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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.
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.
But what it comes down to really is why are they using a commercial product at all to develop one of the most sophisticated open source products.
While (most|some) of us dont always agree with what RMS says - he almost always does have very valid points - and this is something that I personally agree with him on.
Maybe its time for someone to start developing a OSS competitor to BitKeeper (without using BitKeeper of course!)
Code something GPL that performs equal to or better than BitKeeper.
I'm not familiar with the arguments of CVS vs BitKeeper. If it is a philosophical argument about a way to do things, then fine. Someone take the CVS code, fork it, and modify it to do what BitKeeper does.
It is a question of the "Software as Religion" vs "Software as Tool".
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that Linus and the other kernel hackers were pretty proficient with CVS and knew what they were doing. If they are more productive with BK, then there is something wrong with CVS.
Productivity is what counts. This isn't an addiction -- if people want to they can switch back to CVS at any time.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
That is because he was talking about the Linux kernel... NOT the GNU/Linux system.
a ^= b; b ^= a; a ^= b;
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
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.
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.
It's not that BitKeeper shouldn't have the right to choose to whom they give away their product for free; it's just that many feel that it's not appropriate for something intended to be used to maintain an Open Source project such as the Linux kernel.
Maybe its time for someone to start developing a OSS competitor to BitKeeper (without using BitKeeper of course!)
Nobody will; Why? Nobody has really tried so far- even RMS is too stubborn to ask "Well, what is it that bitkeeper does that (cvs|subversion|arch|pcrs) doesn't do?", and then gone off and tried to implement it- in fact, this is what all of bitkeeper's advocates, including it's creator, Larry McVoy, and Linus Torvalds have been saying all this time. "Make me something better, and we'll use it.". Yet, everyone is very willing to complain, and just ignore when $KERNEL_DEVELOPER_USING_BK says "$FEATURE is something i use every day with BK, and isn't in any of the OSS source management tools."
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.
(Actually, i believe that the subversion author (although i may be wrong about which project) has asked, but they're still a ways off in everyone else's eyes- Hell, even bitkeeper isn't there yet. Larry takes plenty of input and actually implements the missing features that Linus and company ask for, though, which is much better than any oss project.)
I'm fairly dissappointed in RMS in this- You'd think if anyone was going to make a GNUkeeper, it'd be him.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
A man's accomplishments do not put him above critique, questioning, or insult.
"And burgers?? Don't want tomato or pickle?"
On the other hand, the GNU license prevents you from adding secret sauce without disclosing the ingredients.
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.
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--
"You answered your own question. The kernel developers decided that BitKeeper was the best tool for the job so they used it"
The kernel developers didn't decide, Linus decided to use BitKeeper!
"That's one of the real strengths of Linux - ideology takes a back seat to getting the job done, and IMO it explains why Linux has been one of the most successful Unix variants."
Untrue. Why do you think they break "kernel module source compatibility" with every patchlevel release? Obviously this has something to do with ideology, because not having to recompile kernel modules is a lot easier to the end user.
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.
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
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
I would expect that in addition to this post to the kernel list, RMS is also doing what he can to support BK alternatives. But that probably would not be as public or controversial.
That's precisely the problem. He's making himself look like more of an ass by doing this. It would be 5000% more effective for his post to lkml to say "I've decided to support the (subversion|arch|aegis|pcrs|whatever) project as an official GNU project, and give them funding and development help so that the kernel team will have a viable alternative to BitKeeper. The project page is at http://www.gnu.org/projects/gnukeeper. Any input from kernel developers about what features are needed to replace BK are welcome at the mailing list, gnukeeper-devel@gnu.org"
*THAT* is constructive. Sending a post that says that he's doing something about his situation. Otherwise he looks like every other crybaby group, like the Group of university students earlier this year, or whoever started last weeks huge thread. Saying "I Hate that you're using this closed product!" is all good and well, but if you don't follow it up with "So here's what I'm doing to remedy the situation", you look like an idiot. If you care that strongly about something, especially if you're in charge of or high up in the GNU foundation or the Free Software Foundation, you should put some backing behind your words.
I expect more out of RMS as this; Others have pointed out that the linux environment is kind of a "flagship" of opensource development in GNU/FSF's eyes. You'd think they'd be committed to providing an alternative if they cared. They've done it with lots of other stuff in the unix world, and they've done a very good job. But, it's been since April or so since bk started being used for kernel devel, and not a single project has stepped up with GNU/FSF's backing and put some real work into doing everything bitkeeper does and more.
Or, the reason could be that Larry McVoy's estimates on the time and money required to create another such beast are shockingly accurate, that's why nothing's stepped up.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
Also, the current Perl 5 development also takes place on a Perforce repository, with public-accessible rsync mirrors available.
CVS is painful to use for many common tasks required for large-sized software projects -- its shortcoming on atomic commits, directory versioning, copy-on-write branches, etc. are widely acknowledged.
It is a good thing that, for a relatively small software sector where the neccessary designs are hardly well-understood, proprietary version control systems could use its customer's funding to experiment with advanced features. As long as nobody gets a monopoly on those ideas (read: software patents), they create a pool of ideas that related free software projects can learn from it -- it is really more like a symbiosis, not antagonism.
It is all a very healthy process of ideas in the 'niche' market, first commissioned by paying customers, then trickle down to the low-end market (think iMovie), which makes enough people to appreciate and understand how it should work like, and finally appears as a full-fledged free software -- and everybody can just move forward and play with new things, proprietary or not.
The remark on lkml that the new BKL is 'pulling a Qt' is probably right on the mark, though: The new Perl pumpking (Hugo) wishes to migrate Perforce to Subversion, and help building the missing pieces that people needs. No doubt that many people are doing the same thing right now, myself included.
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...
It already did. If you are on a campus where anyone (not you - anyone) is working on patches to CVS you are not allowed to use Bitkeeper in the same way I am. What's not arbitary about that?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Shamelessly stolen from the BOFH.
2. You're locked in a room with Richard Stallman and Bill Gates and have only a gun with two bullets in it (which you normally secrete on your person in case you ever get locked in a room with Richard Stallman, Bill Gates, etc). They both clear their throats to speak. What do you do?
A. Shoot Bill, hoping he hasn't got a tablet device (or the XP Security Vulnerability notes) crammed up his blazer
B. Shoot Richard, hoping he hasn't got the notes for his speech in front of his heart
C. Shoot Richard AND Bill and take your chances
D. Shoot yourself, twice, for getting into such a contrived situation
Did you mean, a "Brave GNU World"? I'm sorry Mr. Huxley, but it's just so appropriate.
I know more than you drink.
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.
> GNU Hurd is being developed with CVS.
It's being developed?
> BSD is.
They gave up on the client end and created cvsup for distribution instead (which was meant to replace sup, but turns out to beat cvs in terms of reliability). Many private branches use Perforce
> To me, the real question is: what is going wrong with Linux kernel development that CVS is not sufficient?
Why don't you ask Linus? He's tired of answering, but now and then, he will give you a *big* rant on what he hates about CVS. Let's start with the fact that you can't even rename a file in CVS without losing its history. Or the fact that you can't make one changeset (in CVS terms, a tag) depend on another. Or that you can't even back out individual changesets -- history in CVS is entirely linear when going backward. The reason this worked for Linux before was because Linus did it all by hand, and now he's tired of it.
But seriously, don't take it from me, ask Linus.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.