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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."
Larry McVoy of BitKeeper said: "2) The software is not open source because the open source business model doesn't have a prayer of supporting the development costs."
To which I ask:
WHAT IS YOUR DEVELOPMENT COSTS?!? And can't you dual-licence?
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
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.
Why? Isn't that basically what the GPL does when it's applied to library code? The GPL says-- obviously paraphrasing-- that GPL-licensed software cannot be compiled with software that is not GPL-licensed. If you want to use, say, Readline in your program, then your program must be licensed under the GPL. If I wanted my program to remain closed-source, or if I wanted to release it under a more liberal license like the BSD license, I'd be shit-out-of-luck. That severely restricts the way in which I can use Readline. Did you get that? It limits the way I can use, not just distribute, Readline. In that example, and similar ones, the GPL dictates the terms of use of the software in a very specific and overt way.
Let's take another example, a hypothetical one this time. Let's say I wrote some serious mathematical library software, and released it for general use. And let's say that the license I wrote included a clause that said the government of the People's Republic of China may not use my software for the purposes of decrypting communications. Would my license be, as you put it, "a very dangerous thing?" (Ignore for a moment that my example is silly; I'm making a point, not a suggestion.)
I think Stallman's point is all wet.
I write in my journal
Sigh. This is just another nail in his credibility-coffin. Why does it seem like he spends more time picking fights, pushing people to name things the way he wants them to, or to use software the only matches his ideology? For christ's sake (pun intended) he's gotten so damn bad that it's probably just as bad as it was when the first Christians (Or muslims, or jews...) came on the scene ranting about how THEIR god was going to kick everyone ELSE'S god in the ass.
Yes, RMS has contributed far more than I'll ever even DREAM of. Yes, RMS has a super-genius IQ and a -highly- admirable vision of what the future should hold. But goddamit, he needs to start working on some POSITIVE SHIT otherwise he's just going to make the entire Open Source community look like squabbling fools that can't cooperate and will never be able to compete feature-for-feature with commercial software. He wants to prove that Open Source is better, then DO it. Don't just bitch about who gets the credit for the kernel.
Stop picking fights and start being productive in a way that actually inspires everyone, rather than irritates most.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Two things: it is not Linux that is popular but GNU/Linux that is, and the kernel developers cannot contrib to project because they used BitKeeper before.
One criteria when evaluating the best tool is the license and the users rights. One important citeria should be the users right to see the source and fix bugs and add new features to the software product so that it can work as intended.
This criteria means that many - not all, but nearly all - propriatory software products are inferior.
Just saying it like it are.