. On windows my headset shows up as two cryptically named devices, and using the wrong one or touching microphone input destroys the audio quality.
Windows 10 gets decent audio quality until you try to engage the microphone at which point it switches to a different audio driver with the quality of bad cellular phone call. It sees the headphones AND a generic “Bluetooth headset”. I’ve seen the same behaviour across Sony, Beats, and AirPods.
NixOS 21.05; with last year's release, it did default to headset mode, and the audio profile switching was hidden behind an "advanced" button, so things are improving fast.
I have never heard of NON before and beginning the story in media res while omitting any details of what the 3 antagonists asked him to do with his project makes the whole thing confusing. Until he got to talking about the LAD mailing list, which I am somewhat familiar with, I thought it was some sort of scam post.
"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."
Who uses this? And, why would anybody do something as shady as to make off with somebody's project name? What benefit do they imagine they could get from that?
I would rather see, instead, an announcement of a new discussion group with decent governance, and clean packages for Debian, Fedora, Arch, Nix, etc., renamed if necessary. Needing to rename an old project to work around malfeasance is inconvenient, but nobody is married to the old name.
The Non dev was being abusive in public threads and even nastier in private mails to various Linux Audio devs.
The full story is on the archives of the Linux Audio Development and Consortium mailing lists.
Folk should come visit #lad (Linux/Libre) on Libera.Chat.
Providing a citation is pointing at a specific place where the information came from at the smallest granular level. In this case, a citation would be something like links to specific threads.
Edit: also, I've no obligation to provide a citation, I'm one of those that's bored by this particular drama, folk can go search for posts of they want, I've given enough to go by.
>The full story is on the archives of the Linux Audio Development and Consortium mailing lists.
However creating a fork with the same acronym and name for the daemon or binaries or whatever seems pretty under-handed.
Was a release announcement for the original software moderated, on a list where release announcements had been posted without moderation before the fork? Was the author banned from lists?
That's why Ubuntu has the alternatives system. And why mawk / gawk / etc. are often linked to /bin/awk.
And it's entirely possible to use different software names for projects that implement a compatible API or service, the claim that it's for compatibility is pretty bogus. It's not "standard", especially not for an adversarial fork. And that's not why the alternatives system exists, the alternatives system exists so differently named packages can implement a particular service (i.e., exactly the opposite, for the equivalent in shell commands). So that's underhanded.
They are used to make packages with differently named binaries able to implement standard shell commands.
There is no need to match binary names. It doesn't really help with anything.
A ban did occur on the LAD mailing list, but to the best of my knowledge the ban occurred due to some off list emails with one of the list moderators.
In the business world, this is a clear case of trademark infringement and they would be sued out of existence.
In the business world, picking a different name for marketing and using functional elements for compatibility is a good way to get sued but win. See, for instance, Sega v. Accolade - Accolade sold software for the Sega Genesis without Sega's approval. Sega added something to the Genesis game loader which checked for the string "SEGA" and displayed the message "Produced by or under license from Sega Enterprises LTD." Accolade's games caused that message to appear, even though there was no license. The courts ruled that Accolade was entitled to do this, because the point was compatibility.
It's interesting to see the instance of HN groupthink speculation (and lack of google fu) there has been in this comment section. Folk should come idle/chat in #lad. It's available via Matrix.
Fork the project and pick another name. Spend the effort to market and build the integration with the new name. No one would have a problem.
I think it should be clear to anyone the relationship; the README mentioned JML from the get go, it's not framed as NON related, there is reference client and daemon, and it's just the same acronym because there's no reason to change.
The new projects name is New Session Manager.
Using the same acronym and the same binary file names to push out Non from the distribution is very underhanded.
This looks like a deliberate aim to confuse the users and taking over the project code and identity. It's not cool.
I don't know JML and don't know his development style. Since he has been gracious enough to open source his project, I assume he's generous enough to share his hard work with others. If people don't like his style, fork the project with a different identity and compete on the merits, rather than stealing his project's identity with confusion.
You are trying to argue a course of action that would just have confused both users and devs.