Loading…
[Discussion/Not-A-Bug] ownership transfer #1153
23 participants
gorhill & Deathamns simply pulled it, without any single explanation.
Also, it looks like donations are finally sought; maybe with them, uBlock for Firefox could start auto-updating from Aljoudi's server when AMO is too slow.
The annoying thing is that a separate Chrome Web Store entry was made, so uBlock won't auto-update to 0.9.3.0
@lewisje indeed, I plan to move the Firefox port over to use my server soon.
@lewisje I apologize for the inconvenience regarding the Chrome Web Store — I'm aware.
It was gorhill's decision not to transfer the web store extension entry.
@chrisaljoudi Good idea.
.. and I might be a little rude thinking, but all non-issues posted, related to 3rd party lists ? Close Em !
chrisaljoudi
changed the title from Why was chrisaljoudi's fork made into the primary repository? to [Discussion/Not-A-Bug] ownership transfer
Will something similar happen to uMatrix?
@lewisje I don't know whether gorhill will continue to maintain uMatrix, but I certainly can't take on uMatrix development at this point anyway (I have to have enough time to earn money for food, etc.).
@Betsy25 yep, a cleanup of issues is soon to be underway.
While I don't have a problem with supporting developers. This quick transition to accepting donations is a little suspicious. I'm sure there is a logical explanation for all this, but it sure is strange. Can we get a comment on the future of this project?
@d48e2b388911 uBlock will always be free and open-source. Always.
Since I became the Safari maintainer, I've always accepted donations (because I have to do my own hosting for the update manifests and serving all the updates — and that costs money).
gorhill decided to transfer ownership — the reason is not known to me.
Since that happened — in addition to the fact that I'm about to start serving uBlock for Firefox from my server — the links to donate are now visible on the main project page, as well.
Why did you add lots of donate button almost everywhere?
On the other hand, you said on your website that "MADE WITH LOVE AND CARE BY CHRIS.". As you know this not NOT true
Why did you add lots of donate button almost everywhere?
The changes are in progress. I'm sorry things aren't perfect — it's only been a few hours since the ownership transfer, and I'm working as hard as I can to make sure things are smooth.
I've cleaned up some of the extraneous donation buttons.
Your patience is appreciated.
It would be nice if we stop accusing/abusing devs in here. I know changes were sudden and without explanation, but as I far as I know, @chrisaljoudi is not to blame, he just accepted the transfer @gorhill proposed.
As a matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me if @gorhill dropped the project because he was too tired of dealing with people demanding/arguing over their favorite features (I know I would).
Hopefully we will have more info soon. In the meantime people, remember these guys are doing all the development for free.
@alejandrolemus wins this thread.
Without any kind of explanation from @gorhill given, I'm kind of suspecting an April Fools joke here
Let's not scream at the new dev until he's had more than 20 minutes to actually get everything changed over. If it's like almost any other open-source project, It's hardly likely people are going to start suddenly plowing money into it regardless.
"Joke" would imply it's funny.
@spaghetti2514 I thought about that, too (in fact, I was quite stressed because I couldn't figure out whether it was serious or not) — but I don't know.
Transferring the repository ownership is pretty drastic, I'd say, but still.
Transferring the repository ownership is pretty drastic, I'd say, but still.
Well I'm sure gorhill trusts you plenty enough for that, and the joke prank wouldn't seem real with anything less
@spaghetti2514 yep. We'll find out soon-enough, I guess.
I'm guessing gorhill was overwhelmed by the massive increase in issues due to more browsers being supported so he's making sure that he only gets the Chrome issues with his own page.
Unfortunately this is no April fools, people.
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/ublock-a-lean-and-fast-blocker.365273/page-33#post-2476324
Will the Firefox version be dropped from AMO? Simply signed and updated off-site, is that the idea?
@kintpuash I don't have control over the AMO entry (I believe @Deathamns does).
But yes, the idea is to sign it and update it off-site (just like Safari) so everyone gets the updates quite quickly.
@chrisaljoudi Deathamns appears to have remove his account from uBlock on AMO. Only gorhill remains.
I'm puzzled why the other devs wouldn't at least create a smooth transition. Thanks for hanging in there btw.
@chrisaljoudi Sounds solid but I'm also for concurrently mirroring it on AMO for discoverability purposes.
@procrastinator7 @chrisaljoudi
My reading of AMO guidelines, an extension hosted on AMO cannot independently update code? Should also continue to use the same identifier.
I've never commented or contributed to uBlock before - but I've used software gorhill has made for a while now. It's really sad to see him move on, and I really appreciate everything he's done.
@kintpuash I wasn't aware of that. Too bad.
Thank you for the continued dedication, @chrisaljoudi.
Raymond has added @AlexVallat as a developer over at AMO after he requested of him to take it over. I hope there won't be two separate Firfox project as well, so I hope you can find some common ground, @chrisaljoudi.
Anyway, in the midst of all this chaos, I wish to sincerely thank you for your willingness to continue with this project after its inventor and lead developer chose to leave.
I want to thank @gorhill for creating this amazing addon and making it what it is, its sad to see you leave. The amount of hate and toxiticity this altruistic project has gained from some people is despicable, I understand that with the additional popularity gained from the Firefox crowd etc it has become too burdensome to maintain. Its unthankful work which some people take for granted with arrogance.
I'm just happy to see that ublock isnt dying and seems to be in good hands. Thanks to @AlexVallat as well for the willingness to pick up the Firefox version at AMO, as you seem to be knowledgeable of the Firefox addon ecosystem. I just hope the Firefox version wont stagnate due to all this, there are some of us who are immensely thankful, even though it always wouldnt seem like it.
Cheers, and thank you all for your hard work.
Well Said! Cant say it better!
Here's to hope the word gets out and we'll see some new interested contributors to help the project stay afloat. 
@gitarra The project will stay afloat. Promise. :)
The way gorhill was so adamant about removing himself from the project makes me wonder of it wasn't for legal reasons. He mentioned possibly releasing his own version. I hope he isn't intending to complete with a closed-source alternative. That would explain his secrecy on the change as well.
@hackel
afaik gorhill never wanted the project to become a monetary thing in the first place, nor was there any legal reason, so no, nothing of all that, I guess he just wanted to make this extension his (fantastic) puppy, spending time programming (in which he's superior), he just got tired of the enormous amount of "issues" being posted not related to the extension but rather about 3rd party lists and other non-issues, I guess it takes a whole crew of knowledged programmers in order to keep improving an extention which should run on all known flavors of all known browsers, simply impossible on your own, let alone, also replying and helping in countless "issue" tickets every single day.
Perfectly understandable. If he would have been threatened from anybody related to a commercial/concurrent tool, he wouldn't keep his extension for Chrome only either.
From https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#about:
Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought.
And to quote gorhill's probably reason for leaving from the WildersSecurity forum, though he never gave any specific reason when he requested to be removed as a collaborator:
The more you give, the more many act as if you owed them even more. This is what ground me down in the long run. If the project has any intrinsic value, it will survive. The move was a huge relief for me. I have been postponing this for long now, thinking things might improve. They did not, from my point of view.
@hackel All he's done is fork this git with "issues" disabled. It's still GPL
I consider uBlock here to be feature-complete. I will keep maintaining the project here though so as to ensure it works just fine. If I add anything new, it will be because I decide to do so, for my own coding pleasure, as I do not accept any feature requests.
^ that states his opinion also.
I guess I will comment here instead of submitting another issue.
@chrisaljoudi, why not creating a uBlock github organization with a few core developers like you, @AlexVallat and a few others? This would ensure that this mess doesn't come back when someone wants to get out.
I'm seriously suggesting for a name change. On the Chrone web store, many folks won't know why there are two extensions with the same name, and which of the two they should be using: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/ublock
Many won't be scouring on GitHub issues anytime soon to find out.
This is a fantastic extension, and @gorhill has done an amazing job. With the recent events that has happened, this fork, now spearheaded by @chrisaljoudi, cannot move forward in development and grow without an identity/name change.
Just pick any name.
Maybe pick your next favourite SI prefix other than micro-: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix#List_of_SI_prefixes
My suggestion: mblock / macroblock
Also, I like @asantos3's suggestion on creating a GitHub org.
I agree with the last three of you @asantos3, @Dashed, @dandv
An GitHub organization would avoid such problems in the future, both for the users and developers involved and using this software.
As for the name, nano is a popular prefix. But uBlock+ or uBlock Plus are also options someone is gonna use in some fork, as there are already some old forks.
I suggest vBlock, as it (Nv) is the next letter in the Greek alphabet after Mu.
I wouldn't recommend uBlock+ / uBlock Plus as it first of all copies Adblock Plus and second it is kinda uncool for gorhill, as it leaves the impression chris' uBlock is superior.
I vote for vBlock.
Edit: Actually, gorhill is changing his uBlock: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock "uBlock₀" (uBlock origin)
We already got NoScript, why not YesBlock?
Because I had nothing better to do; Here is my first attempt at a "vBlock" logo. I'll work on it some more if @chrisaljoudi is interested.
Thanks to @chrisaljoudi and of course to @gorhill for all their hard work. It is very much appreciated by the majority of users, I am sure.
I am not at all bothered by donation requests and suspect most reasonable people are not. A few people feel so entitled that other people should work for them for free without so much as being able to request a donation! Hello -- if that's how you feel, go make your own software and stop complaining!
I don't know why @gorhill transferred uBlock but I will probably continue to use his version, while installing the present versions for my other browsers.
I don't know whether this is temporary, but in case it isn't, most of the links to GitHub issues are broken now (just change
/gorhill/to/chrisaljoudi/to load the issue links again).