Hudson, Oracle and Jenkins: what was it?

Many have heard that Hudson and Oracle had some kind of disagreement. Less widely spread the news that on the 29th of Hudson was completely renamed Jenkins. Under the cut you can read my synopsis translation of an explanatory article by one of the main developers of Jenkins and a summary of the events that happened after its writing.

• 06/06/02 : In light of major infrastructure issues with Java.net, the development community is discussing alternatives , including SourceForge, Google Code, Kenai, Berlios, GitHub, and so on. Some key components, such as issues.hudson-ci.org , are moving from Java.net. Discussions about moving the repository from Java.net to another place like GitHub pop up almost every four months, usually after serious problems with the availability or reliability of Java.net.
• 11/11/2011 : The mailing lists are discussing about adding Winston Prakash , a developer from Oracle, to the owners of the Java.net project (before that there was only one owner - Kosuke Kawaguchi Kohsuke Kawaguchi , founder and lead developer of Hudson). Winston mentioned that his request was the idea of ​​the management of Oracle, as they believe that he should be co-owner of the project. During the discussion, the developers decided that this was quite acceptable, and, as a good gesture from the community towards Oracle, gave Winston co-ownership rights
• 2010.11.17 : At the suggestion of Andrew Bayer ( Andrew of Bayer ), one of the contributors to the kernel mailing lists move from unstable at the time Java.net on Google Groups.
• 11.11.19 : Hudson migration is scheduled for the same time as Glassfish, but none of the project owners know about it due to a technical error
• 2010.11.22 : Shortly after midnight, developers notice that SVN is not available; followed by the mailing lists. Hudson's Java.net project is starting to migrate to a new infrastructure (formerly known as “Kenai”). A group of key members of the Hudson community are trying to expedite the move to Google Groups on this blog , and via twitter .
• 2010.11.23 : Frustrated by the fact that the repository is blocked (and the kernel has about 3-8 commits per day, not to mention more than 300 plugins), Kokhsuk in the new mailing list suggests moving to GitHub. Most developers support this idea.
• 2010.11.27 : Andrew Bayer draws up an official proposal to move to GitHub and sets a deadline for filing objections next Tuesday (2010.11.30)

And on Monday, Ted Farrell ( by Ted Farrell ) sends a message to the mailing list, in which he expressed his concern about the current situation:

Oracle's goal is to expand the community and make Hudson stronger. You may not be well informed, but the Hudson user base is very large, far more than you can see on the mailing lists or on the forums. What is sad is how many of these users do not contribute ( to the core, I don’t know how they say it in Russian ) to the core, and do not participate in discussions. They want this, they just don’t think they will be heard. And we want to be heard. We need to make the Hudson community such a place that anyone who wants to can come and participate. In the coming weeks we will announce some innovations that should contribute to this.

But now we will stay on java.net. We are sure that it is important for Hudson to stay close to the rest of the java community, as well as to use many cool features that will be available soon on java.net. You can also use GIT on java.net, moving to github for this is not necessary at all.

...

Since the project is open, we cannot stop anyone from forking out of it. However, we own the trademark, so you cannot use the name outside the main community. We purchased this with Sun. We hope everyone who is working on Hudson will do exactly what they say they want and continue to work with us, making Hudson stronger.

(Ted’s letter is quite long, you can read it all here )

As one would expect, Ted’s response was met with mixed emotions, ranging from misunderstandings to disappointment.

Nigel Magney ( by Nigel Magnay ), contributor Git plugin for Hudson, tried very briefly to explain the advantages of Github:

Just git support = git support on github. They work hard to provide communities with the best development tools, and I doubt that kenai can not only overtake, but at least catch up with them.

...

I don’t understand anything.

What do you ban the Hudson dev community?

TE: Are you saying that being the owners of the Hudson name, you forbid the community (for yourself) to choose which infrastructure (bug tracker, wiki) to move to? And repositories, too, can not be chosen?

So far, developers have actively voted for switching to google groups for mail, to github for version control, and to their own site for bug tracker and information.

Ted's answer contained one of the most important sayings for the entire discussion:

Nigel, I just want to say that I believe that the final decision about what to do regarding the infrastructure belongs to Oracle, and the decision should be made based on the wishes of the community.

For a while, it went swirling of the event, and then, on January 11, Andrew has publicly proposed to rename the project, and finally moved to the Oracle server. A vote was held , as a result of which 214 people voted for the renaming and 14 for maintaining the status quo.

On January 29, they registered the jenkins-ci.org domain and began to rename groups, Twitter accounts, and so on.

The initial management board will consist of Andrew Bayer, Kokhsuke and, if Oracle and he himself, Winston. If Winston does not want or cannot, they will choose another person from the community.

We can wait for further developments, although most are already behind.