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RMS Calls On Linux Developers To Replace BitKeeper
JakusMinimus writes "The developer of BitKeeper has issued fighting words to RMS and he has responded on the LKML,. I remember the flap about this way back when Linus decided on BitKeeper, now it seems many of the non-free concerns were warranted."
As usual, people have not taken the time to read the whole thread. Here is one post by McVoy that sheads a bit more light on the subject. Please note that I am not trying to pass judgement one way or the other, but rather adding more information, since too few of the posters here have bothered to read more than Stallman's post.
Below is one of Larry McVoy's comments in the BK thread"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
Yes, we really do want it to be illegal to sell our rights. Should you allow that you would see public slavery quite fast(underground it happens still, mainly with sex trade and immigrants). Basic rights aren't rights if you can give the key to them away.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"Judge, I want to violate this license on this product that I got for free because it's not free enough".
Except, as Alan just pointed out, in the part that Larry has quoted, that the part of the license which forbids reverse engineering for the sake of interoperability is not enforcable in most of the world. If it isn't enforcable then you can't actually violate it.
Besides, have you considered that it is that license you appear to dislike so much which provides for the product, the hosting, the free public machines, the support, all of that? It's a pile of money and time and I don't see RMS steppng forward with an open checkbook.
Maybe someone should clue Larry in, but GNU have servers around the world hosting both the GNU project itself, the FSF and GNU Savanah. They manage to keep them running, I fail to see how keeping a few extra source control servers running would be an issue for GNU.
Bitkeeper may be better than the current Free alternatives, but it isn't Free software. Larry seems to be of the attitude that a freebee licence and a couple of servers somehow means we should be building golden idols in his image. I don't buy it, sorry.
The right way to do open source development is to add real value to your freely-released product.
The difficulty is that if your project is popular and successful, then other open source developers may release open code that moves in the same direction as what you're doing. Your special super-duper improvement to foo, foobar may be rendered obsolete by foobaz in a few short months.
That's a brutally competitive position to be in. The challenge to making money then is to develop lots of really good code add-ons or plug-ins more quickly and better than the buzzing swarm of random open source developers.
This kind of competitive landscape is absolutely fantastic for consumers, but can make life for the developer trying to make a living difficult. The only room I see is for services: configuration, mainenance, custom-patches for special customer orders. A genuinely useful, general purpose add-on to a piece of free software will be replicated freely in some given amount of time, particularly if it's not difficult to do and/or you charge too much for your add-on.
Strictly, Richard Stallman is right and correct. That if you give in on your principles about free software, then you cannot complain if the software owner suddenly locks up the work and suddenly starts charging you an arm and a leg for the product. But though Richard is right, has high principles and thinks everyone ought to be similarly principled, generous, cooperative, etc., this leaves festering the practical issue of earning a livelihood doing something related to computer programming.
Richard never provides a comforting answer to all the good-hearted programmers thinking "Yes, I'd like to be a generous individual and give away my software and prevent anyone else from caging it by stapling it with the GPL."
"Now that I've done this nice generous thing, how do I live nicely and not like a pauper?"
Good idealistic programmers should love programming so much they do it for the love of it in their spare time, like artists. From what I know of artists, 99.8% of them work at something else that doesn't pay too well. Few get to earn a decent living doing what they love to do. That's a hard reality to face for a budding programmer.
I'd be really curious to hear what Peter Deutch (Aladdin Ghostscript) and the commercial SSH developers have to say about idealism, commercialism, earning a living, competing against their own earlier free software, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Richard is as smart as a whip. If he groomed himself like a blue suit IBM type of yore, he would be unstoppable. The only excuse some individuals have for not listening to Richard is personal prejudice against Richard's way of life. Whatever you think of the way Richard lives, there is no denying his brilliance. He called it right on Bit Keeper from the start.
I think the world will be surprised at how many of the "extremist", "paranoid", "ideological", "smelly hippy" ideas that Stallman has put forth will come true just as he has predicted them.
the guy's a visionary on a level that even much of today's technical crowd can't fully grasp.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
You entirely miss the point. Most countries in the world have laws that explicitly make reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability legal and make any license provisions or contract clauses stating otherwise null and void.
This includes most of Europe - In almost any European country you can not be forced to sign away your right to reverse engineer a product for the purpose of interoperability.
The key questions are as follows. Why should you not be forced to abide by your voluntary, contractual promise? Do we really want the government to say that we don't have the *freedom* to make such binding contracts and promises?
Because some rights are so fundamental and important that they need particular protection. By making it impossible to sign them away, there is nothing to be gained from trying to trick or coerce you into signing them away.
Your freedom has that status in any country on earth: You can't sign yourself into slavery. The reason is that if it were possible, your freedom would be weakened - you could be coerced or tricked into signing it away, and could never change your mind.
Many less vital rights are also protected in the same way: In most countries you can't sign away certain health and safety protections for the workplace, and can't sign away protections against unfair dismissal and similar rights, because the difference in strength between employee and employer in many cases would render the protections worthless if you could sign them away, in particular for the employees with least leverage who would be most likely to suffer from it.
Similarly, reverse engineering is protected in most countries because the right to compete in the marketplace is seen as paramount to a free market in most of the world, and preventing reverse engineering would create massive barriers to entry, and massive potential for consumer lock in.
There are literally hundreds or thousands of rights you have that you can't sign away, or can't sign away without getting specific concessions in return. They are usually there because you would have LESS freedom without them.