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RMS Weighs In On BitKeeper
An anonymous reader writes ". . . and boy, is he pissed! The BitKeeper license, he told the Linux kernel mailing list, is 'the whip hand' of proprietary software. His brief but pungent comment is carried by Linux and Main."
Maybe I don't understand the issue, BitKeeper is a private company, they make a product that they don't want their competitors to use for free. What's the harm in that? Ford doesn't donate cars to Chevy neither does McDonalds give Burger King free food, why is this different?
Well spoken, Rik. Until RMS can propose an alternative to BitKeeper, he's just pissing in the wind.
Of course, he has every right to piss in the wind as much as he likes.
--
pants ahoy
Calling your customer "whiners" is always a sure bet.
Larry McVoy of BitKeeper:
"Our position:
"1) No free licenses for our competition, they can buy them if they like.
"2) The software is not open source because the open source business model doesn't have a prayer of supporting the development costs.
"3) If you had built a decent system instead of sitting around and whining, we could be doing something else instead of sitting around listening to your whining."
He doesn't give a flying fuck about open source, he only wants to sell his product. People like this are the opposite of the open source philosophy.
Stallman was sort of out of place bringing this up again on the LKML, which is supposed to be about technical discussion, but his points are, as always, valid.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
But what it comes down to really is why are they using a commercial product at all to develop one of the most sophisticated open source products.
While (most|some) of us dont always agree with what RMS says - he almost always does have very valid points - and this is something that I personally agree with him on.
Maybe its time for someone to start developing a OSS competitor to BitKeeper (without using BitKeeper of course!)
Code something GPL that performs equal to or better than BitKeeper.
I'm not familiar with the arguments of CVS vs BitKeeper. If it is a philosophical argument about a way to do things, then fine. Someone take the CVS code, fork it, and modify it to do what BitKeeper does.
It is a question of the "Software as Religion" vs "Software as Tool".
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that Linus and the other kernel hackers were pretty proficient with CVS and knew what they were doing. If they are more productive with BK, then there is something wrong with CVS.
Productivity is what counts. This isn't an addiction -- if people want to they can switch back to CVS at any time.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
RMS has an opinion, and has expressed it... I don't see where all the ad hominim vitriol is coming from.
Like him or not, RMS is one of the Free Software movement's Great Thinkers (TM).
Sheesh... let him expound upon his point, and if you don't like it, ignore it.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Oh, wait, you want one of those licenses to be Open Source because you feel you have an entitlement to use their product for free on terms of your choosing, and somehow the existence of another license is going to make the Open Source Fairy fly by and pay the bills. Sorry, I forgot.
I preface this by saying that I'm a big fan and proponent of open source but anyhow...
:)
:).
If free software really is better then why do people like RMS need to come out ranting about giving into the evils of proprietary software. Either it's a better model of development or it isn't, and if you have to brow beat people into using it, maybe it's not a better way of doing things. It always seems to me that the people most afraid that their beliefs are wrong are the ones screaming the loudest that they are right.
As long as we have the freedom to write free software and use free software, then I don't really see the point of such ranting. Let the software itself speak quietly of the benefits of being free rather than screaming about the evils of proprietary software.
I'm sure that Linus would be happy to use a more free product if he felt it was suited to the task. Linus, unlike RMS, has never, to my knowledge, been much of a politician. He wrote open source software because it made sense to do so. He's made his choices for the same reason anybody should, because they made good sound technical sense. (if I'm wrong here, please don't hesitate to point it out
Either it will survive and thrive because it has benefits or it will shrivel up and die. Evolution marches merrily on. I mean the process, not the mail client. Though I LOVE the mail client
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Stallman is correct. Bitkeeper is a proprietary product
produced by a commercial company and that commercial
company has the legal means (whether right or not)
to suddenly change their license terms.
I quite understand Linus' and Rik's aversion to
puritanical arguments against their use of proprietary
products when such proprietary products keep
them productive.
McVoy is a good guy as far as the
Linux kernel hackers are concerned, but what will
happen if a certain Mr. Bill Gates offers
loads of cash to Mr. McVoy for his company?
Steve: Hey Bill, do I have a deal for you.
Bill: Yeah?
Steve: What do you say to spending just a little over
50 million dollars to derail Linux development
on its tracks?
BK is not preventing Redhat, Suse, Mandrake (et al) employees from using BitKeeper, only those who actively develop Subversion or arch
It's not that they are, it's that they could.
EULAs that dictate terms of use of software (as opposed to EULAs that only address distribution), and companies that support those kind of EULAs, and a very dangerous thing.
That is Stallman's point.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
While you're all busy insulting RMS, think about this...
Have you contributed more to the Free Software community in terms of software than RMS?
Have you contributed more to the spirit & philosophy of the OSS & FS software communities than RMS?
Are you smarter than RMS? Ok, this one here's subjective; but I doubt most of the people criticizing RMS have an IQ of 170.
Until you can answer affirmative to all of the following questions, I'd suggest you be more respectful to one of the founding fathers of our community.
Without RMS and the FSF, there would be no GNU/Linux...Linux-based OS' would be some obscurity with little or no useful tools on them.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
It just comes down to this. The current kernel developers don't have the same views that he has and they are angry that he expressed his views on their mailing list.
We might get annoyed at the likes of RMS but we need people like him around. And as far as those people who would want to criticize RMS for not putting out code to have a better source control then CVS, remember that the man has written quite a lot of software in his time.
Molog
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
I agree with you all the way that RMS gets less respect than he deserves. He should be speaking out against the BitKeeper license. He should be using it as an example of what kind of restrictions proprietary licenses can put on you However, he should not be doing it on the LKML.
Starting a political argument on the LKML accomplishes nothing. Almost everyone who reads the LKML knows about the BitKeeper issue and has an opinion already. Posting a rant on the LKML is more likely to polarize people against his position than anything else.
Keep at it, RMS, but be smarter about it.
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
The problem is that all to often people come off with the attitude that free software is all the same as licensed software, it's just a matter of your choice. Many people don't seem to understand that many people who advocate free software consider this like a slap in the face.
You might want to recall 150 yrs ago when some were saying "if you don't like slavery - don't own slaves, otherwise mind your own business. it's all up to whoever chooses" , there problem was that there was no equivalency relationship back then and there is none now.
Copyrights are abusing peoples right to copy, and free software is a response to that. Mixing, matching, and choosing is not the answer, because people are using copyrights to controll me even if I don't wish to exercise them myself. It is very harmfull to try and promote some type of equivalency relationship, and IMHO this is a great example of why.
A man's accomplishments do not put him above critique, questioning, or insult.
You answered your own question. The kernel developers decided that BitKeeper was the best tool for the job so they used it, and if the FSF comes up with something better then I bet they'll switch to that in an instant.
That's one of the real strengths of Linux - ideology takes a back seat to getting the job done, and IMO it explains why Linux has been one of the most successful Unix variants.
That said, this is all the more reason for developers to switch from BitKeeper to alternatives. BitKeeper can impose any draconian restrictions on you they wish, and you'd best not wait until you're trapped into using BitKeeper and dependant on it to change.
Trapped? Not so. If they stop using bk, everything bk ever did still works in patches, and they'd just be in the same boat they were BEFORE using bk-- diff and patch. In fact, right now, if RMS wanted to send Linus a regular patch, he could, without ever using bk. There's also currently a rsync'able bk mirror out there, and bitkeeper retains SCCS compatibility. Anyone can use that and get the latest bk tree, write a patch, and send it on to Linus.
But ask yourself this- If any SCM software out there worked anywhere near as well as bk, why are there so many out there with personal bk trees, and using bk, and none using anything else, exporting their stuff to diff format, and sending the patches that way?
Because none of the OSS SCM tools can do that for them. So all the complainers out there should get to hard work fixing up an OSS SCM to the linux developers' needs, and spend less time bitching.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
Look, it is as simple as this: you don't like the copy protection, patent protection, whatever you have every choice NOT to buy or watch or listen to a product
All Stallman is doing in this case is showing people the consequences of choosing to use this product.
No one (no reasonable person at least) is expecting or asking McVoy to open source his product. Sure, it would be a good way to end this mess, but it's more reasonable to just stop using his closed product.
No one ever said you couldn't use closed source software, we just want to make sure that people understand the inherent risk in any closed solution with bad EULAs.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Perhaps RMS should call much of GNU software, BSD/GNU software, since much software in the GNU project are derived from works in various BSD releases. Linux distros would be called "BSD/GNU/Linux based".
Or maybe RMS just needs to STFU. I think the general concensious in the free software community is that the whole GNU/Linux argument is really quite silly.
There is a very real danger in commiting to use non-free software in the production of free software. I think this is due, in equal parts, to licensing and training issues. The fact that many people were unaware of some of the licensing details is perhaps the most disturbing thing about it..
IMHO, it is an ongoing commitment to free tools that keeps the free software out of licensing traps. It is precisely the people that see the advantages of BitKeeper over CVS that are most likely to code an alternative. Thus, having a license that says what types of software they can and cannot code should be unacceptable (offensive!) to all of us.
I am quite aware of this distinction, however you are missing my point. The license says more than "you cannot use the free version to develop the competition." It also says "if you, the person, do any kind of unrelated development on a competitor (perhaps even submitting a bug report!) you no may no longer use the free version of bitkeeper. Which means that any kernel developer who has become accustomed to using BitKeeper will retstrain himself from aiding competing free software projects at all.
This divides the world of open-source developers into two mutually exclusive groups: those who use bitkeeper for kernel development and those who can ever work on free alternatives.
With Bitkeeper, the potential for a real problem (or at least a hell of an inconvenience) is right there, and so you see RMS not even thinking of naming conventions because his concern is about something a lot more important.
There are people who don't see it as a problem- since buying a license/shifting development to something else/jumping through whatever hoops will be technically possible. It's the same as saying there is no such thing as force because (for instance) if a guy has a gun to your head you can take your chances dodging away, or pretend to submit and then escape later, etc etc. It's the same thing as saying the actions of commercial proprietary entities cannot ever be force because people can choose not to buy the product.
Technically this is so, but in the shades-of-gray world of reality such acts can be a KIND of force, simply not an ultimate force. I've seen the suggestion that Slashdotters should get everybody to violate the DMCA and turn themselves in, civil disobedience. It's true that if enough people did this, particularly important people, the law would be destroyed. OK, so where are they? Funny how in reality the DMCA still has force enough to be a danger, even though technically it's not a problem because it can be destroyed through mass civil disobedience.
It is just this sort of thing Stallman is concerned about.
I'm with him, in that I see a conceptual problem with mingling free and proprietary software in this way. I realise in real world uses you don't always get to be ideologically perfect- I myself code Free code using an IDE that's totally nonfree, because I'm not good enough yet to use more difficult programming languages (really it's the APIs for GUI C/C++ coding that throw me, I can't even get started) so I find I'm forced to use a brilliant but proprietary product (REALbasic) for non-C-coder types, or fail to code anything.
I guess the difference between me and Bitkeeper supporters is that I feel I have less option to choose a Free path- and I remain firmly aware that I don't want to stay in proprietary-land a second longer than I have to. With the Bitkeeper thing, I see people saying, we don't really care, the degree of control over our own environments we'd get from Free code is less important than the convenience of using this proprietary tool. I see that as a problem- free software is not an object or an abstraction, it is a PRACTICE that should be pursued where possible. Supporting Bitkeeper is intentionally pursuing the opposite of this practice for personal gain. And personal gain isn't enough of an excuse.
I support RMS in many ways, he's the driving force which got us most of the free software we use today, indirectly or directly. But he fails to understand that freedom doesn't come all at once.
Think of trying to implement democracy in Iraq after Saddam's fall, or even better, in some far more impoverished nation with much less technology. You can't just put up voting booths and say you have a democracy. Democracy requires an informed citizenry, it requires literacy, it requires a stable social climate, it requires reasonable expectations of the citizens that their vote might matter, and it requires them to have their immediate concerns taken care of, like stable income and work, safe from government persecution, safe from crime.
Same with free software. I think BitKeeper's license sucks in many ways, but perfection is the enemy of good enough, and right now, BitKeeper's license is good enough for the kernel folks, so RMS should just butt out, work on an alternative if he wants, but butt out of something that is none of his business.
Infuriate left and right
But people everyday here write how they oppose protections for copyrighted material like movies and music. How is it that my product differs in spirit to BitKeeper?
Well, CVS is fine for small projects. Linux is anything BUT a small project; there's a lot of things that cvs either doesn't support, or supports poorly. Binary files and renaming files, for example. There's a handful of other things, but the bottom line is, the linux developers who are using BK would laugh in your face if you told them CVS was a viable replacement.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
Second Linux is not his project, and he is not managing it. Torvalds has expressed his opinions on the Free Software movement. He doesn't believe in Free Software as an all important political idea, thus he has not don anything wrong by using Bitkeeper. Torvalds chose Bitkeeper, and that's what the project uses. Period.
But how is this relevant? For example, Windows isn't our product, and neither was Blender, nor Qt, nor many other things. Yet people seem to be quite happy to have opinions on the development and licensing of those pieces of software. Why can't RMS have an opinion on the development software used by the kernel? I can disagree with Linus any time I like if I think he's wrong, and RMS damn well can too.
All these people saying 'write something better' are also somewhat missing the point if you ask me. Of course that would be a solution to the problem, but it just means that those people aren't as strong about the free(dom) software ideal as RMS is. They would prefer to use a free tool, but are willing to use BitKeeper - RMS would never do that, and that's the key difference.
People saying 'write me something better' are basically taking the lazy way out; 'if you write me something better, then I can feel better about my decision as being the best on both a technical and ethical level'. Yet what good are ethics and morals if you always want somebody else to make them easy for you? The whole point of morals is about making the right choices, not the easiest or most convenient ones.
Isn't it true that for any proprietary software you could presumably get code if you satisfied the owners, paid them enough or whatever? It sounds very much like you see the point as being able to get code, but completely don't 'get' the idea of taking authority out of the original developer's hands.
'Open' source and proprietary source can both be transmitted to different coders given that you satisfy the owner, get their okay. Maybe sometimes they'll agree. Maybe they won't. Maybe they're dead, or out of town, simply unavailable.
Free code, you don't have to satisfy the owner- you have to qualify to BE an owner, at which point you get all privileges of ownership to the extent that the license permits. You're not dealing with a PERSON, you're dealing with a set of legal rules. It's set up in the only way it can be so that if you see code you can HAVE it. It defines a commons that is to some extent self-protecting.
The reason it's that way and not simple public domain is, a certain person saw years ago that the public domain naturally tended towards the proprietary. Stagnation, walling off IP. That person saw fit to arrange for something else to be available.
That's the person you want to get rid of.
That's why I say- go RIGHT ahead. I already know what will happen. You wouldn't be reacting the way you are, if you didn't have some underlying assumptions about how coders should have say over what happens to their code- the idea that people should make their own 'open' licenses, should get to determine their own rules for their openness.
This is no different from very permissive proprietary licenses. The thing about the GNU sphere that is different is that it is set up to balk any effort to impose authority, up to and including RMS's. If he did a new version of the GPL in which he got to come into your house and eat your Fritos and microwave all your nonfree software CDs, GNU would promptly fork and nobody would adopt his new license at all.
Because the GNU/GPL sphere goes against the grain in balking authority from outside itself, it isn't the instinctive choice of anybody- it's giving up your power to something bigger than you. Not a person or authority, but a concept- but it's still giving up your power, to use the GPL. You have legal rights that you intentionally let go of when you use GPL, because legally you are allowed to be proprietary and take ownership of your code.
RMS may or may not have known that what he was creating in Free code would be collectively successful- in fact it's led to huge things, much grander than cooperation among non-Free independent developers (given that Linux is grander than POV-Ray ;) ). However, since it is collectively successful as a result of individual coders giving up some of their power to support the common interest, it makes sense to be interested in the reasons for this.
And it makes sense for RMS to be tireless, unbending, even maddening in his demands that people respect and understand this collective.
You only see him, the figurehead, loudly heading up this thing, and because you don't know better you see him as being in control. You see this guy as the leader, the one in charge.
The difference is, what he's leading, he has no real control over whatsoever- and he likes it that way. He can parade his ego all he wants and it won't do any harm because he HAS no authority over what he's supposedly leading.
Shouldn't you be reconsidering your hostility to the guy in light of the fact that he's not the boss of you, not the boss of Linux, not the boss of GNU, and not the boss of the GPL? You gotta make some allowances for the visionary type. Name one more socially acceptable person who's innovated something like the GPL universe, while not leaving a loophole for himself to direct and control it.
If you're going to refuse to deal on anything other than a technical or pragmatic level, then you should expect trouble from RMS, and you should expect to get some flak you don't understand and don't consider appropriate. What RMS observes that you don't is, operating purely from a technical/pragmatic level TENDS TOWARD non-optimal proprietary software.
It's pure game theory. Unless you jump outside the system of tech/pragmatic, you can't understand the manner in which you lose. Self-interested rationalism, even among coders, leads to game-theoretical problems like refusal to cooperate (what's in it for me?) and a variety of failures to efficiently produce a commons.
I'm afraid you can't stick to just pragmatic concerns. No, let me correct that- you can, but you can't expect everyone else to, because some people out there know better- and pragmatically, you don't have the power to control them or shut them up.
It's amazing that the same people who put themselves in a bad position with their pictures and music would again willingly do so with their kernels.
Bitkeeper could easily change their license with after an acceptable amount of market share, just as GIF, JPEG and MP3 did before them. RMS, as usual, is dead on target here.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
One important reason to keep in mind:
This is what scares me. I haven't read RMS's article yet. He tends to post off-the-cuff, and in inappropriate contexts; but he's doing the best job he knows how. (Somebody please get this guy a P.R. manager, a personal groomer...)First, nothing begins if not opening
Yeah, but that's his job. He's the voice of conscience. Kind of like the ACLU.
Without someone to constantly point out the difference between "almost free" or "free-like" and "truly free" we might get lazy and do what's convenient, rather than what is morally right.
And no matter how you feel about him: if you hate him, agree with him, consider him a whiner... whatever... you *have* to respect someone who has such an unwavering set of principles that he is not afraid or ashamed to look like an idiot to stand up for them. No matter what, you have to admire him for that.
So despite the fact that he spins me up occasionally, I shut up and listen to what he has to say because when you come right down to it... he's right. Annoying. Irritating. But right.
Oh. And you have to respect him for emacs, too. Obviously.
Ye gods, man. What are you talking about? Sure, Linux is a pretty big project. Maybe it's not best suited to CVS management, that's not my call, nor anyone elses, besides the main kernel contributors, and Linus himself. However, I think you do yourself a great disservice when you completely ignore many of the other GIANT projects that utelize CVS successfully. I can't comment on Net or OpenBSD, but FreeBSD development is very much tied to CVS. CVS is used to keep track of the ports distrubution, the necessary bins and source to make an install run, and the main kernel source itself. Grass(the GIS software) is another absolutely huge project (the full source weighing in many times the size of Linux), XFree86 (pretty huge in it's own right--also many times Linux's size, with a large ammount of active development), and god knows how many other Open Source and in-house software is developed using CVS.
By making a blanket statement like you have, you ignore what good CVS has done to a great many projects (some enormous, some not). Frankly, if the developers want certian features, they can certianly add them; the source is there, afterall. If they have no intrest in making the tools they use better for themselves directly, the least they could do is point out the flaws in the system to somebody who is interested in that project. Instead, all I hear is "CVS sucks, subversion sucks, it won't/can't do what I want, so I won't even bother with it!" Unwarrented and constructive criticism are different things, the latter being a good way to help progress, the former being a great way to hinder progress.
That is bullshit, plain 'an simple. If they are unwilling to support their ideals, then they should not be OSS devs in the first place.
Well I don't like RMS due to many reasons, mainly that he follows his ideas like a religious fanatic altogether with some very faint ideals on how the world should be. It reminds me those hippy, extreme left revolutionaries that raised Che to the level of a saint, considered Mao's sentences the Bible and USSR a traitor to communist ideals... Meanwhile there are many things on RMS that deserve some high respect. Here is one of them, because, RMS is absolutely right...
I may understand the reasons kernel developers point to hold up to BitKeeper. However they can't and shouldn't ignore the consequences of ignoring the legalities of their move. The fact that BitKeeper is factually an EULA much worse than M$ is something that may put into question the future of Linux. Yes, it is much worse because ethically violates some principals of market, things that were formed not yesterday but millenia ago. It is much worse because it is clearly not a commercial license but a typical feudal decree of the worst kind, in common terms: "you can't do that or do this while you are under my service". This is what is inside this license and it is so superficial that any deviation may turn it void. For some you may have had the chance to read documents from the V up to IX centuries, one may note that feudalism started this way. First they said "while", then they said "because" and later they didn't say nothing as everyone considered it natural...
And to consider things worse:
Larry McVoy of BitKeeper:
"Our position:
"1) No free licenses for our competition, they can buy them if they like.
"2) The software is not open source because the open source business model doesn't have a prayer of supporting the development costs.
"3) If you had built a decent system instead of sitting around and whining, we could be doing something else instead of sitting around listening to your whining."
If we look at the reaction of BitKeeper's owner, we can see that we are really going the worst way. He is ultimative, he is arrogant, for him OSS lacks prayers. But this is not the worst. The worst is that we are a mass of apatic whinners, but he stands higher and listens to the crowd of gentiles. And he only can listen whinning, nothing else, because the brilliance and crystal sound of BitKeeper's castle blinds and deafens everything else.
This is not OSS, this is not Free Software. This is not even the M$ Empire. This is the Black Cathedral.
I for one plan to resist this bogus, anticompetitive license. As others have mentioned, this is like MS changing their EULA to exclude developers of competing operating systems. The best way to fight BK is to write a compelling replacement. My best wishes go out to those who are already doing such admirable work!
Cheers,
Fyodor
Concerned about your network security? Try the Free Nmap Security Scanner.
Normally I do not agree with RMS at all. In this particular case, though, he is flat out right.
BK is infrastructure for the kernel development. This is not something that you happen to rip out and replace on a moments notice in case the license changes to something unacceptable. changing infrastructure is a painful process in which more often than not valueable metadata is lost and in which you have to change processes and retrain people.
In fact, this is precisely the reason while Linus is still using BK despite the controversial license: Convenience vs. da pain of changing.
Now, consider the license change BK put through, and what it mandates: It basically says that you cannot use the free license for Bitkeeper to use Bitkeeper for anything including Kernel development if you or your company happen to work on a version control system.
Can Bitkeeper legitimately impose such license restrictions? Yes, they can - it is their product and they can do whatever they fucking want with it.
Is such a license acceptable for Linux kernel development? Not at all. Despite the fact that there are Bitkeeper-to-CVS and Bitkeeper-to-Subversion and Bitkeeper-to-tgz-Gateways all over the place now, Non-BK users are second class citizens in Linux kernel development. They do not have realtime access, and they do not have proper access to BK metadata at all. Also, patch submissions that do not come in via BK are treated worse than patches that come in via BK - Linus and friends may say they aren't, or they aren't intentionally, but they are - again matters of convenience and infrastructure working against Non-BK users.
Switching from BK to a different systems becomes harder the longer you use them, because the systems accumulates metadata and processes center around BK - the infrastructure mechanics I explained above at work.
Finally, is this situation sane at all? That is, is there at least one party that wins because of this license change?
Well, the people who cannot use the free BK license are certainly not winning. They are shut out and have to use second-class systems to contribute to the kernel. Their enthusiasm and energy that could be used for Linux kernel development is diverted to integrating into a principally broken infrastructure.
The Linux kernel development process certainly is not winning at all. There is war and blodshed on the list, and people are switching or turning their back on kernel development out of principle, others defend Bitkeeper out of purely technical reasons, shutting out all the process problems and political outrage BK creates.
Bitkeeper, the company, certainly isn't winning, too. They created this license in order to discourage the development of BK alternatives. Well, that backfired big time. I couldn't have devised a better Subversion promotion campaign than this particular license change.
Basically, BK has pulled a Qt. That is, they created a great product that is important infrastructure for other projects, with a license that is unacceptable for many people. This is just what Qt was in the beginning of the KDE project: a truly great product in an pivotal infrastructure role for an important project (the Linux Desktop). And just like the license to Qt forced many people to create an alternative to Qt, spawning the Gnome desktop, the BK license change will be a great incentive for many to work on Subversion, Arc and related projects.
So BK actually achived the opposite of what they intended with the license change.
Is there any other party that might be winning? Well, yes. Microsoft. But you already knew that. And hey, they even have a version control system.
RMS doesn't give a damn about convenience, especially for his own sake. He cares about ideals, and challenges everyone else to do the same. Most of his life has been spent trying to make living with his ideals more convenient. Most of us losers spend our lives rationlizing about our ideals until our ideals are convenient. I hope this explains where RMS is coming from and why he says the stuff he does.
Linus Torvalds is more like the majority of people whose ideals meld (by design or otherwise, I don't want to guess) with convenience. This is probably part of why he is fairly popular and seen as a regular guy (unlike RMS). For instance, Torvalds feels the "best" tool for the job should be used regardless. Unfortunately, Torvalds has never taken the time to describe for us exactly what "best" means. I'm sure he doesn't mean anything so sinister as "if unpaid child labor makes the tool cheaper, then it's better!", or so naive as "I'll pay anything for the best, screw value/dollar!".
RMS doesn't give a damn about Larry McVoy's company succeeding with propietary software. I believe (I don't want to put words in RMS' mouth) this is because RMS feel propietary software is worthless in the long run, and hence a waste of society's time, energy, and money. I believe he could win this argument, should he choose to make it. Torvald's feelings on the subject are useless until he defines what he means by "best".
My second personal interjection for this post is about competition versus scratching itches. It's not clear to me that the "competition" from BitKeeper is what will spur the creation of a Free package with similar features -- Torvalds doesn't seem motiviated by competition with Microsoft (he's said such several times), so it's not obvious to me that software authors will be motivated to compete with BitKeeper for the sake of competition alone.
The people in the Free and Open Source communities most affected by the lack of Free BitKeeper alternatives are the Linux (i.e. kernel) developers. Most others seem to be happy enough with existing tools, with just enough disgruntelment that subversion is finally emerging. Thus BitKeeper is providing non-Free itch-relief for the only people in the communities who are have this particular itch. Rik and Linus are dreaming if they think I care about their itches more than I care about mine. Essentially, the only people who are likely to produce BitKeeper alternatives are those kernel developers who refuse to use BitKeeper because of their ideals (if they don't use BitKeeper because they don't like source control, or because they're lazy, then they're unlikely to write a replacement).
That is, only people with strong ideals about Free software are likely to write a replacment for BitKeeper. That means people more like RMS and less like Linus.
-Paul Komarek
> here, here!
Where, where?
Learn some damn English, man!
I would expect that in addition to this post to the kernel list, RMS is also doing what he can to support BK alternatives. But that probably would not be as public or controversial.
That's precisely the problem. He's making himself look like more of an ass by doing this. It would be 5000% more effective for his post to lkml to say "I've decided to support the (subversion|arch|aegis|pcrs|whatever) project as an official GNU project, and give them funding and development help so that the kernel team will have a viable alternative to BitKeeper. The project page is at http://www.gnu.org/projects/gnukeeper. Any input from kernel developers about what features are needed to replace BK are welcome at the mailing list, gnukeeper-devel@gnu.org"
*THAT* is constructive. Sending a post that says that he's doing something about his situation. Otherwise he looks like every other crybaby group, like the Group of university students earlier this year, or whoever started last weeks huge thread. Saying "I Hate that you're using this closed product!" is all good and well, but if you don't follow it up with "So here's what I'm doing to remedy the situation", you look like an idiot. If you care that strongly about something, especially if you're in charge of or high up in the GNU foundation or the Free Software Foundation, you should put some backing behind your words.
I expect more out of RMS as this; Others have pointed out that the linux environment is kind of a "flagship" of opensource development in GNU/FSF's eyes. You'd think they'd be committed to providing an alternative if they cared. They've done it with lots of other stuff in the unix world, and they've done a very good job. But, it's been since April or so since bk started being used for kernel devel, and not a single project has stepped up with GNU/FSF's backing and put some real work into doing everything bitkeeper does and more.
Or, the reason could be that Larry McVoy's estimates on the time and money required to create another such beast are shockingly accurate, that's why nothing's stepped up.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
Also, the current Perl 5 development also takes place on a Perforce repository, with public-accessible rsync mirrors available.
CVS is painful to use for many common tasks required for large-sized software projects -- its shortcoming on atomic commits, directory versioning, copy-on-write branches, etc. are widely acknowledged.
It is a good thing that, for a relatively small software sector where the neccessary designs are hardly well-understood, proprietary version control systems could use its customer's funding to experiment with advanced features. As long as nobody gets a monopoly on those ideas (read: software patents), they create a pool of ideas that related free software projects can learn from it -- it is really more like a symbiosis, not antagonism.
It is all a very healthy process of ideas in the 'niche' market, first commissioned by paying customers, then trickle down to the low-end market (think iMovie), which makes enough people to appreciate and understand how it should work like, and finally appears as a full-fledged free software -- and everybody can just move forward and play with new things, proprietary or not.
The remark on lkml that the new BKL is 'pulling a Qt' is probably right on the mark, though: The new Perl pumpking (Hugo) wishes to migrate Perforce to Subversion, and help building the missing pieces that people needs. No doubt that many people are doing the same thing right now, myself included.
Imagine Bill Gates realising that his real cash cow is Microsoft Office, and that MS Windows is just the technology that keep MS Office ahead of the competitors, by having early access to new or secret API's. In that case, it might make perfect sense to license MS Windows gratis in order to keep off any competitors. And of course, not license it gratis to people who worked for companies who contributed to software that compete with Microsoft offereings.
Suddenly, any company that used Linux/Samba/Apache on their servers, and occationally contributed a bug fix to either of these, would have to pay for all their MS Windows desktop licenses, which could be arbitrary high as most customers would not be affected.
In other words, MS could make it arbitrarily expensive for companies to participate in the development of free software that competed with Micosoft products.
The BitKeeper trap would be an excellent way for Bill Gates to kill of the competion from free software. We just have to hope he doesn't realise this, or that he have a higher sense of business ethics than Larry McVoy.
Let's see.. a few years back Linus just used CVS. Developers began complaining about shortcomings since Linux became too big to be handled in plain CVS etc.
Since CVS is a different beast then the Linux Kernel they did not try to develop something themselves. Besides, that would only distract them from kernel development. To make things worse the competitor, subversions, wasn't much usefull eather since it was still in development (and still is).
So Linux chose BitKeeper. Not because he was pushed or otherwise but because it was, and still is, the best alternative offered then and now. Not because out of convenience but to keep the development going in a strong pace lest it become, like the HURD, a product which seems to be never finished.
BitMover provided the software for free to kernel developers. The only real restriction is that you ae not allowed to use BitKeeper to create a competitive product. Why? Because that's the way BitMover earns it's money to pay it's employees and to fund development for BitKeeper.
So, to be able to use a good product (BitKeeper) which in it's turn made it possible to create a good product (linuxkernel) Linus agreed on the terms that were layed out. If they should have to go back to CVS (which is technologically still possible although people claim otherwise) they would also have to go back to all the problems there were before they started using BitKeeper.
And may eventually a better product come by which is OSS then i would have no doubt everyone would switch to using that.
I can understand RMS's opinion. He sees the flagship of the FSF being "corrupted" by closed source software. This is of course a big blow to him. The FSF always tried to create the tools to do the job themselves. Apparently their jobs were not as big as the Linux kernel though. So their tools became inadequate. However, instead of arguing he could also try to understand the forces that work here. If he could start up a project aiming to replace BitKeeper i think alot of people would jump right in. But if he does not then please be a bit more polite against the people working on the Linux kernel.
So far for this not entirely coherent post...
Interestingly enough, if everyone used the same arguments Linux, the kernel, would never had coming into being.
Just imagine that gcc and the other GNU utilities carried a similar license. Linus would have had to buy a real compiler and developer toolbox before even starting, and these cost real money in those days, much more than he could afford. And then no one would use his work or collaborate with him, because BSD and the other Unices were so much better for the task. The few tinkerers would have stayed with BSD.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Say what you want, but the man shure has one hell of an impact. :-).
He get's pissy on some issue (for valid reasons too), drops a word on it and all of a sudden even slashdot has some really intelligent controversial discussion going on.
It is really all what someone like RMS could want and bargain for, and if I judge him right it's just what he intended.
Presumtion:
From what I gather the kernel group can use a little self reflection to. Because: If kernel dev is actually stalled by this BitKeeper vs. OSS Tool debate (I hope not so hefty) it is in a state where carrying on with buisness as usual would have driven Linux into a messy corner.
I predict that, within a relatively short term, either Bitkeeper will see a chance for cool PR and modify their license to 'free for free Software products' or something or just now some people are firing up a VCS project that is to Emporer Linus' likeing and thus will be prefered
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Yes, and that's perhaps at the root of the problem: the Linux kernel is a huge, monolithic project. If it were broken up into smaller, independent subprojects, for example, then each subproject would have fewer developers and fewer patches coming in.
However, how can you possibly say dependence on proprietary software is more effective at achieving GNU goals than the GPL is?
Methinks you are radically misunderstanding something about whose goals for what and why. If you'd said 'it was more effective at achieving Linus's goals for Linux than the GPL', that would be very debatable and hard to prove, but it wouldn't be an insane statement. You need to rephrase, because in no sense would reliance on BitKeeper further any GNU or FSF goals.
What you have here is a situation where BitKeeper might be effective at furthering 'Open Source' goals, but completely bitchslaps 'Free Software' goals. Schism. This is where you can split the diamond with only a very light tap.
I think it is interesting that this has come up: it is a wonderful opportunity for Microsoft or some interested party to do some damage, or just lay plans. If you split the community into Open Source vs Free Software camps (ESR vs RMS?), the results are interesting. The Open Source camp would be considerably larger, have bigger projects, but it would be vulnerable to catastrophic failure- you could destroy it. The Free camp would be smaller and have fewer ties to big companies and 'name' projects, but it is the one that cannot be 'taken out' by hostile action.
It's a bit like Napster vs. Gnutella. Napster was much, much bigger- but it was possible to destroy, and it was destroyed. Gnutella and similar designs are just not as efficient, but you can't get rid of them...
This is much the same. In the end, RMS will be the last man standing. However, if you stand with him, people are gonna pass you by, pursuing grand plans that have fatal flaws, undertaking huge projects and suffering great defeats. To side with RMS you have to be thinking longterm. Few seem to.
The scenario wouldn't be Ford Donating anything to Chevy. The scenario would be like you signing a paper that says by driving this ford for free (the EULA doesn't apply to the purchased ver AFAIK) you agree to never use it to drive to work at a Chevy plant. Taken a bit further, you may not drive the car to work at a garage that works on anything but Chevy vehicles since everyone knows used car sales compete with new cars sales.
Also you may never re-sell the car to anyone who would drive it to work at a Chevy plant.
Or to go a little further down that road.... you can never use the Ford to get parts for the homebrew car you're building out in that garage that you plan to donate to Sally Struthers.
You may not use that car to drive to work at the golf cart factory since golf carts could conceivebly compete with cars. Same with scooters, bikes motorcycles, planes, trains, helicopters... you get the idea. This sounds absurd but not nearly as crazy as some of the lawsuits we've heard about in the last few years.
RMS posted his comments to the wrong list and should apologize to the list (but not on the list). But he's still right. Your comment missed the mark a bit, but is excusable, heat of the moment and all, the insightful moderation however was just nuts.
Now it's the kernel hackers right to do what they will... it's Stallman's right to bitch about it, (but not on the dev list), it's your right to make a bad post and my right to try to get you to think about Stallman's message and life's work in your own terms and it's Slashdot's right to give us a place to have this discussion.
It is also most certainly BitKeeper's right to make whatever EULA they like, however that right has nothing to do with anyone donating hamburgers or cars between companies.
Imagine this... I write the ultimate BitKeeper replacement.. I take the linux kernel, some gnu stuff and create a distro entitled Byte Arranger. It's a totally gpl'd bootablle ISO. You stick it in your PC and voila you're arranging Bytes/keeping bits, so to speak. Does this mean that any of the kernel hackers that continue to use the free version of bitkeeper have now violated the EULA because their work has gone into a system that competes with bitkeeper?
I agree a linux kernel has nothing todo with a userland app that keeps bits, but it'd be a good enough argument to drag a few developers to court.
Once we come to accept this type of license because it's free, we are then another step closer to accepting even stronger versions of this type of license on stuff we pay for. Imagine the EULA of a Windows product first saying
"By installing this software you must agree to never use this software to contribute to Linux."
Version2 states "By installing this software you must agree to never contribute to gpl'ed software." Seems kinda the same at first glance but NOT the same.
G
Spoken like somebody who has never read LKML.
Practise what you preach.
Untrue. Why do you think they break "kernel module source compatibility" with every patchlevel release? Obviously this has something to do with ideology, because not having to recompile kernel modules is a lot easier to the end user.
The ideology that defines Free Software people in general is that you make things easier for the developer, not the user. If the user doesn't like it, they should do their own development (that's what the source is for). If they don't want to do that, they can pay someone to do it for them (even RMS has no problems with that, so long as the source is available). If they don't want to code and they don't want to pay, they're irrelevant and should shut up and be grateful for having any software in the first place. Harsh, but that's the way it works in practice.
Ok, burning you to the stake...
First load of lumber: GNU is not nazi and it is not merely a vocal minority. If you consider GNU just a minority you are simply wrong because more than 99% of Linux soft is made on GNU stuff. If you consider that there are some fanatics in GNU, nazis as you name, they are more leftists rather than nazis and it is an offense to name them like this. And they have a right to voice because they are the founders of all things GNU, no matter the rant. And it is good to hear some voice from the Founding Fathers, to help us remind that all this didn't come from nowhere and there are reasons for things being what they are.
Second load of lumber: GNU/Linux is frankly a stupid name. But the ideology not. And the ideology states a very important thing - free software is a share of ideas among equals. Yes, we don't live in a perfect world but software is also not a perfect thing. Software is a mean term between Science, Technology and Human Thought. To develop, it needs to be shared. GNU tries to show one of the most optimal ways of sharing it. It is hard to be universally accepted, but is is the main engine that moves the whole machine Linux is now.
Third load of lumber: Bitkeeper may do what kernel devlopers want. Cool be this way. So why they didn't start Linux on some Borland C or Visual C++? The GNU/GPL/OSS ideals are not only a problem of technicities but also of ideology. And these ideals mean freedom of use, development or choice. And that's why people fit things to open source and not the other way around. The other way around would be furninshing a bunch of owners a cheap working force.
Well, were I put the matches?
What kind of job would I have to get to afford a $50000 license?
Does that not seem a little childish, to demand of the person who gave you most of the operating system you are now using, that he continue to get you out of proprietary software ruts in the future?
Not really; I'm not the one who has a problem with the kernel developers using BitKeeper. But that's what my problem is. Over the years, RMS's attitude has gone from "The world is wrong, I should fix it" to "The world is wrong. I should tell everyone else to fix it."
The answer that's repeatedly given on the kernel mailing list is "Well, if you want us to use something else, build it for us.". This is like RMS walking up to a carpenter, taking his hammer, and telling the carpenter to invent something better-- Nevermind that he's in the middle of building a house.
But none of the naysayers ever ask "What can *I* do to fix this?". I only expect more out of RMS, because he didn't say "HEY! YOU GUYS ARE USING PROPRIETARY UNIX COMPILERS! USE SOMETHING MORE FREE!". He said "Hey, i should make a truly free compiler."
So why isn't this the situation for BitKeeper?
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
The day Larry changes the format to be incompatible with SCCS is the day the kernel developers stop using BitKeeper. Larry knows this, and he's not likely to shoot himself repeatedly in the foot by doing that.
/did/ happen.
You might ask yourself why BitKeeper is still using the SCCS file format. The answer is for exactly this reason: they don't want to lock their users in by using a proprietary format.
What might be a real risk is if Larry loses control of BitMover and the new owners decided to make such changes. As it stands, that's not even a mid-term threat, and with any luck the Free alternatives would have caught up enough to be usable if it
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
There are plenty of open source systems for version control and configuration management. Furthermore, they way open source works, if you need an unusual tool for your project, you create it yourself and share it.
The way open source works is if you need an unisual tool for your project and there is not one available you do the above. When you state something like the above you do one of two things:
A) you trivialize the process of (just create the feature yourself) which gives me the impression that either you are not a developer or you are just too darn gifted
B) You assume that people like Linus should take time off from their important projects to fix a nag in a product for which a better one (though commercial) already exists.
Neither of those things makes sense IMO
"If you had built a decent system instead of sitting around and whining, we could be doing something else instead of sitting around listening to your whining."
Man, did that quote put me off. I wonder, for instance, what compiler Larry uses to build BitKeeper. Or what version of shell utils. Or what editor. Or what MTA. Or what DNS server.
RMS and friends *did* build a decent system, which is exactly the reason that Larry is getting all of this publicity for BitKeeper. Think anyone would have heard of BitKeeper if Linus didn't endorse it? Think anyone would have heard of Linus if it weren't for RMS' "decent system"?
-Pez
I might be more inclined to care what he has to say if he wasn't such a hypocrite.
Sure it seems cute to use today's copyright laws to protect his anti-copyright license.
But all his ranting about GNU/blah proves that he does believe in intelectual property rights. He wants to be recognized for HIS work.
Is he the only one that deserves some sort of property rights, since he is the father of open source? No, you either believe in property rights, and all that entails, or you believe in exercising your property rights (in what ever fashion) is immoral.
What a load o' crap. Larry McVoy basically says three things:
;)
1. We very much like to give both the poor and the rich the option of using our software (without illegally using it), the only thing we disagree with is that our competitors use it for free. While it may be short-sighted, in no way is this worse than Perforce or any of the other commercial versioning tools which cannot be used by anyone for free.
2. We don't believe that an open source product can financially be succesful in this market segment (that is what he actually said, not that all OSS is hopeless). You call this arrogant, but where o where is this money making open source versioning tool to disprove Larry? Besides, there is no reason to call someone arrogant for a honest opinion (unless you are part of the thought police).
3. You have every right to create your own ultracool open source product, but don't claim that you have any right to use our work for free unless you follow our rules. If you want a versioning tool that doesn't have these restrictions, build your own instead of whining.
I certainly don't think that Larry is against OSS or its proponents. What he is against, is people who blame him when he is ten times nicer to users than most other developers. Because no matter how you twist the argument, a commercial license is all your gonna get with almost every other commercial product. BitMover gives you another option, one which you may accept or not, but it can never take anything away from the basic proposition that you get with most commercial products: pay to use it. Besides, the commercial license they use is not a shinkwrap EULA, but a legitimate contract that you must sign. So all in all, BitMover doesn't seem to be any more evil than other commercial developers (probably much less actually). I agree that Larry could have used a bit more tact, but the same can be said for RMS. That's why they should both stick to coding IMHO
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Nobody will; Why? Nobody has really tried so far- even RMS is too stubborn to ask "Well, what is it that bitkeeper does that (cvs|subversion|arch|pcrs) doesn't do?", and then gone off and tried to implement it- in fact, this is what all of bitkeeper's advocates, including it's creator, Larry McVoy, and Linus Torvalds have been saying all this time. "Make me something better, and we'll use it.". Yet, everyone is very willing to complain, and just ignore when $KERNEL_DEVELOPER_USING_BK says "$FEATURE is something i use every day with BK, and isn't in any of the OSS source management tools."
Since I don't follow the kernel mailing lists, has anyone compiled a list of features Linus and the other developers want? From what I've read, it sounds like Linus glanced cursorily at a few other source control systems, and then pounced on BK. (Maybe Larry bought him a beer at the right time, or maybe the planets were aligned correctly the night he tried it out.) But I haven't seen a list of what the kernel developers want in the product. And the only comment I've read about why Linus didn't use one of the free source control systems basically said they didn't give him the warm fuzzies.
Unless somebody can put together a comprehensive list of what features they want or use, the rest of us will just keep wondering: why can't Linus use CVS, for instance, when other projects apparently can use it? Looking at the largest downloads I have, gcc, gdb, and xemacs have similar sizes, but they don't use BK. Why? and why can't the kernel developers?
"So why isn't this the situation for BitKeeper?"
Simple. The tech community should be smart enough to help themselves. It would be a weak industry indeed if we all depended on one person to solve the difficult problems.
Subversion was written by people who saw CVS and wanted something which was free. This is the way things should work, and indeed, it seems to be working very well. No need to go begging back to our political leaders. Isn't GCC enough of a gift?
At a guess, the fundamental reason your requests are being ignored is that people who write software on their own don't need CVS. What ESR calls the cathedrals, they don't need committees to decide whose turn it is to design the roof today. So why should somebody who can shut themselves into an office for 2 weeks and write a programming language need a CVS replacement? Isn't that something for the teams of 20 people next door divvying up tasks between themselves?
Like the kernel developers, for example.
Or the mozilla team.
Or any of the thousands of companies who pay for Visual-SourceSafe licenses each year.
Or literally, anyone with an interest in DIFF and GZIP with time on their hands looking for a project.
Or the Subversion team.
"B) You assume that people like Linus should take time off from their important projects to fix a nag in a product for which a better one (though commercial) already exists." Not to nitpick or anything, but didn't Linus take some time out of his original schedule to develop a product for which a better, though commercial, on existed? I'm talking about linux here.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I don't really understand just how he can justify recommending that others use it.
Linus has answered this question several times: Bitkeeper works. No opensource project aproaches the functionality of Bitkeeper. Remember that Linus cares more about functional software then open source software. Opensource software is just a means to an ends.