[PD] Is Cyclone forking? What's the current version and official goal? Who's the "owner"? How can I collaborate?

Alexandre Torres Porres porres at gmail.com
Thu Feb 18 07:41:21 CET 2016


Howdy, I'm interested in collaborating to cyclone by coding and inserting
new cloned objects. This makes me ask a few questions, but first, here's a
little history/research about cyclone.

=================
Cyclone history so far:

Original project is authored by K. Czaja (copy of original project
http://fjkraan.home.xs4all.nl/digaud/puredata/cyclone/cyclone_site/cyclone.html).
Somehow author abandoned it in Pd extended and Hans was maintaining it
until Extended was abandoned on its own. About a year ago, Fred Jan asked
permission to this list to work on improving the help files of cyclone, and
also help with some existing issues and making it widely buildly available
(here's the thread:
http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2014-12/108580.html). Since
then, I helped a lot reporting bugs and a newer version was being
maintained by Fred (0.1 alpha 57).

Recently I suggested a list of objects to be included in cyclone and ran
across a pd-cyclone github from Fred (
https://github.com/electrickery/pd-cyclone), I now realize it's a 'fork' -
as its README.md says "*pd-cyclone is a 'fork' of the
https://git.puredata.info/cgit/svn2git/libraries/miXed.git/
<https://git.puredata.info/cgit/svn2git/libraries/miXed.git/> migrated
repository*". I checked now that this original source is authored by *IOhannes
m zmölnig.* Then I realized there are 2 cyclone versions in Deken, one
uploaded by IOhannes, in respect to his authored github, and another one by
Fred and according to his fork.

Here's the oficial cyclone page in the pd site: <
https://puredata.info/downloads/cyclone>. Original project description from
K. Czaja is present until the "unreleased" version alpha 57! The deken
package from IOhannes is named as "cyclone-v0-0extended", and I was able to
determine it's 0.1 alpha 56. The other version in deken is from Fred's
github fork, it has a distinct project description than the originals and
it's a whole new versioning state named as "0.2beta1" not described in the
puredata.info at all, but made available for download under Fred's member
page (https://puredata.info/Members/fjkraan).

===================

Questions:

*- Is cyclone forking? What's the current version and official goal?*

Fred has a fork from another existing cyclone version (0.1 alpha 56), with
a different and newly written project description, not described in <
https://puredata.info/downloads/cyclone> and with a new versioning name
(0.2beta1). Is this a "fork" of the project? in what sense? Will we have
the same project with different descriptions? Which would be the
"official/original" then? And how are the maintenance of both progress?

*- Ownership?*

Cyclone is an old project that has been abandoned, but was kept alive as
originally described through 3 different stages: a) original author (K.
Caza) b) extended era (hans) c) post extended (IOhannes?). When Fred was
asking how he could collaborate and work on the code, he contacted hans,
who only had to say that in a message to this list was "*If you want to
stick to cyclone's central goal of Max/MSP compatibility, then keep working
on it as cyclone. But please do not work on cyclone and break the Max/MSP
compatibility.*"

Here's my common sense, tell me if I'm wrong, please. Cyclone has no
"ownership", there's just a Pd community still holding on to it after being
abandoned from the original author with different maintainers. Pd is an
open source project and has a democratic community. Anyone can collaborate
to the open source project of cyclone as long as it keeps its holy and
central goal: *Max/MSP compatibility. *Project is open to different and
numerous maintainers, coders, testers and everything.

If anyone is changing the original description of the project by either
restricting it (such as saying "it should not include new objects", or "it
should not keep up with new improvements from newer versions in Max"),
expanding it (it should contain also clones from SuperCollider) or just
changing it completely (it's now a military project against ISIS) is kinda
taking control of the project and changing its scope as the owner. I don't
think I or anyone could do that - unless it's a fork...

If the project has only one maintainer, who can only do so much and commit
to a particular set of tasks, this does not mean other can't join and
collaborate/help with the maintenance and progress.

Am I way off?

*- Future of Cyclone? How can I collaborate?*

Original description of cyclone is old, from Max 4.6 era, it was described
as "at early stage" and aimed to being able to increase Max/Msp
Compatibility and "even more ambitions". It never described the intention
of being fixed to an outdated and arbitrary Max version. We could maybe
update the project description or not (I don't really care). One way or
another, description/scope changes should be openly discussed with the
community. I just strongly believe that it can include new objects and
functionalities without hurting the central Goal of compatibility and I
have 10 new objects in the oven that I'd like to share. How can I
collaborate then, and where do I send this code to? How can I help
maintaining it?

Thanks
cheers
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