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BitKeeper EULA Forbids Working On Competition
Col. Klink (retired) writes "BitKeeper's new EULA forbids working on the competition. Larry McVoy has told Ben Collins that he can't use BK because he works on subversion (a free revision control program). In fact, you can't use BitKeeper if you OR your company have anything to do with competing software. Free Software advocates who were upset when Linus decided to use non-Free software now have the opportunity to say 'I told you so.'"
Note that only the use of Bitkeeper for free is affected by this clause. It still seems like this was a bait-and-switch maneuver on the part of BitKeeper, also there seems to be some personal animosity with the Subversion crew.
Subversion isn't quite up to par, yet, but it does seem like the switch to 2.6/3.0 "soon" would be a good time to switch revision control systems to something less... counter productive.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Forgive me if I'm stupid, but doesn't an EULA say what you can and can't do with respect to the product that the EULA covers? Reverse engineering and stuff like that are, grudgingly, acceptable terms of an EULA, but saying you can't do something that is not directly related to the software program covered by the EULA seems a tad on the side of illegality.
I have a feeling that if anyone challenged the agreement, the law would force it to change. Granted you have to accept the EULA in order to use the software...but if I made a EULA that said you were no longer allowed to own a firearm if you used my product, it would be tossed to the wind in a second. In a sense, Bitmover's EULA infringes on my right to compete, yes/no? If Bitmover doesn't want people to use an idea they have, they should file a patent for that idea, or otherwise rely on copyright/trademark law to prevent people from "stealing."
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Many slashdot posters seem to think Richard is just a voice crying out in the wilderness, but increasingly he seems to be a prophet.
Many years before this happened Richard pointed out the flaws of relying on non free software. Will any of the slashdot posters who called him crazy then apologize now?
Linus is wrong and Richard was right. You can't be "pragmatic" and use the best tool for the job if you want to keep your freedom.
you made a lot of good points until the small projects with a small number of people bit. that's crap. free and open bsd use cvs for one thing; they are not small.
cvs works for developers with a clue about cvs. that's not to say that a better version control system couldn't be developed - one can and should. but saying cvs is crap for large projects is demonstrably false.
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What's the short version?
A) The license forbids you to use BK to further a direct competitor to BK. Distributing a competitor, while using BK, like Red Hat does, is allowed.
B) This license is the FREE license. Remember the saying, "Beggars can't be choosers?" They can't. Are you using BK for free? Then you can't expect to choose the license. If you buy the program, you can develop whatever you like with it.
C) Anyone still has the ability to be a kernel hacker without using BK whatsoever. The old tools still work, Linus and everyone else still accepts standard patches. It's just the old tools are actually worse than BK. BK was chosen purely on technical merits, it's only the license that's raising questions.
Point B) is important. Because this is the FREE license, it means that BM is not violating anti-trust laws by forbidding competition, because you can purchase the product, and get unrestricted use. Companies are not required to provide free samples of their products to competitors to help them out. Also, it means that BM is NOT acting like MS when they pulled the same stunt in their EULA. (Adding a clause stating that you cannot use MS products to harm MS in any way).
Summary: Bit Mover is acting reasonably, and completely within their rights as a company to define the acceptable uses of their free gift to users. The issue should is not whether or not Bit Mover is 'cheating' people. The issue now is whether or not to use Bit Keeper personally.
The problem with licensed proprietary software is that you can never make more than a snapshot judgement on it. You do not have the data necessary to make a judgement than will be valid for more than a few seconds.
I see nothing where Larry McVoy swears the license will never be changed to exclude anyone providing non-BK repositories. I havent seen a mail where he swears that people working for for-profit corporations wont be excluded. I havent seen him promise that BK wont exclude anyone with a beard either in the future.
How do you make a judgement then? How well does it do what it's supposed to do? How well does it do what you need it to do? Well, how much does that matter when _you may not be allowed to use it at all tomorrow_? What value does it have for you then?
Software freedom isnt necessarily the deciding factor if your choice matters the next five minutes. But when you make a choice that must be valid over a decade youd better have a crystal ball to see how whoever decides the license is going to act for the next ten years.
Fine, but you don't seem to understand that if everybody did what you do, you wouldn't have free software to enjoy. So, in short, you adopt a comfortable "I use the right tool for the job" attitude, you "get sick" of people who really stand for free software and finally use their software when it is done. Brilliant.
I don't see why it would bother kernel developers.
This is explicitly allowed by the GPL, so for any kernel developers to have a problem with this would be hypocritical. Anyone can use any GPL software in house in a production environment with as many custom changes they want without releasing those changes to everyone in the world as long as they do not distribute their custom version outside their organization. Perhaps you meant something else than what your words clearly say? That you mean an "in house" "production" environment is somehow equivalent to distributing a version of a GPL software package outside (not in house) your organization with custom changes and not releasing the source code? That would be illegal, but that's not what you said.
Not it is not. Their new license apparently goes well beyond that. It says that developers using (the free license version of) their software for a non-competing product, such as the kernel, can not work on a competing product, regardless of what other revision control software they use to build the competing product. So, no Linux kernel developers, or anyone else that uses the "free" version of BK, can contribute to some competing products. This is quite different than you portray.
I don't believe you understand what the issue is.
One would hope that the community produces a better alternative under the GPL. If BM wants to limit the use of their software to create a competing product then I don't see a problem with this as much as what they are doing, which is described above.
BitKeeper, back when I used it (2-3 years ago) had some nifty features, yes -- but was prone to corrupting the repository on a regular basis. What's more, Larry deliberately changed the license so that my then-current employer was no longer in compliance. Suffice to say that more than a few people there still consider him an asshole for that.
If Red Hat is going to put money into a better version control system, I'd hope that that would be either Subversion or arch. (The author is flat broke and has no web hosting unless someone gives him some, so that link may not work; also see here and here). Arch is brilliant, functional, much more reliable than BitKeeper (at least, much more reliable than BitKeeper was when I used it)... and for someone as utterly friggin' brilliant as Tom Lord to be utterly penniless (as in, unable to buy beer, much less pay rent) is just wrong.