There's been an ongoing kerfuffle over the .NET Foundation these past few days, and if this is the first time you've heard of the .NET Foundation in a while, or at all, you're not alone. I think that's precisely part of the problem: it hasn't made a great case for itself on what it's good for.
This seems to be one of the better summaries of what's going on:
[A] lapsed maintainer forced their pull request into a project without following process and over the explicit objections of a current maintainer. That lapsed maintainer is also the executive director of the .NET Foundation, the open source umbrella organization that the project is a member of. After forcing her changes in, the lapsed maintainer cited the foundation's goals as the justification for the PR.
Discussions revolve around topics such as:
- why wasn't this (of various values of "this") communicated better?
- what are the benefits and downsides of moving a project to the foundation?
- will changed leadership improve on this, or is the concept fundamentally flawed?
I still have a hard time figuring out what the exact story here is.
Various pieces come from Rodney Littles II and Glenn Watson (both of whom heavily involved in the long-running ReactiveUI project), as well as Rob Mensching (of the even-longer-running WiX project).
Then there's an apology from Claire Novotny, who's also the aforementioned "lapsed maintainer".
The story is perhaps interesting more in its larger context of: how do you foster an active OSS community for your ecosystem? How do OSS maintainers feel legally and financially safe and valued?
(Not like this, perhaps.)
Kaleidoscope, a Mac app for comparing files, has reached 3.0.
This follows an acquisition (and dev team change) earlier this year, after the product seemed dead in the water for a while.
They've bumped the price from $69.99 to $149.99, with the old $69.99 now serving as the upgrade price. It's the Mac Pro effect: if your market is small and shrinking, you can either give up or offer a high-priced product for the relatively few who are still interested.
Kaleidoscope always struck me as designed with a lot of love, but also hard to find a market for.
I imagine that this is a tricky app to sell because, even though it’s great, parts of its functionality are available in tools that developers already have: BBEdit, Tower, Xcode, FileMerge. And in most cases I compare files using those apps because I’m already in them. But sometimes I need more power or want more convenience for a certain workflow, and then I’m really glad that I have Kaleidoscope.
IDEs, versioning tools, etc. tend to already include this, leaving a stand-alone app as useful only for more niche scenarios.
Israel is seeing a significant reduction in death rate among those who have had a third COVID-19 shot. Maybe that's only for now, and it'll wear off the same way?