[kristopher]

Hello HN and sorry for this bizarre drama!

Although we have a page documenting some outlandish comments that the founder of Zig has made about Zen[0], we find it well inside of our rights to fork the MIT Licensed Zig and make a better product with commercial support.

We had initial plans to support Zig in Japan, but efforts to localize Zig were not accepted and we could not take the risk of not having some sort of formal role.

Regarding commercializing compilers: our main market is in embedded and as others have pointed out, charging for compilers and support is not uncommon.

One of our big main differences between Zig is that Zen natively supports vtables and traits that we call interfaces[1].

Although our core market is in Japan, we are preparing our English website and hope to have it out soon.

On a more personal note, I am happy that Zig is growing and that they got the foundation together. At the peak before the fork, I was the 5th largest contributor to Zig, so I am very happy to hear when people say that they are enjoying the language.

It's midnight in Japan, but I will try to field questions if any.

[0] https://zen-lang.org/zig/ [1] https://www.zen-lang.org/ja-JP/docs/ch06-interface/

[kristoff_it]

Can you explain why you're attempting to register a "ZIG" trademark in Japan?

https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/c1800/TR/JP-2020-078615/FF...

(for people that can't read japanese: click the "english" link on the top right for a translation)

(edit: fixed link, I pasted another trademark registration by connectfree by mistake)

[fastball]

I think the link is still wrong... I'm seeing an application for the "ＳｉＦｉｖｅ" mark.

[akhong]

Got a "System error occurred. If the error occurs repeatedly, please contact the Help Desk."

Probably taken down?

[kristopher]

Hi Loris, thanks for the question and congratulations on your new role at the Zig Software Foundation. We originally planned on supporting Zig in Japan via support contracts and this is from that preparation. Trademarks have multiple categories and one such category is for contract work and related materials. We don't plan to use this trademark to harm Zig.

[kristoff_it]

> We don't plan to use this trademark to harm Zig.

Of course you don't. How about we register a Japanese ZSF subsidiary and you hand it over?

[dnautics]

since you have instead settled on forking as the zen PL, which is your right to do, would you turn that trademark over to the zig foundation as a show of good faith?

[kristopher]

Our communication with the ZSF seems to be on the rocks. If they can communicate politely, this could be possible. The ZSF has my email address.

[dnautics]

If you feel like ZSF is treating you poorly there is nothing stopping you from taking the high road and making a show of it.

[klohto]

> We don't plan to use this trademark to harm Zig.

Can you back that statement up somehow?

[YorickPeterse]

I find this hard to believe. There are plenty of companies out there providing some kind of product built on top of another (e.g. a language), without registering the name of said product as a trademark of their own.

To me it sounds more like you didn't get the things you wanted, and instead decided to try and take them by force.

[xtian]

Can you share your justification for non-compete clauses in employment contracts as well as contracts which take ownership of employee work done outside work hours?

[turndown]

What is your statement about the fact that Zen clearly takes code from Zig post fork? Do you not find it - extremely - hypocritical that you are using thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lines of someone elses code for free while also mandating your employees enter draconian contracts? Do you think your actions will ostracize you from more communities, as has already occured with yourself and Zig?

How quickly after posting this did you regret it as a foolish midnight decision?

[kristopher]

Sorry, but I was a top contributor to Zig when we forked it. What did you contribute? No regrets, by the way -- conversation is important.

[fastball]

You were the 5th top contributor, which isn't much considering the actual top contributor (Andrew Kelley) still accounts for 60% of commits, even years after your fork "at 0.3".

Speaking of the fork at v0.3, in your response you forgot to address the claim that Zen has lifted changes almost wholesale made to Zig post-0.3. You'd think if Connectfree was doing all this heavy-lifting (as you seem keen to claim), it would be the other way around, no?

[kristopher]

Thank-you for the question. Most of heavy lifting is in the actual compiler itself and in the vtables/trait interface feature. Although the cpp implementation now differs most, we never claimed to be a hard fork of Zig.

[turndown]

Of course, I don't deny that, what I'm asking is about the code that was incorporated into your project from Zig after version 0.3, such as async/await, mentioned in this very post.

I contributed to Zig by not forking it for my own financial gain ;). What features did you work on in Zig that gives you the right to claim work you didn't do and incorporate it into your project?

[kristopher]

A simple search on github will show what I worked on:

https://github.com/ziglang/zig/search?q=author%3Akristate&un...

[turndown]

From your method of half responses I can see immediately why you were banned from the Zig community; I expect the next thing I will hear about Zen is its eventual closure. Also, 89 out of 10k commits makes you a footnote, not a major contributor.

[kstenerud]

On whose authority was https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/2701 made, and what are the implications for the Zig project now that the referenced commit (https://github.com/ziglang/zig/commit/aa60d2a688c965dcccf8e2...) is part of the codebase?

[AndyKelley]

It is not part of the codebase. I immediately reverted the commit in question[1] and then I fixed the bug independently[2].

[1]: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/commit/8ed88280a62f2a400d00b5... [2]: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/commit/9050a07540b7387dade818...

[ratww]

Will you release contributor No. 2 from the anti-compete and allow them contribute again to Zig?

[kristopher]

Sorry, cannot talk about individual cases.

[tssva]

Cannot and will not are two different things.

[vesche]

Are you blind to the fact that you're causing damage & frustration to one of the coolest open-source projects to pop-up over the past 5 years?

[dnautics]

hey folks, don't downvote this, it seems like this is a good opportunity for a conversation!

[kahlonel]

I'd never pay for your compiler. I don't care what features it has over Zig.

[justin66]

Dude... what are you even doing?

[badsectoracula]

Asking money for a compiler, the audacity!

[hitekker]

Can you explain why you were banned from Zig?

[darthrupert]

Please stop making the world a worse place. There are so many other fields you could contribute to.