Slashdot Mirror
New BSD licensed CVS replacement for OpenBSD
Jeferey Bakins writes "In an effort, by Jean-Francois Brousseau (jfb@openbsd.org), to rid the OpenBSD CVS tree of GPL'ed licensed code, OpenCVS is now officially part of the OpenBSD project.
For more details, see the OpenCVS homepage;
http://www.openbsd.org/opencvs/"
I think the article summary is somewhat misleading, the front page of the project claims that OpenCVS is a result of the ongoing security vulnerabilities in the existing CVS project, which has grown stagnant:
The OpenCVS project was started after discussions regarding the latest GNU CVS vulnerabilities that came out. Although CVS is widely used, its development has been mostly stagnant in the last years and many security issues have popped up, both in the implementation and in the mechanisms.
Of course, I'm not going to be stupid enough to deny that there is a great probablity that another unwritten motivating factor was to use a non-GPL licensed piece of software. But, I think time has proven that while OpenBSD may not be a very useable distribution from a common desktop end-user standpoint, a lot of very good portable, secure code has come out of the project. Since I have to continue to run CVS servers for some of the projects I host I look forward to a secure portable CVS server that I can be more confident in.
Umm. No. That's not what it's about at all. Lets correct the mistakes now, shall we?
1) There was no OpenCVS until the OpenBSD project noticed some major security vulnerabilities posted to bugtraq in GNU CVS.
2) The reason why OpenCVS was written was to provide a more secure client/server package than what the [now stagnant] GNU CVS project is currently providing. It has nothing to do with GPL vs BSD, infact the OpenBSD project is all about what RMS calls "free software".
So basically the Slashdot editors posted a troll to the front page. Beautiful.