Project name ownership and conflict
in [Ruby]
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From: Emmanuel Gomez on 5 Aug 2010 05:29 I recently had a discussion with a fellow Ruby developer that revealed a significant variance in our views about project names. In 2008 I published a Ruby project on GitHub with an MIT license and registered a RubyForge project at the same time. This code was available as a Gem from GitHub while GitHub was hosting Gems (ie, I included a gemspec in the project). I never publicized my code, though I think it is worthwhile, and I did not publish a Gem to gemcutter.org or rubygems.org once GitHub stopped hosting Gems. My Gem was no longer installable with `gem install X` after that point. In 2010, my fellow Rubyist published a gem using the same name as my project without notifying me. When I contacted him about this, he indicated that in his view, first to publish in the public Gem namespace is the only claim a developer can make on a name for a Ruby project. He didn't say so, but I assume he only recognizes the authority of rubygems.org with regard to the Gem namespace. Citing this view of project name 'ownership', he refused my request that he rename his project. I was disappointed, but I was also curious. Clearly the authority of rubygems.org as *the* public Gem namespace is important, but I personally search for existing projects on GitHub, RubyForge and Google before considering a given name as 'available'. I consider it reasonable and polite to do so, but more so, I consider it *my responsibility* to perform such a check before publishing. I don't take `gem install X` as the only meaningful test for project name availability. What is the community view of project name 'ownership'? Was my fellow Rubyist right to publish his Gem without checking Google, GitHub or RubyForge for existing projects under his intended name? Or am I right to expect Ruby Gem authors to perform at least a minimal search for existing projects prior to publication? I appreciate your input in this matter, Emmanuel Gomez -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
From: Peter Hickman on 5 Aug 2010 05:40 What was the name of your gem? Would googling for it have returned anything meaningful given that you made no effort to promote it? Is this actually a problem for you?
From: Roger Pack on 5 Aug 2010 11:13 > What is the community view of project name 'ownership'? Was my fellow > Rubyist right to publish his Gem without checking Google, GitHub or > RubyForge for existing projects under his intended name? Or am I right > to expect Ruby Gem authors to perform at least a minimal search for > existing projects prior to publication? Yeah typically all we check if "can I push this gem?" before grabbing the namespace. Unfortunately. Hopefully you can work it out civilly :) One option would be to keep with your original github gem name username-gemname, since apparently that was good enough at one point? -r -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
From: Emmanuel Gomez on 5 Aug 2010 18:50 Peter Hickman wrote: > What was the name of your gem? My project is called Clockwork. http://github.com/emmanuel/clockwork > Would googling for it have returned anything meaningful > given that you made no effort to promote it? Before this name conflict, my project's GitHub and Rubyforge pages appeared in the first page of Google results for the query 'ruby clockwork'. > Is this actually a problem for you? Neither my life nor livelihood is threatened. That said, this does matter to me. I'm not sure what form of answer you expect. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
From: Emmanuel Gomez on 5 Aug 2010 19:03
Roger Pack wrote: > Yeah typically all we check if "can I push this gem?" before grabbing > the namespace. Based on responses received so far, this seems to be the prevailing view. This speaks to the letter of my question. > Unfortunately. This speaks directly to the spirit of my question. Namely: what expectation would the community prefer to hold Gem authors to? > Hopefully you can work it out civilly :) I'm sure we will. I have no interest in being uncivil in this matter. My fellow Rubyist seems to have little interest in the matter at all. Posession is nine-tenths of the law, after all. > One option would be to keep with your original github gem name > username-gemname, since apparently that was good enough at one point? Thank you for the suggestion. I think a new, non-conflicting name is the only acceptable solution in this case. My inflexibility: how many Gems with Github username prefixes are in general use? -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. |