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JonnyMac obex contributions - missing? — Parallax Forums

JonnyMac obex contributions - missing?

wmosscropwmosscrop Posts: 409
in General Discussion
I can't seem to find anything on obex from @JonnyMac

Looking for the WS2812 drivers in particular...
«13

Comments

  • VonSzarvasVonSzarvas Posts: 3,450
    edited 2017-08-01 20:23
    Try here:
    http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/comment/1374793/#Comment_1374793
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    edited 2017-08-01 22:35
    He made a comment about one of my C versions of his WS2812 object that wasn't very complimentary. I made a sarcastic response and I guess that pushed him over the edge. I sent him both a PM and an email apologizing although I wasn't really that upset myself even offering to leave the forums myself rather than having him stop participating. He didn't reply to either and now he seems to have removed his stuff. Seems like a rather strong reaction to a harmless exchange but that probably explains why his stuff is missing. I hope he will reconsider.
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    David Betz wrote: »
    He made a comment about one of my C versions of his WS2812 objects that wasn't very complimentary. I made a sarcastic response and I guess that pushed him over the edge. I sent him both a PM and an email apologizing although I wasn't really that upset myself even offering to leave the forums myself rather than having him stop participating. He didn't reply to either and now he seems to have removed his stuff. Seems like a rather strong reaction to a harmless exchange but that probably explains why his stuff is missing. I hope he will reconsider.

    That would be a shame, the Prop ( & P2 ) needs all the Languages and Enthusiasts it can muster.
    The exchange seemed fairly benign, but you never know what makes something the 'final straw' ?


  • Dave HeinDave Hein Posts: 6,347
    On July 28 David Zemon downloaded the entire OBEX. I looked at it, but unfortunately there are no contributions from JonnyMac or Jon McPhalen. He must have deleted his entries sometime before that. It's too bad we didn't do the download earlier to capture them.

    I don't know what Jon is going through, but I hope he recovers from it ands re-joins the forum for his sake as much as ours.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    What? That's a shocker. What happened? Jon will be missed around here if he really has upped sticks.


  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    Dave Hein wrote: »
    On July 28 David Zemon downloaded the entire OBEX. I looked at it, but unfortunately there are no contributions from JonnyMac or Jon McPhalen. He must have deleted his entries sometime before that. It's too bad we didn't do the download earlier to capture them.

    I don't know what Jon is going through, but I hope he recovers from it ands re-joins the forum for his sake as much as ours.



    I hope I have all of his posted contributions, but that was probably a fluid list.



    My guess is he has been grabbed by the government and sent to Area 51 S4, top secret.



    I hope we don't lose this great contributor, and forum friend from Hollywood.

    Mike
  • macrobeakmacrobeak Posts: 354
    I would really like to highlight and acknowledge JonnyMac's valuable contribution to the Prop community.
    I have used several of his OBEX and other programs in my projects, as model code, stand-alone objects and code base for amendment.
    I have always found his coding practical, concise, accurate and easy to follow.
    In addition I have followed his excellent Nuts and Volts articles and forum posts over the years.
    I think JonnyMac is a foundation contributor and it would be a tragedy to lose his OBEX coding and forum inputs.
    I would beg JonnyMac to reconsider his withdrawal from OBEX and the forum.

  • DigitalBobDigitalBob Posts: 1,513
    I have quite a few of Johnny Mac 's objects. They all where quite good that's why I saved them.
  • JonMJonM Posts: 318
    Perhaps those that responded to JonnyMac causing him to take his marbles elsewhere should reach out to him and apologize. Having watched that exchange, I have say it was quite childish so someone has to grow up. I really don't blame him and it has been postings such as those that have turned me off from the Parallax products in the past, but I thought I would give it another go. I guess somethings, or rather people don't change.
    What a shame.
  • xanaduxanadu Posts: 3,347
    If JM needs a break, let him have it. He is well past earning one.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2017-08-02 11:05
    On the other hand...

    The internet is full of boorish oafs. Or at least people one disagrees with.

    It even happens on this very forum. Which is a haven of civility by comparison to many other places around the web.

    Even Jon and I had a fall out years ago when I made some off-hand remark about Hollywood. Which I acknowledged as being offensive and apologized for.

    Still I don't get the idea of removing all your valuable contributions from public display. Which were presumably put in public for the non-ducks. Why punish the innocent?

    If you see what I mean.

    Please come back Jon. We value you.



    ModEdit: Language sanitised (ducks)

    Me edit: "ducks" did not make any sense.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    JonM wrote: »
    Perhaps those that responded to JonnyMac causing him to take his marbles elsewhere should reach out to him and apologize. Having watched that exchange, I have say it was quite childish so someone has to grow up. I really don't blame him and it has been postings such as those that have turned me off from the Parallax products in the past, but I thought I would give it another go. I guess somethings, or rather people don't change.
    What a shame.
    I don't even know what post pushed him over the edge. He made a rather snarky comment about my translation of his code and I responded with a message that just said "thanks for the compliment". Was that enough to make him leave? If so he has a very thin skin. In any case, I *did* send him both an IM and email to apologize but didn't hear back. Maybe it was something else in a different thread.

  • Dave HeinDave Hein Posts: 6,347
    edited 2017-08-02 13:20
    JonM wrote: »
    Perhaps those that responded to JonnyMac causing him to take his marbles elsewhere should reach out to him and apologize. Having watched that exchange, I have say it was quite childish so someone has to grow up. I really don't blame him and it has been postings such as those that have turned me off from the Parallax products in the past, but I thought I would give it another go. I guess somethings, or rather people don't change.
    What a shame.
    JonM, I don't see anything in the thread that warrants an apology. Can you tell us exactly what you thought was childish in the thread. The thread was about a C driver that David Betz wrote based on JonnyMac's Spin driver. Jon made a comment that the C code looked like a "train wreck". David Betz responded with a sarcastic "thanks for the compliment" comment. I commented that spin2cpp does produce code that looks like a "train wreck". David Zemon made a comment about starting a language war. None of the comments seem like something that requires an apology.

    As I said, something must be going on with JonnyMac right now that he needs to sort out. It's probably best to just let him take care of it himself and hope that he comes back to the forum some day.

  • LevLev Posts: 182
    I can't stand it - I gotta say something.

    There was nothing wrong with JonnyMacs original insightful comment. If he left because he was tired of the nitpicking (and I do not know), I don't blame him. I am sad to say that is why I rarely use the forums. When I do, I often search for JonnyMac.

    I'll miss him and his contributions a LOT.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    Lev wrote: »
    I can't stand it - I gotta say something.

    There was nothing wrong with JonnyMacs original insightful comment. If he left because he was tired of the nitpicking (and I do not know), I don't blame him. I am sad to say that is why I rarely use the forums. When I do, I often search for JonnyMac.

    I'll miss him and his contributions a LOT.
    Calling someone else's code a "train wreck" is an insightful comment?

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Hmm... Maybe there is a hint of an issue here.

    Let's say I were to write some beautiful and useful code in Spin. Then that code get's transpiled into C. And comes out looking like some ball of wool the cat has been playing with for a week. A train wreck.

    Now, that C code gets published and distributed and ends up in all kind of C libraries.

    C, being a more widely known and popular language than Spin, gets exposed to a much bigger audience. So far so good except....

    What if that train wreck of C code still has my name on in?

    Now it looks like I am the author of really messy horrible code. My reputation is in ruins. What to do? :

    1) Ask the people who transpile the code to remove all attribution to me.

    2) Make sure the code is not available for transpilation. Remove it from public view.

    Personally I would not worry about such things. After all, by placing my code in OBEX I have put a BSD license on it , which allows such use. Besides, most people might say my code looks like a train wreck before it's transpiled to anything.

    I have no idea if this is the issue at hand. Just thinking things around a bit.





  • Keith YoungKeith Young Posts: 569
    This will really hurt the Parallax community if he left. His work years ago is what helped me get started and now I teach hundreds of kids STEM. If it weren't for him and Andy I don't know if I'd be here teaching today.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    Heater. wrote: »
    Hmm... Maybe there is a hint of an issue here.

    Let's say I were to write some beautiful and useful code in Spin. Then that code get's transpiled into C. And comes out looking like some ball of wool the cat has been playing with for a week. A train wreck.

    Now, that C code gets published and distributed and ends up in all kind of C libraries.

    C, being a more widely known and popular language than Spin, gets exposed to a much bigger audience. So far so good except....

    What if that train wreck of C code still has my name on in?

    Now it looks like I am the author of really messy horrible code. My reputation is in ruins. What to do? :

    1) Ask the people who transpile the code to remove all attribution to me.

    2) Make sure the code is not available for transpilation. Remove it from public view.

    Personally I would not worry about such things. After all, by placing my code in OBEX I have put a BSD license on it , which allows such use. Besides, most people might say my code looks like a train wreck before it's transpiled to anything.

    I have no idea if this is the issue at hand. Just thinking things around a bit.




    I guess you can't win then. You'd like to give credit where credit is due and add a comment saying something like "based on code by JonnyMac" but then you get dinged for that. The alternative is to steal the code with no attribution. That is usually frowned on as well. Also, no matter how well code is written, it might be viewed as "a train wreck" by someone who doesn't like the target language. It's a no win situation.

  • Dave HeinDave Hein Posts: 6,347
    I still cannot figure out what caused Jon to react the way he did. Perhaps it had to do with the interest in the C version of the driver rather than the Spin version that he wrote. He seem to attack the quality of the C version calling it a "train wreck". From his comment I assumed that the C version must have been the raw output of spin2cpp. However, I looked at the C version later on, and it looks as clean as the Spin version. It appears that it was translated from Spin to C manually, and it's just as readable as the Spin version is.

    In my opinion, Jon's attack of the C code was completely unwarranted. David Betz's response was not out of bounds. I probably would have commented more harshly if someone would have described my code the way Jon described David's code.

    We may never know what ticked Jon off. Jon instigated the attack, and then could not handle the comments that were directed toward him. And then he removed his OBEX entries. It seems like Jon is the one that should be apologizing.
  • DavidZemonDavidZemon Posts: 2,973
    Jon asked for any attribution to be removed at the very top of this post.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    So, perhaps I was on to something.

    Man that was ages ago. Surely any attribution problem could have been resolved nicely in all that time.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    Heater. wrote: »
    So, perhaps I was on to something.

    Man that was ages ago. Surely any attribution problem could have been resolved nicely in all that time.
    If anyone actually knew about that request. Maybe that should be in his license text in the files themselves?

  • rjo__rjo__ Posts: 2,114
    I'm a big JonnyMac fan. I've been reading over it all. I didn't see the thread that David is talking about, but it doesn't matter. I I think it is something else.

    I don't think it is personal, and I don't think it has anything to do with the forum.

    The fact that JonnyMac hasn't commented is consistent with my view of it all.

    I think we should take a lead from JonnyMac. Let it go for now, and see if things get sorted out over the next month or so.







  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2017-08-02 20:41
    Problem is, when you put stuff into OBEX you have to put whatever license the OBEX requires on it. MIT if I remember correctly. You cannot go adding your own terms and conditions.

    If you later realize that the OBEX license does not work for you the only thing to do is remove everything.

    Of course by then it may be too late if people have been downloading things already.


    Edit: Changed BSD to MIT.
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    Heater. wrote: »
    Problem is, when you put stuff into OBEX you have to put whatever license the OBEX requires on it. BSD if I remember correctly. You cannot go adding your own terms and conditions.

    If you later realize that the OBEX license does not work for you the only thing to do is remove everything.

    Of course by then it may be too late if people have been downloading things already.
    I would think that a license that is more lenient than the BSD license would also be acceptable to Parallax.

  • JasonDorieJasonDorie Posts: 1,930
    Damn - I read the thread, and Jon's response was downright childish. "I'm taking my ball and going home."

    I'd guess it's a combination of things - the forums have splintered into a bunch of different languages and tools (Blockly, C/C++, Spin, Forth, PropWare, P2, ...) so it's a little less useful for someone with a relatively singular focus. The overall forum activity has fallen off as well with many of the regular contributors from JM's time having left (Beau, Bean, TimSweit, OldBit, many others). He's written a bunch of stuff and gets asked a lot of questions, so maybe he's tired of it. He may have been looking for an excuse to leave, and he's from Hollywood, so a little theatrical flourish fits.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2017-08-02 20:43
    What license is more lenient that the MIT license?

    "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
    of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
    in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
    to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
    copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
    furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

    The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
    copies or substantial portions of the Software.

    THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
    IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
    FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
    AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
    LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
    OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
    SOFTWARE."
  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    Heater. wrote: »
    What license is more lenient that the MIT license?
    One that says you can do what you want with the code without any attribution required or even allowed. That seems only a little more restrictive than public domain. I think code that is really in the public domain would not disallow even curtesy attribution.

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    It is almost impossible for one to put any published work into the public domain. First you have to die and then the copyright term will expire eventually. Or you have to be a government.

    That is why licenses like BST, MIT, GPL, LGPL, etc exist. They are a way of using copyright law to enforce the "public domain like" release you actually want.

    Neither the BSD or MIT licenses (sorry I got them confused above, now fixed) require attribution.

    Disallowing attribution would be an interesting license condition. It's basically less lenient in that anyone acquiring the work now has to remember not to say where it originated from or was derived from. I.e. censorship.


  • David BetzDavid Betz Posts: 14,516
    I wonder if JonnyMac took all of his code out of OBEX a long time ago when the requirement for using the MIT license was put into place? Maybe it wasn't a recent move.
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