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McVoy on BitKeeper, Linus, and Perens

Posted by timothy on from the eggs-in-a-good-basket dept.

Joe Barr writes "The story of how BitKeeper has come to be Linus Torvalds' (and many other kernel hackers) tool of choice in maintaining the Linux development tree is worthy of a book. Here's the Cliff Note's version of McVoy's contribution to Linux kernel development, BitKeeper, and countless hours of flaming on the role of open source and proprietary software."

1 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. open source - never had it, never will by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Let's look at the facts.

    For years, open source users used RCS (and bastard son CVS). They have problems, but they were "good enough" for 'rms/gnu hello world'. But they were inadequate for a more serious project, like linux. Of course, corporations often used superior tools like Visual SafeSource, or perforce (which the *BSDs use under the free perforce license).

    Then, along comes Larry McVoy, who builds a versioning system that doesn't have CVS's limitations, and offers it for free to open source projects. Check the numbers, you will see that Linux has improved while using BitKeeper. But instead of thanking LArry, the gnu/zealots piss their pants because linus didn't use CVS.

    Fucking ingrates.