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No More BitKeeper Linux
An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has a lengthy article detailing BitMover's recent decision to drop support for its free version of BitKeeper. Linus Torvalds began using BitKeeper back in February of 2002, a decision that has resulted in frequent flamefests, but also in increased kernel development productivity. Evidently the recent decision was due to OSDL's decision to keep paying a developer who was working on reverse engineering BitKeeper... What tool Linus will move to is still being determined."
> What tool Linus will move to is still being
> determined."
Who bloody cares?
Yes, this will be modded down as a troll, but seriously: who cares? I use what I use because it suits ME. What Linus uses isn't even remotely interesting to me, or important.
Enough with the hero worship.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
The whole thing happened because of lack of trust from the free software community. I bet BitMover wouldn't care much if there was an odd person in OSDL reverse-engineering the client to make a port to his pet OS or to learn good programming. Instead RMS kept preaching that BK is evil and must be killed and replaced, and I guess too many people listened. Would you do anything for people with such hostile intentions towards you? And so RMS created the very situation he was warning people about. Which was probably exactly what he wanted.
This is not to say that reverse-engineering is wrong. I have a right to read your source or binaries as any copyrighted book and use general ideas I learned in my future proprietary or open-source projects. I think I will go to read some Emacs code right now to get some hints for my future BSD-licensed project. Yum! What is wrong is plagiarism or fighting people who are trying to help.