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BitMover Releases Open Source BitKeeper Client
diegocgteleline.es writes "Larry McVoy, the owner of BitKeeper (also one of the guys behind LMbench) has posted a message to linux-kernel where he announces a open source client of BitKeeper, which would only allow synching against BK trees. It looks like it's licensed under the NWL (No Whining License) that will force you to 'not whine about this product or any other products from BitMover, Inc.'"
So.. this doesn't run under WINE then.
So.. this doesn't run under WINE then.
Ba-dum-ching.
Don't be a stupid. At least read the mailing list posting:
Too late.
Right know, I put my expectations on Bazaar-NG: all the goodies of GNU Arch and the simple interface of Subversion. Developed by Canonical (of Ubuntu fame).
Windows users:
Internet Explorer is obsolete. Please upgrade to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
Larry's entitled to license things under any license he wants to. It's HIS product. However, having said this, it's still quite understandable for people to not want Linux development being tied to a closed-source product with nasty gotchas in it's free license. That's not whining in the least.
The only thing resembling "whining" seems to be coming from Larry himself with this silly license. All it's going to do is make the acrimony WORSE, not better. Kind of childish, in my not so humble opinion.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Actually he said in the email that the whining license was a joke and he's actually licensing it as BSD (and later said it could even be considered public domain), though until the source code is re-released with proper license headers, I doubt his statement to lkml is legally binding in any way.
-Tupshin
It looks like it's licensed under the NWL (No Whining License) that will force you to 'not whine about this product or any other products from BitMover, Inc.'
Seems comparable with Microsoft licenses. But in the case of Microsoft, it's No Whining about our license.
I wonder if someone could extend said license to other things in life such as Family, Jobs and Girlfriends..
mnewberg.com
I don't know how relevant this is, not quite getting the gist of the article, but does this sentence (linked from the word message in the article) make any difference? Or was I not supposed to follow any of the links?
Don't worry about the license, it's a joke. BSD license OK with everyone?
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
I guess it's too late to tell you to RTFA, isn't it?
MacroHard - Boning you in a big way! (TM)
There are so much real open alternatives like subversion, arch and (my personal favourite) darcs - just to name a few. Why bother with bitkeeper?
Need a Wiki? Check out DokuWiki
Thinking of his track record, I wouldn't bet on his software. First you couldn't do anything, then you couldn't even use it if you were messing with other source control systems, now he is saying it is free for anything. If someone reverse engineers a GPL/BSDL BitKeeper server clone using the client will he tolerate it or will he try to crush it? That's the crux of it.
Don't worry about the license, it's a joke. BSD license OK with everyone?
You ain't from round here, are ya, boy?
The LMBench results shown on that link ( http://www.bitmover.com/lmbench/lmbench-summary ) are very interesting, but very old (Linux 1.3.57 vs IRIX 6.2 vs AIX 3.x vs SunOS5.5)
Anyone have more recent results anywhere?
oi no whining!
"BitKeeper has made me more than twice as productive, and its fundamentally distributed nature allows me to work the way I prefer to work - with many different groups working independently, yet allowing for easy merging between them."
-- Linus Torvalds, February 2004
Linus did it. I can too! *jumps on the bandwagon*
This slashdot-related signature is a stub. You can help kihjin by expanding it.
Nothing is going to stop people bitching and BK has some restrcitions in it's licence that some people with a personal stake in Linux are uncomfortable with (to say the least).
Me? I don't really care. The relentless flamewars are tiresome though.
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
Wouldn't it be a perfect example of promissory estoppel".
Why do you think the headers carry any more legal standing than lkml?
They should have used the Open Profanity License instead!
- shadowmatter
I don't keep my beer in my neighbor's fridge, I don't keep my money in my accountant's saving account, and I don't keep my source code in closed-source revision control systems.
Whatever there licence was at the time I gess it is noegzistance now. At the time I went in to there site to read there licence and see what it was all about the link to the licence was broken. I wonder if too many pepole from here looked for that link. I think I acculy might create a NwL. I think it would be useful from the buisness side of things. For example a project you are offering for free and do not have the time to support it. So you do not get a million emails a day of how anoying your product is.
~tuxmaster
I wonder how this bitkeeper thing compares to the state of the art, Perforce. Perforce charges $700 per seat, and after working with it for years, I can say it's worth it. Everything is just the way it should be. I wish someone would reimplement the damn thing under GPL license. After using Perforce at work, all other systems look like a joke.
I found a mention from 2003 about this. Albeit only a extension, it seems like this have long roots.
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
Actually; unless the parent Accepts the No Whining License - he is perfectly free to whine about the product in any way he/she desiresw
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Blockquoth the site:
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
When all is said and done, dispite the licencing issues with BitKeeper, it is still a very good product. I have yet to hear of any decent opensource revision control products that are SCCS based with a concept of change-sets to a repository. Such a product would be very useful to those held hostage by the BitKeeper licencing, but need an opensource alternative with similar features to migrate to.
The other opensource revision control products mentioned above do not appear to be SCCS based with a concept of change-sets to a repository, and hence would not very useful to current bitkeeper users. If I am mistaken, then I would love to be proven wrong.
No, your attitude is the one with the problem. No current open source solution adequate? Then help make one that is- either by improving an existing alternative, or starting your own.
...if you're trying to do the community a service. If you're looking to put food on the table doing something completely unrelated (where this is simply a support function), it is mindnumbingly stupid. Most likely you're long out of business by the time it is working.
Sure, if all you need is some minor customization, maybe. But if it clearly isn't anywhere near being up to the task, pick something non-OSS. Earn some money, help out the projects where it is feasible to replace proprietary with OSS.
That is the way OSS projects prospers. I make a 98% solution a 100% one. That makes it a 98% solution for someone else, who'll make it a 100% solution for them. And the snowball is rolling. Not by one company breaking its back trying to bring it from 40% to 100%.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Larry McVoy, BitMover Founder, gave a great talk about BitKeeper and the delta development model at SCALE 3x (Southern California Linux Expo) last month. Its available online here. -Ilan
Nah, in Korea only old people use BitKeeper... :)
"This is exactlythe attitude that keeps holding open source back. It's not about whether the source is open or not, it is about choosing the right tool for the right job. More people should understand this..."
They work at Microsoft now.
*BSD (and later said it could even be considered public domain)*
so actually he isn't giving it away under any license... merely providing a download to it. kind of dangerous thing to start using(not that it seems to be good for anything but getting the latest snapshot out of the system).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Making fun of your prospective users is a good way to turn them off. Why should I care about a product that labels me 'whiner' when I am concerned about my software freedoms?
It was a good stunt that he snagged Linus/linux as a user/project, but in hindsight that was not the best move for Linux, IMHO.
The game of free software is played on merits, not restricting your users how they can use the software. a BSD client does not mean much when the server is not free too.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Wikipedia knows it all!
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
A copy of NWL can be found at http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/14/47/:
/*
* tarball.c copyright (c) 2003 BitMover, Inc.
*
* Licensed under the NWL - No Whining License.
*
* You may use this, modify this, redistribute this provided you agree:
* - not to whine about this product or any other products from BitMover, Inc.
* - that there is no warranty of any kind.
* - retain this copyright in full.
*/
So far as I can see on their website, BitMover fall under that heading.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Why is nowadays everything called Open Source, even if it is? Free Software is more than Freeware and Open Source more than having the source code.
Limiting usage of the program by limiting what you are allowed to say is nothing bearing any freedom in it at all.
This is true for most real world objects. Only software is radically different.
You can also hack your own fridge all you want without dmca style rules coming into play.
So his anology works for a skilled craftsman anyway.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Larry's entitled to license things under any license he wants to".
But is the licence enforcable? Would any court take it seriously? And isn't the right to free speech "inalienable" in the U.S.?
Don't worry about the license, it's a joke. BSD license OK with everyone?
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com
I want to be able to whine all I want, and I'm prepared to whine about this until it is changed.
From the Open Source definition:
MOD THE CHILD UP!
What if that GPL/BSD project is a replacement for Perforce?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Hey! I went to Wikipedia, and look what I found!
Karma whores are individuals, or messages themselves, that attempt to receive feedback in the form of karma points. Often these will be needless information (such as a link to a wikipedia article to the subject being discussed)
This license would never be approved for the "Open Source" logo by OSI. If necessary, I would suggest that we change the OSD to make sure that a license does not impose restrictions on freedom of speech. Sheesh.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I doubt his statement to lkml is legally binding in any way.
Don't be so sure. Judges have all sorts of discretion when you make statements about permission that go outside legal documents. That's exactly WHY legal documents exist, and why some of them will say "This is the entire extent of the legal agreement; no other statements are binding."
Keeping your mouth shut about a license (when you're the licensor) is the best policy. Larry has obviously chosen a policy less than best.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I admire your ideology-before-productivity attitude, though... inspiring.
That is a very unfair (and inaccurate) characterization of the grandparent post.
Productivity is only one factor, and often not the most critical one. Just as any liability lawyer, security consultant, or sysadmin whose had to recover using an offsite backup.
Your data is your most valuable possession. The cost (in time, energy, money, resources, you name it) of creating your data far outweighs the value of the hardware it resides on, the software you paid for, and probably even the office in which it resides. It is the one thing insurance can't replace, and the one thing you (or your business) probably can't live without.
Having your data (e.g. the Linux kernel) beholden to a proprietary product, managed in a proprietary format, is over the long term quite foolhardy. Imagine, for example, if Microsoft were to buy Bitkeeper (this is hardly unimaginable, and arguably not so unlikely). It isn't an "end of the world" scenerio by any means, but it is damn inconvinient to move the kernel sources to another revision control system, and unfortunately for the kernel developers, there is unlikely to be a libre one that suits their purposes available because they haven't been contributing feedback, criticisms, and suggestions for improvement to any of the free projects by virtue of the fact that they aren't using any of them and so aren't in a position to make said suggestions, etc.
It is generally a mistake to have one's data beholden to a proprietary product. Sometimes it can't be avoided, and sometimes the cost is worthwhile. And sometimes, the results are absolutely catastrophic. Unfortunately, in the case of the Linux kernel, if the results should be catastrophic in some manner, it will be catastrophci for the millions upon millions of Linux users around the world. OTOH there are enough tarballs and parallel CVS repositories around that such a scenerio is very unlikely. What isn't so unlikely is the "OMFG this is painful, we'll have to move to $free-rcs and its going to cost us at least a couple of months productivity."
Now, in the case of the Kernel, Linus has judged these risks to be small enough, and his productivity improvements to be great enough, for the potential tradeoff to be worthwhile. The grandparent post has judged the opposite. Both may be correct for their respective problem domains, but to characterize the one as "ideology-before-productivity" is very disingenuous, and ignores a whole slew of real-world issues that proprietary management schemes, formats, and restrictions bring to the table.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
With Bitkeeper it's very easy for every organization - and even every developer - to have his own "fork" of the tree which acts as a "master repository" for others to create branches off of.
Darcs does this. http://abridgegame.org/darcs/
For example, within RedHat, they can have one (or many) child branches from Linus's branch (or any other developer's branches); and "reparent" the branches as needed to merge in the various pieces they need. Other employes' repositories may point to one inside RedHat; or they may point to Linus's; and of course they can "reparent" their repository to switch between the two as needed.
Darcs can do this, although the mechanics may be slightly different. I'm not sure how easy it is to do, as I have never needed to do this.
Similarly, any company or group of developers can have similar structures.
Darcs does this, too.
Also; it's important to note that not everyone needs access to a "master repository"; and that indeed no-one needs access to a "master repository" except when they're merging with that master.
The same is true of Darcs. In fact, with Darcs, you don't even need access to the master repository to send changes to the master repositroy as merges can be sent, via email, to someone who has write access to the repository. Darcs even sends the email for you.
Bitkeeper works perfectly on my laptop in disconnected mode - and I have the full power of the source control system on my laptop even with no net access - I can create branches, merge branches, etc. If I'm traveling with someone else from the company I can merge my branches with his merely with a cable between the laptops - no connection to the home office is needed.
Wow! Darcs works perfectly in disconnected mode, too! I sense a pattern!
http://abridgegame.org/darcs/
Consider darcs. Darcs is free, open source software.
There IS a mature open source alternative to BitKeeper. http://aegis.sourceforge.net. I wish more people would try it.
So, uh, there are like over a hundred posts here, and since nobody has said so yet... what the hell IS BitKeeper? I get the impression it's something used for the Linux kernel? What does it do? Why is this news newsworthy?
Would be nice if the article submissions actually contained some of this information...
Comment of the year
> What if that GPL/BSD project is a replacement for Perforce?
Unlike Bitmovers, Perforce isn't so insecure and controlling as to forbid you from doing so.
The point of this article is that you no longer need to use the "we own your soul" closed source BK client just to download the kernel
I hope you are not in violation of the license, or that you have not agreed to the license.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
Karma whores are individuals, or messages themselves, that attempt to receive feedback in the form of karma points. Often these will be needless information (such as a link to a wikipedia article to the subject being discussed)
The parent I replied to, didn't know what BitKeeper was, I could have said 'yes, it is something like CVS', I could also just point him to a resource of information about it...
Sorry for trying to help, to put actual useful information in these comments... next time I'll bash Microsoft again.
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
Then where's their source code?
OK, that's all I need to hear to like these guys!
We apologize for the inconvenience.
this license makes me wish everyone on Slashdot ran Microsoft Linux released under the NWL.
This is a VERY limited client, can only update to the current status of the tree. That's it. It's completely seperate from other offerings of the complete client and their licenses.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
You've given us an excellent example of the Wikipedia bias. Fourteen out of twenty two lines in the Bitkeeper entry are about the Linux/Bitkeeper controversy. That's two thirds of the article! Two lines are about it being closed source, and three lines about a Linux vulnerability it prevented. That leaves only three lines out of twenty two that bother to talk about what Bitkeeper is.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
...why did he have to use that licence... there are so many others that are much better... :)
Yes, arch has improved massively. It's now something I'm prepared to use, though I'd like it more if it didn't {have} +the silly--filename !requirements.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
OK-root OK
INFO-generating patch, please wait...
ERROR-unable to gzip patch
Running demo.sh.
> What if that GPL/BSD project is a replacement for Perforce?
Keeping the motivation for such a project at bay is probably a strong reason they do this in the first place. Smart.
Informative: My post was also a joke.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
Just to amplify on what you said: The two terms usually used in industry are "state of the art" and "state of the practice".
The second is what's known to be good in practice, and thus is widely used. The first is more cutting-edge.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Try reading a bit more carefully moron.
There are lots of OSS/FS software configuration management (SCM) tools. CVS, Subversion (SVN), and GNU arch get lots of press, but there are many others such as Aegis, CVSNT, Darcs, FastCST, OpenCM, Vesta, Codeville, Bazaar and Bazaar-NG.
You might also take a peek at my paper Software Configuration Management (SCM) Security.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Well, I remember some A/V program that had a provision such that you could not compare their product to any other A/V products and publish the results in their EULA.
I believe that the judge declined to enforce that provision.
The No-Whining License is bad, because anything might be a whine. Any kind of criticism, a suggestion for improvement, even a patch may be considered a whine because it's a disparaging remark on the official BitKeeper as it stands, which might turn potential users away (until it's improved, which Bitmover might not want to do, which is their right, and this sentence is getting just too long.)
The next day it snowed and the villagers lost all their crops, but it was a good day. Or something like that. Go and read the story.
Nice list. An interesting project you didn't mention is monotone.
OK-root OK
INFO-generating patch, please wait...
INFO-patch had problems, see below:
INFO-Entire repository is locked by:
INFO- Write locker: 767@bkbits.net.lock
ERROR-creating patch errored.
This shit doesn't work. Go to hell Larry. hahaha.
Thanks! I knew about that one (you can see its link in the paper), but it didn't get into my cut-n-paste.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
well there link
for there licence
Whatever there licence
in to there site
read there licence
"their".
I gess it is noegzistance now
"guess", "non-existant".
I went in to there site
"into".
it was all about the link to the
"about, the".
I acculy might
"actually".
create a NwL
???
OK, I give up.
OK, Mr. Smartass. How do you see his/her ip? What's my ip, if you're so smart, Mr. Smartass?
... or to whine about BitKeeper.
it violates section 6