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Linus Drops BitKeeper
ravenII wrote in to mention a story running on CNet, which discusses Linus Torvald's decision to no longer use BitKeeper. From the article: "Linus Torvalds is looking for a new SCM for his project's source code after a conflict involving the current management system, BitKeeper. 'I've decided to not use BK (BitKeeper) mainly because I need to figure out the alternatives,' Torvalds said in a posting. 'Rather than continuing things as normal, I decided to bite the bullet and just see what life without BK looks like.' Coverage on the BitKeeper announcement from earlier this week is also available. Update: 04/10 16:36 GMT by Z : Updated to reflect the story's origin.
Lets start with an easy question.
What qualities does a replacement have to have, and what are the present alternatives missing?
..I hate how everybody has critized Linus (specially the RMS/GNU front), when he never forced people to use BK.
I mean, when Linus started to use BK he promised things would be at least as good as they were before - and it's true (they've been better in fact), people still gets -rc's in GNU diff format at kernel.org. The official way of distributing patches has always been "clean", I don't know why people whined so much about BK, it's OK for me if Linus wants to use a propietary tool himself, as long as I'm not forced to use it. I've certainly not used or needed to use it for years, and I'm one of those people who tries -mm and -rcs all the time...
(and those who claim that people should behave differently and "give example" just because they're "leaders" can go to hell)
Never?
The quote continues being true. IMO the reason why Linus is dropping BK is the license and flamewars - BK is great, but maybe the free alternatives have got better in those 3 years and now they're "good enought" to use with the kernel. It'd be certainly better if bitmover would make BK free, but that's not going to happen.
How much has Linus use of Bitkeeper hampered the development of a free software alternative? I mean, if Linus had used a free SCM since the beginning, chances are that much more effort would have invested in that very same system to make it better. Unfortunately all the past publicity has helped only Bitkeeper instead of the free software movement.
Thank you
If this whole absurd scenario is not an object lesson on why not to choose proprietary software nothing is.
Imagine that. A company pulling their license and then refusing to even sell licenses to you or your employees.
evil is as evil does
Uh, last I heard, that's neither illegal, immoral, or unexpected when you release a product to the world. I'm sorry they're unhappy about it, but it seems a bit naive to think that it won't happen and a bit stupid that they'd PO one of their most visible references over it.
That is all.
tired of people trying to reverse engineer their software
This is exactly the core issue, and exactly why BitKeeper isn't worth considering.
So which do you take issue with?
1. Writing non-free software is antisocial
or
2. If a job is based upon antisocial behaviour, one should get some other job
Personally I can't see how you could argue against 2, unless you are in fact antisocial and just don't care. RMS has been making a case for point 1 for years now, and the recent news with regards to BK is more supporting evidence for his argument.
Reading your comment to the interview, I can't understand your vehemence. It's irrational. If you have a choice of doing something bad or doing something good, why insist that it's okay to do the something bad? I don't want to put words into RMS' mouth, but I get the impression that when he states something like: "It is better not to program at all than to program non-free software", it's not a statement about the utility of free versus non-free software -- as you noted in your comment, a lot of non-free software is very useful -- but instead it is a statement concerning how programming as a practice in today's society should be carried out. Programming non-free software is not bad because it makes useful software -- that would be silly. It's bad because it supports a system in which non-free software proliferates and causes huge amounts of waste. It is essentially the same point as the one you quote.
The horrible irony of it all is that most non-free software is non-free by default, not because the owners of that software are profiting significantly by having it be non-free. Most software is written for internal use for internal projects. Embedded software is usually specialised to its hardware and of limited use to competing manufacturers. In as much as it is not limited, a culture of free software allows the programmers to write original software, not re-write what others have done hundreds of times before.
If hypothetically free software were to become the only legal form of software as of tomorrow, the vast majority of programmers would still be in a job. And those jobs would be better.
I'm not convinced by your arguments, although I do note that most of the sub-points are valid. Specifically, I reject your conclusion.
If Linus did Linux the *BSD way, a few things would have to change.
Firstly, and foremostly, he would have to develop, and guide, the userland as well. That is part of the reason for the apparent stability of BSD interfaces - for some kernel->userland interfaces the implemetnation is hidden (for example, things that are used only by libc). Whether this is a good or bad thing on the partof the BSD's is irrelevent, it is a fundementaly different approach.
Currently, Linux provides a set of kernel level interfaces, and the GNU libc utiliese some of these to provide the standard C library. Some of the kernel interfaces are standard, (POSIX file stuff, sockets etc), some are not (Firewall, some threading interfaces etc).
Most fundementally, the reason I reject your conclusion can be best expressed as a question: "If the linux process is so poor, why is it more popular than *BSD?"
One can discuss that question ad nauseum, but I suspect that part of the reason is that it is _not_ tightly controlled. If you have a method for making some part better, the Linux apprach says: show me the code, convince us it's better. The *BSD approach says: Show me the code, convince us it's better, get somone on the core team to sponser it, shedule it for the next (or prehaps one after next) release, and wait.
Thus, Linux has a lot more mobility, and can utilise new approaches sooner than *BSD - for good or ill [0].
My personal thoughts is: Linux is not broken. The development model works as well now as it used to, thus there is no need to change. Let the two approaches co-exists, let people use whichever they feel like. If that means that Linux becomes a testbed for ideas, and *BSD cherry pick, then so be it, that's fine. If that means that Linux evolves and *BSD stagnates, so be it, that's fine. If that means that Linux is unstable and *BSD is stable, so be it, that's fine. In practice, the last two will be indistinguishable for a long time after one of them occurs.
Let them be different - choose your favourite model, and be happy with it. But if the other one results in something you prefer, consider that both are trade-offs, and neither is perfect.
[0] This can bring problems. The various VM saga's are prehaps a canonnical example here.
So, in conclusion, big frickin' deal. BK got a few years of valuable, free beta testing, Linus got some work done, and the Open source folks got a reminder as to why the Free source folks got religon.
Luke, help me take this mask off
He's both, he's an insane genius. In 20 years time we'll all be saying "We should have listened to RMS". At times he can appear petulant but if I'd been spent a couple of decades warning people about non-free software and been derided while been proved right time and again I'd probably not be a happy bunny either.
One day we'll listen to him BEFORE things start to go all runny but that will probably cause the universe to end.
And you know that Linus reverse engineered UNIX? He recreated a system with the same API. What is wrong with that? There would be no progress at all if we weren't "stealing" each others ideas all the time. Neither in science, nor in art, nor in (software) engineering.
I find the current brainwashing efforts of "intellectual property" proponents to make us believe there is anything wrong with reverse engineering highly immoral, contradictory with human civilization and ignoring its history.