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BitKeeper Love Triangle: McVoy, Linus and Tridge
erktrek writes "NewsForge has given a brief interview to the parties involved in the (inevitable?) BitKeeper debacle." Here is some of our previous coverage.
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I wouldn't excatly call it love.
Any chance we could get a 1-2 line summary of what the "debacle" is exactly? The summary above is practically just a link... it doesnt' really help anyone understand w/o a reading of several materials.
stuff |
Does the name 'git' strike anyone else as an odd name for a (kind-of) SCM system?
Or is this Linus making a not-so-subtle pot-shot at Larry McVoy?
"Linux leader Linus Torvalds has begun looking for a new electronic home for his project's source code after a conflict involving the current management system, BitKeeper"
Linky
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
Tridge?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Reverse engineering is particularly warrented for the purposes of interoperability, and this seems to have been the motivation of Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell. He wasn't reverse engineering BitKeeper to "steal" McVoy's ideas, he was doing it so that he could gain access to the Linux kernel without using non-free tools. McVoy's position is one that you might expect from Microsoft on Samba, but not from someone that claims to support the ideals of free software.
Bottom line? I'm with Tridge on this one, McVoy is wrong, what he wants and seems to expect is effectively patent-level protection of his ideas.
Wow, that is definitely one video I definitely wouldn't want to look for a torrent of.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/04/06/torval ds_bitkeeper/
So whether you take the view that Bitkeeper isn't compatible with the principles of the Linux project, or vice versa, is moot. It's simply a wonder it took so long for things to come to a head.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Linus said
Larry has a very clear moral standpoint: "You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails. Solve the problems on your own, and compete _honestly_. Don't compete by looking at my solution."
And that is what the BK license boils down to. It says: "Get off my coat-tails, you free-loader". And I can't really argue against that.
That's bollocks. Reverse-engineering is not riding on the coat-tails of anyone. It ensures that the product is 100% compatible.
If Linus truly believed that, he'd have worked to drop Tridge and keep BitKeeper. However, I'm quite disappointed in Linus implicating Tridge as the evil in this situation.
...to make a better statement.
This kind of thing looks bad to the entire community and makes corporations question their liability if it's found their products in use have been copied. OSS doesn't need this kind of anchor around it's neck.
I hope this addressed openly and completely in the near future.
Larry has a very clear moral standpoint: "You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails. Solve the problems on your own, and compete _honestly_. Don't compete by looking at my solution."
Hmm.. and where does that end? Is it dishonest to not re-invent the wheel for your new automobile? This is a tricky area because outright copying of someone elses work without their permission is not right, but figuring out how someone else has solved a problem is kind of the way progress works.
Starsucks
He's probably either:
a) getting sued and his lawyers have advised him not to release too many details
b) worried about getting sued and his lawyers have advised him not to release too many details
Why wait until some undefined "later" point to explain one's self, if one has nothing to hide?
for legal reasons
Curiouser and curiouser.
And, incidentally, since Larry is so offended by Tridge's reverse engineering, I take it that he's taken the moral stand, and backed up his strong principles by making sure that none of BitMover's employees use Samba, either at work or in their spare time.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Please lets get this straight - there is nothing immoral about reverse engineering, particularly in the interests of interoperability as seems to be the case here.
Its sad to see people put celebrity before principal, if this were Microsoft making these arguments against Samba, rather than Linus' friend making them against this Tridge guy, there would be no question as to which side most slashdotters would come down on.
The principal doesn't change just because the people in question claim to be friends of free software.
"Canseco's book is absurd. The allegations are completely false."
It seems that Larry McVoy has a fine line between a replacement and reverse-engineering (in this case compatibility?).
From the article (Torvald's statement):
" What Larry is _not_ fine with, is somebody writing a free replacement by just reverse-engineering what _he_ did."
I always am sympathetic to reverse engineering efforts, because frankly interoperability is ultimately a good thing. I am not sure what sort of principle we can follow if reverse-engineering is bad in this case. Where is the line? Is it a property line?
You've put together the friggin' _kernel_. This is a lot more complicated than creating a version control system. Just take Monotone (which I like as it is), and make a BitKeeper killer out of it. Have Tridgell do it with a few other gurus. Yeah, it's probably gonna take half a year, but the benefit to the open source community will be immense.
Thanks for stripping out the formatting. I despise paragraph breaks, and now, I don't have to read them!
Why not say that if that's the facts?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Huh? The fact that he didn't use BitKeeper to do this and therefore there is no question of him being bound by its license is ample "defense" in itself, as if any "defense" should be needed for reverse engineering.
But if he didn't use BitKeeper, how *did* he do it? By sending random data to BK's servers? Isn't that somewhere between DoS and haxoring, and just as bad?
this were Microsoft making these arguments against Samba
Samba isn't MS's core product. MS are probably secretly happy to have an open Samba implementation as long as they don't have to support it. BitKeeper is Larry's core product.
He was most likely asked or forced to sign some form of Non-disclosure agreement. This is even more likely if lawyers were or are involved (in which we'd have no way of knowing if all involved parties keep silent).
Regards,
Steve
Wow, I had better call my lawyer next time I decide to surf the web!
I'm going to disagree with you. It is immoral to reverse engineer while relying on the goodwill of the people you are reverse engineering. If you can't see that, I can't explain it any more clearly.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I am not a zealot, so I do not think it was a sin to temporarily use non-free software, especially when there were a lot of circumstances at the time leading to this at the time - we didn't want a Linux fork or Linus having a nervous breakdown, or so on. You have to look at things like a war - there is an objective, there is strategy and there is tactics. Bitkeeper was a necessary tactical retreat, but now that Linux is moving beyond Bitkeeper, we can see it fit in with the overall good objective and strategy behind Linux. The thing people like me worried about was the fortitude of the Linus core team as they began using Bitkeeper - is this a tactical retreat, or are they going over to the dark side? With recent events, we can see they did the right thing.
I think people should have sympathy with the situation at the time that led to Bitkeeper. It's alright for Richard Stallman to be pure and a zealot - that's his job. But it was a tactical necessity. On the other side of the coin are the little worms who whine how some developer floating around out there tried to reverse engineer Bitkeeper and offended the tender sensibilities of Bitmover and Larry McVoy, and how Linus doesn't crawl in subjugation before Bitmover and by implication other short-term corporate concerns. I don't think these people really understand even corporate America, never mind industrial or information production in general. Corporate America doesn't respect little worms that crawl around and do whatever are ordered, they just get used up until they're of no use any more and are then thrown away. And who ever said Linux was for corporate America anyway? I always thought of Linux as by engineers, for engineers. Which is not the same things as by engineers, for corporate America. That's what most of us do for our day jobs.
When you think of copyrights like a right (and please don't go off on how it's pro business), then it is only a matter of time till you believe that your right is the right to controll how others use or learn from information that originated from you via coercive means.
Copyrights are not a "reasonable" position anymore (and please don't go off about how the GPL is a copyright license without reading it first either) Because the "right" to micro-controll and manipulate how every last person uses information in the information age is no longer, workable tenable, or acceptable any more.
Tridge is a bit of a Militant in my opinion. I understand his position, and to some extent might even aggree with it. However I do not believe that people using non-free software to be "living in sin". Thats rather asinine.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
On the other hand, he's probably answering a lot of questions from a lot of corners, and doesn't want to spend much time defending himself. Also, to say anything more he would have to talk about the differences in the motivation and ethos of all the players, which is a can of worms. Better just to say what he said and leave it at that.
The key piece of information he did provide, though, is that he "did not use BitKeeper at all in writing this tool". If that means he didn't look at the binary, the the BitKeeper folks are just being petty.
If all he did was write a tool to manage the same data format that BitKeeper uses, then he's not doing anything wrong. If he had disassembled the BitKeeper binaries to figure out how they worked, I'd call that cheating, which is not the way to go about making software free.
Either way, it's a tempest in a teapot.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Why wait until some undefined "later" point to explain one's self, if one has nothing to hide?
That's a good question. We should immediately execute anybody who insists on talking to a lawyer when arrested. After all, why wait until some undefined "later" point to explain one's self, if one has nothing to hide?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I know that it's heresy to say this on slashdot, but it sounds like things were running pretty fine until rabid open-source zealotry reared its ugly head.
Although BK has always been a source of controversy among kernel developers, fans of BK were happy and productive using it, while anti-BKers were also happy and productive, using whatever other SCM software they wanted. So everything's kosher.
Then this 'Tridge' guy comes along, and is *so* opposed to BK that he is determined to fight against it using tactics that are legal, but not especially moral, ethical, or friendly. Then, while a temporary cease-fire is arranged so that the matter can be discussed and resolved maturely, he violates this truce.
So now that so much happiness and productivity has been ruined, are the license zealots happy? I hope so.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Oh you mean as in git'r done?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Well, I guess that's the end of "standing on the shoulders of giants".
So nice of you to copy this comment from an earlier story, verbatim, without crediting the original author.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Larry McVoy sees two problems with Andrew Tridgell's reverse-engineered, free tool. One is "condoning reverse engineering". The other is, in his words:
Once again, Linus shows he more of a practical guy than a political ideologue. He recognized the cost to BitMover and suggested the rational solution for them. I think Linus' role in this is being underreported--he appears to have been on McVoy's side all through this.
What happens if Tridge's client sucks?
:)
Someone looks at the source and makes it better.
What happens if it corrupts older files?
That sounds like a problem that can only occur if the server doesn't enforce proper ACLs. Older files cannot be corrupted by "updates" or "checkouts" unless there's an architectural problem with the server.
A source control system should enforce immutability of older revisions. Only administrators should have any delete powers at all to clean up, and the idea of modification of committed revisions should be right out! I expect the server to enforce this.
If word gets out that that damn BitKeeper source control system has corrupted 6 months worth of work, that's bad publicity.
And it's their own fault for that bad publicity. They should have written code that properly enforced immutability of older stuff.
Of course, if that data cannot be recovered from backups, then it's Linus's fault.
INSIGHTFUL?! I've seen some amazing moderator goofs, but this one takes the cake!
No, this is not insightful, this is called trolling. It's akin to, "have you stopped beating your wife?"
However -- to answer his question -- if you have nothing to hide, you keep you lips sealed if:
Larry has a very clear moral standpoint: "You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails. Solve the problems on your own, and compete _honestly_. Don't compete by looking at my solution."
If this is the same Andrew Tridgell that created rsync and samba, that is not his reputation. There are many successful examples of reverse engineering software without consulting the original sources. Heck, samba and linux are formost among these! Why should Mr. McVoy think that BitKeeper is perpetually immune from immitation?
an ill wind that blows no good
I don't think many of NewsForge's readers are going to be anti-reverse engineering. Like Sanity says, McVoy appears to want patent-level protection of his work. He doesn't have patent-level protection of his work, whether that's because he doesn't hold patents or because Tridge lives somewhere safe.
I don't think McVoy is exactly a villain here either. He just needs to quit acting like he got taken advantage of. He was doing a service and now it's not worth it to him so he's stopped. Larry McVoy, quit your bitching for your business' sake. However well founded you think it is, it only makes you sound like an asshole.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
What I've got from this so far is this:
1. BitKeeper is a technically good program
2. Larry McVoy is an arrogant a******.
3. I have absolutely no problem with Tridge
Sure, Larry might not like people cloning his program. Well, tough. A clone is what is needed for interoperability. Sure, the Samba team could probably have built their own networking protocol, probably even a better one, but that wasn't the point!
The BK guy claims that he would be ok with a OSS clone, so long as it was not reverse enginerred from BK. Who knows? We may never really know now.
Linus, who is in a position to know (and I consider trustworthy), doesn't seem convinced that Tridge wasn't just trying to torpedo BK from the get-go. (based on his statements here and in the eariler article)Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Why get into what amounts to a denial of service attack, by offering bait to the chattering classes?
Ironically, you can bet disinterest in dealing with 'almost interoperable' protocols is among (though by no means the sole one of) Larry M's motives for pulling the plug on Linux. Neither Tridge nor Larry owe any of us the time of day.
After RTFA, I can respect Larry's stance, and only hope that FOSS can step up to the plate soon.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell supposedly reverse-engineered Bitkeeper to get things out of BK tree's "without agreeing to the BK license", as he is a free-software purist.
McVoy is a businessman who doesn't want people to reverse-engineer Bitkeeper, but wouldn't mind if someone wrote a free replacement that wasn't reverse-engineered because he doesn't believe people should freeload off of his work.
Amazing. The exact same post was made by Concern, here. And then Squiggleslash replies with the exact same reply that Redswinglinestapler replies with here.
Are you guys just all the same people, or what?
Moderators: this is redundant, and overrated.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Wow.
Nice catch.
Especially ironic given the title of the post, and the copyright issues the gpl uses as its core.
Or he finds the idea of getting involved in a "he said, she said" public mud flinging fest to be personally distasteful. It may be hard to believe here on Slashdot, but there really are people who feel that way.
He made the relevant points, that he did not use Bitkeeper at all in developing his tool and was never subject to the Bitkeeper license.
KFG
And in many situations, that is true. And in most situations, it's not important.
The different between FOSS and proprietary is this: for the former, I don't have to switch. For the latter, I do.
If Commodore Amiga's operating system had been Free Software, the chances are I'd still be using it today. It would, by now, have a community of developers built around it who would have kept it up to date, ported it to commodity hardware, etc.
So, to be honest, this kind of argument doesn't impress me. Why, exactly, do I need to switch from sendmail? I don't. I can't envisage needing to any time in the next decade, can you?
Why did I need to switch from AmigaOS? 'cos it was set in stone. There'd never likely be an update, and even if there was one, I'd be unlikely to obtain it, and it's unlikely it'd ever move forward very far.
Or he's busy working on the replacement SCM system that this kerfuffle is all about. Nothing in this discussion is going to affect that development, and the worst impact (beyond some bruised relationships in the "triangle") is the threat to delay patch distribution until a replacement is ready. So he prioritizes development, and deprioritizes arguing. He believes he's right, and yet knows he looks bad while he's responsible for slowing things down. So he might talk about it when the bottleneck is passed.
It's not very media savvy, but that's one reason why Torvalds is the spokesmodel for Linux, not Tridgell. There's lots of reasons not to interview that have nothing to do with lawyers.
--
make install -not war
Larry never exposed BK source code, the code being pulled is the Linux kernel, it's just being pulled off a BK repository, which it is perfectly OK to do.
Go troll somewhere else.
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
> NewsForge has given a brief interview to the
> parties involved
No, they haven't. The parties involved have given interviews to NewsForge. The way this is written, it sounds like someone is interviewing NewsForge, which is not the case.
That's kind of a funny attitude coming with a .sig like
'"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey'
Maybe he has something better to do. Like Kesey did when Tom Wolfe was hassling him for interviews for his extremely popular mythmaking book.
--
make install -not war
There was another post exactly like this one posted in the past. I believe it was attached to something related to the office standards.
PearPC accuses CherryOS of stealing its open source code and using it in their proprietary project. There is some proof of this.
Bitkeeper accuses Tridge of using their propriety code to reverse-engineer an open-source project. To best of my knowledge, only circumstantial evidence as yet supports this.
So when open source take advantage of closed source, it's a Good Thing (tm), but when closed sources takes advantage of open source, it's a Bad Thing (tm). Did I get that right?
Free MacMini
Linus said 'And that is what the BK license boils down to. It says: "Get off my coat-tails, you free-loader". And I can't really argue against that.'
Tridge didn't use BitKeeper and didn't agree to it's license. The free-loader accusation is no more accurate than SCO's claim to own Linux on the basis that they own the ideas it incorporates (ie UNIX)!
Larry McVoy is the criminal not Tridgell!
If Torvalds never, used BitKeeper and promoted it, Mr. McVoy would have less head weight.
Netcraft confirms: BitKeeper is dying
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
Bitkeeper traces it's roots to Sun's Teamware, which was not written by Larry McVoy, to Sun's NSE-lite which was partially written by McVoy, to Sun's NSE which McVoy had absolutely nothing to do with except being an unhappy customer, to Eric Scmidt's PhD dissertation which Larry had nothing to do with, to Apollo's DSEE which Larry had nothing to do with, to SCCS which Larry had nothing to do with. Bitkeeper is largely an amalgamation of 3 previously existing ideas, the Teamware/NSE distributed development model, changesets, and the CVS pserver. It's a little hypocritical for Larry to complain about other people riding on his coat tails when Bitkeeper is, like most successful products, a really good implementation of a bunch of ideas that were invented by a lot of other people over a lot of time.
Hey, it's the easy way to summarise! It can also be automated. Summariser v2.0 also stripes out spaces and punctuation to reduce article size even further! Coming soon from a /dev/urandom near you!
the layman's guide to computer science
We've got a problem here.
The problem is that Linus is a saint (and I would be first in line to support his sainthood, it's well deserved), but as a result of that nobody can dare say anything wrong about him.
Unfortunately, he's doing the community considerable harm by not coming out in support of reverse engineering in this little episode. Surely he cannot fail to know that it's mega important to the community, and that his friendship with McVoy cannot be alloyed to stand in the way of that?
By being diplomatic in this case, he's doing bad.
Somebody modded a perfectly good comment down as a troll. Perhaps they took it the wrong way. If I had mod points, I'd bump it back up. I don't, so I'm reposting it:
I'm going to disagree with you. It is immoral to reverse engineer while relying on the goodwill of the people you are reverse engineering. If you can't see that, I can't explain it any more clearly. -- winkydink
This seems pretty reasonable to me. I can understand how people have different opinions than BitKeeper's author, but his position isn't unreasonable. He went out of the way to support Linux kernel development, and he feels that having OSDL pay somebody to copy his work is a betrayal of his generosity.
He copied text from an earlier post NOT written by him! (See below)
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Chris DiBona
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
I've been trying to make sense of Larry McVoy's actions here and the only sane conclusion I can come to is that he is one of the ultimate advocates of Open Source. He is willing to go as far as destroying his own company to make a point on the benefits of Open Source!
Right now, he is saying this to potential BitMover clients: "If you use BitKeeper, then I will control your development process. I am free to change how you work at just a whim." Can you imagine even ONE company that would accept terms like this? I can't.
Therefore, his actions now will have the result of destroying his company. That means that he is either incredibly stupid or has some other plan so clever that nobody (or almost nobody) sees it. I think it's the latter.
He's said many times that he is a big advocate of Open Source. Now, he is showing an object lesson on how horrible proprietary software can be. "Look at how much I can screw you over," he is telling us. "I wouldn't be able to do this if BitKeeper was Open Source."
Very clever! By sacrificing his company, he gets his point across much more strongly than mere words could ever do. Bravo McVoy!
While McVoy may be overstating things a bit, I get this sort of vibe from some F/OSS people, most notably RMS, who adovcated outlawing proprietary source code in the GNU Manifesto.
I run SuSE 9.2 at home, and I use Firefox and OpenOffice on Windows at work. I also provide the "freedom" angle for every tool we consider using or purchasing. We use GCC instead of commercial compilers so that we never have to renew a license or pass around a dongle. We use a libre and gratis source code management tool. Our lab machines and test stations run linux.
Even in hardware, I try to inject freedom: we are buying a Bitscope instead of a competitor's product because their gratis (but not libre, duly noted) software runs on Windows or Linux, while the slightly-more-capable competitor only runs on Windows. Additionally, the Bitscope interface is documented well enough that we will be writing one for an automated hardware validation test, something that would be much more difficult if we had to reverse-engineer the protocol.
I found myself explaining this philosophy to our FNG (f-ing new guy) recently, when he asked why we didn't buy tool X from vendor Y: "we want to control our tools, rather than have our tools control us."
Contrast this to our JTAG/ICE which used to support Motorola and IBM PowerPC chips until the company was bought a few times and wound up in the Motorola family of companies. We had to upgrade the firmware and software to support a new Mot chip, and with that we lost the support for the IBM PPC chips.
F/OSS is great, but we will not make inroads if we have an attitude like that attributed to Tridge; we cannot [openly] "look down" on those who are stuck in the land of proprietary software, or we come across as self-righteous zealots, and we all know how well that sort of attitude is taken these days.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
Once I waive the cloud of zealot spray away from my face a bit, I still have the same question: How is reverse engineering BK right when the company he worked for said it wouldn't in a legal agreement? Isn't this what happned? moral or immoral doesn't count. BK had a standard clause (look at any software licence and you'll probabaly see it) that said you can use our product as long as you don't use the product against us. OSDL agreed (through Linus I believe) that they wouldn't reverse engineer. They said so in a legal agreement (licence). There is someone under thier pay reverse engineering it.
Argue on the right and wrong of such an agreement in the first place. Argue on the details of how far the agreement reaches. The first is about something in the past. The second is about somethign going on now. But, They are really different arguments. And to claim no problems exists seems kinda funny to me since the licence doesn't just go away because you don't like it.
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
Of course it's reasonable for them to do this. But this is exactly why people didn't want to start using it in the first place - because you become beholden to the goodwill of a third party. That's an uncomfortable spot for anyone to be in, anywhere.
The fact that Larry is being pissy about a tenuous connection to a third party developer working on a BK alternative just makes him sound like an asshole. It was nice to read his little speech about accepting commercial developers, like any time a company releaases a commercial product for Linux all the OSS guys should cease work on anything to compete with it. That attitude is the whole reason OSS got started in the first place.
Huh? The fact that he didn't use BitKeeper to do this and therefore there is no question of him being bound by its license is ample "defense" in itself, as if any "defense" should be needed for reverse engineering.
Then how is he interacting with a BitKeeper controlled source? He has _had_ to of reversed engineered a closed product (i.e. BitKeeper). These things don't just work by "magic", he has had to of analyzed how BitKeeper does its thing to make it compatible.
Please lets get this straight - there is nothing immoral about reverse engineering, particularly in the interests of interoperability as seems to be the case here.
Please lets get this straight, this is a closed source product. If the developers wanted you reverse engineering the product, they would have clearly stated it in their license agreement, further more they would of provided the source code.
A company that produces a software package has the right to determine how said package is used, you agree to this when you agree to the license. You don't like it? Ask for your money back, and then choose another product.
Its sad to see people put celebrity before principal, if this were Microsoft making these arguments against Samba, rather than Linus' friend making them against this Tridge guy, there would be no question as to which side most slashdotters would come down on.
It is sad to see people trying to ride on other people's hard work. Microsoft is a different situation, completely different. Microsoft has market dominance, which means with their market share, and their revenue they can effectively drive any competition out of business.
Thus when you have a product, namely Windows with the market share that it does, you need to have controls to maintain a free market. For Windows, this would be in the form of open SDK's, allowing developers to integrate with Windows. This would also include allowing the user to rip out core functionality to be replaced with one of their choice, thus providing the interoperability you speak of.
Perhaps BitKeeper should also provide an SDK for its product. But regardless of the company, taking an existing product where the developer has expressly stated that no reverse engineering of said product is to be done, where the method in which it works is proprietary is effectively stealing.
Just my opinion...
Tes
it means that Team A uses the product you want to reverse-engineer and writes as complete of a spec of it as possible, team B then creates the app from the spec without using the original app at all.
As long as somebody provided him with a complete BK spec he could've created his client without ever having used BK at all.
-- the cake is a lie
Please lets get this straight - there is nothing immoral about reverse engineering, particularly in the interests of interoperability as seems to be the case here.
I hope not.. Or we wouldn't have any frigging drivers!
What are the limitations with the various obvious candidates ? Is support for merging binaries the killer feature ?
What made BitKeeper so special in the first place ? Shouldn't a really good SCM server system have a standardized, controlled interface that can allow simple, third-party clients, anyway ? If Tridge had limited his client to doing check-outs, and had avoided modifying the source tree with it, would the BitKeeper folks have been OK with _that_ amount of reverse engineering ? And who works with the leaders in open-source software while being so against reverse engineering ?? That seems odd.
But ignore that last set of questions. Really, I just want everyone in this thread to tell me what the really, really good open source SCM system I'm not using is. Unless it's Subversion, in which case I want you all to tell me what to look out for.
Now everyone's mad because the author of the software is not happy about his product essentially being copied (which is what reverse engineering is).
Reverse engineering is not copying. Reverse engineering involves determining how an application works, so that you can write an equivalent application that performs similar functionality. It provides a means to the same end, even if the application itself takes different routes.
a) Corruption. BK is a complicated system, there are >10,000 replicas of the BK database holding Linux floating around. If a problem starts moving through those there is no way to fix them all by hand. This happened once before, a user tweaked the ChangeSet file, and it costs $35,000 plus a custom release to fix it.
I really don't get how a single ChangeSet file could wreak havoc to all those repositories out there.
I'm going to disagree with you. It is immoral to reverse engineer while relying on the goodwill of the people you are reverse engineering.
In what way was Tridge relying on the goodwill of Bit Mover? This is the first time I've even heard there was any goodwill towards him.
Thanks for tacking a note like this on the end of the post, to let people know you're driving traffic to your own network. An evil OSTG? Probably not. Good practice for people playing news web site? Yes.
In case anyone's still interested, the title of the /. article is a play on the New Order single "Bizarre Love Triangle".
I wish I had mod points so I could mod you -1 Redundant (others have already pointed this out), and -1 No Sense of Humor.
The purpose of copyrights is to advance science and useful arts, not to reward authors.
If rewarding authors for that purpose is required, then they will be rewarded.
Copyrights on binaries however, reward authors while stifling the progress of science and useful arts.
It encourages people to create secretly-operating software that helps them get revenue but does not inspire new works, does not enter the public domain and does not help anyone else in the long run.
It is rediculous that binaries are copyrightable and the law that allows it is actually quite new (from the late 70's) and should be reverted.
I find it appauling that people actually buy it that reverse engineering here is immoral.
Context is everything. I posted this article (written at the time of Linus' adoption of bitkeeper) from Linux World in the last BK thread. Casts the current events in an interesting (and not McVoy-friendly) light.
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
Honestly, he didn't see this coming? This is Linux we're talking about here. You know, the one where Linus looked at unix and decided to write his own version...
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
It seems to be everyone's knee-jerk reaction that McVoy is against all reverse-engineering in general.
But if he's okay with competition, reverse engineering is always a part of competition and he should be fine with it.
After RTFA, what I get is, if you reverse engineer BK, learn how it works, and implement something that's not plugged into BK's network, and compete with McVoy, he's fine with it. The "riding on his coat-tails" is when you reimplement his solution using BK's network, and compete with BK directly.
Before you jump into conclusion the network is open so everyone can use it, consider this: you are not just reading information from BK's network, but also changing the information, and possibly corrupting the network data. You can say it's a flaw.
So it comes to this: should reverse-engineering, on the third party's property, that could cause harm to the third party be allowed?
I'm not sure letting an implementation that potentially render the whole network useless should be protected as valid reverse-engineering.
A sig is redundant.
there seem to be a double standard concerning reverse engineering ...
...
when it's done on some closed source / restrictive license source control software, it's immoral.
but when we're talking about microsoft office files, it's completely okay, and more, the immoral one here is microsoft
is there something i've missed here ??
Lets get this straight. Permission and/or a license agreement and/or source code are not not needed to reverse engineer software or anything else. And its still perfectly legal, moral, etc.
Not in the case of reverse engineering; reverse engineering is a vital part of competition in a free market.
Actually, it is the controls put in place by Microsoft (no-compete licenses with OEM's + punishment for those who disobey) that skew the market and merit sanctions against Microsoft. Microsoft's size and market share only enable the problem (their bad behaviour); its not the problem itself. In a truely free market, the market dictates how the vendors behave, not visa-versa.
Unfortunately for your arguement and for the BK folks, you can't preclude people from doing things in a license if those people aren't actually party to the license. Tridge stole nothing from BK by reverse engineering it.
No, it doesn't. It sets conditions for anyone who copies, distributes or creates derivative works of software. You can completely repudiate the GPL and continue to use GPL-licensed software (except for copying, distributing, and deriving).
You're thinking of an End User License Agreement (EULA). EULAs take away users' rights. The GPL is not an EULA. The GPL gives you rights you would not have had without a license.
(prostituting anonymously)
Go, AT!
How Samba was written
---------------------
Andrew Tridgell
August 2003
Method 1:
---------
First off, there are a number of publicly available documents on the
CIFS/SMB protocol. The documents are incomplete and in places rather
inaccurate, but they are a very useful starting point. Perhaps the
most useful document is "draft-leach-cifs-v1-spec-02.txt" from 1997
which is a protocol specification released by SNIA and authored
primarily by Microsoft (with significant input from many other people,
including myself). This document has expired as an IETF draft, and
Microsoft has dropped their attempts to get CIFS accepted as an IETF
standard, but the document is still available if you look hard enough
with an internet search engine.
There are numerous other public specifications for various pieces of
the protocol available. I maintain a collection of the ones I know
about in http://samba.org/ftp/samba/specs/
Method 2:
---------
I call this method the "French Cafe technique". Imagine you wanted to
learn French, and there were no books, courses etc available to teach
you. You might decide to learn by flying to France and sitting in a
French Cafe and just listening to the conversations around you. You
take copious notes on what the customers say to the waiter and what
food arrives. That way you eventually learn the words for "bread",
"coffee" etc.
We use the same technique to learn about protocol additions that
Microsoft makes. We use a network sniffer to listen in on
conversations between Microsoft clients and servers and over time we
learn the "words" for "file size", "datestamp" as we observe what is
sent for each query.
Now one problem with the "French Cafe" technique is that you can only
learn words that the customers use. What if you want to learn other
words? Say for example you want to learn to swear in French? You would
try ordering something at the cafe, then stepping on the waiters toe
or poking him in the eye when he gives you your order. As you are
being kicked out you take copious notes on the words he uses.
The equivalent of "swear words" in a network protocol are "error
packets". When implementing Samba we need to know how to respond to
error conditions. To work this out we write a program that
deliberately accesses a file that doesn't exist, or uses a buffer that
is too small or accesses a file we don't own. Then we watch what error
code is returned for each condition, and take notes.
Method 3:
--------
Method 3 is a greatly expanded variant of the "swear words" technique
I have already mentioned. It involves writing something called a
"protocol scanner". A protocol scanner is a program that tries all
possible "words" in some section of a protocol and uses the response
to automatically deduce new information about the protocol. It is like
the French Cafe technique but with a very patient waiter.
For example, some section of the protocol might contain a 16 bit
"command word" that tells the server what operation to perform. There
are 64 thousand possible command words, so we try all of them and note
which ones give an error code other than "not implemented". Then we
need to work out how much supplementary data each command word needs,
so the program tries 1 byte of blank data, then 2 bytes then 3 bytes
etc until the server changes its response in some way. When the
response changes then you know (with a fairly high level of confidence
at least) that you are using the right quantity of data. You then try
using non-blank data, putting in a filename or a directory name or a
username until the server changes its response again. After a large
number of tries the program eventually finds a combination of data
that gives no error code at all - the server
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The problem is two-fold
1. The only way to access revision history was through the non-OSS client
2. If the non-free client is revoked, developers are left with no way to export their own revision history
Tridgedell was not writing a Free client, exactly. He was writing a migration tool.
McVoy's position is equivelant to espousing vendor lock-in as a legitimate strategy, and if Tridgedell's description of his actions is effectively accurate, McVoy is just using this as an excuse.
McVoy should take his license if he wants, and then encourage Tridgedell to finish his export client so developers w/o a commercial license don't lose their revision histories.
In fact, it is clearly stated that he is uncomfortable with the situation simply because it is costing more money to support a free BK than the extra revenue such support is apparenty encouraging.
--
God! I sound like a NYT article, i mean editorial!
"(Ironically, many users and distributions are likely to actually not mind slightly slower development for a while. One of the most common worries for users is just the fact that 2.6.x has continued to be developed at a very high rate thanks to just how smoothly it's been working, so I bet some people are both upset and gratified by this all. ;)"
I just have one thing to say: About fucking time.
I'm on an out of date 2.6 kernel right now because every 2.6 kernel I've used has replaced one set of show-stopping bugs with another. I'd rather just stick with the show-stoppers that I've worked around (in this case, I use a Promise IDE card because the kernel doesn't support an SATA hard drive and a CD drive on the same chipset) than get a whole new set of show-stoppers that I may not be able compensate for.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
he feels that having OSDL pay somebody to copy his work is a betrayal of his generosity.
I don't think anyone other than you has claimed that OSDL paid him to 'copy' Bit Mover's work. Every other account has them paying him for a completely unrelated matter.
Totally agree. And, from what I've read, at this
time I'd sooner say 'weak allegation from McEvoy'
bjd
Its sad to see people put celebrity before principal, if this were Microsoft making these arguments against Samba, rather than Linus' friend making them against this Tridge guy, there would be no question as to which side most slashdotters would come down on.
You mean this Tridge guy? The guy who wrote Samba?
-matt
So I can take a GPLd piece of software, figure out how the innards work, then use that knowledge to create something that does the same things, and not release it under the GPL? I can close OSS and then make it propreitary?
When I say "use" in my original comment, I mean how it is taken and reimplemented. This sort of "use" is what the GPL protects. If you extend a GPLd product, you have part of your process dictated to you, you have to give back modified parts of the original code (though you can keep the extended completely new pieces to yourself) Even that though many feel violates the spirit of the GPL. So the GPL does determine use in that respect, as does any license for proprietary software. You can dictate how it can or can not be extended or reimplemented as you see fit.
And wasn't there an article the other day about how the GPL 3 may extend to GPL code used in-house at companies and not distributed?
Pardon me, but wasn't what just happened here the first step on the way to doing that? Before you move to a completely Free system, you want to start Freeing up bits of the current system. Thus, the Free BK client. Then you have Free access to (supposedly) Free code.
the layman's guide to computer science
I find it sad, and a confirmation of my point, that any disagreement with the pure OSS ideaology is labeled as flamebait.
This is insightful? It's even more vague than Tridge's statement! And it's pure speculation.
MOD PARENT UP!!!
What the parent does not mention, however, is that this almost always happens. Commercial software companies almost always do something that causes problems for their users. They raise prices, declare premature death of their products (Microsoft has more than 100,000,000 Windows 98 users, but they say the product is dead.), or become adversarial in other ways.
FIX THE SLASHDOT MODERATION SYSTEM!!! Moderators can only moderate discussions in which they have no interest in contributing.
People like me, who have excellent karma, never get moderation points. Why? I don't know, and there is no way to learn.
The parent comment was at +3 when I began writing this comment. Now it is at -1. Did a Slashdot employee moderate it down? Was there a kind of censorship?
RTFA, dude. It costs them half-mil per year to support free version of BitKeeper. It is perfectly reasonable for them to expect certain things in return, especically if they are being reasonable about it.
You may preach about reverse engineering being a good thing as much as you want (which I agree with, btw), but DONT TAKE IT OUT OF THE FUCKING CONTEXT.
> That's not the OSS movement I signed up on.
:-)
Where did you sign up?
> If people want to use BitKeeper, let them! It's called freedom of choice.
That's exactly what Larry does wrong: He does not let any OSDL employees use BK, no matter what they might want to pay. The disruption of the Linux development is only possible because of the reliance on a proprietary tool. Exactly what the "RMS zealots" warned everyone of.
Didn't help them much though
Since people keep saying the same things, I'll keep responding with the same too:
It's a bit silly to say 'I told you so" - especially since I didn't actually say it. I thought the arguments made by Linus had some logic behind it too (the technical-merit-before-anything-else approach). Often I thought both sides (Stallman and Linus) had some valuable viewpoint on it, and it was difficult to say who actually was right on the matter.
It seems now, after all, it was R.Stallman all along. Yes, Linus has a good point in chosing for technical superior alternatives...BUT, in the end, as is clearly shown now, you can't just devide the political/ideological/proprietary issue from the mere technical one. When push comes to shove, an alternative that isn't really free, isn't really an alternative. You are always dependend on the goodwill of whomever owns the product- even when buying it, I may add.
So, it would seem the viewpoint of Linus, in this instance, is the weaker one, because now he doesn't have a 'tecnological superior' product anymore, and what is he going to do? Go for another proprietary product, because it's technologically better? And have the same thing happen to him again? I don't think so. I think he learned his lesson, and he will go for the really free alternatives that R.Stallman suggested, which, albeit not as good, at least allow you to continue with it as you see fit.
Stallman can be a nag sometimes because of his gnu/linux diatribe, but in this instance, he was right.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
the only way to stop reverse engineering is to keep the product secret and out of anyone elses hands.
reverse engineering is legal and therefore it can will and should be done.
if they wanted to stop that possibility. they would have never ever released their software.
but since they did, they allow that to happen
What did you expect him to say - Ya, I developed the tool in unethical manner in violation of the license ?
Filter your input information better, dude.
Next time, CTFB when you want to Post Anonymously...
Case 1: CherryOS violates the license to some open source software by taking it, adding some slight functionality, and renaming it, claiming it's 100% original code.
Case 2: Tridge reverse-engineers the bitkeeper protocol / binary format, intending to release an open-source version.
Case 1: Violates source code license, used to do something illegal, taking open software and making it closed.
Case 2: Adheres to all laws and licenses, takes something closed and makes it open.
Tridge didn't use proprietary code, and he wasn't reverse engineering an open-source project. (What open-source project did you think he was reverse-engineering? Linux? Why would you need to reverse-engineer an open source project anyhow, rather than reading the source and chatting with the original developers?)
And in fact I have a lot of respect for Linus for dropping BK now right on the spot, when the problems it created were becoming too big -- after he had been unimpressed by 3 years of anti-BK flaming...
Wow! An AC actually has a valid point! I'm going go buy a lottery ticket, just in case my luck holds.
I don't think anyone other than you has claimed that OSDL paid him to 'copy' Bit Mover's work. Every other account has them paying him for a completely unrelated matter.
You're right; I don't know that either way. If I could edit my comment, I'd change it to, "having somebody in the pay of OSDL copy his work". It'd be interesting to hear his side of it, in particular whether he was careful to use no OSDL resources in this. But from BitMover's perspective, there's probably not a lot of difference: either way, they feel like they're doing a lot to support Linus and OSDL, and one of their other employees goes out of his way to cause them trouble.
Now everyone's mad because the author of the software is not happy about his product essentially being copied (which is what reverse engineering is).
Reverse engineering is not copying. And, that is funny that if the software was free, all that would never happen.
Just like the GPL sets conditions for anyone using software under that license.
GPL doesn't set conditions for anyone using the software, just for redistribution. And those conditions are "You can not close the software". That is very different from closed licenses and if you take the time to read the license, you'll see that FSF will very pleased to not have to even write GPL.
If I code something, it's mine. I can say how it is distributed and the terms of its use. That is my right. If I want to make it free that is also my right.
You have that right, and if nobody is hurt by that decision, almost no one will bash you. You also must not blame when the people who takes to shortest path (share knowledge) leave you behind.
I agree that blind devotion sometimes hurt FOSS image, as I agree that linus was right to use BK. But those people who belive that all software must be free have a very good point, and are more right than wrong. And, as you said, you have the right to use any software you want, but people also have the right to bash what they thing is a stupid idea.
Rethinking email
Indeed. I've been staying out of this as I know too much about what really happened to comment publicly.
But one thing I will say is that tridge has done *nothing* wrong in this matter.
As for his short reply to the question, unfortunately this is for reasons outside his control.
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
Well... no. A company that produces a software package has 2 rights:
There is no "right to a rightful retribution for your hard work".
So, because the user may (not sure of the legalities there) need to copy the thing to use it, he needs a license. So most software companies add loads of clauses in theirs restricting the use he can make of it to boost the bottom line, stifle competition, whatever, legal or not. For instance reverse engineering is explicitely allowed by law in quite a few countries, nevermind what the license says.
That's what make the GPL, BSD and other open source licenses so strong, BTW. They don't restrict what is granted to the user by law in any way, they give him additional rights.
If I disasemble your code to find out how you did something and then make my own version that is probably a clear case of reverse engineering.
If I use your product for a period of time and keep notes of all it's features (and bugs!) and then create a work alike based on my notes is that also reverse engineering?
Samba was clearly reverse engineered, and it HAD to be done that way because M$ dosen't publish any details on the workings of their net protocols necessary to build a work alike. Does M$ gain anything from Samba? Perhaps they don't lose some sales of Office and Windows OS because by having Samba available a customer can choose to keep their windows desktop sytems and applications while using Unix for their inferstructure.
I cannot fault BK for having an anti-reverse engineering clause in their eula for the 'free' version of the product. As long as someone had purchased the 'enterprise' version I would think some form of functional reverse engineering (not necessarly disassembly and copy) would be fair game.
What he did was perfectly ethical.
Ethics is a subjective matter. I personally think what he did perhaps was legal, but not ethical. He is a person who is about to complicate kernel development process, because he decides to solve an non-critical problem in a highly contraversial manner.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Why does everybody think this? Linux was written completely from scratch with no desire to interoperate with anything. All of the interoperable parts (gcc, shells, libc, nfsd, etc.) are just standard GNU tools. Those tools may have been reverse-engineered, but not the kernel. Sure, behaves similar to many other OSes, but there are only so many ways to do things. However, external code sees a completely different interface at the kernel level. That's why device drivers and syscalls don't work with any other OS, or even come close.
dom
Not everyone that disagrees with you is a fucking Zealot. Get over yourself.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
But the difference comes up when you have to weigh what is "better" versus what is "practical". Yes, it is better for all code to be completely open. But it isn't practical for companies to do so in all cases. It wouldn't be practical for Microsoft to completely open up Windows because doing so would lose them sales on the desktop almost completely. Even the few linux companies who make money make it almost entirely from the high-end market through support contracts.
Apple also wouldn't stand well to open up OSX completely since it could then be rebuilt for the x86 architecture and could then destroy their hardware sales.
In some cases even closed-source turns out "better" as you have less of a chance of encountering the "too many cooks" problem we see on large OSS projects.
The open source ideaology is dependent on the situation an individual coder or company is in. It is too easy to say one way is superior to another.
I love OSS, I use it whenever I can and whenever it's practical. My view on technology and software is to use what suits my needs. I am a gamer so Windows suits my desktop OS needs. I have a powerbook so OSX suits my mobile OS needs. I have a server at home too so Linux (Slackware) suits my server OS needs. I don't intend to alter my behaviors based on license ideaology, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that others expect me or anyone else to.
What is unethical about seeing what some product does, and thinking "how would I do this?" That is all Tridge is accused of.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
Is Tridge part of a team working on the kernel or has there been some change recently where it's just him?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
In other words: this, like most of the disagreements over DRM, trademarks, domain-squatting, copyright, and even software licensing, isn't really about freedom. It's not really about cost, or about 'stealing' someone's work. It's about control.
If Larry's client is the only one that can connect to the BK servers, then he has full control over the system as a whole. If other clients can connect as well, then he loses that control.
Now, whether you think that control is a Good Thing(tm) or not is another matter. I haven't been following the story, and I don't know the details, so I have no firm opinion.
Try looking at it from Larry's point of view. AIUI, at present, if there's a problem with BK, then he's responsible. It's down to him to fix software, get new clients out there, fix corruption in the DBs, &c &c. And where that's down to mistakes in his own code, then that seems fair enough -- especially when people have paid him money for the privilege.
But if other clients can connect, then that opens up whole areas of problems for which he could not be responsible. How could it be fair to expect him to invest time and money in sorting out problems caused by third-party code? Especially when he'd be incapable of fixing said code, or even from preventing it being used?
OTOH, I can also see the users' point of view, where huge amounts of data, time and effort are invested in a system with no guaranteed future, no way to fix mistakes or make improvements themselves. That's not a good long-term investment. But was this a good response to the situation?
Maybe the Right Thing to do would be to ignore the BK protocols (regardless of whether it's okay to reverse-engineer them, or to connect to a such a closed system). The moral high ground would be to ensure some way of getting all the information out of BK DBs (which I gather McVoy was going to provide), and then write a free tool, servers and clients, to do the same job -- with its own, separate protocols. But it looks like it's too late for that now...
My own ill-informed opinion, FWIW, is that while Tridge's efforts were probably legal (and rightly so), they weren't helpful or prudent.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Striped spaces? Spaces: now even faster and more reliable than ever before!
Rumoured to be available in Linux 2.6.13
Follow me
Disagreeing with the Slashdot groupthink and posting said disagreement here (especially if it's in disagreement with one of the Linux deities) is a lot more like being hit by lightning than it is being in an earthquake.
While I like a lot of Kesey's work, the quote means much more to me than the author (though the author also means a lot).
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
"I developed the tool in a completely ethical and legal manner." Whether it was the right thing to do or not in light of the situation, and despite the warnings, for him it was "ethical" to go ahead with it despite full knowledge of the consequences. Tridge's ethical conscience 1 Rest of the Linux community 0
Every post pointing out that the reason for free software is to avoid precisely this situation has been modded to -1. Fascinating!
... Standards and Practices !
PenGun
Do What Now ???
I expect that in the future I will be able to give a more detailed response, but for now I can only tell you the following:
I'm sorry, but there is no way to write "a tool that is interoperable with BitKeeper" without using BitKeeper. How in the world did he test his tool? How does he know it's interoperable? Well, the only way is to actually try it. Which means his comment "I did not use BitKeeper at all" is a completely lie.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
So nice of you to copy this comment from an earlier story, verbatim, without crediting the original author
He didn't copy it, he reverse-engineered it.
In a word, "Yes". Just don't copy the source code, or people might get a bit irritated.
That is all.
Look, I read the article.
I don't care how much it cost them to make the free version. It was a business decision on their part. It's perfectly reasonable that the amount of publicity they got from having a free version is sufficient repayment, and that they should not, later, have 'reasonable requests' that infringe on the freedom of american citizens doing things that are not only not immoral, but also not illegal.
They wanted the publicity of being associated with FOSS, but they couldn't hack it, so they took their ball and went home. I understand. Business decision.
I did not take it ouf of context. He was slamming the guy for reverse-engineering.
"Piter, too, is dead."
"non-critical problem"
Possibly, but he wouldn't be the only person who doesn't want to use proprietary code in contributing to the Linux kernel.
Indeed Debian practically exists these days so people can get a GNU/Linux distro without non-free software.
Presumably if Linus switches to a free software SCM system, Tridge is happy, Linus will have to learn some new tricks, and McVoy loses out anyway.
Either way it seems Tridge gets his way.
Second, there are potential issues with file corruption. According to the article, corruption has been an issue already when a user tweaked the ChangeSet file. If KnockOff(TM) causes corruption in BitKeeper files (a not unreasonable risk), who are the BitKeeper file owners going to come to for support? One guess. Their lack of enthusiasm is understandable given the article-provided context.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I assume 'clean room' was implied when he said he did things by the book.
Team A is writing a spec which is basically a glorified description of how the tool/component works: I don't think there's anything legally objectionable in putting down on paper how something works (as in, I give it this input, it gives me this output).
-- the cake is a lie
The article looks like it could have been written by Larry's PR company. He gets the first 1/2 and says what he likes, cherry picking quotes from Linus.
/. and traffic to NewsForge... What could be the motivation? ;-)
Then Linus gets to answer three questions from Newsforge. Finally Tridge gives a response that sounds like he's wearing thumbscrews!
So, posting a story that might provoke discussion on
If only there were a decent FOSS source-control system out there, the end of free BitKeeper wouldn't be an issue.
Yeah, I know things like CVS and Subversion exist, and in particular CVS is often cited as being a "mature" and "capable" version control system. But in my experience they're awfully difficult and complicated to set up and maintain, particularly CVS. Setting up and maintaining a source control system shouldn't be a full-time job in addition to the code you're actually trying to develop. It should be amazingly simple to set up and use, with almost zero learning curve and very little distraction from actually working on your software.
For instance, I know several people on various SourceForge projects who basically gave up trying to work with SourceForge CVS because it's so damn complicated to get set up and working. Even when CVS hosting is offered for FREE people choose not to use it because it's such a pain in the ass. That right there should tell you something.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Lesson #1:
From what I can tell, BitMover got involved with the Linux kernel for very little or no money. Expecting a return from giving your product away for free and expecting return in the form of corporate profit is a huge mistake when it appears the business model is product (not support/integration service) oriented.
Lesson #2:
Every good idea gets reversed engineered. Take it as a compliment that your software is being reversed engineered. In this article and judging by some of the comments, it's not viewd as complimentary and it might land the parties in court. (I won't get started with the problems with American IP)
Personal Opinion and Off-Topic:
(Here's where I get modded down) Reverse engineering should be valued as an accomplishment in American culture. A reverse-engineered product is typically lower in cost and innovates because more consumers can afford it.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I didn't know he'd worked on the kernel at all, I will bow to your superior knowledge.
That's bollocks. Reverse-engineering is not riding on the coat-tails of anyone. It ensures that the product is 100% compatible.
It's not just bollocks, it's rank hypocrisy coming from Linus Torvalds, who would be a completely unknown, minor software developer in Finland if he hadn't ridden -- dry-humped, actually -- on the coattails of Unix. The same goes for his last employer, whose business is built on a reverse-engineering of x86 microcode.
Ordinarily, I'm quite fond of Linus, but in this case, he's being a ridiculous ass.
The whole idea behind free software, IMHO, is that by encouraging reverse-engineering, among other forms of transparency, it ensures that software development is accelerated because you can't rest on your laurels. Your good ideas become the community's (and your competitors') good ideas, and you have to keep coming up with new good ideas to stay ahead.
This is the reverse of the closed source world where having had good ideas once entitles you to maintain a monopoly to the detriment of the consumer.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I wonder how many slashdot readers have no idea what you mean by a "PC clone". Hmm. Gettin' old I guess.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Your ignorance of that fact lead to Troll moderations.
Is Tridge part of a team working on the kernel
No, he is not. Is this an example of your ethics in action, making up stuff to support your case?
"These zealots go on and on about a "free world" that they define and others must follow."
That's really a fairly silly criticism. The only thing the "zealots" are concerned about is people eating their own dog food. If you want to be a part of the free software "world", you have to agree to the tenets of that world. If you don't, that's fine, nobody's coming to your house with a gun to force you.
They might disagree with your choice, and they might even argue against your choice, and they might even tell you to your face that they think you're wrong: None of which impinges the slightest on your freedom to do whatever the hell you want.
Get a spine. Makes life easier.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
All its points are valid and argumented.
It's NOT a flamebait.
OK, I made a mistake in my haste.
My underlying question remains. How did he get access to the BitKeeper functionality such that he was able to attempt to reverse engineer it? I say he did only because of BitKeeper's goodwill.
And to use someone's goodwill at cross-purposes to the one who gives it, is, in my opinion, at least unethical, if not immoral.
I realize I will not change the minds of the "Tridge can do no wrong, all hail Tridge" club. However, that doesn't make them right.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
"...and his character is simply beyond reproach."
Linus Torvalds doesn't seem to agree. Or does that not count now that he's betrayed the purer faith?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Noproblemheygladyoulikedit.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Chris:
You are right on the mark on this one. I cannot say this any better.
that I doubt I'd download.
Linus says it himself:
"...we did get three very productive years out of it, and we not only learnt how SCMs can work, we also taught a lot of people what to expect of a _good_ SCM, so anybody who claims that it was a waste of time to go with BK obviously doesn't have his head screwed on right. BK did good."
There seems to be the idea that now that they've got to move off BitKeeper that it's the end of the world. It isn't. What if they hadn't used BitKeeper - kernel development would not have progressed at nearly the rate that it has and they'd still be in the same position they are in now, but with less work done on the kernel. They'd still have had to work out some alternative SCM, they might just have had to do it sooner.
I really don't see what the big deal is. Linus hasn't lost anything by using BitKeeper - you say that he was "dependent on the goodwill of [BitMover]", but dependent for what? we still have the Linux source - the only thing he was dependent on them for was the productivity that no open source product was capable of offering. So all he's done is gain, and lost nothing.
The sky hasn't fallen.
"Once again, Linus shows he more of a practical guy than a political ideologue."
One of the reasons I like the guy...
"I think Linus' role in this is being underreported--he appears to have been on McVoy's side all through this."
Yup, and if it was anyone other than Linus Torvalds, this piece will be filled with 400+ posts roasting him alive. So I think there's more flaming on McVoy here, because hey, we can't rip on Linus now, can we? I have wonder though, how long until someone comes out and starts ripping Linus a new one? You KNOW some prominent Open Source folks want to. They want to paint him as a villain or idiot because he went with that evil closed-source solution.
Linus is right about one thing; they've gotten more work done, faster, using BitKeeper than they ever have. This whole situation is going to grind things to a bloody halt once they're out of BK. And Linus does not sound happy about this situation, even a little bitter towards Tridgell. He's been put between a rock and a hard place, forced out of using what he considered the best tool for the job.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
This is not a big deal. BitKeeper was an SCM tool that allowed collaborative development among hundreds of developers, without a reliance on a sole arbiter to determine every update (of say 10,000 updates).
Loss of BitKeeper only means that development proceeds at the pace similar to pre-BitKeeper days. (Good ole 2.2-2.4 days.) Ah yes, the good old days of "Why didn't F**king Linus put in my patch? He LOST IT??? But I resubmitted it 50 times? He put me on his KILL filter?!?!" and "When will 2.3 (development) be committed as 2.4 (stable)? What's the holdup???"
The only two consequences are merely that 1) it will take longer to release new (major) kernel releases and 2) many, many developers may be discouraged from participating in linux kernel development, and some established developers may burn out from spending more time communicating/managing changes, rather than coding.
As for point 1), what's the rush? Principle is always more important than selling your soul for expediency. After all, look at Hurd. They didn't sell out. So what if we'll have to wait another two years before Linus can start development of 2.7?
Point 2), if Torvalds doesn't like going back to scripts, screw him. What a crybaby. So what if his email explodes in resubmissions and carelessly worded missives from impatient developers? If Torvalds, Morton, and Cox at some point can't deal with it anymore, it just means they're old and mentally weak. They need to be replaced with younger, hungrier talent. "Hell, the only reason why I'm not running the whole shebang are these old guys in the way...."
It kills me that with my relative antipathy towards Ayn Rand that her philosophic views could actually come to pass with this fiasco. If there is a Microsoftie fanboy who can comprehend what is happening right now, they must be laughing their asses off. Or at very least, smug in their perceptions of the flaws of amateur software development. (Hmm, need to send a memo to Marketing...)
The only question I have for Trigdell is "Couldn't you have at least waited until there WAS a SUITABLE alternative to BitKeeper"? Oh well. Guess we'll know the answer to that in two years. The only thing proven here is that if you are a zealot that can't adapt to the real world, you can still go f*ck things up for everyone else. And yet, for all their principles, these F/OSS zealots still prefer to focus their efforts on Linux, and ignore the embodiment of F/OSS development philosophy, HURD.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I can't help but be reminded the venom we received when we forked Sodipodi; people castigating us for ruining things by forking, and berating us as if we'd done something criminal ... "stealing" (that word was used) all the hard work that had gone into Sodipodi.
Heaven forbid we upset the apple cart by using legal and ethical means to ensure the freedom of users and developers...
DNA just wants to be free...
Since this is much in line with the answers I already gave to other posts like yours, let me repeat those:
"If you follow some of the links from the article, it talks about productivity doubling since using BitKeeper."
There is, ofcourse, always the matter that there might be a relation noted, but therefor not a causality. Is there really a heightened production? Is it due to Bitkeeper? Is it *all* due to Bitkeeper?
Those are reasonable questions, and I think, even the neutral Linus could be biased a bit in this regard, because after all, he has made and kept to this decision for 3 years, contrary to much critique.
"Even if there is a cost now moving to something else, it may still work out better in terms of productivity to have used BitKeeper for the three years. Also the use of BitKeeper in Linux seems to encouraged a lot of work on open source alternatives, so they may well be better now than they would have been had BitKeeper not been chosen."
The cost will not be minute, I assure you. Yes, it *might* have been worthwile, but I have problems with this 'might' because it is largely based on speculation. If it really is all that much beneficial, he (Linus) would obviuosly chose another technological superior, yet proprietary system. I doubt that he will, however. Well, we'll see.
"So from the practical, rather than ideological, point of view, even with dropping it now it may still have been the best choice."
See above.
"When you are provided a powerful tool for no cost under the condition that you don't fund the creation of a competing tool based on that technology you are not at the whim of someone's goodwill."
Ermm...yes, you are. I don't follow you: you just describe a situation where, at least in that instance, you are at the whim, and you claim it's indicative that you aren't? Unless you equal 'whim' with totally unreasonable demands, this makes no sense. however, being depended on the goodwill of someone does not infer being unreasonable: they can have very good reasons (even economical ones are good too, in a sense); but still it remains a fact you are at their mercy.
"When they approached OSDL and said you have a employee doing this (reverse engineering our technology), please have them stop and OSDL says it's not our problem."
See above. Besides, reverse engeneering isn't illegal per sé, so they were right to say it's not there problem.
"Its not like they all of the sudden started says hey OSDL/Linus you now need to start paying for this since you like it. They said we are giving you free access to our tool but you have staff that are now striking at our revenue line, which happens to be how we fund this tool you like. Please have them stop and we will continue to provide this tool."
That's very amicable (or not) of them, but it still means one is not free to use the tool; thus, one is dependend on their goodwill.
"When you still thumb your nose at the company who has employees to support and revenue to generate you are only putting them under the gun."
See above.
"So based on this evidence you can see this isn't a RS versus Linus issue versus a OSDL taking responsibility issue. If OSDL came back to the table and said Ok, mea culpa, we will make this right then the problem wouldn't be there."
Yes, it would, since it would still be clear that they are not really free. If they can say 'do not do this" they can say "do not do that" neither. Whether it is reasonable from their perspective or not doesn't enter the picture: it still makes it clear that they can't use the tool totally free.
"Make Sense?"
Not really, when you look at it strictly from the viewpoint of whether or not they are delivered to the goodwill of the owners of Bitkeeper. This shows they aren't, whether Bitkeepers owners were reasonable in their demands or not.
"RMS was not necessarily right. In TFA Linus is quoted as saying "three years of using BitKeeper has made some profound impr
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Larry has definitely NOT gien software to the public. Otherwise he would not be able to withdraw a license.
Please get it right.
Ta.
...those F/OSS zealots prevented the Linux source code from being TAKEN OVER by evil Larry McVoy! Please explain how an SCM can accomplish this?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
"Why wait until some undefined "later" point to explain one's self, if one has nothing to hide"
Utter horse-puckey.
Nobody is ever responsible to explain their actions to anybody under any circumstances, unless bound by agreement or contract. You don't have an agreement with Tridge, and he is perfectly within his rights to tell you to go pound sand.
He doesn't need to "defend" himself because he hasn't done anything wrong. He's pissed some people off who have a philosophical and commercial disagreement with him, and he would probably be wise to discuss the situation with those people, but he doesn't owe YOU (or me or any other J Random Slashdot Reader) any explanation whatsoever.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
we need some text here, IIRC
It's McVoy who has the problem with reverse engineering (probably while using SAMBA to cut costs at his business...).
"Does Tridge work for OSDL? Not clear, but the point is that OSDL gave their word, so they either had an agreement with Tridge, which means he did break it, or OSDL is not being truthful, either way it casts OSDL/Tridge as lacking integrity."
First of all, you are mistaken: it could well be, that Larry is the one who lacks integrity - for instance, when he's just talking crap and there wasn't any agreement or word given.
Secondly, logic would suggest that, even if OSDL did give their word, it is still possible that Tridge didn't - and one can not reasonably expect to be bound to another persons' promise, when you never agreed to it.
So, even according to yourself, it is quite possible that Tridge didn't give his word at all, and thus, your former conclusion is rather unsubstantiated.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Even today, the alternatives to BK aren't quite good enough to handle what is needed for developing Linux, but they are getting much closer. Linus is currently planning to use a non-SCM tool for the final "logging" of what goes into the official kernel, but this is only possible because most of the hard work of merging changes into the kernel from a wide variety of sources will be done by other people, including those who will still be running licensed versions of BK (at least for the near future, if not for some time to come).
Yes, the most recent events do demonstrate how open-source tools are a clearly superior in preventing getting abandoned by a proprietary vendor, but sometimes going with non-open-source software is a good temporary solution while waiting for open-source software to catch up with your needs.
..wayne..
How can you create a clone without reverse-engineering from the cloned product? UI clone? Need to see the product. File format? Need to use the file created. Network protocol? Need to get on the network where the product is running.
The ONLY way you could reverse engineer a product without that being from the product is if the protocol is an open API. And that isn't reverse engineering.
"It's OK to swear at the president so long as you don't talk".
It seems odd for someone to have worked so much on what is essentially an interop layer with non-free software if that were the case. It seems to me that he's into stopping people being locked in to non-free software which seems fairly honourable.
Also from what I remember from the Tivo hacking he also seemed quite sensitive and pragmatic in respect to not releasing anything that would harm Tivo's business model for guide data.
Perhaps the "he thinks anyone using non-free software is living in sin" is an asinine comment from Larry McVoy rather than an asinine belief of Tridge. (It might also be badly worded, it makes more sense in context if you replace "using" with "writing").
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Well once again we see the wisdom of RMS's position that you try for 100% non-proprietary software.
Time and again, he has been proven correct, and others (like me) who are willing to compromise or cut corners proven wrong.
MP3 -> ogg-vorbis
KDE/QT -> Gnome
BitKeeper -> ???
Others I prob don't know about.
If you want to look at kontact and write a different wrapper for the programs it collates, you are completely able to write Win_contact as a Windows version of kontact as long as you don't use the kontact code in a manner not compatible with copyright infringement.
E.g. you can copy structures, API's and most of the header information (with enum's etc for error codes). If you copy sigificant sections of code, you are not allowed.
GPL 3 will not change this in the slightest. What it may do is stop you renting out CPU cycles and modifying code that users run on your CPU (doing so to bypass the GPL distribution clause unfairly).
This is about as interesting as the saga of why my aunt switched from Word Perfect to Word.
I wouldn't want to be a company making source code management software. Its a hard sell, and the open source tools will catch up. Most people I know do just fine with CVS or SVN, or ack, VSS.
But its a broad statement when you describe something as "reverse engineering". Almost every commercial company reverse engineers physical products. Its legal. The line gets blurry when you talk about software though- if you are examining a file format (such as a source code repository) then , thats one thing, but if you decompile code thats quite another. Then again, if you trace network protocols, again thats one thing.
I think many people are divided over the issue, but I vote that anything on the network is fair game for reverse engineering and interoperability. As should be file formats. And emulation of public API's should also be fair game.
it is better to live in peace and harmony with all people. However, practically speaking, if I beat up all the people I can and take their money, I'll do very well.
Yes, extreme, but because something isn't practical doesn't mean we should abandon trying to get there.
The article cites Torvalds summarizing McVoy's position:
Compatibility is honest competition and it requires understanding protocols to work as a drop-in replacement. There is nothing so original about BitKeeper that it would pass the criteria of this statement. But the next statement from Torvalds underscores a theme on why we should not place Torvalds in the position of "posterboy" for a long-term movement:
Well, I can, and Torvalds ought to be able to. In science and art (and perhaps those categories draw an artificial difference which is much more blurry in reality) everyone rides someone's coat-tail. Again, the work done by the speaker would not pass the test suggested by these statements. The Linux kernel does a lot of things that are not original. One of the major reasons it was able to become a practical kernel is because of its design--HURD developers talk of the difficulty of debugging a multithreaded kernel replacement which slows down their development progress. A monolithic kernel, it has been said, is easier to debug and faster to add new features to. The GNU/Linux operating system benefits from Samba and OpenOffice.org which are built on reverse engineering Microsoft's underdocumented and changing protocols and file formats.
This is part of why I believe Linus Torvalds is about to make the same mistake twice, choosing a non-free program for Linux kernel maintenance because he values popularity and short-term technical gains like more than software freedom.
Digital Citizen
Parent is not informative, moderator fucktards.
Sorry your post was too brief for me to understand what you were trying to say.
I've basically already answered this one, though I admit it was originally for other posts. But you don't counterargument or invalidate anything I've said, really.
'Linus himself says it has been beneficial...' Surely, you are aware that individual opinions, especially from people that have ties with a subject, are not the best persons to talk unbiased about said subject? Agreed, it is possible that there was that huge improvement, and it was all due to BitKeeper...but basically, if you base that on the fact that 'Linus said so' , it is a bit weak, me thinks. As I have said before: where there is, seemingly, a link, it therefor is not a causality. So even if there was more progress, it would be unwise to conclude that it was due to BitKeeper, let alone argue the extend.
Let's be honest: there have been developers who were greately against it, maybe were refusing to use it, were less productive, etc. You always have two sides (minimum), so, if a devl now said he thought Bitkeeper didn't improve things more then an alternative would have...would you then consider that proof that BitKeeper wasn't any good?
It really isn't about sides or who said it: it's simply the fact that we shouldn't make false assumptions. After all, if I use a road instead of strawling through the forrest, one can say: look how better and faster things go. But ofcourse, even when true, it doesn't say anything about what would have happend if you took another road - it might turn out, it would have gone even better and faster. So saying it was beneficial could not only be factual wrong, but impossible a statement to make, at least when you use it as a comparative.
Your last statement does not actually counter my argument neither. "sometimes going with non-open-source software is a good temporary solution" is not a good solution, temporary or not. It *CAN* be a good temporary solution, but this can only (and always) be said after the facts. As I've said before: there is an inherent risk in using proprietary systems, which is not elevated by Linus now saying, in hindsight, that it was beneficial (even when this would be true).
If BitKeeper had thrown out Linus after 2 days, instead of two years, I doubt anyone would have made a claim it had been beneficial. But you NEVER know in front how long the 'allowed use' is going to last, do you? So, ultimately, when push comes to shove, you don't know if it's going to be a solution, let alone a good one. Only the temporary seems pretty assured.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Everybody gotta eat. OSDL is not exactly a financially stable job. Things may change like they did at Transmeta and Linus may be out of a job. He's a family man and can't really afford NOT to plan for the future. What he does best is writing software. If he ever need to write and sell software, he would certainly hope to emulate successful commercial models like BitMover/BitKeeper that can survive peacefully with open software.
Linus has given a good part of his life to open source. But as middle age catches up with him, he has to think for himself and his family. If those "free everything" zealots who cannot tolerate any commercial software now, then they wouldn't tolerate any commercial software from him in the future either. Are these zealots so rich now that they never ever need to worry about their own need to sell software in the future? Can we all agree to some compromise that allow those involved in open source to make a decent living if necessary? If people involved in open source cannot make a decent living then who would dare to get involved to succeed those who left?
whenever somebody "defers" on defending themself, it sure looks like they have something to hide
Never heard the phrase "innocent until proven guilty", huh?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Because of fights over CVS commit access, we now have DragonflyBSD. (and OpenBSD, which had a similar split from NetBSD)
Decentralized SCM reduces the political problems.
What licenses did Tridge accept?
What licences did OSDL accept that somehow legally automagically bind Tridge 24/7/265?
What licenses did some kernel devs accept and what bearing does this have on OSDL and Tridge?
Clear answers to these would tell me what the "core issues" are.
when you need to defend the "character" and not the "action," you know your defense is pretty weak. Good people can do bad things, and it's awfully elitist to make an assertion like this. Maybe we want to make a decision on our own before waiting for a "community leader" like yourself to tell us how to think.
While the agreement was made between Linus and McVoy, Tridge positioned Linus in the middle of the shit.
Human beings are selfish by nature. With few exceptions, we always do what is best for us, even if it is to the detriment of others.
Tridgell is no more right than McVoy. They both did what was in their best self interest. Tridgell started working on reverse engineering BitKeeper with full knowledge that it would not go well with McVoy, and might even cause the free version of BitKeeper to be pulled from the market. But that wasn't important to him, what was important to him is that he had the legal right to reverse engineer Bitkeeper and nothing else mattered.
McVoy also responded by doing what was in his best self interest. He's going to discontinue the free program even though it's going to cause problems for many programmers who had grown to depend on it.
It isn't politics or ideology. It's human nature.
Exactly. If Larry were honest and he really believed that OSDN (through Tridge) did something wrong, he would have withdrawn OSDN's license and not everyone's license.
Larry was looking for a way to get rid of the free version without looking like a complete ass. If it wasn't this situation, it was something else. It was bound to happen sooner rather than later. Tridge did nothing but try to create an BitKeeper export so that when that eventuallity happened, we'd be ready. This situation is precisely highlights why Tridge's work and those like him is so important.
Vendor lock-in sucks, no matter how friendly the vendor is currently.
The computer I'm writing this on is a genuine IBM, but the BIOS is from Phoenix, not IBM. In short, the BIOS is reverse engineered.
I don't think IBM has made/used their own BIOS in years. Easier to buy one off the shelf.
No! It's a completely independent re-implementation! Since it serves the same function, it must necessarily have some similarities in internal structure. Just like CherryOS and PearPC. Or Linux and SCO Unix.
</satire>
Why don't you just go tell that to Larry, then? It was his decision to yank BK, not Tridge's.
DNA just wants to be free...
There is evidence that Microsoft doesn't know how their networking protocol works anymore. When they need to change something they have to read the Samba docs and their source code to understand how it works.
After reading the article, it sounds to me like like Larry and Linus still like/respect one another, and Larry really wants to *@#! Tridge right now... That's good enough for a lot of films.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I think that everyone just needs to take a moment and look at what actually happened here.
Bitkeeper created a truly exceptional source management software. Linus had a problem with what he was currently using, and was in search of a new tool. Bitkeeper provides Linus with a free version which allows him to use the tool, thus providing two things: (1) an exceptional source management tool for Linux, (2) unbelievable publicity for Bitkeeper by having perhaps the most famous developer in the world using and advocating his product.
Fast foward 3 years. Bitkeeper has established itself as a solid company on its own right, and spends a considerable amount of money maintaining the relationship with Linus. An open source developer starts developing an open source version of the Bitkeeper product, which is essentially happening because the product is being given away for free. Essentially, what is happening here is that McVoy is spending money to provide a free version that is actively being used to create an open source competitor to his product.
As much of an open source fan as I am, I have to see McVoy's stance on this. Why should he spend money to indirectly support the creation of a competitor to his product? Because he's got a good heart and knows that it is good in the long run? He's also not stupid, and realizes that the open source version will get along just fine w/o his indirect funding.
Now let's find a villian, shall we?
Option 1: Linus. Linus has done no wrong. He used the best tool at his disposal. It wasn't open source, but it was a small amount of evil for a greater amount of good (linux kernel moved along quite well with bitkeeper). Now he's looking for another solution. Villian? I don't think so. Opportunistic? Definitely.
Option 2: McVoy. McVoy provided Bitkeeper free of charge for 3 years and kept up development on the free version. Changed his mind when Tridge wouldn't quit developing the open source version which essentially reverse engineered the work he had done and created a valid competitor. Made the proper business decision, lost his best marketing tool. Villian? Don't think so. Opportunisitic? Definitely.
Option 3: Tridge. Didn't like using the proprietary software, and decided to reverse engineer what had already been created. This caused McVoy to have problems with the business relationship. Result is that Linus has to find a new SCM solution, but also that new energy will be thrown into SCM in an open source way. Villian? Not at all. Opportunistic? Definitely.
My conclusion? There is no villian here. The entire relationship was doomed to fail eventually. Everyone got something out of it while it lasted. Linus got great source code management. McVoy got _amazing_ advertising. Tridge got to create an open source version of one of the best SCM systems out there. Who is the winner? Probably everyone. Who is the loser? I can't think of one right now.
Well, I wouldn't consider myself to be a 'hard-line' anything, apart from being libertarian minded, perhaps. Let alone compare me with R.Stallman. ;-)
I can't speak for Stallman, but if you think I'm considering it inherently 'immoral' as an argument, I aparently failed to make my point clear.
I have difficulties imagining how this could be, since I have explained several times now, what my arguments are. None of them was 'it is inherently immoral'. In fact, I gave you the reason right after the quote. And again, you didn't actually go into it. Once again: you do not know, in front, how long you can use proprietary systems. Thus, EVEN if they are beneficial on themselves, you do not know for how long you are going to be able to use them. Since there is always a cost at reversing or moving to something else, it is perfectly possible to have no benefit, or even outright a negative impact, on the development, when chosing proprietary systems.
Since you do not know how long you are going to be able to use it, you can not know in front if it's going to be beneficial or not. Thus, if you talk about balancing, it is always in hindsight: you balance the actual benefits it had + the time you were able to profit from it (- moving to something else, etc). So, for making a decision in front, in regard to the question what to use (as Linus did, 2 years ago), you CAN NOT argue that it is beneficial compared to other alternatives, since you do not know how long you can use the system. Linus may (rightfully or not) claim this now, in this instance (= in hindsight), but it does not validate his technological-superiority-before-ideology viewpoint as a principle.
I don't see where the problem seems to be in following this rational argument.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Lets put this into perspective: Say North and South Korea get back into a war. The US then goes to Source Korea and arranges a cease fire. All well and good, but it never brought a major party to the table.
If BK behaves in the way they do, then I'm happy that this is brought out now and solved. The primary reason Linus was using them is he was convinced they were not evil, but when they throw a tempertantrum like they did...
This BK story was always controversial. BK itself was always going to go away sooner or later due to its conflictual nature.
Linus might suffer for a while (and I'm truly sorry for him) but hopefully we'll have a workable replacement soon, which will presumably be completely Free and usable by all. We now have a complete set of requirements for a BK replacement, and this in itself is quite precious.
In the long run the productivity loss due to the Linux kernel hackers having to pioneer an as-yet undecided new tool will be offset by the whole FOSS community getting to benefit from it.
So thannks to BK for the ride and good luck to LMcV with his new approach and his software.
Linus' stance has been progressively more disappointing on this issue. He doesn't seem to understand the deepest significance of his own software-offspring Linux: Freedom.
This does not, in my mind, greatly detract from his virtues as a programmer. But I will read his stances on Free Software issues with considerably more grains of salt in the future.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
2.6.x has continued to be developed at a very high rate thanks to just how smoothly it's been working
I am the first to admit that I know a lot more about 2.4 than 2.6, but I have read _many_ posts about something being broken in certain 2.6.x versions.
Quite a few revisions mainly fixed exploitable code.
Thus I read this as a joke; in fact everything he says in that article.
He got a version that worked well (for him) for free, the linux version is abandoned thus he has to choose an alternative (or keep using the old version?); end of story
With nearly six hundred comments on this story, this comment is unlikely to be read, but what the hell.
After reading many of the aforementioned comments it seems almost no one gets why McVoy is pissed off. Most comments make it seem like he is pissed off that BK is being reverse engineered, but in my opinion what he is pissed about is who is doing the reverse engineering.
McVoy tought he had a quid pro quo agreement with the free/open source community, i.e. we'd give you BK for free and in exchange we'll get a user-base, publicity and extended QA, and you will not reverse engineer our code.
Now Tridge has broken that quid pro quo agreement and McVoy has taken his marbles and gone home.
The problem with McVoy's view, of curse, is that there is no monolithic "free/open source comminity". It is a group of individuals with some shared interests, but each person is empowered to not accept McVoy's offer. That is what Tridge did.
It was silly for McVoy to think that everyone would agree to abide by the agreement. And one can only wonder if Tridge knew what the results of his actions would be and when ahead anyway.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/11/torvalds_a ttack/
So, basically, Tridge is an asshole.
It didn't happen here, but...
Actually, short of violating a license agreement/contract, or breaking some kind of DRM (possible DMCA violation), reverse engineering a binary is not illegal or in any way unfair either. It's OK to look under the hood of your car to see how it works before building another.
The problem with reverse engineering binaries, is that there is always the question of whether you copied the code outright. If by process you can show in court that you never needed to look at the code and never did look at the code, when by chance it turns out to be close to identical by accident, you have a reasonable defense.
It's a practical legal consideration not a right/wrong, illegal/legal issue.
-- John.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
- Isaac Newton
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
- Hal Abelson
In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
- Brian K. Reed
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
You say that I should read it first? This I have done. (Most recently, last weekend.)
You say that I should discuss it first? This I have done. (Most recently, last weekend.)
You say that I should discuss it with lawyers? This I have done. (The company lawyer at my last job, for instance.)
You say that I should discuss it with lawyers who specialize in IP law? This I have done. (With Wendy Seltzer among others.)
You say that I should discuss it with lawyers who care about both IP and free software? This I have done. (Wendy Seltzer works for the EFF, and created Chilling Effects.)
You say that I should discuss it with Eben Moglen, the lawyer who wrote it? This I have done. (He corrected me on a misunderstanding that I had about whether it was a contract as well as a copyright license. It is not a contract, it is a copyright license.)
At every level I have had it confirmed that it is a copyright license.
I don't know how many of these things you have done. But whichever is the first thing that I have done that you have not, I suggest that you do that now and verify that the GPL really is a copyright license.
Then stop spreading misinformation.
Moderation -1
100% Offtopic
Pointing out a better explanation than guilt for Tridge's reticence, in a thread about Tridge's guilt, discussing a story implying Tridge's guilt, is "Offtopic"? TrollMods need a clue.
--
make install -not war
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =5&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1='Sun+Microsystems'.A SNM.&s2=skinner.INZZ.&OS=AN/%22Sun+Microsystems%22 +AND+IN/skinner&RS=AN/%22Sun+Microsystems%22+AND+I N/skinner
I believe Larry thinks he should be listed as co-inventor (and he probably should), but that isn't what the patent says. I don't really care for the purposes of this dicussion, but just wanted to verify that my memory isn't completely gone. Note that there was a fair amount of prior art leading up to this.
b) IP loss. If we sat back and did nothing about Tridge then we are implicitly condoning reverse engineering.
They should "condone reverse engineering". Without reverse engineering, open source would be nearly impossible, because we need to be able to access proprietary protocols and proprietary file structures. Furthermore, reverse engineering is specifically permitted in many countries.
One can debate whether it is desirable from an open source perspective that companies claim copyrights or patents over their code. One can even debate whether it is desirable from an open source perspective that companies don't like their code to be reverse engineered.
But reverse engineering of protocols and functionality that are not protected by patents is simply non-negotiable for open source: any company that attempts to prohibit that is fundamentally in conflict with open source, and they should be avoided like the plague by any open source developer.
McVoy has no legal leg to stand on, and his claims that he is "open source friendly" are ridiculous. Give him and Bitkeeper the boot.
So Tridge didn't actually type "Merge two files".
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
The man who is the chief architect/project lead/development lead/release manager, and has been since the very beginning, said that three years of BK was well worth the transition hassles that have to be endured now. That's his judgement, and he's laid out the reasons why he thinks so.
So what you're saying is that you have better information and/or insight into what version control systems are best for his situation, or maybe he's plain not very good at his job. Not likely on either count.
Or maybe Stallman was the right man to lead development of the free software kernel... oh wait.
You don't know what "reverse engineering" means , you have no idea how Linux was developed, and your conception of Transmeta's technology is pitiful. And that's your BEST paragraph.
Second, there are potential issues with file corruption. According to the article, corruption has been an issue already when a user tweaked the ChangeSet file.
The story, if true, simply identifies a server bug that needed to be fixed anyway.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Not exactly. Without a license, you have the right to do anything you wish with the software. The GPL doesn't give you rights, it prevents others from taking them away from you.
It's much like the American "Bill of Rights". It states that there are "certain rights to be self-evident" and God given. It's not about the government giving you the right of free speech (for example), it's about the government not being able to take that right away from you.
TommyOpen Source for Open Minds
Tridge wasn't using the software.
Tridge reverse-engineered it by knowing basically what it did, and looking at the data files. He wrote rsync essentially from scratch, and reverse engineered that chaotic mess which Microsoft likes to refer to as CIFS. He's an effing genius in a few areas, notably compression, diffs and file management. BitKeeper's processes would've been a walkover for Tridge to replicate independently.
Tridge is highly ethical, more ethical than me. Susan wouldn't've married him otherwise. And they have a truly excellent frog. So until you actually know what you're talking about, stick to lurking. )-;
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Cheers,
e.
It's amazing that anyone still believes there is anywhere 'safe' from the Imperial doctrine of we'll-write-your-laws-or-bomb-the-crap-out-of-you.
you had me at #!
Storing free software in a proprietary system was doomed to fail anyway. Tridge just got Linus to see his own hypocracy.
you had me at #!
It looks to me that that is the case in the interview/article. Given Larry's apparent tendencies and approach to the whole affair, I would pretty much take those second hand quotes with several grains of salt. I am not saying that those weren't the actual words uttered by Linus, of course.
Words can be used to color opinions. Let me give you an example: There is no need to explain to anyone that that WMD, like nuclear weapons, in the hands of an unstable tyrant can lead to horrifying outcome. It is of high possibility that Saddam Hussein has WMD right now, at this moment, today. Bad things can happen anytime, maybe tomorrow. We must act immediately to rectify a precarious situation. Each sentence could have been standalone or used in some other entirely different context. Each sentence is either a statement that is hard to argue against, or deniable (e.g., possibility). But used in the sequence like I did above, the innuendo is clear. They have been used to hoodwink a whole nation.
By select the right combinations of words and sentences, one can create colors.
Human nature is a bunch of grays; trying to understand it in binary terms of 1s and 0s is likely to lead to misleading conclusions. Back to what I am trying to say: it seems to me that those are quotes of Linus from Larry.
Cheers,
e.
Linus certainly appears to be in the minority with that opinion when you start reading these threads. I don't know Linus and I don't know Tridge, but I see many people who are known in the community and who personally know Tridge stating that he is ethical and honest. While I certainly respect Linus, I don't intend to worship him blindly and ignore what others have to say.
Maybe linux should work with perforce for another three years.
Unpicking it requires an export tool, and frankly, like Tridge, I wouldn't personally want to rely wholly on Larry's good graces for one as Linus seemed willing to do.
So, is Larry providing one now? Tridge's was just a proof-of-concept.
(Admittedly that's kind of moot as it sounds like Linus did extract his own BK repository already. But what if he hadn't?)
This was on his own time, not when he was billing OSDL contract hours (he's a contractor, not an employee).
Larry did that, not Tridge.
Frankly, the more I read about the situation, the more this sounds like one of those situations where a controlling and jealous husband beats his wife because he doesn't like what some of her friends are doing. Then some people take the side of the husband and blame the friends for everything.
They insist how good he was was to her, and that he wasn't really TOO controlling, really. He PROVIDED for her. Where would she have been without him? Is it too much to ask if she and her friends could just show gratitude and respect his wishes?
DNA just wants to be free...
oh so suddenly click-through licenses matter. how convenient.
Did you find_this_irritating from Linus's interview in TFA?
Carpe Diem: Seize The Day!
Tridge decided that Torvalds, the chief project manager of linux kernel, should not be able to use software tools if they are proprietary tools, nor make agreements with proprietary vendors. Tridge then proceeded to reverse-engineer the client tool, despite the fact it was against the wishes of Torvalds and McVoy. It would not result in an open alternative to BitKeeper, because you still have to reverse-engineer the server. It would make it impossible for Linus to maintain his arrangement with McVoy.
Hopefully, Tridgell was correct in there was an acceptable alternative to BK. Because if he isn't, development may be slowed to the point that it may be years before we get to see a new kernel release. Hopefully, it won't result in a situation where Microsoft can convince product developers to abandon adoption of linux as an OS platform because it can't change at an adequate rate to satisfy the commercial environment. Most of all, lets thank this one individual for making that kind of decision for all of us, rather than Linus.
Buts its a good thing that the Open Source Program Manager of Google, Inc. can take such a sympathetic position towards Tridgell. It's good Brin, Sergey, Schmidt & Co. don't mind subordinates making their strategic decisions for them. Or shrug if Google was prevented from responding when someone gamed their pagerank system.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
It doesn't matter if they do or not, since he didn't agree to one.
That's the whole point, this whole thing is an exercise in double-speak. You can never be bound by any liscence you didn't accept, no matter how that acceptance could be obtained.
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
I don't know how advanced Tridge's tools are, but GNU CSSC (downloadable from the the GNU FTP servers) has a certain amount of read-only compatibility with BitKeeper. See also the BitBucket project (code here).
Re. subversion, read this from the horses mouth: http://subversion.tigris.org/subversion-linus.html
As for monotone, I think Linus and others like it but find it too slow (http://kerneltrap.org/node/4982) to the extent that it would take a year to import the entire source repository at the moment.
- Peder
To be accurate to history: Linus looked at Minix, didn't like what he saw, and decided to write his own version...
- Peder
...because it's what the BK client license says!
I can't say I exactly agree with the language, but I do agree with the contens.
Everybody was happy, except the whiners and they coudn't explain why bk was worse than what we had before.
- Peder
Wrong, initially, for about 6 months, the BitKeeper code was released
The difference here is that Microsoft isn't letting you use Office for free with the stipulation that so long as you use the free licence you do not engage in any reverse engineering.
From the sound of it, though, Tridge did not actually run BitKeeper at any time -- he performed the act of reverse engineering by studying the datafiles.
That would make BK's license irrelevant as it did not apply to him (a non-user).
It also makes the fact that BK is available for free to some users irrevant.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Looks like Linus is very carefully skirting the line and not implementing any actual SCM features in git himself, rather dropping hints and letting others do the actual work.
DNA just wants to be free...
Try ArX.
As soon as you start using a distributed system, that opportunity is lost. There will always be folk who choose to keep their BK trees. (Remember, the one and only point behind distributed SCM systems is _every_ repository is "alike in status".
Tridge is quite entitled to ignore agreements that do not involve him, and weren't made with his consent.
In distributed SCM, there is no one time export and carry on mode of change over. Thus Tridge is still right, if an open source alternative is ever to grow up a BK environment, it needs a way to work with existing BK repositories.
McVoy is trying to stunt any open source competition to his product by, like a shrewish mother-in-law, using moral blackmail. (Woo, I was nice to you, and you don't love me!)
Linus, bless his pragmatic sockses, is prepared to use BK as long as it is free, but realizes McVoy will cut the ground from under him.
The first rule of getting yourself out of a hole, is to stop digging. Thus the closest he will ever get in a distributed SCM scenario to a one night change over is to stop using BK now, before the problem gets bigger. Linus is pissed, all this fuss forces him to do work he isn't interested in, doesn't want.
... that, thank goodness, reverse engineering is not illegal? (not yet at least, many fine folks are making a big effort to make it not so anymore).
That is it really.
If Linus, and you, don't understand about software freedom, about our right to share knowledge, you are both deluded.
Tridgell is not copying something, he is thinkering with it, finding how it works, and producing his own version that does the same.
That is perfectly legitimate and Linus and his friend are on the wrong this time.
Linus lambasting reverse Engineering is so idiotic in so many ways that it is not funny.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If Linus now supports the concept of proprietry file formats and decries the reverse engineering thereof, should we shortly expect an announcement about the removal of the NTFS filesystem driver from his tree?
If not, why not?
How is reverse engineering the NTFS filesystem format different to reverse engineering the BitMover File format>
I suspect that when Linus made this statement he had not considered the ramifications, and I am looking forward to seeing a clarification.
See also http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tpenta/20050411#d id_linus_really_mean_to
Tp.
Anybody with delussion of the contrary can go ans waste their money starting a "software" company.
MS knows it, that is why they tried to start subscription services for theiy wares and why they entered the online gaming market (servicing software by another name).
IBM knows it.
The companies making the more money in the IT industry are the ones providing services.
But here we are, once again, sombody decrying that what economics are mandating should be avoided by all means.
You go ahead budy, become the Don Quixote of the software shop. Those windmills are called market forces and are going to give you a beating to remember.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... for Linux kernel development of using a tool like BK.
But many now are fully entitled to tell him "we told you so"....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... not like a hacker.
Hacker do not have deadlines, they do things for the pleasure fo doing them and the knoledge acquired.
Linus should have never used BK.
Red Hat or SuSe perhaps should have.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Fortunately those are relative terms.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Linux source control would not be affected by the whims of a closed source sompany.
After all these years of OSS existence and advocacy I don't understand how there are people out there that don't understand why open is better in the long term.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You are embarrasing yourself, badly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Since reverse Engineering is a perfect fine activity to replace something else if done correctly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I was deeply concerned from the beginning with the whole affair. Yes, BitKeeper was the best tool for the job- as far as workflow, etc. was concerned. It wasn't, however, the best tool because of whom it was associated with (Um, anyone else remember lmbench?) and the fact that the entire repository was hosted on a machine that was controlled by a company with proprietary attitudes and software- software that could have the plug pulled on it at any moment. I knew this was going to happen. So did Linus, according to what he said- he just didn't think it was going to happen as soon as it did.
I'm also very deeply disappointed in Linus. "Practicality" and "expediency" aside, this was a bad idea from the get-go; and to express bitterness over Tridge's insistence on ensuring a way out of all this mess that Linus made for himself , is disturbing to say the least. Yes, he's human, but I thought he had his head screwed on better than that. Tridge did nothing wrong. Not even "unwise" as it's been described by him and others. The unwise thing was to choose BitKeeper in the first place.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's only "good" when they clandestinely apply it to competiors products. It's "bad" when it's applied to their stuff.
Hypocrisy always rubs me the wrong way. Even in the case of Open Source people...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Just FYI: I desperately needed a good SCM (for a open-source program from a company), and found nothing in the Open-Source space. I was interested in BK, because Linus drooled so much about it, but didn't want to accept their "free" license where they forbid working on competing systems etc., so I called them for pricing. I couldn't believe what I heard:
US-$2400. Per developer. Per Year.
That's ridiculous, which I tried to make clear, politely, but they were unwilling to negotiate. Not even given the fact that it was just open-source that's being maintained. So I forgot about them.
Now I am quite happy with SVK.
I don't want to sound too harsh because I respect Linus a lot, but there has been a lot of discontent over the use of BK amongst kernel developers and with this situation, rightfully so. When Linus chose BK, he knew that the rug could be pulled from under him at any moment, for whatever reason. It might have been a good technological decision, but it was a pretty bad strategic management decision. The complication of the kernel development process is therefor his to blame only: he put the future of his development process in the hands of Larry McVoy and made himself dependent on the whole universe agreeing not to step on McVoy's toes. It was only a matter of time before someone came up with a utility to extract metadata from the repositories. Anyway, not all's doom and gloom. If the removal of BK from the development process spurs people to develop a free system that satisfies most of the needs of the developers, it will only have been for the better.
He's so fucking cute and sweet. I'd treat him to some fancy restaurant, then take a long romantic walk with him, holding hands and talking about philosophy, art and dreams. Then I'd invite him to my home and ravage his hot ass for hours, and forcing my cock down his throat so he choked on both the throbbing cock and his own rectal juice. I'd then proceed to cum on his cute innocent face. Then, as the ultimate love gift, I'd carry him in my arms to the tub and let my piss wash away the semen and last dignity from him. I'd whisper "I love you" and give him a tender smile, and cut his throat from ear to ear with a knife. Covered in his own warm blood, he'd look straight into my very soul, forgiving, understanding. A bubble from blood and saliva would burst between his lips, then he'd die. After some additional lovemaking, I'd stuff him in a bin bag. Three Weeks later, some playing children will find him mutilated and desecrated body in the forest. They will be scarred for life.
I LAUGH AT YOUR DICK!
bitch.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
In The Ghetto XXXI (Special Guest Star: Grandma Lockwood)
A burning wet fart scalded Vlad's colon and rectum as he twitched awake. Vlad laid in bed, shaking at the horrible images that had danced through his sleeping mind. Sweat streamed from his forehead, trickled through his greasy scalp and soaked his pillow. This had been the worst nightmare yet. Vlad had dreamt that he was married to a 400-pound bag of soul-sucking gelatin. Living in a double-wide trailer filled with Jerry Springer moments, his only joy was his two sexy sons.
Vlad slipped out of bed and tip-toed into the next room. There, Grandma slept peacefully, snoring and farting in her usual comforting way. Vlad slipped under the covers with her and immediately felt his sense of security return. Grandma always made everything better. A loud, low rumble escaped from her buttocks. Vlad pulled himself lower down the length of the bed so that his nose rested against Grandma's ass. He inhaled deeply as the gas wafted around him and put him back to sleep. Vlad savored every moment, even in his sleep, for he knew tomorrow the other kids in his class would remind him of his countless inadequacies.
* * * * * * * * *
Vlad belched forcefully, sending chunks of hamburger helper spewing out into the living-room. The orange plastic of the couch stuck to his fat pale legs and his stained briefs bathed him in a rich sampling of unique Lockwood odors. At the opposite end of the couch, Reza sat in her usual spot. The cushion was practically non-existent, compressed as it was from her unimaginable mass.
"Oh Vladdie-Pop, I'm so glad Grandma has come to stay with us since little Vaginez came along! It is so nice to have some help around the house!"
"Yo, you fat cunt, I'm trying to watch the new Eminem video. One more word outta you, and your fat ass'll be laid out on the fuckin' floor for the next month."
Reza quivered at the thought of another merciless beating by her dear Vladdie-Pop. The last time he had "corrected" her, she had spent 22 hours huddled in the shower, weeping as the scalding water pelted her rubbery body. She had lost a whopping 1/2 pound that day. She spent the entire next day eating, fearful of her body wasting away to further displease her beloved.
Reza's ruminations were interrupted by a terrible screeching from Marticock's Chamber. Vlad's fleshy head reddened with rage. He just wanted to watch television. Why did everything always have to work against him? He turned to Reza, with a terrifying scowl on his face. Reza felt a pang of terror shoot through her massive gut and she frantically dislodged herself from the indentation in the couch.
Reza thudded across the double-wide's paper-thin floors, "Grandma! Grandma!"
Grandma Lockwood was sitting on the toilet relieving herself of the Metamucil she had consumed for breakfast, "don't worry, dear, I'll take little Marticock out for a nice walk and he'll be fine!"
"Oh Grandma," Reza blubbered.
Grandma Lockwood soaked a rag in some Clorox and cleaned her rump of the liquified feces that had spattered up from the toilet. She applied a thick coat of Johnson's Baby Powder and then pulled up her stockings. She flushed the toilet, which immediately backed up and spilled out over the floor.
"Reza, honey, you wanna clean up my shit while I take little Marticock for a nice walk?"
Reza was only happy to clean up in the bathroom. It would give her a purpose, a valid reason to be away from Vlad. Though she could never admit such a thing to herself, at a subconscious level she would do anything to avoid being with her Precious Love.
Grandma Lockwood prepared the grocery cart by throwing some used Taco Bell napkins in the bottom to make a nice nest for Marticock. She then lifted Marticock from his crib, careful not to agitate his pummelled rear, and placed him comfortably in the nest. She wrapped herself in her Eminem shawl - a Christmas gift from her grandson - and pushed Marticock out the