Lunatic is an Erlang-inspired runtime for WebAssembly(lunatic.solutions)
lunatic.solutions
Lunatic is an Erlang-inspired runtime for WebAssembly
https://lunatic.solutions/
101 comments
Wow! I really like this project. I have been loving actor systems, and your project brings a lot of interesting concepts together.
I do not have much of anything to say, but I did come up with an idea. One thing that Fuchsia (operating system) does is that parents are able to lock down the permissions when spawning childs. For example, if a child is spawned with no I/O permissions, that child will have all those permissions removed, and any child that spawns from that will have the same restraints.
Could Lunatic support something like this on the far future?
EDIT: I just read the FAQ and looks to be heading that way. Awesome.
I do not have much of anything to say, but I did come up with an idea. One thing that Fuchsia (operating system) does is that parents are able to lock down the permissions when spawning childs. For example, if a child is spawned with no I/O permissions, that child will have all those permissions removed, and any child that spawns from that will have the same restraints.
Could Lunatic support something like this on the far future?
EDIT: I just read the FAQ and looks to be heading that way. Awesome.
Thanks!
You can already do this in lunatic. For example, in the Rust library you can create a configuration (https://docs.rs/lunatic/latest/lunatic/struct.ProcessConfig....) with specific permissions (e.g. no i/o) and then use the spawn_config function to spawn children with it. Children will automatically inherit the configuration from their parents.
Lunatic is also a bit of a meta-system. We expose a lot of the vm stuff directly to the running wasm instances. So you can in a running wasm modules embed other modules or dynamically load them, then spawn processes from them. At the same time you can use the configurations to limit capabilities of this, potentially untrusted, modules.
You can already do this in lunatic. For example, in the Rust library you can create a configuration (https://docs.rs/lunatic/latest/lunatic/struct.ProcessConfig....) with specific permissions (e.g. no i/o) and then use the spawn_config function to spawn children with it. Children will automatically inherit the configuration from their parents.
Lunatic is also a bit of a meta-system. We expose a lot of the vm stuff directly to the running wasm instances. So you can in a running wasm modules embed other modules or dynamically load them, then spawn processes from them. At the same time you can use the configurations to limit capabilities of this, potentially untrusted, modules.
Neat. Good luck. I'll paste here the request I keep making again and again:
I want to teach something like Tailscale about my contacts, so they are allowed to communicate with my services (through their services).
Then I want to run an app inside a strong sanbox (maybe Lunatic?) that has capability-based APIs to do things kind of like ZeroMQ for sending messages TO THE CONTACTS. I don't want the API to look like a tcp/ip or udp connection. I want the app to think it's sending a message to a contact I've given it permission to talk to, via some interface that Lunatic itself provides.
If this was running in a strong sandbox, I think this would be an awesome way to develop and use simple federated apps. If something like Mastodon existed on top of this, I'd think it would be really secure and much easier to tell people to stand up their own node...
And I want the whole thing to feel like Sandstorm.io, in that self-updating way, with an app store... But Sandstorm.io is like an Oasis... I want a Federation. And I feel like a Rust-language-implemented WebAssembly sandbox that uses CONTACTS (not TCP) and Messaging, over something like Tailscale for connectivity and encryption, and then a Capability model for storing locally, or talking to a DB, or making external HTTP requests depending on the service, etc...
I want a WebAssembly thin client running on my phone... And a WebAssembly server running on my PC at home. And the server at home runs applets that THINK they're running on my phone (like XWindows, basically). Talking to other applets on my server, which talk to other applets on YOUR server, which talk to applets on your phone. I type a message on my phone, lots of Tailscale happens, and you see the message on your phone. And in my head, there's basically no boilerplate in the code I write. It just looks like Contacts and strongly-typed Messages.
That's the thing I keep wanting.
I want to teach something like Tailscale about my contacts, so they are allowed to communicate with my services (through their services).
Then I want to run an app inside a strong sanbox (maybe Lunatic?) that has capability-based APIs to do things kind of like ZeroMQ for sending messages TO THE CONTACTS. I don't want the API to look like a tcp/ip or udp connection. I want the app to think it's sending a message to a contact I've given it permission to talk to, via some interface that Lunatic itself provides.
If this was running in a strong sandbox, I think this would be an awesome way to develop and use simple federated apps. If something like Mastodon existed on top of this, I'd think it would be really secure and much easier to tell people to stand up their own node...
And I want the whole thing to feel like Sandstorm.io, in that self-updating way, with an app store... But Sandstorm.io is like an Oasis... I want a Federation. And I feel like a Rust-language-implemented WebAssembly sandbox that uses CONTACTS (not TCP) and Messaging, over something like Tailscale for connectivity and encryption, and then a Capability model for storing locally, or talking to a DB, or making external HTTP requests depending on the service, etc...
I want a WebAssembly thin client running on my phone... And a WebAssembly server running on my PC at home. And the server at home runs applets that THINK they're running on my phone (like XWindows, basically). Talking to other applets on my server, which talk to other applets on YOUR server, which talk to applets on your phone. I type a message on my phone, lots of Tailscale happens, and you see the message on your phone. And in my head, there's basically no boilerplate in the code I write. It just looks like Contacts and strongly-typed Messages.
That's the thing I keep wanting.
This is a very cool vision but it sounds like a lot of research, and they probably have many lower-hanging fruit to pick before that!
Ooh, LiveView pattern implementors! I have a question -- I've been tinkering with a custom Phoenix LV client in my 'shop time', so I wanted to ask: are you doing your diffs on a string-based representation, like they do in the internal Phoenix LV protocol? Or are you sending the DOM patches?
In the phx protocol, their diffs depend on having split the render into a tree of 'statics', 'dynamics', 'components', and on each change, that structure is patched, and needs to be recursively zipped to a string, parsed into a DOM, and patches computed against the previous DOM.
I've been playing with a new client as a way of understanding it, and it's definitely a certain amount of work! Fortunately computing 'what needs to change to reconcile 2 html-like DOMs' is a project that's been wrapped into libraries a few times in a few languages (phoenix relies on other people having done that too, via the 'morphdom' library in JS, and Dockyard recently open-sourced an ergonomic Rust library I'm using in my client).
So -- it's a lot of client work, but it optimizes for bandwidth. Cool.
But I've wondered if there could be any benefit to optimizing for granularity of patches, and simpler clients -- by sending 'just the patches', ie the list of DOM operations that cause the desired end state. My intuition is that the bandwidth 'cost' would be prohibitive, because the list of patches required to perform the morph could be quite large for a change that appears small in 'what string has changed' terms. (maybe harder to debug, too? lots of trade-offs)
I just don't have the energy to try it that way too, hehe, on the off chance that my intuition is off base and it'd actually help improve things (simpler clients, and maybe the bandwidth hit wouldn't be too bad?); it'd require deep server changes as well, when up until now I've only been writing a client. So I was curious what approach y'all are taking.
Prior/related art in the Rust space: I know there's a non-Phoenix liveview project, 'dioxus', with a generic DOM liveview implementation that several clients have been created for, by making a state machine that operates on that list of generated Patches; however I don't know what that one sends, whether DOM patches directly, or Phx-style diffs that need to go phxDiff -> zippedUpString -> dom -> morphPatches -> applyToDom.
In the phx protocol, their diffs depend on having split the render into a tree of 'statics', 'dynamics', 'components', and on each change, that structure is patched, and needs to be recursively zipped to a string, parsed into a DOM, and patches computed against the previous DOM.
I've been playing with a new client as a way of understanding it, and it's definitely a certain amount of work! Fortunately computing 'what needs to change to reconcile 2 html-like DOMs' is a project that's been wrapped into libraries a few times in a few languages (phoenix relies on other people having done that too, via the 'morphdom' library in JS, and Dockyard recently open-sourced an ergonomic Rust library I'm using in my client).
So -- it's a lot of client work, but it optimizes for bandwidth. Cool.
But I've wondered if there could be any benefit to optimizing for granularity of patches, and simpler clients -- by sending 'just the patches', ie the list of DOM operations that cause the desired end state. My intuition is that the bandwidth 'cost' would be prohibitive, because the list of patches required to perform the morph could be quite large for a change that appears small in 'what string has changed' terms. (maybe harder to debug, too? lots of trade-offs)
I just don't have the energy to try it that way too, hehe, on the off chance that my intuition is off base and it'd actually help improve things (simpler clients, and maybe the bandwidth hit wouldn't be too bad?); it'd require deep server changes as well, when up until now I've only been writing a client. So I was curious what approach y'all are taking.
Prior/related art in the Rust space: I know there's a non-Phoenix liveview project, 'dioxus', with a generic DOM liveview implementation that several clients have been created for, by making a state machine that operates on that list of generated Patches; however I don't know what that one sends, whether DOM patches directly, or Phx-style diffs that need to go phxDiff -> zippedUpString -> dom -> morphPatches -> applyToDom.
We take the Phoenix approach of splitting the DOM into static and dynamic parts. In fact, we even re-use the pheonix.js library on the frontend, so we just implement the backend part that speaks the same protocol as Phoenix.
I don't think that sending DOM patches directly would have a significant higher bandwidth cost, but it would have higher "implementation" cost for us. That's why we choose to just use an existing "battle tested" library.
I don't think that sending DOM patches directly would have a significant higher bandwidth cost, but it would have higher "implementation" cost for us. That's why we choose to just use an existing "battle tested" library.
Oh, hey that's great! So in your case, you're re-using the Phoenix client, and thus the Phoenix protocol lives on so as not to break that. Makes sense.
Thanks for the answer -- the current SDUI renaissance is a beautiful thing. Cheers :)
Didn't mean to distract from the main discussion either -- pre-emption is something that more people should want, I think, so y'all making it the default for WASM stuff feels super valuable. And surely the sandboxing is really valuable to some people too. (But day-to-day I probably won't use Lunatic, whereas LiveView-based SDUI is my current shop-time project).
Thanks for the answer -- the current SDUI renaissance is a beautiful thing. Cheers :)
Didn't mean to distract from the main discussion either -- pre-emption is something that more people should want, I think, so y'all making it the default for WASM stuff feels super valuable. And surely the sandboxing is really valuable to some people too. (But day-to-day I probably won't use Lunatic, whereas LiveView-based SDUI is my current shop-time project).
I have implemented a VDOM in Ruby which I use to send patches to the browser. It works really well.
I'm currently playing around with signals as in SolidJS. That would result in more granular updates, but it's not as easy to implement.
I'm currently playing around with signals as in SolidJS. That would result in more granular updates, but it's not as easy to implement.
Cool -- not to pry, but I'd be interested in looking at that if it's public somewhere! Could update my intuition.
Sure! https://github.com/mayu-live/framework
There's lots of things to do until it's useful for anything real, and some parts are quite messy, but I think it's a pretty good approach.
There's lots of things to do until it's useful for anything real, and some parts are quite messy, but I think it's a pretty good approach.
I'm curious about this part:
> This allows it to decide on a per process basis what syscalls are going to be forwarded to the operating systems.
1. Which system calls are being referred to here?
2. Does Lunatic follow WASI's capability-based filesystem access?
> This allows it to decide on a per process basis what syscalls are going to be forwarded to the operating systems.
1. Which system calls are being referred to here?
2. Does Lunatic follow WASI's capability-based filesystem access?
1. You can limit almost anything, file system usage (fopen, write, ...), networking i/o, how much memory can be used, message sending, the capability of spawning child processes, etc.
2. Yes
2. Yes
How are you going to implement hot reloading, or when can we expect it to be ready?
Hot reloading is always a pit tricky. The programming model needs to explicitly support it. In lunatic it will consist of 2 parts:
1. Stuff inside the vm that lets you keep the process id and message queue, but replaces the code running.
2. Higher level libraries that allows you to preserve state when the code is reloaded and potentially do state modification so that the newly loaded code can continue operating on the existing state.
This is fairly similar to how Erlang does it and I think it's a good approach for most use cases.
1. Stuff inside the vm that lets you keep the process id and message queue, but replaces the code running.
2. Higher level libraries that allows you to preserve state when the code is reloaded and potentially do state modification so that the newly loaded code can continue operating on the existing state.
This is fairly similar to how Erlang does it and I think it's a good approach for most use cases.
Has anyone written an OTP library on top of it?
We expose some OTP constructs in the lunatic Rust library directly, like supervisors (https://docs.rs/lunatic/0.12.1/lunatic/supervisor/trait.Supe...), gen_server (https://docs.rs/lunatic/0.12.1/lunatic/process/trait.Abstrac...) and others.
Interesting. A huge part of the Erlang value proposition is that the language and runtime are designed to complement each other, and both have significant constraints imposed by the language design.
Taking half of that equation, and supporting any language, feels like you’re missing a big part of the benefit.
Taking half of that equation, and supporting any language, feels like you’re missing a big part of the benefit.
I read the "Erlang inspired" more narrowly. Specifically, it's about supporting large numbers of efficient, isolated processes. So there's a single, well-understood concurrency primitive: the (lunatic) process.
Having written concurrent code in Erlang, C# and Python, I'd view above as a win. A big win. Concurrency decisions in Erlang are simple: if things need to run concurrently, spawn them in different processes. If they're sequential, put them in a function. That's it.
In C# and Python it's nowhere near as straightforward. Do you use OS processes? Threads? Async/Await? Each has different strengths; each also has significant weaknesses.
So: a new runtime that aims to bring Erlang's simple, powerful and scalable concurrency model to any language that targets WebAssembly is, at the very least, interesting. It doesn't need to have all the wider benefits of OTP, or the symbiosis of Erlang and the BEAM. (Though that's great too obviously).
Having written concurrent code in Erlang, C# and Python, I'd view above as a win. A big win. Concurrency decisions in Erlang are simple: if things need to run concurrently, spawn them in different processes. If they're sequential, put them in a function. That's it.
In C# and Python it's nowhere near as straightforward. Do you use OS processes? Threads? Async/Await? Each has different strengths; each also has significant weaknesses.
So: a new runtime that aims to bring Erlang's simple, powerful and scalable concurrency model to any language that targets WebAssembly is, at the very least, interesting. It doesn't need to have all the wider benefits of OTP, or the symbiosis of Erlang and the BEAM. (Though that's great too obviously).
Elixir, LFE, etc. seem to work fine for the people who enjoy them.
https://github.com/llaisdy/beam_languages
LFE is Virding's himself, and has been around for longer than Erlang has been popular: Robert Virding - LFE - a lisp flavour on the Erlang VM (Lambda Days 2016)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br2KY12LB2w
Edit: Implementing Languages on the BEAM - Robert Virding - London Erlang User Group
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm0mbQbc9Kc
https://github.com/llaisdy/beam_languages
LFE is Virding's himself, and has been around for longer than Erlang has been popular: Robert Virding - LFE - a lisp flavour on the Erlang VM (Lambda Days 2016)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br2KY12LB2w
Edit: Implementing Languages on the BEAM - Robert Virding - London Erlang User Group
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm0mbQbc9Kc
I think you're missing the point. All these languages are functional programming languages, have structural pattern matching and share the same types. The types of languages you can develop on the beam are very restrictive. For example, you'll never get Ruby or Java to work on the BEAM VM.
let's look at garbage collection.
How does tradition stop the world, Mark-and-sweep garbage collection work on the BEAM? it doesn't really.
Each process on the beam has its own garbage collection algo, because processes can't share memory, garbage collection on one process can happen without disrupting any other process.
https://www.erlang.org/doc/apps/erts/garbagecollection
let's look at garbage collection.
How does tradition stop the world, Mark-and-sweep garbage collection work on the BEAM? it doesn't really.
Each process on the beam has its own garbage collection algo, because processes can't share memory, garbage collection on one process can happen without disrupting any other process.
https://www.erlang.org/doc/apps/erts/garbagecollection
also given that it's Wasm GC performance/characteristics aren't grate so it's best suited for non GC language (for now, it's changing, also JIT doesn't work grate either as it's designed for AOT, through interpreted languages can work just fine and for such limitations wrt. how you can write GCs might be less of an problem).
> For example, you'll never get Ruby or Java to work on the BEAM VM
Uhm, several ways:
1. Bind the VM in as a C FFI artefact
2. Write your ruby or Java bytecode emulator to run on one Erlang process only. Since Java supports threads, each thread could live on a different process, any shared memory would live on an Ets table.
"never" is a strong word. The reason why people don't do it is that it's not worth it.
I believe riak embeds javascript in the erlang VM. You can imagine why that might be worth it.
Uhm, several ways:
1. Bind the VM in as a C FFI artefact
2. Write your ruby or Java bytecode emulator to run on one Erlang process only. Since Java supports threads, each thread could live on a different process, any shared memory would live on an Ets table.
"never" is a strong word. The reason why people don't do it is that it's not worth it.
I believe riak embeds javascript in the erlang VM. You can imagine why that might be worth it.
and then you have a a kernel panic and bring down the entire VM. That doesn't work and totally defeats the whole point of having a VM, 9 9s or reliability, etc. Having a bunch of FF/NIFs in C to get around the VM is really missing the point.
Yeah nice job eluding point #2
Then what's the point of the beam then? you can have the beam, but you can't have concurrency?
I *could* eat soup with a paper airplane, I'm really not understanding how any of this is viable solution to implementing something like ruby on the BEAM VM. What would the performance hit be for using ETS for all your state? You'd just be better off using MRI for Ruby.
I *could* eat soup with a paper airplane, I'm really not understanding how any of this is viable solution to implementing something like ruby on the BEAM VM. What would the performance hit be for using ETS for all your state? You'd just be better off using MRI for Ruby.
You're the one that suggested it, but I'll bite: you might want to embed say ruby in BEAM if you wanted to take advantage of hashicorp terraform. Perhaps you want to support middleware or a query system in another language but have the bulk of your architecture be BEAM. You might want to deduplicate internal libraries shared between teams. You might want to use a 3rd party library written in one of these langs. You might want to transition between lang X and a beam lang and what you need is to leakily expose BEAM modules using shim code as an intermediate. You might just be crazy and want to do weird shit for fun.
Why can't you have concurrency?
Those languages have the same semantics as Erlang in many important respects. For example, there are no mutable variables in any of those languages. They all have the same concurrency model, the same memory management etc.
Nothing stopping anyone from building mutability into an Erlang based language:
https://youtu.be/5EtV2JUU0Z4
https://youtu.be/5EtV2JUU0Z4
it does. values are immutable in the BEAM, not at language level.
The impact of bugs is minimized by compartmentalization. This is done from the lowest level where each data structure is separate and immutable [1]
But you can simulate mutability with stateful processes.
Directly from Joe Armstrong: https://joearms.github.io/published/2013-11-21-My-favorite-e...
[1] https://github.com/happi/theBeamBook/blob/3971e8e2d09e367670...
The impact of bugs is minimized by compartmentalization. This is done from the lowest level where each data structure is separate and immutable [1]
But you can simulate mutability with stateful processes.
Directly from Joe Armstrong: https://joearms.github.io/published/2013-11-21-My-favorite-e...
[1] https://github.com/happi/theBeamBook/blob/3971e8e2d09e367670...
How exactly is Erlang complimenting BEAM in a way that Elixir, for example, doesn’t?
The other languages that work with the BEAM are all roughly equivalent. I failed to be explicit, but as weatherlight indicated, languages like Ruby will never work on it.
But your argument is “supporting any language”. Lunatic isn’t supporting any language, the language has to be compatible with WebAssembly for all the reasons you and weatherlight stated.
Erlang/Elixir+BEAM is a tightly integrated ecosystem where the sensibilities of the language(s) and the sensibilities of the runtime mesh perfectly. Both language and runtime are highly opinionated, and their opinions are identical.
WASM is the opposite of opinionated. It was designed to be a compilation target for everything. Almost every language is working on supporting WASM, and that's exactly what WASM was intended for. Because Lunatic is built around WASM, it does support any language, because that's what WASM set out to do.
WASM is the opposite of opinionated. It was designed to be a compilation target for everything. Almost every language is working on supporting WASM, and that's exactly what WASM was intended for. Because Lunatic is built around WASM, it does support any language, because that's what WASM set out to do.
On the contrary, wasm is extremely opinionated for an assembly-level language. I mean, starting with the part where it literally doesn't have goto, and "almost every language" like C++, C#, or really anything else that has such a construct on language level has to rewrite it into (sometimes much less efficient) loops, conditionals, and/or duplicated code. Or we could talk about how code and data are strictly separated in memory, so no JIT and no language features that require it.
Not to be pedantic but Ruby has webassembly support, still won't work on the BEAM.
https://github.com/artichoke/artichoke
https://github.com/artichoke/artichoke
You’re correct, and it’s entirely possible that a language that targets WebAssembly must be designed in a way that makes this a useful addition to the ecosystem.
I just get skeptical when people try to retrofit an existing language/platform to act like FP in general, or Erlang in particular.
I just get skeptical when people try to retrofit an existing language/platform to act like FP in general, or Erlang in particular.
From the FAQ:
Each process has its own stack, heap, and even syscalls. If one process fails, it will not affect the rest of the system. This allows you to create very powerful and fault-tolerant abstraction.
This is also true for some other runtimes, but Lunatic goes one step further and makes it possible to use C bindings directly in your app without any fear. If the C code contains any security vulnerabilities or crashes, those issues will only affect the process currently executing the code. The only requirement is that the C code can be compiled to WebAssembly.
So as I understand it, an Erlang process can "crash" from an Erlang perspective and it's fine (and even encouraged!), but if it crashes from a system perspective (segfault or some such), it takes down all neighbouring processes as well - usually an issue when using foreign libraries.
With this set up, one of your erlang processes can segfault and it's fine?
I have to admit I'm not across using WASM as a general purpose backend.
Each process has its own stack, heap, and even syscalls. If one process fails, it will not affect the rest of the system. This allows you to create very powerful and fault-tolerant abstraction.
This is also true for some other runtimes, but Lunatic goes one step further and makes it possible to use C bindings directly in your app without any fear. If the C code contains any security vulnerabilities or crashes, those issues will only affect the process currently executing the code. The only requirement is that the C code can be compiled to WebAssembly.
So as I understand it, an Erlang process can "crash" from an Erlang perspective and it's fine (and even encouraged!), but if it crashes from a system perspective (segfault or some such), it takes down all neighbouring processes as well - usually an issue when using foreign libraries.
With this set up, one of your erlang processes can segfault and it's fine?
I have to admit I'm not across using WASM as a general purpose backend.
> but if it crashes from a system perspective (segfault or some such), it takes down all neighbouring processes as well
there are three different types of crashes in Erlang.
First there are processes `spawn`ed with the spawn primitive. If such a process crashes, there's no risk for any other process in the system, not even exceptions can bubble up (or be intercepted for that matter).
The second type is a linked process, a process whose faith has been linked to their children.
In that situation if a parent process dies, intuitively all the children processes die with it too.
If a child process dies, it brings down the parent too, and if the parent process is a child itself, recursively until the top Application process.
It sounds risky until you realize that this mechanism allows parent processes to intercept child processes dying and act accordingly (restart one, restart all, ignore it, etc.)
That's how supervision works in Erlang.
Finally, if a process crashes when running as NIF (Native Implemented Function) or, to put it simply, a native library written in C (or that can export the same C calling convention) injected into the VM, it can bring down the entire VM.
there are three different types of crashes in Erlang.
First there are processes `spawn`ed with the spawn primitive. If such a process crashes, there's no risk for any other process in the system, not even exceptions can bubble up (or be intercepted for that matter).
The second type is a linked process, a process whose faith has been linked to their children.
In that situation if a parent process dies, intuitively all the children processes die with it too.
If a child process dies, it brings down the parent too, and if the parent process is a child itself, recursively until the top Application process.
It sounds risky until you realize that this mechanism allows parent processes to intercept child processes dying and act accordingly (restart one, restart all, ignore it, etc.)
That's how supervision works in Erlang.
Finally, if a process crashes when running as NIF (Native Implemented Function) or, to put it simply, a native library written in C (or that can export the same C calling convention) injected into the VM, it can bring down the entire VM.
Idly dreaming here, without enough understanding to even know how much this makes sense in this context, of:
- Erlang-style concurrency (which I haven't tried so don't understand but hear good things about always)
- With "platform" level capability security...
- ... and language-level capability security
- But with a sound and expressive type system like F# or similar
- Oh, and garbage collection
- Erlang-style concurrency (which I haven't tried so don't understand but hear good things about always)
- With "platform" level capability security...
- ... and language-level capability security
- But with a sound and expressive type system like F# or similar
- Oh, and garbage collection
Damn, it Wasm runtimes week! haha (Wasmer first, then WasmEdge and now Lunatic!)
Good to see Lunatic here, they have been doing great work on their runtime. Props to Bernard and team :)
Good to see Lunatic here, they have been doing great work on their runtime. Props to Bernard and team :)
hang on, what part of the web assembly stack is this competing with exactly? I'm likely just very ignorant on how Web Assembly works but I don't understand exactly how it fits. Do browsers have pluggable hooks for interpreting web assembly that you can swap out for this or smth? Or are we talking about running WebAssembly on the server here?
My understanding is using web assembly isolation to execute arbitrary untrusted code in a different (non-browser) env
So like what node.js is to javascript in the browser? For whatever reason I had mistakenly thought that web-assembly was purely a front-end browser thing.
Yeah, this is one of many non-browser runtimes, e.g. see https://github.com/appcypher/awesome-wasm-runtimes
Lunatic is more opinionated than most of these or node, though, in that it's trying to emulate a particular concurrent system design pattern borrowed from Erlang/BEAM.
Lunatic is more opinionated than most of these or node, though, in that it's trying to emulate a particular concurrent system design pattern borrowed from Erlang/BEAM.
> mistakenly thought that web-assembly was purely a front-end browser thing
WASM has well defined boundaries and with WASI it adds some none browser APIs (but still sandboxed).
It's used a lot for:
- edge computing
- plugin systems (or sandboxing)
- easier cross platform code by targeting wasm (for code which is logically well-enough isolated you can compile it to wasm once end then just use it pretty much anywhere (web, app, desktop, server, edge, smarttv) reliable without having to worry about security or cross platform constraints.
- easier auto updating/ever green apps (e.g. I remember vaguely to have heard Disney+ does put all their core business logic into a wasm blob to for both easy cross platform and auto updating of some parts)
Lunatic doubles down one the server focused easy cross paltform + sandboxed aspects potentially deployed at the edge. But I also have seen people use a library wasm-runtime to embed a program written as stdin->dostuff->stdout CLI app into a go program without having to bother with cgo or cross platform support of the CLI app.
WASM has well defined boundaries and with WASI it adds some none browser APIs (but still sandboxed).
It's used a lot for:
- edge computing
- plugin systems (or sandboxing)
- easier cross platform code by targeting wasm (for code which is logically well-enough isolated you can compile it to wasm once end then just use it pretty much anywhere (web, app, desktop, server, edge, smarttv) reliable without having to worry about security or cross platform constraints.
- easier auto updating/ever green apps (e.g. I remember vaguely to have heard Disney+ does put all their core business logic into a wasm blob to for both easy cross platform and auto updating of some parts)
Lunatic doubles down one the server focused easy cross paltform + sandboxed aspects potentially deployed at the edge. But I also have seen people use a library wasm-runtime to embed a program written as stdin->dostuff->stdout CLI app into a go program without having to bother with cgo or cross platform support of the CLI app.
Does Lunatic have a starter / example project?
There's some things:
- https://github.com/lunatic-solutions/chat
- https://github.com/lunatic-solutions/submillisecond/tree/mai...
My apologies, I mean in terms of an AssemblyScript template / example project that takes advantage of https://github.com/lunatic-solutions/as-lunatic
If they need a theme song.
https://youtu.be/uqUa_G1h3pw
https://youtu.be/uqUa_G1h3pw
I wish they had called it something else. I hate to be that guy but you know, it's not that hard to be maybe just a little bit more thoughtful.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17997413
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17997413
The article you link to discusses "lunatic" being offensive when used in law in its original sense to refer to real people with real mental health problems. Whether that is offensive (and I think it probably is) is a completely different question from whether its modern, colloquial use is offensive.
The word dramatically declined in popularity through the 19th century but started climbing again after ~1995[0]. The recent increase in usage is driven entirely by a much milder, colloquial meaning of "wildly foolish"[1].
I think being offended because our great-grandparents used the word literally is a bit silly.
[0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lunatic&year_s...
[1] Meriam Webster identifies the older meaning as "dated": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lunatic
The word dramatically declined in popularity through the 19th century but started climbing again after ~1995[0]. The recent increase in usage is driven entirely by a much milder, colloquial meaning of "wildly foolish"[1].
I think being offended because our great-grandparents used the word literally is a bit silly.
[0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lunatic&year_s...
[1] Meriam Webster identifies the older meaning as "dated": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lunatic
The origin of the name comes from the fact that it started as a Lua project. In Lua (Portuguese for moon), everyone loves any "moon" related names or puns for their project. As such, "Lunatic" fits right in.
As someone who has family members with mental health issues, I don't find the term offensive at all.
I, for one, by default think more of someone who's obsessed with the moon, I guess it's because I never read that article, so I've never been told to be offended by it.
All that said, I do hope that the authors understand that they might be fighting an uphill battle with regards to adoption.
As someone who has family members with mental health issues, I don't find the term offensive at all.
I, for one, by default think more of someone who's obsessed with the moon, I guess it's because I never read that article, so I've never been told to be offended by it.
All that said, I do hope that the authors understand that they might be fighting an uphill battle with regards to adoption.
Everything is "offensive" these days - anyone can claim anything is "offensive", and because it's subjective, it's impossible to even be proven wrong.
The very word has lost all real meaning.
The very word has lost all real meaning.
> Everything is "offensive" these days
Spare us the BS. Society is very much able to form opinions on what is widely considered offensive and what is not.
Case in point: legal proceedings for libel, threats and so on. Turns out society still gives meaning to words.
> it's impossible to even be proven wrong
You've been proven wrong right now.
Spare us the BS. Society is very much able to form opinions on what is widely considered offensive and what is not.
Case in point: legal proceedings for libel, threats and so on. Turns out society still gives meaning to words.
> it's impossible to even be proven wrong
You've been proven wrong right now.
> Society is very much able to form opinions on what is widely considered offensive and what is not.
Except there isn't an agreed upon opinion, just a certain number of loud individuals trying to silence others, and everyone else who just quietly don't care.
> You've been proven wrong right now.
I was saying that it's impossible to prove that something isn't offensive. Please take your time to actually understand posts you read before posting angry comments.
Except there isn't an agreed upon opinion, just a certain number of loud individuals trying to silence others, and everyone else who just quietly don't care.
> You've been proven wrong right now.
I was saying that it's impossible to prove that something isn't offensive. Please take your time to actually understand posts you read before posting angry comments.
> Except there isn't an agreed upon opinion, just a certain number of loud individuals trying to silence others
Again you are trying to make a strawman, claiming that it's just some minority and you are so brave for standing up to them.
It isn't. Open a dictionary and you'll find a number of words clearly defined as offensive.
Language isn't just an opinion of few people.
> I was saying that it's impossible to prove that something isn't offensive. Please take your time to actually understand posts you read before posting angry comments.
Spare us the BS.
Again you are trying to make a strawman, claiming that it's just some minority and you are so brave for standing up to them.
It isn't. Open a dictionary and you'll find a number of words clearly defined as offensive.
Language isn't just an opinion of few people.
> I was saying that it's impossible to prove that something isn't offensive. Please take your time to actually understand posts you read before posting angry comments.
Spare us the BS.
> Again you are trying to make a strawman, claiming that it's just some minority
Are you implying that it's not? If so, do you have any reasoning to support that claim?
> Language isn't just an opinion of few people
Language is defined by how people use it. There is no central authority for the meaning, or level of offensiveness, of words.
> Spare us the BS.
Who's "us"? And what bullshit are you talking about exactly?
Your demeaning attitude is not appreciated.
Are you implying that it's not? If so, do you have any reasoning to support that claim?
> Language isn't just an opinion of few people
Language is defined by how people use it. There is no central authority for the meaning, or level of offensiveness, of words.
> Spare us the BS.
Who's "us"? And what bullshit are you talking about exactly?
Your demeaning attitude is not appreciated.
> Your demeaning attitude is not appreciated.
You are easily offended it seems.
You are easily offended it seems.
> You are easily offended it seems.
Spare us the bullshit.
Spare us the bullshit.
Someone on here recently asserted that ditching the colloquial use of "crazy" had significant mainstream support. I pushed back on people even noticing that it might be a problem, let alone actively choosing not to use it, being anything like a norm outside tiny niches of terminally-online Web users.
Sure enough, sensitized to it, I heard an NPR host and a Chipotle ad use it in the colloquial sense within the next week. And those are just the ones I noticed, and that were very-public rather than in private conversations.
This stuff's not mainstream and normal people don't care a bit. It's not even caught on in groups worried about impressing the word-police crowd (major advertisers and NPR both qualifying, I should think).
Sure enough, sensitized to it, I heard an NPR host and a Chipotle ad use it in the colloquial sense within the next week. And those are just the ones I noticed, and that were very-public rather than in private conversations.
This stuff's not mainstream and normal people don't care a bit. It's not even caught on in groups worried about impressing the word-police crowd (major advertisers and NPR both qualifying, I should think).
definition of "lunatic" - "a person who is mentally ill (not in technical use)."
I didn't say it was offensive. If it was called "autistic", the word is not offensive but... why? It's just a really strange choice.
I didn't say it was offensive. If it was called "autistic", the word is not offensive but... why? It's just a really strange choice.
> definition of "lunatic" - "a person who is mentally ill (not in technical use)."
Have you, your relatives or your friends ever used the phrases "are you insane?" and "are you out of your mind"? Were they being insesitive. Should you/they be more thoughtful how it would be perceived by other people, that you/they so casually use a very modern (and not 19th century) refernces to mental illness?
What about, I don't know, Insane Clown Posse who formed in 1989 and won Outstanding Hip-Hop Artist/Group at Detroit Music Awards? They probably need to re-think their name, too?
Looney Tunes? (Looney is the same as Lunatic) Or looking at some of the adjacent terms, perhaps Animaniacs?
The list just goes on. And on. And on. AND ON.
Have you, your relatives or your friends ever used the phrases "are you insane?" and "are you out of your mind"? Were they being insesitive. Should you/they be more thoughtful how it would be perceived by other people, that you/they so casually use a very modern (and not 19th century) refernces to mental illness?
What about, I don't know, Insane Clown Posse who formed in 1989 and won Outstanding Hip-Hop Artist/Group at Detroit Music Awards? They probably need to re-think their name, too?
Looney Tunes? (Looney is the same as Lunatic) Or looking at some of the adjacent terms, perhaps Animaniacs?
The list just goes on. And on. And on. AND ON.
> why? It's just a really strange choice.
I personally thought it was a witty name. Had a tiny mental chuckle when I read it.
Better question is, why not? If it's not offensive, then what is the reason you "wish they had called it something else"?
> It's just a really strange choice
Doesn't sound like a real criticism to me...
I personally thought it was a witty name. Had a tiny mental chuckle when I read it.
Better question is, why not? If it's not offensive, then what is the reason you "wish they had called it something else"?
> It's just a really strange choice
Doesn't sound like a real criticism to me...
Let's just put it this way, I'm not advertising in anything associated with my professional credibility that I use "lunatic", for the very obvious reason that it's possibly offensive to some people and that the word offers nothing to convey meaning. I don't have to find it personally offensive to not want to associate with it.
I can understand that as a heuristic.
On the other hand, there are other people who might apply a different heuristic and guess that a project named 'lunatic' is less likely to attract the sort of people who might take, for example, a code of conduct as a tool to beat other contributors about the head. (I'm not saying that's you!)
I guess there are "swings and roundabouts" and peoples' rules of thumb differ, which is perhaps diversity that's all to the good.
On the other hand, there are other people who might apply a different heuristic and guess that a project named 'lunatic' is less likely to attract the sort of people who might take, for example, a code of conduct as a tool to beat other contributors about the head. (I'm not saying that's you!)
I guess there are "swings and roundabouts" and peoples' rules of thumb differ, which is perhaps diversity that's all to the good.
I think brainf*k is a great example of a potentially offensive name that actually conveys meaning and doesn't harm adoption by its intended audience.
To me (without reading any of their stuff, I don't know if this is what they were shooting at), "lunatic" makes me think "high performance" and "this is a very difficult project with high payoff if we succeed, we're a little bit crazy (in a good way) to try, eh?".
Is it still that offensive? The linked article discusses a peak of the term around reform of 19th century "lunatic asylums" where the phrase was in common use and had dark connotations but aren't all those people dead now? Is the term still somehow problematic and if it is, doesn't that imply that words like "insane" have the same problem?
As far as I can tell, it's not offensive, and was never offensive. What can be offensive is using it as a term to refer to the mentally ill, especially in law - and it's really more antiquated than offensive even there. We have more specific and thoughtful terminology for varieties of mental illnesses now, that have nothing to do with the moon.
So if you have a law on the books governing how to treat lunatics, or how lunatics should be treated, it's a dumb old law because there's no official test for lunatic. It would be just as stupid if you had laws about the "wacky" or the "nuts."
The overwrought nature of the concern about seeing the word as the name of a piece of software is just a symptom of the current zeitgeist.
So if you have a law on the books governing how to treat lunatics, or how lunatics should be treated, it's a dumb old law because there's no official test for lunatic. It would be just as stupid if you had laws about the "wacky" or the "nuts."
The overwrought nature of the concern about seeing the word as the name of a piece of software is just a symptom of the current zeitgeist.
It's not offensive as much as it's kind of odd sounding, and would feel awkward pitching to someone else.
I mean, I had to think about it. Whether it's hugely offensive or not isn't necessarily the right question here. With the whole English language to pick from there are probably better choices that are less ambiguous.
I personally worry somewhat about social-censure. Here's [1] a talk that asks (among other things) if Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses would be published or even written today and I think that concern relates a little to our conversation. While its quite easy to see the argument for self/social censure (as usually someone is personally motivated to make it), I worry that the argument against it is much harder to see and has less organic advocates.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dhrlhm/the-reith-lec...
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dhrlhm/the-reith-lec...
> Whether it's hugely offensive or not isn't necessarily the right question here.
It is the right question. If a term once considered offensive no longer is one, and there's no one who gets offended by it, is it still offensive?
> With the whole English language to pick from there are probably better choices that are less ambiguous.
Given infinite time and finite language, every term will become offensive. What then? Especially considering the euphemism treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Lifespan
It is the right question. If a term once considered offensive no longer is one, and there's no one who gets offended by it, is it still offensive?
> With the whole English language to pick from there are probably better choices that are less ambiguous.
Given infinite time and finite language, every term will become offensive. What then? Especially considering the euphemism treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Lifespan
Luckily most projects won't be around for infinite time
It is not used in a context in which it is offensive. It’s just a name. Maybe they just like looking at the moon a lot.
This logic implies that one could name a project after an explicit slur and it being a project instead of a directed insult makes it no longer a slur. That doesn't track at all.
It does.
A few years back a non-native English speaker presented an Erlang library called `coon` because he like this abbreviation of the word `raccoon`. [1]
The shitstorm from Americans (US and Canada) was unbelievable. Even though:
- most people on the mailing list where this was discussed never heard it used as a slur
- people in the states where this word was purportedly still used as a slur never heard it used
- several black people (both African Americans IIRC and a guy from South Africa) said they had no problems with the name (and promptly ignored)
The name of the library was changed.
Now. The question is: who decides it is a slur especially in our global world? Somehow, increasingly, it's the white Americans who end up being offended on everyone's behalf.
See also: the performative activism around master/main branches in git.
[1] Actual reasons: the name was available: https://github.com/comtihon/enot/issues/59#issuecomment-3651...
A few years back a non-native English speaker presented an Erlang library called `coon` because he like this abbreviation of the word `raccoon`. [1]
The shitstorm from Americans (US and Canada) was unbelievable. Even though:
- most people on the mailing list where this was discussed never heard it used as a slur
- people in the states where this word was purportedly still used as a slur never heard it used
- several black people (both African Americans IIRC and a guy from South Africa) said they had no problems with the name (and promptly ignored)
The name of the library was changed.
Now. The question is: who decides it is a slur especially in our global world? Somehow, increasingly, it's the white Americans who end up being offended on everyone's behalf.
See also: the performative activism around master/main branches in git.
[1] Actual reasons: the name was available: https://github.com/comtihon/enot/issues/59#issuecomment-3651...
man, don't be ridiculous. 'coon' is objectively a long standing racist slur. That some people ("a guy from South Africa", ffs) claimed not to know this or notto have heard it personally doesn't make that untrue. I invite you to go to any black neighborhood in the US and chant 'coon' for as long as you can to determine just how performative the white americans are being. I'll take the short side of 30 seconds.
> coon' is objectively a long standing racist slur.
In the US. Not even the whole of the US, but in some parts of the US.
> That some people ("a guy from South Africa", ffs) claimed not to know this
I wonder who is being a racist now. "South Africa ffs" and "claim not to know".
The world is much larger than the US and is not required to view everything through US issues.
> I invite you to go to any black neighborhood in the US
So, to quote myself: "The question is: who decides it is a slur especially in our global world? Somehow, increasingly, it's the white Americans who end up being offended on everyone's behalf."
In the US. Not even the whole of the US, but in some parts of the US.
> That some people ("a guy from South Africa", ffs) claimed not to know this
I wonder who is being a racist now. "South Africa ffs" and "claim not to know".
The world is much larger than the US and is not required to view everything through US issues.
> I invite you to go to any black neighborhood in the US
So, to quote myself: "The question is: who decides it is a slur especially in our global world? Somehow, increasingly, it's the white Americans who end up being offended on everyone's behalf."
> So, to quote myself: "The question is: who decides it is a slur especially in our global world? Somehow, increasingly, it's the white Americans who end up being offended on everyone's behalf."
The black people on the receiving end of “coon” would be the decision makers in this case.
And besides that, during the googling process of figuring out if the name is taken the negative connotations of this one would come up.
Anyway I’m working on a new terminal string styling library that I’ve named Colored which should be of some interest to you.
The black people on the receiving end of “coon” would be the decision makers in this case.
And besides that, during the googling process of figuring out if the name is taken the negative connotations of this one would come up.
Anyway I’m working on a new terminal string styling library that I’ve named Colored which should be of some interest to you.
> The black people on the receiving end of “coon” would be the decision makers in this case.
The black people in the United States, specifically. To put this into perspective: 1.2 billion people live in Africa alone, most of them non-white.
> Anyway I’m working on a new terminal string styling library that I’ve named Colored which should be of some interest to you.
And what exactly is the negaive connotation here for 1.1 billion English speakers (out of 8.7 billion people) who don't live in the US?
Once again. To put this into perspective since you both are being maximally culturally and racially insensitive to anything that is not US, here's a perspective of an English-speaking person from South Africa (I only quote parts of the messages):
- http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2018-February/0...
--- staty quote ---
I think you just need to tolerate different cultures better. A word that is deemed racist in one culture isn't the same in another.
There are many other uses for coon. Maine Coon is a type of cat. Coon is type of cheese in Australia. Go on - tell all of Australia to stop eating coon.
Next you'll be telling me to rethink the use of the work 'monkey' or 'gorrilla' for a library. Where does it end?
--- end quote ---
- http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2018-February/0...
--- start quote ---
I grew up in apartheid South Africa. This was a system of government that legitimised racist laws... I've been mocked and called racial slurs, served last in queues, talked down to. Bad words over there are 'kaffir' and 'coolie'. They're highly offensive words and given the nature of violence in that country, it's something you could be killed over. For me those words carry more significance than 'coon' ever will.
...
When I moved to NZ it was quite clear that those same words that were insulting in South Africa didn't carry over. Both countries speak English but the cultures are different, although SA has more languages. I noticed that there's there is a product called 'kaffir lime' grocery stores everywhere. Imagine having 'n...ga lime' in American/Canadian grocery stores. I got used to it after a while and it really doesn't bother me anymore. Instead of shouting out about the use of the word 'kaffir' in their product, I understood that different countries use words differently, and expecting NZ to change for me to accommodate my sensitivities would have been stupid.
--- end quote ---
Now. Are you also going to dismiss this as "some guy from South Africa ffs"?
If the US were a person, literally everyone would tell them to get its shit together and go see a psychologist. And not make the world assume that all issues must be viewed strictly through skewed American view.
The black people in the United States, specifically. To put this into perspective: 1.2 billion people live in Africa alone, most of them non-white.
> Anyway I’m working on a new terminal string styling library that I’ve named Colored which should be of some interest to you.
And what exactly is the negaive connotation here for 1.1 billion English speakers (out of 8.7 billion people) who don't live in the US?
Once again. To put this into perspective since you both are being maximally culturally and racially insensitive to anything that is not US, here's a perspective of an English-speaking person from South Africa (I only quote parts of the messages):
- http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2018-February/0...
--- staty quote ---
I think you just need to tolerate different cultures better. A word that is deemed racist in one culture isn't the same in another.
There are many other uses for coon. Maine Coon is a type of cat. Coon is type of cheese in Australia. Go on - tell all of Australia to stop eating coon.
Next you'll be telling me to rethink the use of the work 'monkey' or 'gorrilla' for a library. Where does it end?
--- end quote ---
- http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2018-February/0...
--- start quote ---
I grew up in apartheid South Africa. This was a system of government that legitimised racist laws... I've been mocked and called racial slurs, served last in queues, talked down to. Bad words over there are 'kaffir' and 'coolie'. They're highly offensive words and given the nature of violence in that country, it's something you could be killed over. For me those words carry more significance than 'coon' ever will.
...
When I moved to NZ it was quite clear that those same words that were insulting in South Africa didn't carry over. Both countries speak English but the cultures are different, although SA has more languages. I noticed that there's there is a product called 'kaffir lime' grocery stores everywhere. Imagine having 'n...ga lime' in American/Canadian grocery stores. I got used to it after a while and it really doesn't bother me anymore. Instead of shouting out about the use of the word 'kaffir' in their product, I understood that different countries use words differently, and expecting NZ to change for me to accommodate my sensitivities would have been stupid.
--- end quote ---
Now. Are you also going to dismiss this as "some guy from South Africa ffs"?
If the US were a person, literally everyone would tell them to get its shit together and go see a psychologist. And not make the world assume that all issues must be viewed strictly through skewed American view.
> The black people in the United States, specifically
If Bubba goes on twitter and starts calling black people from Canada, Australia, Mozambique, or wherever "coon" they'll probably be offended by it once they figure out what it means.
> Now. Are you also going to dismiss this as "some guy from South Africa ffs"?
That wasn't me, so no i'm not. I'm not "being maximally culturally and racially insensitive to anything that is not US", I just answered your question with the simple and obvious truth. Honestly you're coming across as more of the "offended" type than the people asking for the name change in the first place.
And your quote isn't really helping you out. Comparing changing the name of a new software library to changing the name of a long standing physical product on shelves is dishonest when we could just do a simple apples to apples comparison.
If I consider a hypothetical situation where I named my project "Coolie" because I think it's a fun word and I used to like Coolio, then someone comes along and says hey that's pretty offensive to this subset of people on the other side of the globe for these reasons that will never affect you. I'd just change it. It would cost me nothing and probably net me some goodwill.
If Bubba goes on twitter and starts calling black people from Canada, Australia, Mozambique, or wherever "coon" they'll probably be offended by it once they figure out what it means.
> Now. Are you also going to dismiss this as "some guy from South Africa ffs"?
That wasn't me, so no i'm not. I'm not "being maximally culturally and racially insensitive to anything that is not US", I just answered your question with the simple and obvious truth. Honestly you're coming across as more of the "offended" type than the people asking for the name change in the first place.
And your quote isn't really helping you out. Comparing changing the name of a new software library to changing the name of a long standing physical product on shelves is dishonest when we could just do a simple apples to apples comparison.
If I consider a hypothetical situation where I named my project "Coolie" because I think it's a fun word and I used to like Coolio, then someone comes along and says hey that's pretty offensive to this subset of people on the other side of the globe for these reasons that will never affect you. I'd just change it. It would cost me nothing and probably net me some goodwill.
> they'll probably be offended by it once they figure out what it means.
If that person is from the States and/or uses the term specifically in the way it's used in the US.
And even then most might just shrug it away because the word doesn't bare any significant emotional or historical baggage. What's another idiot on the internet?
Meanwhile you keep forcing the US-centric view onto the world.
> I just answered your question with the simple and obvious truth.
Ah yes. The "obvious truth" apparently meaning "whatever is true for this specific US-centric view of US-specific issues and US_specific cultural baggage is the truth".
> Honestly you're coming across as more of the "offended" type than the people asking for the name change in the first place.
Yes. I'm offended by the US shoving its way of thinking down everyone's throats and expecting everyone to meekly comply because "it's the objective truth".
> And your quote isn't really helping you out. Comparing changing the name of a new software library to changing the name of a long standing physical product on shelves is dishonest
Of course what makes it dishonest is your monopoly on the truth, got it.
> If I consider a hypothetical situation where I named my project "Coolie"
You already said, I quote, "I’m working on a new terminal string styling library that I’ve named Colored which should be of some interest to you." which was probably supposed to evoke some kind of indignation from me.
I can only re-iterate: stop forcing your US cultural and societal issues onto the world.
> I'd just change it.
You? Maybe. As it actually turns out, Americans expect everyone else to conform to whatever they find offensive while never, or rarely, changing themselves. A great example: Pidora has been "actively seeking a new name" for the past 9 years, and counting https://wiki.cdot.senecacollege.ca/wiki/Pidora_Russian
If that person is from the States and/or uses the term specifically in the way it's used in the US.
And even then most might just shrug it away because the word doesn't bare any significant emotional or historical baggage. What's another idiot on the internet?
Meanwhile you keep forcing the US-centric view onto the world.
> I just answered your question with the simple and obvious truth.
Ah yes. The "obvious truth" apparently meaning "whatever is true for this specific US-centric view of US-specific issues and US_specific cultural baggage is the truth".
> Honestly you're coming across as more of the "offended" type than the people asking for the name change in the first place.
Yes. I'm offended by the US shoving its way of thinking down everyone's throats and expecting everyone to meekly comply because "it's the objective truth".
> And your quote isn't really helping you out. Comparing changing the name of a new software library to changing the name of a long standing physical product on shelves is dishonest
Of course what makes it dishonest is your monopoly on the truth, got it.
> If I consider a hypothetical situation where I named my project "Coolie"
You already said, I quote, "I’m working on a new terminal string styling library that I’ve named Colored which should be of some interest to you." which was probably supposed to evoke some kind of indignation from me.
I can only re-iterate: stop forcing your US cultural and societal issues onto the world.
> I'd just change it.
You? Maybe. As it actually turns out, Americans expect everyone else to conform to whatever they find offensive while never, or rarely, changing themselves. A great example: Pidora has been "actively seeking a new name" for the past 9 years, and counting https://wiki.cdot.senecacollege.ca/wiki/Pidora_Russian
> Meanwhile you keep forcing the US-centric view onto the world.
You keep saying this, but the world view presented i've presented is anything but. The coolie example is specifically addressing non-US racism right?
> Of course what makes it dishonest is your monopoly on the truth, got it.
No, what makes it dishonest is that a bad example was specifically chosen because it helped the point. Where a good example would have been detrimental to the point.
> which was probably supposed to evoke some kind of indignation from me
No, you've been indignant the whole time. The US existing and having people in it that have their own perspectives seems to be some kind of attack on your identity which is causing you to lose reason and froth at the mouth.
You keep talking about "shoving" and "forcing", but the only person forcing anything is you and your ad nauseam repetition of some "US centric" accusation. It's just as baseless and pointless the 10th time as the first. Everyone gets it, you can chill.
You keep saying this, but the world view presented i've presented is anything but. The coolie example is specifically addressing non-US racism right?
> Of course what makes it dishonest is your monopoly on the truth, got it.
No, what makes it dishonest is that a bad example was specifically chosen because it helped the point. Where a good example would have been detrimental to the point.
> which was probably supposed to evoke some kind of indignation from me
No, you've been indignant the whole time. The US existing and having people in it that have their own perspectives seems to be some kind of attack on your identity which is causing you to lose reason and froth at the mouth.
You keep talking about "shoving" and "forcing", but the only person forcing anything is you and your ad nauseam repetition of some "US centric" accusation. It's just as baseless and pointless the 10th time as the first. Everyone gets it, you can chill.
It also, "objectively", as you put it, just means "raccoon" more often than not.
I feel like I’m trying to explain nuance to a brick:
* An obviously racist and currently in-use racial slur is not ok.
* A Victorian-era word, which was not even used as a slur (although it did have some negative connotation back then and now too) is most likely ok.
* An obviously racist and currently in-use racial slur is not ok.
* A Victorian-era word, which was not even used as a slur (although it did have some negative connotation back then and now too) is most likely ok.
Agreed. While it might be debatable whether it's explicitly offensive, it's at least a bit of a grey area and it immediately stood out to me as a poor choice of name.
Whether you agree or not with the use of the term, names are part of communication, and communication that people are going to take issue with (rightly or wrongly) is going to have an impact on a product/project/business, and should probably be reconsidered, unless the point is to cause controversy or dogwhistle certain values.
This name for example would probably rule out use at many companies, and I suspect many would choose not to publicise it with things like conference talks.
Whether you agree or not with the use of the term, names are part of communication, and communication that people are going to take issue with (rightly or wrongly) is going to have an impact on a product/project/business, and should probably be reconsidered, unless the point is to cause controversy or dogwhistle certain values.
This name for example would probably rule out use at many companies, and I suspect many would choose not to publicise it with things like conference talks.
The problem is that in the age of the internet, it's very difficult to find anything that someone, somewhere won't be offended by. Every time an organization or project gives in and alters its innocently-chosen name because a tiny minority takes offense, they further normalize outrageous outrage.
It's definitely a fine line to walk. There are names that originated in an offensive context, and it's easier for me to see the objection to those. But "lunatic" hasn't been commonly used in its offensive sense in nearly a century, so I don't think it's fair to stoke outrage towards a project that started in the 2020s and chose it for extremely innocent reasons.
It's definitely a fine line to walk. There are names that originated in an offensive context, and it's easier for me to see the objection to those. But "lunatic" hasn't been commonly used in its offensive sense in nearly a century, so I don't think it's fair to stoke outrage towards a project that started in the 2020s and chose it for extremely innocent reasons.
> it's very difficult to find anything that someone, somewhere won't be offended by
Sure, but there's a big difference to the marketability of a product between whether 30% get a funny feeling that it's not a great name and won't promote via word of mouth, vs 0.0001% who are known for taking issue with a lot of stuff shouting about it in their echochamber.
> But "lunatic" hasn't been commonly used in its offensive sense in nearly a century
I think it was reasonable to refer to "lunatic asylums" or even "looney bins" until quite recently. The offensiveness may be less, and less targeted at individuals than it was 100 years ago, but it's still there.
Sure, but there's a big difference to the marketability of a product between whether 30% get a funny feeling that it's not a great name and won't promote via word of mouth, vs 0.0001% who are known for taking issue with a lot of stuff shouting about it in their echochamber.
> But "lunatic" hasn't been commonly used in its offensive sense in nearly a century
I think it was reasonable to refer to "lunatic asylums" or even "looney bins" until quite recently. The offensiveness may be less, and less targeted at individuals than it was 100 years ago, but it's still there.
"should probably be reconsidered" isn't exactly outrage is it? We can have sensible discussions about appropriate naming without being extreme one way or the other, as much as the internet seems to hate moderate discussion.
Was interested, especially aiming to by language agnostic, then immediately not when I see all communications are exclusively via proprietary platforms.
> Choosing proprietary tools and services for your free software project ultimately sends a message to downstream developers and users of your project that freedom of all users—developers included—is not a priority.
— Matt Lee
This means if Discord or Microsoft (parent of GitHub) or Twitter (I guess) decide to delete or ban your account, you are by proxy banned from the project, Lunatic; this means Lunatic is not in control of the moderation of its community. This also requires all users must give up personal data to the corporations in order to participate. This also further drives a wedge between those that prefer the spirit of open source not just in the style of communication, but those that want it in the tools used to create it as well.
This project isn’t the only or first offender, but it’s frustrating seeing this pattern pop up over and over and it needs to be called out every time. People care about their privacy more than ever. Interest in OSS has never been higher.
We just witnessed yet another exodus off Twitter for federated plaforms like Mastodon and other platforms because folks don’t want to deal with the whims of megacorporations. Everytime Microsoft or Microsoft GitHub make another questionable move, projects seek refuge on Codeberg/SourceHut/GitLab, or self-hosting. There are a non-negligible amount of folks that don’t want this.
> Choosing proprietary tools and services for your free software project ultimately sends a message to downstream developers and users of your project that freedom of all users—developers included—is not a priority.
— Matt Lee
This means if Discord or Microsoft (parent of GitHub) or Twitter (I guess) decide to delete or ban your account, you are by proxy banned from the project, Lunatic; this means Lunatic is not in control of the moderation of its community. This also requires all users must give up personal data to the corporations in order to participate. This also further drives a wedge between those that prefer the spirit of open source not just in the style of communication, but those that want it in the tools used to create it as well.
This project isn’t the only or first offender, but it’s frustrating seeing this pattern pop up over and over and it needs to be called out every time. People care about their privacy more than ever. Interest in OSS has never been higher.
We just witnessed yet another exodus off Twitter for federated plaforms like Mastodon and other platforms because folks don’t want to deal with the whims of megacorporations. Everytime Microsoft or Microsoft GitHub make another questionable move, projects seek refuge on Codeberg/SourceHut/GitLab, or self-hosting. There are a non-negligible amount of folks that don’t want this.
It is MIT licensed so one could host their copy or fork entirely elsewhere. It's available as a Rust crate, which doesn't seem to have the issues that concern you. The Discord part is a little harder to address. Contributing back to the code upstream could be difficult. Projects have moved before when corporate hosts proved problematic for either the maintainers or enough users, such as the exodus from Sourceforge. I have no doubt if Discord, Github, or Twitter become issues the project could move elsewhere, possibly to a private Gitea and to Mastodon. Right now, though, the maintainers are probably happy to use these services and not worry about maintaining production servers for it.
Use them, sure. Suppport them, sure. But require them, nah. Vendor lock on them, nah too.
So you're suggesting that the maintainers should fragment their community by officially supporting Mastodon and Discord and GitHub and GitLab?
The community and their own time dealing with said community would both be fragmented. I have a feeling what they most want to do in maintaining the project is to spend time maintaining the project, not the infrastructure for distributing and supporting it.
They can at a bare minimum point to say an IRC #room on Libera.Chat and say it's unofficial, so folks can know where to congregate. In the case of Mastodon or other Fediverse, make that the official and have that forward to Twitter if you cared. GitLab (which isn't the only alternative Git forge) itself lets you add to merge requests via patches and emails--along with supporting automatic mirroring. You can make one just a read-only archive. You can also just support two platforms--or drop the problematic proprietary one.
How often do people get banned from GitHub for reasons anyone would disagree with? (besides projects that are targeted for DMCA, but you seen to be talking about personal accounts being unable to participate in the community of an open source project)
We have been busy pushing out a lot of new stuff. Recently we released a web framework [0] for Rust building on top of lunatic, and a live-view library [1] for crating full stack apps in Rust without JS. For now we are staying close to the Phoenix LiveView implementation, where everything is rendered on the backend and just a diff is sent over websockets to the frontend. But a big advantage of Wasm is that it runs in the browser too, so we hope to leverage this part to move some of the logic directly into the browser, like form checking, or offer a way to create offline-first experiences with the backend running as PWA in a service worker.
[0]: https://github.com/lunatic-solutions/submillisecond
[1]: https://github.com/lunatic-solutions/submillisecond-live-vie...