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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."
if they agree to rename it to GNU/Bitkeeper, everything will be allright. :)
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
If RMS speaks, but nobody listens, does he make a sound?
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.)
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
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.
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.
That couldn't have been RMS in that quote. He didn't say GNU/Linux.
Is this thing on? Hello?
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.
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
He doesn't give a flying fuck about open source, he only wants to sell his product.
If he wants to stay in business,he better want to sell his product.
Je ne parle pas francais.
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"
Yeah, this guy is a total loser, he is only interested in making money. This is totally different from IBM, O'Reilly and especially VA Software/Linux/Whatever, they only want to contribute to open source world domination. In fact, VA is happy to lose millions every year. Imagine, a company only interested in making money!! Someone should tell the FBI to bust these BitKeeper clowns.
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
Larry said in a previous thread that if the kernel developers wanted to contact bitkeeper and get dispensation on the stuff they were worried about (because it doesn't follow the spirit of the license even though it might fall under the wording) that they could do that.
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?
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Beeezt! Sorry try again. This is about using the software, the finished product, not copying the code and using it in another project.
Molog
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
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.
Now all the contributors cannot help out on a bitkeeper replacement.
Actually, dead wrong.
You can either make someone abide by the exact terms of the GPL you specify by saying "GPL ver X.x" or you can allow them to choose between any GPL version by saying "GPL" or allow them to use the version you specify or any later version "GPL version X.x or later" or can allow them to choose between various version of the GPL "GPL X.x, X.y, or X.z". However, it is inconsistent with the GPL to say "the latest version of the GPL". Though I suppose one could say that. But that isn't a part of the GPL license. The GPL license itself does NOT say you must abide by the "latest version of the GPL".
Please get your facts straight. The GPL is not like every other license. For one thing, its not a EULA. For another, you don't even have to accept it in the first place.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
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?
When Ford gives away cars FOR FREE, do you not think they might want to only give them to non-competitors?
Infuriate left and right
Ten to one McVoy isn't going to care anyhow. He just doesn't want to give bitkeeper away to people so they can turn around and use it to put him out of business. If the license is worded strongly that is to make it abundantly clear.
:) When svn (or whatever) is done, he can simply say "they had to use bitkeeper to develop it. What does that tell you?"
I'm entirely sure Mr. McVoy could care less if you pay for his product.
"question = (to) ? be : !be;" --Shakespeare
2) The software is not open source because the open source business model doesn't have a prayer of supporting the development costs.
So... if the open source "business model" (I think he means licensing model) can't support the costs of a BitKeeper-type program, then why is that clause there? What's he afraid of?
By his own assertion, it will not be able to cover its own development costs, therefore he doesn't need the clause to avoid the competition.
Unless of course, he's lying, and he knows BitKeeper could be replaced by a free version, and he's trying to use the license as an anti-competitive measure, using that unique government-enforced power that copyright holders have. "Rent-seeking" in the 21st century ....
But this is all pissing in the wind, the best solution is to simply get as far away from BitKeeper and McVoy as possible, and don't use the product, and try and convince those people with their "best tool for the job" blinders on that the type of license is an integral part of the tool.
I think if you put the RMS-haters and the RMS-lovers in one room, they'd agree on this: don't use it if you don't like it!
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.
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.
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--
There's only one problem with the statement about "Linux's Philosophy". Linus is Linux. His philosophy is "Use what works", which is why he chose BitKeeper. Linus was kind enough to use the GPL and allow his little kernel to grow into a full OS with the help of GNU.
:)
What's at issue is RMS's philosophy, not Linux's. And there's nothing wrong with stating one's opinion, but what RMS does is try and state his opinion in an only slightly less aggressive and sometimes offensive manner than the preacher standing outside a porn shop waving a bible and screaming at "sinners". That kind of obnoxiousness on -any- side pisses me off.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
He's afraid that someone will put him out of business trying to build a better replacement and that it will be good enough but not as good as BK, or that it will be as good as BK is now but will never get to the level of perfection he's aiming for. He's also afraid that using BK gives people enough of an insight into how an SCS should work that it would provide his competitors (free or otherwise) a significant advantage that he did not have. No, what he's saying is that a free equivalent will not be able to cover the development costs that BK has incurred. Essentially a free SCS could not have broken the ground in the way BK has.
Safedisc licensing agreements are also pending.
-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.
Ignoring the obvious request for an argument with the language comparison, it is in fact a testament to the languaes that it is possible to develop other languages using them. For example, could you write Python using VB? Probably not. So the comparison is "C is better for developing languages than VB. Look at Python!" Similarly, McVoy can say "BitKeeper is a great SCCM, even competing SCCMs have used it for their projects."
Basically it says that the people who know lots about SCCMs (or programming languages) settled on whichever tool because it was the best one to do the work they wanted to do, even if that isn't true. So no, as I said, Mr. McVoy would probably end up being pleased.
"question = (to) ? be : !be;" --Shakespeare
The ACLU doesn't have representatives on TV every week telling us what they think. We know. Just like most of the people here know what RMS stands for already. We've heard it all before, and in many areas he -might- be right, but he's just so obnoxious people won't want to deal with him. I respect him greatly for having principles and sticking to them, yes. But it's getting damn near the point where I'm starting to respect him in the same way you'd respect Jerry Falwell. He's a bigoted, racist, loudmouthed prick, but he's got his principles.
Open source doesn't need a Jerry Falwell. It needs a Martin Luther King Jr.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
It's the part about being able to control the software on my PC. It's about being able to modify the code or make bug fixes that are important to me. It's also about being able to install the code on my computer and not have it running all sorts of process in the background, or tracking my online behavior or whatever.
Next time you buy proprietary software just ask yourself the question: Would I buy a car with a hood welded shut? How would you feel if there was a law that prevented you from changing your own oil, or if there were no independent mechanics, or if you could not learn about how cars work in school because all the textbooks were copyrighted and had controled distribution.
Peace, or Not?
RMS is truly a great visionary - i find that everything he has written about free software has been truly prescient, and penetratingly insightful.
Again, on the matter of BitKeeper, as far as i am concerned he is completely right. It's not a question of 'best tool for the job' - the creed of the technocrat - but the best tool if and only if that tool respects the user's freedom.
Interestingly, the movement to downplay RMS's role in the free software movement and his instigal role in the development of the GNU/Linux system is mirrored many times in history where the true visionaries and revolutionaries are brushed aside by later-comers who sell-out on the founding principles of a movement - and Linus Torvalds for all his strong contribution towards the linux kernel is rapidly coming into danger of falling into this camp.
As an example, and one i hope you do not find to off-topic, i ask this mainly american audience on slashdot to tell me who was america's first president?
If you answer george washington you are incorrect - george washington was the leader of a counter-coup after the first revolution.
As my supporting documentaion i give you this from the introduction to the brilliant alternative history of america called the Tribes and the States (written by william james sidis, on several objective grounds considered america's greatest genius of the 20th century).
Don't stand by and let our new john hancock (RMS) be replaced in history by the new george washington (torvalds).
Buying BK licenses for subversion developers is not exactly going to help them. Svn developers use svn for developing svn. Right now, svn isn't stable enough or featureful enough for something like kernel development.
Lastly, many kernel developers actually like bk. They have no problem with using the right tool for the job. Unfortuantly, it's only people who haven't touched any piece of Linux code in their lives who are complaining. (RMS, et al.)
Leave what Linus uses to maintain Linux to Linus. Linus has chosen bk; let him keep using bk.
Mod this comment up!
;) It's also easier to train people on for some reason, I guess it's just so few things to remember, "cvs co, cvs add, cvs update, cvs commit" That's enough to get someone through their first month.
I don't want to use bitkeeper because their license is so anti-free, but subversion needs to be tested on smaller projects before we really can switch something as large as Linux over.
CVS is not so good mostly because it can't version directories. You can of course delete a directory and create another one and rename all your files into the new directory, but it's still ugly enough that I try very to get my directory structure right the first time, and only move files to new directories after a major version release in a branch. There are some other things missing like checkin lists, that allow you to work on different things within a source tree without checking out a parallel tree, it's not as safe, but essential if it's 4-5 Gigabyte source tree(I've worked on such a beast.) Those types of features could be added, as could an rsync type feature, also essential. But the for the directories CVS can't be nicely extended to do it.
I'm trying subversion on for one of my projects soon, and I've heard NetBSD folks talk about trying it. If it works well enough I might even add some of those other features we need so one day I'll never be tempted by perforce or bitkeeper.
BTW My first real vc experience was using RCS, and CVS is much better. RCS files are pretty clever themselves. Later I used Perforce, then I went back to CVS cuz I work on opensource things and everyone can use CVS
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)
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.
> the worst that could happen is that the kernel tree goes back to cvs,
When was Linux using cvs?
> So, using BitKeeper harms nothing, no one is _dependent_ on it, i
Even now, noone is dependent on bk. Some people just prefer using it. Don't know why RMS and other GNU zealots have their panties in a bunch.
Now show me a PHB who thinks that hard. :)
"question = (to) ? be : !be;" --Shakespeare
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
This is different because occasionally, a Chevy worker will drive a Ford to work; and a McDonalds worker will eat Burger King food. Neither activity is restricted by their job.
Nor is it restricted by BitKeeper. What they say is that Burger King won't feed McD staff its burgers for _free_, and the Chevy worker won't get a brand new Ford for _free_.
However, they're free to buy them if they want, like the rest of the world does. They always have been free to buy them. Nothing special here.
Then you'd be saying some software concepts can't thrive as Free Software.
Maybe you're right- depending on how you define 'thrive'. It's all shades of gray.
But if this type of software concept can't thrive as Free, why would there be license clauses blocking the development of it through use of BitKeeper? Even the free-beer license?
Can't have it both ways. If it truly is a niche that BitKeeper deserves to keep because Free alternatives would be too boring to develop, then there's no reason to block them. If it's a niche that naturally would tend towards a Free variant tailored to supporting Linux, then McVoy is intentionally blocking development of it for his own personal gain.
If it's a matter of 'but the Free version would be Good Enough (tm) to kill BitKeeper as a moneymaking enterprise while still not being really as good as truly proprietary software!'... Well, when did THAT ever stop Linux from growing? And the lame-but-good-enough version would be permanently available to build on and improve, which BitKeeper is not.
I don't think concerns of profitmaking software-development companies have any bearing on what should allow to take root in the Free sphere. If they are so afraid that a worse-but-Free variant will eat their business, well, sucks to be them. Maybe they need to try harder if they don't think they can still sell under those conditions.
I don't like to see these proprietary-coder guys coddled and given a cushier situation than what I face in a different field- as a musician ;) I want to go, 'so starve and eat Ramen if you aren't willing to sweat fsckin' blood over your work and fight for years for even piddling small amounts of recognition, pansy!' ;) Wimps. ;)
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
In the case of MS, the ammended EULA is forced upon you when you download updates.
Whereas anyone can post an essay on the internet, and if they're famous or if the topic is of sufficiently general interest, it will get noticed.
What exactly is he doing that offends you so much? He posts an essay once in a while, and gets interviewed now and again. It's not like he's beating on your door or calling you on the phone. I don't understand how you can credibly claim that he's anywhere near as annoying as Falwell, who is in the news *much* more often than RMS."Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
I think the thing is that in a lot of shops this "open source" stuff just doesn't fly. Okay, so SVN might be just as good as BK, but who's selling support for it? It will be interesting to see, once SVN is done, whether people start adopting it or not. If and until some company decides to start selling support for SVN, though, it is a non-threat to companies like BitMover because it doesn't keep any real money out of their pockets.
;)
I think this is all moot though, since nobody's going to be buying BK licenses to develop their own OSS SCCM just "to piss McVoy off." At least no serious contender would.
And yes, I think I've seen the same shirt. Still, nothing beats the ternary operator in terms of fun.
"question = (to) ? be : !be;" --Shakespeare
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
...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.
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...
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
The danger is that eventually these licenses will say things like - "If you use this product, even if forced to by some PHB (eg MS Windows) as part of your employment, you may not ever work on a competing product". If they can't compete technically or economically, powerful vendors will start thinking about this sort of thing without a doubt.
I wonder at the legality of this. I personally would want to see this tested in a court before people start letting EULAs claim their firstborn. EULAs are definitely getting ridiculous, but hopefully at some point one will be challenged and some reasonable restrictions will be set.
"question = (to) ? be : !be;" --Shakespeare
RMS has no way to MAKE people adopt a new version- they already have a GPL that works. McVoy has, I think, a way to MAKE people adopt new licensing on BitKeeper- people don't have ownership of his product, merely licenses to use it.
So, in practice RMS has a way to control the direction of the GPL, but by design this is not an absolute, and not even RMS has total control over it. It's bigger than he is, even though it's in his image- and if he did choose to get backseat-drivey on the GPL, it would not be from a position of control as the creator of it, but from a position of deep and abiding respect for him and desire to obey his wishes.
Which is to say you should NOT worry because it seems like nobody respects RMS and certainly won't do what he says, even if he's asking for sensible things. So in that case it's IMPOSSIBLE for him to affect the GPL anymore ;)
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
I think he sums it up pretty well with that comment.
"Unfortuantly, it's only people who haven't touched any piece of Linux code in their lives who are complaining."
From: Alan Cox
Subject: Re: New BK License Problem?
Date: 06 Oct 2002 00:50:27 +0100
On Sun, 2002-10-06 at 00:28, Larry McVoy wrote:
> Because Linus is using BK it is easier for him to make his work in
> progress available, so he does. Before he was using BK, you got a
> snapshot when he put up for ftp. It is an absolute fact that Linus
> tree is far more quickly available, via regular patches or BK, than
> it was before he used BK.
Linus used to do about a patch every 2 days. Nowdays its a lot slower. I put that down to buttkeeper.
Except, of course, the GPL doesnt say you cant work on proprietary code at all if you work with GPL code. It doesnt say you have to give up your daytime job to use Linux at home.
The BK license says you cant use free bitkeeper for _anything_, not to check out linux kernel sources, not to write a program for the Red Cross, _if_ you develop any competing product in any other sort of function in your life.
The GPL dictates under what terms you can distribute the GPL software.
The free BK EULA dictates what you are allowed to spend your time doing.
Thats quite different.
Did you mean, a "Brave GNU World"? I'm sorry Mr. Huxley, but it's just so appropriate.
I know more than you drink.
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.
Oh no, he's spent 80 hours a week developing his product and now he wants to sell it? He made the software, he can do whatever the hell he wants with it.
Wish I had some mod points left.
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
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?
spot on
:
:
:
:
thanks for making the effort to write such an insightful and hard-hitting comment - you made many good points, i'll focus on just one to add a few quotes
your line
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.
i like a lot and here are some relevant quotes
Lord Shiva said
"You are judged on your actions, and this determines your future. Never seek power. It is the fastest way to fall."
Hakim Bey
"Never seek power - only release it"
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...
I think the website was having troubles. Try again. I just did and it worked fine.
But even better, here is the kernel archives URL for RMS' comments and the response.
Kirk
"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.
Larry's claim is that there isn't a business model that will allow the source to be GPLed and still fund the development from scratch of a BitKeeper type system. The development costs including all the research required, as well - bk breaks new ground in a number of areas, and he doesn't think such work can be funded by any of the GPL-based business models.
/why/ he did it.
Cloning bk, though, would be fairly simple - all the research has been done, and it's just the final functionality that needs to be duplicated. That's what he's afraid of, and with quite good reason. The resulting clone would kill BitMover stone dead, even if it lacked the polish and the full set of features bk supports - free trumps for-cost almost inevitably.
I'd really suggest you think about what you're posting, and perhaps do a little bit of research before you actually hit "submit" - you're comments here are rather offensive to someone who knows what Larry's done, and has an inkling of
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
And now you can track every single patch Linus applies, in real time. Before Linus started using bk, you had to wait for him to drop a patch onto ftp.kernel.org, now you can simply cd linux-2.5 && bk pull.
/does/ actually merge things faster than he used to, Alan's comments notwithstanding.
In any case, the general consensus from that thread was that linus
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
Take what I am about to say with a grain of salt. I am no conspiracy theorist, but in the last 5 years I have seen so many shady actions by big companies, one in particular, nothing would surprise me.
You really have to wonder if Microsoft has their eye on BK, as a financial investment. They could afford to purchase BitKeeper, and from the sound of McVoy, he is no friend of Open Source and would jump at the chance to make a buck. So MS owns BK, maybe quietly, and starts doing their EULA magic on it, hoping nobody will notice. Whoops, suddenly MS owns the rights to the Linux kernel. Frogs, locusts, moon turns red, etc etc.
Yeah, pretty far fetched, but it would be worth a shot, don't you think? What would MS have to lose? Reputation? Hah. They might be taken to court? Ooooooo, scary. If they can thumb their nose to the DOJ, do you think anyone else will scare them in the courts?
Yeah, I am probably just paranoid.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
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
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/021
In case this get slashdotted, here is RMS' post (and I quote):
The new restrictions on Bitkeeper, saying that people who contribute
to CVS or Subversion and even companies that distribute them cannot
even run Bitkeeper, have sparked outrage. While these specific
restrictions are new, their spirit fits perfectly with the previous
Bitkeeper license.
The spirit of the Bitkeeper license is the spirit of the whip hand.
It is the spirit that says, "You have no right to use Bitkeeper, only
temporary privileges that we can revoke. Be grateful that we allow
you to use Bitkeeper. Be grateful, and don't do anything we dislike,
or we may revoke those privileges." It is the spirit of proprietary
software. Every non-free license is designed to control the users
more or less. Outrage at this spirit is the reason for the free
software movement. (By contrast, the open source movement prefers to
play down this same outrage.)
If the latest outrage brings the spirit of the non-free Bitkeeper
license into clear view, perhaps that will be enough to convince the
developers of Linux to stop using Bitkeeper for Linux development.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Beware of the non-GNU/Linux systems that will come (and they will come, sooner or later).
RMS (and the FSF) has a goal, which is to promote Free Software and to avoid further confusion about its nature (the adoption of the word "free" has already been an endless source of confusion). As of now, you can take a Linux distribution at random and be quite sure it uses the GNU tools. But what about tomorrow? It will still be "Linux", but not necessarily "GNU".
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.
The *BSD's are already quite dependent on GNU tools (although not as much as linux). Why isn't RMS screaming at freebsd core to refer to FreeBSD as gnu/FreeBSD?
KDE, GNOME and XFree86 are not precisely small projects. They all use CVS.
Well, subversion will support those two, and also be almost compatible with CVS (except when there is a strong reason not to). A compromise solution would be: use CVS and then switch to Subversion. They are going golden early next year it seems.
I got modded a troll above? Geez.
:)
RMS didn't post this as an essay, though. He posted it to the Kernel mailing list. If he'd posted it to a news site (any Free Software/Open Source site would bow and scrape to host it) it wouldn't have been so obnoxious. But in this case, RMS took his gripe to people in a place that they didn't want to clutter up with arguments and politics. He should have submitted it here, people here -thrive- on politics and bitching.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Shows you his priorities. The whingeing about GNU/Linux is icing on the cake, and is forgotten when the REAL issues come up. Anything you see RMS arguing that people should use GNU/something as a name, you know that there obviously isn't any real problem happening.
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.
This analysis is completely flawed. From the GNU/Linux FAQ:
Obviously, RMS is talking about just the kernel.
I don't understand why everyone loves to speculate on RMS's personality and motivations, when they can't even be bothered to read and understand his arguments in the first place.
And would I buy a car with a hood welded shut? Probably not. But if it met my needs, and all the vehicles with non-welded hoods were go-carts and Pintos, I might consider it.
Metal Gear Solid 2 used CVS on a Linux system. I wouldn't call that small. Check out the PS2 DVD "The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2" for more interesting info on the development of the game, it's got some pretty sweet info.
Upgrade your grey matter, cause one day it may matter
OpenCM
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
While I certainly don't agree with RMS's point of view on everything by a long shot, I think it is valuable to have his opinions around for discussion. The FSF has been a seminal contributer to the Open Source movement, and many of use use their software on a daily basis.
I also think that a lot of us find BitKeeper's anti-competitive free-beer license troubling, although nobody should be particularly shocked since there are other components in the BitKeeper license that are clearly not 'Open Source'. If for whatever reasons you feel that the use of Bitkeeper is inappropriate for your work, fine. I have severe doubts that the anticompetitive clauses are tolerable in a project like the Linux kernel since they might prevent some entities from making what might be a valuable contributuion to the project, or prevent somebody from working on another project in addition to the Linux kernel. That is a very dubious situtation for an open source project like the kernel to be in.
I hope that the upshot of this will be rapid progress on an open alternative to BitKeeper - I expect that it will be. I've long felt that CVS is a rather crude system, and open source development, especially large projects like Mozilla and the Linux kernel deserve better. Ultimately I think the Bitkeeper license will backfire, and there will soon be an open source choice with a similar or better feature set.
And that's why Joe Sixpack doesn't give two wet shits about Linux, and never will. If Linux wants to ever have a snowball's chance in Hell of unseating MS Windows its developers need to start focusing on the user end of things.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Time will tell, of course.
But I believe that the GPL and the principles it stands for
will be seen as revolutionary, in times to come.
It is no coincidence, I believe, that GPL'd software is more successful and widespread
than software issued under more liberal licenses, such as the OpenBSD license.
I don't see how you can dismiss as an 'eccentric notion' a thesis that has changed the face of our business.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
This is about licenses and what they can dictate. Both the BK license & the GPL dictate to anyone downstream what one can & can't do with the "product".
Not true. The GPL states that you can use the product any way you want. You can crack government agencies with it, use it to develop proprietary software or what ever. The restrictions are only on redistribution of software and code from the product. You are not limited in use of the the application. You can use it anyway you want, but you can not take the code, modify or incorporate it into something that does not conform with the GPL and distribute it. That sounds reasonable to me. With BitKeeper, they tell you how you can use the software, you don't get to look at the code, and you can't distribute it at all.
We may not like what he's doing, but as long as he's doing it within the boundaries of the law. All we can do is what others have suggested. Play by his rules ("he who writes the code,writes the rules") or go and make our own "ball".
I have no problem with the developer of the software. He can make it anyway he wants. I am concerned that software with these restrictions is being used to develop Free software.
Molog
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
Yep, RMS, you're right again.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Why do people hate?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
What if RMS were persuaded by these arguments that BK is actually a good licensing scheme? Then the FSF, as the sole gcc copyright holder, could add a license restriction to gcc saying "can't be used to compile Bitkeeper." I don't think BK could win that licensing war. The only reason they can survive currently is that the FSF has some ideals they uphold on their licensing.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The LKML archive I use dosn't preserve headers. Does anyone have the headers from the origional message?
He refers to "Linux development" not "GNU/Linux". That in itself gives me reason to suspect that it's a forgery.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Sure, you can do that. But I don't think you should have to if there's an alternative you're happy with. If you're focused on whatever is your baby, building your own tools when there are alternatives which work for you are a distraction, and not the point of what you're doing.
If BitKeeper weren't available, perhaps the Linux project would develop its own version control system either from scratch or as an improvement on an existing one. But that's not the situation - Linus et al aren't in the business to build version control software but Linux.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Ack. That was me, BTW. Didn't log in. Don't include me in your Anti-Anonymous Posters thing. I just forgot!
This argument does not hold water. Why did Linus create the inferior Linux of 1991 at all? There were many superior UNIXes at that time. Go back in time and substitute "BitKeeper" with "Minix" to see the hypocracy of his statement.
He created it for fun. Everyone knows that. It had nothing to do with becoming a superior unix, and he didn't expect then for anyone to go out and install it on a production server.
The BK->CVS gateway is now explicitly prohibited by the BK license. The only way around it would be a non-realtime solution whereby one individual makes available BK->patch files and another individual makes a patch->CVS gateway. This solution is a non-solution - it's slow and awkward and is not protected from a future licensing whim change of Larry McVoy.
Bullshit. There's nothing in the license that prohibits that. It prohibits someone from using bk if they write for another SCM system. But, larry doesn't own the data.you send through bk, and as long as you're not a CVS developer, you can export a new tree. Go read the entire set of threads on it lately, he says that explicitly a few times. In fact, there's an rsync'able tree that you can sync with sccs right now.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
The GPL/BKL are exactly analogous.
The GPL is an instrumentality of the GNU Manifesto: it exists to achive the goals of the GNU Manifesto, and to help the world envisioned by RMS, when he set those goals, to come into existance.
That is the reason for the existance of the GPL.
Likewise, the BKL is an instrumentality of the same philosophy, but with a somewhat narrower scope of operation. It intends to make source code available, and gives economic incentive for that to happen, by providing a service for free which would otherwise have a high price attached to it, in exchange.
The interesting thing here is that the GPL does not work, if the source code is available under terms other than the GPL.
The BKL doesn't work if the service it provides in exchange for making source code available is available under other terms.
Consider that, with a comparable product available, there is no need to accept the GPL restrictions placed upon you for redistribution and source availability that use of GCC contractually requires.
Similarly, with a comparable product available, there is no need to accept the BKL restrictions placed upon you for source availability that use of BitKeeper contractually requires.
Both achieve their goals through force of contract, and both achieve their goals through the unavailability of alternatives. This unavailability is through an enforced barrier to entry.
In the GCC case, the barrier to entry is that one is not permitted to make derivative works which are not also under the GPL; in the BitKeeper case, it is that one is not permitted to use BitKeeper itself in the creation of derivative works.
In both cases, what is being controlled is derivation.
In fact, the GPL is not a very effective instrumentality of the GNU Manifesto; it fails to address patent and other issues addressed by the M
nifesto, and it's emergent properties are not precisely aligned with the results the GNU Manifesto claims it wants. A better instrumentality would be something like the Cygnus eCOS license. I think the GPL is a trade-off, required by a complexity barrier: any more complex, and it would be a better instrumentality, but it would be harder to get programmers to attach it to their code, without them feeling the need to consult a lawyer first.
On a side note, your Microsoft argument is specious; assuming wide deployment of a "trusted computing environment", Microsoft no longer has an incentive to keep their source code to themselves in order to achieve their own barrier to entry: the barrier is replaced with the fact that you can not digitally sign the resulting code in order to get the hardware to run it, only Microsoft can, so the source code no longer needs obscurity protection.
At this point, it is all about controlling barriers to your competition, and it doesn't matter if you are the FSF, BitMover, or Microsoft.
The net effect of all this is that it destroys the intellectual commons, no matter how you look at it. The FSF is just as guilty as Microsoft, in this regard.
-- Terry
Seems that people's posts are missing an important detail. RMS does not use any proprietary software to do anything ever. For instance there was a long time when he could not browse the web. He does this because he believes that he cannot stand for Free Software and use proprietary software at the same time.
Any projects which are moved into BitKeeper become unavailable to him. This is why the idea of a Free Software project in a proprietary version control system would really bother him.
It's not retroactive. So if the new Uber-GPL license were non-acceptable to you and to everyone else then they could just .... not use it!
Interesting... I smell a new O'Reilly book, CVS for Game Developers!
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE