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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."
What RMS is doing his best to ignore is that these restrictions are lifted if you (gasp!) buy a commercial license.
I realise what point he is trying to make, but I think it is unfair of him to cloud the issue like that.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
It seems reasonable enough that Larry would want to prohibit people from using bitkeeper to compete against bitkeeper.
However I think it is telling that the license goes a step further and disallows any person or entity who ever works on a competitor from ever using bitkeeper. So Larry is essentially helping to see that many people (Linux kernel hackers using bitkeeper) are unable to ever compete with him, even if the kernel hacking and open-source-SCM hacking are in no way related. Way to drive a wedge through the free software community.
As usual, RMS gets little or no respect around here, despite the fact that, as usual, he's right.
/. to listen more to RMS when he speaks and suppress your obvious desire to bash a man because he has a certain set of ideals.
Those of you saying that the restrictions RMS mentions would be lifted if you bought the commercial version are missing the point. The point by RMS is that all of the licenses under which you can use BitKeeper are draconian, as they're EULA's. The problem with EULA's is that they can be changed at any time by the developer, thus creating an unfair situation; BitKeeper could just as easily include such restrictions on its paid-for version. The other problem is that accepting them is mandatory, thus creating another power imbalance.
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.
I'd advise the rest of
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Firstly, this isn't your project. Mr. Torvalds has made his points and position quite clear, and it's time that you and the rest of the Free Software people leave the kernel hackers well enough alone.
Also, do you have no respect what's so ever? What are you doing posting on the LKML, which is not meant to be political.
Also, it would be nice if you would get your facts straight. Bitkeeper (the gratis version, anyway) only restricts you from using it to develop a competing project, not from using one.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
As far as I know from reading the first slashdot story, the Bitkeeper folks are not saying that "companies that distribute [subversion, et al] cannot even run Bitkeeper." Rather, it's only programmers who are actively participating in the development of Bitkeeper replacements that cannot take advantage of the free license. In the words of Larry McVey speaking on behalf ob Bitmover, In my opinion, that makes the situation considerably less imperative. Sure, it's a real wrench in the works, but it's not as bad as it's made out to be -- BK is not preventing Redhat, Suse, Mandrake (et al) employees from using BitKeeper, only those who actively develop Subversion or arch.
Flame away.
According to RMS: If you even run bitkeeper, you can't contribute to CVS or other competetors.
That seems to be quite a restriction. Imagine a Microsoft EULA that says: if you run Windows, you can't contribute to Linux.
RMS has a point. Licenses like these are there to kill free software alternatives.
Goddamn, but what has happened to slashdot? Judging by the posts from the majority of the slashdot crowd, I think that they'd be happier if slashdot started reporting every new Microsoft Update patch instead of new Kernal releases.
He doesn't give a flying fuck about open source,
That's bullshit. I read a good portion of the thread where they first discussed this and Mr. McVoy was pretty receptive to everything that the kernel people were saying. Did you read any of the threads or are you just flaming?
We will never know the answer to this puzzler because he is the only person in the world to get slashdot headlines by posting flamebait to the wrong news groups. Anyone else would either be ignored, flamed for cross-posting, or deleted by the moderators.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Normally I don't mind RMS spouting off about something when he has a decent leg to stand on or is using his own forum. In this case, he really doesn't.
First, he didn't seem to choose the right forum to speak in. A listserv for kernel development is not the correct space to bring political speach into. RMS's post was very possibly off topic to the list.
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.
RMS should attempt to open a serious technical discussion directly with Torvalds. RMS should say "What do you need?" and then deliver it. Or RMS should violate the license in a clearly absurd manner and let Bitkeeper take him to court to test the validity of the license.
There's a solution. Buy out BitKeeper and GPL it.
You don't buy the source code when you buy a peice of software. Nothing is being kept from you that belongs to you.
If you don't like that you can't tinker with the software don't buy it. If the only one that does what you like but doesn't give you the ability to do everything you want shut up and ether buy it and go with their rules, or go with one that isn't as good as you like but alows you to do what you want, or go write your own.
also cars are slowling making it so you can't tinker with them. in time there will be more things on them that won't let you see how they work. But you bought the car for the car, not for the ability to see how it works and modify it (In most cases). When you buy somehting you agree to their rules. It doesn't matter if you like it or not. If you don't go else where. IN the case of cars their all going to be in the same situation so your just going to have to deal with it.
Also cars have hoods you can open and tinker cause they are a physical object. Software is not a phyiscal object for the most part. You can't see software (hence it's soft). you can only see a product/representation of it.
From reading slashdot over the years and such
and just how i react to RMS i have a question
How many people out there would like to see RMS be completely isolated away from the opensource movement?
When I read what he says such as this it makes me not want to have anything to do with opensource, "free" software , GNU.
He seams to be one of the most detrimental forces around. His idea's of having freedom by only wanting people to do as he says just send chills down my spine.
Also does he ever use any closed source software? or has he? does he alow for any such usage?
This is sorta a trick question since he does if he has say a car built in the last 15 years and a few other things since they have closed source software in them. How does he feel about that?
I understand why it's a slap in the face, too; but comparing software licensing to slavery is a bit overboard. Software is not sentient by any stretch of the imagination. Further, no one is restricting your rights toward software development - only your rights toward the use of their system.
A far better analogy is to compare a software licensing agreement to a lease--some landlords are perfectly respectable, while others are more than a little shifty. In any event, as long as you live on their property, you abide by the terms of the lease.
Unfortunately, software manufacturers don't require notice before changing the terms of their licensing agreements. I think they should - and I think that people who purchased software licenses have a right not to have the license changed on them arbitrarily. That sort of fly-by-night treatment is my principal objection to BitKeeper's practices: it's unethical. And unethical behavior is not limited in practice to companies which distribute proprietary software.
Their treatment of their own customers deserves a response - and the best response is to cease doing business with them. That couldn't work with slavery, which was far too widespread. . . but when you're dealing with a single corporation, a little bit of financial pressure goes a long way.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
RMS is certainly entitled to his opinion; I don't think that is the issue here. The issue here is his choice of forum. The Linux Kernel Dev list is for technical discussion related to the Linux kernel. If RMS has issues with the bitkeeper license he should post his opinions somewhere else, like the GNU website or Usenet. It doesn't matter who you are or what you've accomplised, offtopic is offtopic.
But people everyday here write how they oppose protections for copyrighted material like movies and music.
Don't mind those people. Also don't assume that people who advocate free software are always of that belief. We aren't all communist. I'd even go as far to say the real communists are in the minority.
I admit there is a lot wrong with our current system of copyright, but I am not in favor of eliminating it, and I don't think many reasonable people are. Most of us do want to see widespread IP reform, but eliminating all IP is not the goal for most of us.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I preface this by saying that I'm a big fan and proponent of open source but anyhow...
If free software really is better...
And instantly you've proven RMS right, by mixing up 'free software' and 'open source software' in your post, you give ammunition to his assertion that 'open source' dilutes the message of the FSF about free software.
The point of the free software movement is that it should be completely free for users to copy, modify and distribute, which is what the GPL tries to ensure. This is an ethical point - RMS believes that this freedom is a right, and that benefits flow from this right.
The point of the open source movement is that opening the source is a better development model, faster bug fixes, the ability for third parties and users to make patches, and better security,
If you read RMS' comments carefully, he never emphasises the open development of software as being the prime goal. Instead, he always emphasises that it's free(dom) software. RMS is someone who is genuinely on a crusade for what he thinks is right, and that's something to be respected. Steadfast belief and effort in a cause considered worthy is something to be respected and admired, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with him. Heck, at least he's not a religious nut who thinks unbelievers should be killed.
If you read the entire story, not just the slashdot post. It looks like Bitkeeper is getting a little microsoftian about what type of project they 'allow' you to use with their product.
I am not a huge RMS fan, especially with all of his "it is a GNU/World!!" assertions, but i think he has a good point this time.
Maybe RMS should not cry wolf so often; so we might learn to listen.....
Ghandi had a great point
First they ignore you...
Second they laugh at you...
Then they fight you...
And then you win!
McVoy doesn't seem to be very supportive however of the GPL, which is understandable considering that few if any companies have managed to post strong profits off of GPL'd software. That doesn't mean there won't be some eventually, or that the GPL isn't the best licence, just right now it is not always feasible for the small business.
And as far as people choosing software (or refusing to use software) because of the nature of the EULA seems to me to be shortsighted. Sure, if I to choose between two similar programs, I'd choose the OSS solution, but if there is a feature I need, or that will drastically improve productivity I'm going to have to eventually use the non-OSS solution, no matter how much I might prefer not to.
I respect RMS for what he has helped to create, but too often I feel like he is just a little too desperate for attention and respect.
just my two cents...(wow that was way too long)
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.
It's funny how much people will bitch when they're not the ones that have to deal with the inadequacies of $OSS_SM_TOOL when it comes to kernel development.
There are plenty of huge open source projects, and they work fine with CVS. GNU Hurd is being developed with CVS. BSD is. To me, the real question is: what is going wrong with Linux kernel development that CVS is not sufficient?
You obviously don't know Larry McVoy.
I first met Larry McVoy on usenet. He was highly cogent in his arguments, and generally a very intelligent guy. Unlike a lot of the idiots who came in after the NSF quit running the Internet, you could actually hold a technical discussion with him, after which you would have a solution, or an approach to a solution, for the problem at hand.
I've talked with him on the telephone on several occasions, when issues have come up that merited a telephone conversation; I've called him, and he's called me, though it has been a while since our last voice conversation.
When Larry McVoy left Sun, he wanted to take the SunOS 4.1.3_U1 code (U2 has not yet come out), and release it under the GPL. This was quite visionary, given the amount of competition that Linux is now giving Sun, even internally, within their own engineering staff, these days. Sun would not do the release, because it would cannibalize their SVR4-derived "Solaris" market.
Larry's motivations in this case were, I think, base... in that he wanted to "rescue" the important work which had been done on the BSD dervice Solaris (SunOS) code base. He saw the GPL as a way to do that.
Larry was an early GPL advocate, in this sense. Frankly, I'm glad he failed in this endeavor; it wporbably would have meant the end of BSD derived OSs, which generally exist only because the GPL is too draconian for people who need to do business.
Larry became an outspoken Linux advocate; he authored the "lmbench" suite of micro-benchmarks, all of which show Linux in a good light, compared to its competition. One can argue that these tools drove a number of the important design decisions in the Linux kernel itself, which, among other things, led to the current threading model and code, which *depends* upon the fact that process context switch overhead is minimal, and there is very little difference between it and thread context switch overhead.
Larry advocated Open Source software, in general: BitKeeper, by it's nature, *from the beginning*, offered free licenses those people who woul publish their source archive, as the cost of the license.
Thus, by its nature, BitKeeper encourages free software by providing economic incentive.
But, like the GPL itself, it is an instrumentality, and the instrumentality must not obey the same rules as that on which it acts.
The GPL carries a prohibition against modification: it is not itself under the GPL. Ask yourself "Why?".
For this same reason, good or bad, BitKeeper can not itself be Open Source software. Yes, there are economic issues. Despite people's intentional misinterpretation of the word "support" in Larry's statements to mean "technical support" rather than "economic support", Larry's correct: the Open Source model is not economically self supporting for stategic projects... it only supports itself for tactical projects.
That RMS is complaining about BitKeeper now is, I think, sour grapes. That's the kind interpretation. The unkind interpreation is that BitKeeper is a more effective mechanism than the GPL itself for achiving the goals of the GNU Manifesto, of which the GPL is an instrumentality.
So before you call Larry an idiot, or blindly GPL or even BSDL your next set of source code, understand the long term consequences of the license.
Frankly, I'm glad he's let go of the understandable bitterness that comes from pouring your soul into a product, only to have it hidden away in a vault by an employer with goals other than advancement of the art and science of computer science.
I think this license demonstrates that he's come to his senses, on strategic issues -- a painful lesson. Would that RMS would so the same.
Thanks,
-- Terry
Linus tries to be so cool not being bothered by M$ but in reality he was pissed off too when the mindcraft report was first published. And what about his "joke" on world domination?
Clearly there is a competition between M$ and linux.
I think it is ridiculous that Linux should be developed with software so proprietary. It think this is where Linus should stop trying to be apolitical. It's going to be counterproductive.
I agree with you on the most part however I find it that idealism doesn't really accomplish anything other then logically consistency. Which really doesn't mean anything either since you can construct a logical consistent argument for anything. No, its the pragmatic people who are to able to bend and find solutions to problems. Bitkeeper is only an idealogical problem at this time if it becomes a problem that deters effciency then it becomes one of pragamatism.
RMS can rant and rave about how BitKeeper is idealogically inconsistent, but who cares? Also its not like BitKeeper owns the linux kernel it's just a tool. If the licensing truly becomes a nuisance then just use another tool.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
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!".
This is nonsense. Do you subscribe to the lkml lists? Linus (and others) have said many times in many different ways why the current SCM software doesn't work for them.
only people with strong ideals about Free software are likely to write a replacment for BitKeeper.
Please note that some people have different ideas of freedom than yours. I don't feel BitKeeper is infringing on my freedom because I don't feel like I should be able to tell the creator how he must distribute is work. Perhaps it is wrong to think differently than you, but it does not mean that I do not have strong ideals.
...they can. Anyone can. If they purchase a commercial license for BitKeeper. Then the product belongs to you, fully and completely, and you can do anything you want with it, short of copying and redistributing it, since it will still be a copyrighted work.
I think this is the point everyone seems to be missing. Larry McVoy sells BitKeeper commercially to pay for its development, and possibly to even make a little profit (the philistine!). He doesn't feel like letting people use his product FOR FREE to develop a competing product. But he isn't attempting to dictate what you will do with the product after you buy it.
This is a long way from the kind of insane grabastics we've seen from Microsoft et al, where they ignore the 1st Amendment and try to tell you that you can't talk about their products without their permission (Frontpage, anyone? SQL Server?), and that's with products that you've paid good money for the privilege of owning. (How is that even legal? I never did figure that one out.)
IMNSFHO, Mr. McVoy has a quite reasonable license attached to his commercial product, which he has graciously allowed the Open Source community to use for free. Maybe even because he wants to (wait for it) support Open Source! (DOH! Really?) If you actually take a look at what kind of guy he is, as obviously Linus has, I don't think anyone here (except the true zealots) would think for a moment that Mr. McVoy would try to stick such draconian requirements into the commercial version of the license. All he's saying is, "If you want to work on a replacement for BitKeeper using BitKeeper, at least pay for a license, so I can afford to keep BitKeeper going until you're done developing the replacement." So, to reiterate, every single developer using BitKeeper is free to develop a replacement for BitKeeper, just not with the FREE version. Using the free version of a commercial product is a privilege, not a right. If you want to have rights, buy the damn thing.
I haven't read the article so I won't comment on that, but the people posting here have definitely gone off the deep end, dumping on Mr. McVoy like he's some kind of "Microsoft, Junior" in disguise, while giving no consideration to his character, the character of his company, the professional judgement of Linus Torvalds and company, and the immense benefit the Open Source community is currently receiving from this "evil capitalist bastard" who dared to attach a restriction to the FREE use of his COMMERCIAL product. Geesh.
Disclaimer: None of this has much to do with whether Proprietary software licenses are good or bad. Obviously, they can be quite bad, since abusive companies can abuse them. But this license and these terms aren't unreasonable by any stretch of the imagination, and will probably never become so as long as Larry McVoy is at the helm. Whether such a proprietary license could ever be used in a bad way by a future owner of the company is another matter, as is the question of how far software licenses will hold up in a court of law, be they reasonable or unreasonable. Those are all separate questions.
I send you this post to ask your advice. Have a nice day. All your opinions are belong to Microsoft.
Yet, thats where Larry posts liscense issues. Thats where the discussion was taking place. Who are you to tell them where they can discuss kernel issues?
we had to explain to outsiders what "get it" means, but
it appears nowdays we have to explain it to Linuxers.
"Live
free or die"
RMS is not concerned whether program A is
technically superior, he is concerned that program A is
non-free. That is what counts for him. (And if
you think about it, we could easily lose our
freedom if we start using non-free programs. This
requires little or no thinking.
His point is that Free Software is better because it gives freedom to its users: freedom to use it as they choose, to understand how it works, and to modify it to fit their needs.
Question: is the average Word user made more or less free by having the source code to Word?
proprietary software is so bad- it doesn't respect the needs of its users
On the contrary, proprietary software must respect the needs of its users, otherwise they won't buy it. There are no such incentives for free software, which doesn't have to respect the needs of anyone but its author.
This is not FUD and it is not panic. It's a problem and a serious one.
The fact that RMS is frequently one-sided is a fact and I agree with partially with you on the case of single criteria. However you should note that a larger part of the people here is worried not about this but on the fact that someone is being more papist than the Pope. And it's not RMS but BitKeeper. These license policies may lead to the fact that, in one point of time, BK may hinder a lot the development of Linux. Note that Linux is not ONE product for ONE objective on ONE SINGLE environment. Inside of it, along with it and beyond it there are TONS of programs, applications, drivers and other stuff which depend on Linux and which Linux depends of. To understand how BK may hinder this, try to get a deeper look at their license.
This is a license directly against best value. It is a binding that forces people into conditions where they may be unable to find that same best value. The license is even anti-commercial as it forbids people to sell third-products, that may have nothing to do with BK, except some similarity on functionality. No matter the qualities of BK, such term is enough to put it more dangerous than M$.
If BK is sincere on being a good company, willing to receive a direct reward, they should choose three ways - turn the license into a genuine commercial license, make a license in terms near to BSD,or separate it into components with different licensings. Probably this would hinder kernel developers, but there is a problem on playing with half-agreements, not seeing dropped nets, accepting broad middle-terms and forgetting about consequences. In one way or the other this may one day turn into the bad corner. Much like M$ did since its advent, let's not forget that 10 years ago BG was Luke against the Empire. Frankly I would not like to see Torvalds being compared to Dart Vader...
Consider that the open source software often chases the coattails of proprietary software, and it is like an erosive force against a software monopoly. Rather than let a given company build an invincible fortress of refined, polished, peerless software, they are constantly forced to accept that their current innovations will eventually become basically public domain through free software. This is an incredible incentive to keep in touch with their market, make real and substantial improvements to their product, and avoid heavy handed dictator style behavior.
If closed-source proprietary software blazes the trail, open source paves the highway. Making a practical public domain out of so much software ensures that innovation in proprietary software is a process, not an end point. It's competition, it's checks and balances, and it benefits everyone who uses the software.
Open source does hardly any damage to commercial products. It does ensure that the #1 commercial product has a competitor close on its heels that cannot be driven away not by competitive pricing but by smart business and new inventions. I wouldn't argue against having competition around here, I get the feeling that Microsoft isn't loved. At any rate, this is a very sustainable situation and the checks and balances benefit the users substantially.
I and many others do read articles before commenting. I happen to agree with many of Rick's philosophies, but not the way he has been presenting them over the past 4-5 years.
His fame and founding-father status with GNU mean that he gets a lot of respect and press, even from those who disagree with his ideals. But when he ignores whether a forum is appropriate and storms on with his idealistic rants, he provides the anti-open-source community with a poster boy to paint the community as a bunch of fanatics.
Some claim that his persistant ranting is a "challenge" for us all to follow our ideals and morals regardless of the consequences. While this is a terrific sentiment for those who wish to be seen as dedicated religious icons, it is hardly a suitable approach for those who don't live in their office as RMS does.
But in a world where "reality" TV is so popular, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Realism is the last thing the sound-bite hungry populace seems to want, and a few "sure win" discussions like this ensure that the page counts stay high enough to improve the eyeball stats for advertising.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
To my way of thinking, Universities should provide free software when it's supported by Government grants in that the public paid for it. And, no, I don't buy that government support is the same as industry grants. If that were the case, we should close the libraries since there are plenty of fine book stores available. After all, Government support is the same as Industry grant and we can't expect the book stores to support their "competition" through their taxes now, can we?
Government support is the same as Industry grant when Industry runs the Government. I don't think we're there yet, but with people thinking like you, I suspect we're not far from it.
So, which is it, do these risk-takers in industry provide all the innovation, or is it done in Universities as you are saying now?
Total baloney. Read, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software RMS created a lot of that software, even after Symbolics and LMI were formed, and offered value to BOTH companies. He felt it only fair that they kick back by providing their changes back to him. When one of the companies balked at the arrangement, he proceeded to produce all of the Symbolics changes on his own without looking at the Symbolics source code and work with LMI in integrating that into their shared base. It seems to me that it was Symbolics who were destroying the value equation here by not sharing their changes and facilitating common advancement.
Sure, competition is good for markets, but cooperation can be better for advancement in some areas.
So, should the Apache folks just stop working and cede the market to iPlanet and MS? Should people stop donating their time to work on Perl and Python and let Activestate do that for the "market". Should the PostgreSQL and MySQL people stop work now that we have Oracle and Sybase?
Why should people suddenly stop working on code they themselves need and use and start only looking into far out research projects? I guess you would argue that no value is created by Apache, Perl, MySQL and the like and that these things just needlessly distract from the commercial marketplace?
Web Servers and Web Browsers were all initially free software. I guess you'd argue that those teams should stop working as soon as the commercial "innovators" move in, huh?
Actually, I think you'll find a lot of free software does extend into exotic areas, like advanced clustering, new OS models, P2P, new languages (Icon, ML, Mercury, most Schemes are all free software), AI. Of course, it doesn't take long before commercial interests start to work in these same areas if they show promise. I guess your take would be that the free software community should back off at that point.
Why is that a better test? Since when is value not related to price? There are some areas that Free Software has not competed well with commercial offerings, like UI, documentation and support. Why should Free Software give up it's advantage in price?
OK, let's compare MS Office and Star Office at the same price. Free. Oh wait, MS Office could never exist at that price, so it's not a realistic comparison. Why is it any more a realistic comparison to raise the price of free software?