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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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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 |
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.
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.
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
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.
Better yet, since Larry is since against reverse engineering of his work, I hope he only uses IBM PC's, as all others stem from the original reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Wow, I had better call my lawyer next time I decide to surf the web!
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.
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.
Well, I guess that's the end of "standing on the shoulders of giants".
What exactly do you want him to say? He's never agreed to the BitKeeper license, and he's not bound by it. How could his defense possibly be any stronger?
What is this, some kind of astroturfing effort by McVoy to try to make us think that "everyone" feels like Tridge's defense is weak? What, exactly, is deficient in his statement?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
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:
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
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
There's nothing wrong with Tridge writing a program that can read Bitkeeper'd files any more than there is Open Office writing programs that can read Microsoft Word files. Interoperability is good. Linus is being silly if he's blaming Tridge for anything here.
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.
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
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.
>He's never agreed to the BitKeeper license, and he's not bound by it. How could his defense possibly be any stronger?
If he's never agreed, he hasn't been allowed to use it.
Chris DiBona
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
What, exactly, is deficient in his statement?
The fact that it doesn't explain his apparently antisocial behavior. Both Linus and BK dude sound as though they were working together and attempting to find an equitable solution, including a natively supported SCM-independent export format. Tridge sounds like he was given an opportunity to negotiate and come up with a solution everyone could be happy with, and he sent them all a fuck you instead.
Of course, I don't know if that's the case, because he didn't bother to defend himself. See?
I have every right to insult yo momma right now. If I did, though, it would be completely reasonable to expect me to explain why -- and saying that there's no law saying I can't isn't exactly a great explanation.
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!
I have also seen no reason to suggest that Tridge cannot be trusted when he claims that he didn't use BitKeeper, and since Tridge is the free software developer in this debate, I am more inclined towards sympathy with him than towards a guy that thinks reverse engineering for interoperability is immoral.
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.
Not to mention samba sharing files and printers, or email clients interoperating with exchange, or Linux having the ability to read FAT32 and NTFS partitions.
I think "Tridge" is being scapegoated because Larry McVoy is Linus' buddy, so he doesn't want to lay the blame on him.
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!
There is nothing unmoral, unethical, or unfriendly about reverse engineering. Otherwise have fun buying only PC's from IBM and cars from Ford (or whoever) for the rest of your life, since anything else would be against your sense of 'ethics'.
"While he was within the letter of the law, he certainly didn't stick to the spirit."
Please, do tell which _law_ Tridge isn't abiding the spirit of?
Is it the "thou-shall-not-reverse-engineer-Larry McVoy's-baby" law for your stupid pseudo religion? Cuz, from where I sit, you are pulling _laws_ out of your ass...
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.
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.
Um, he didn't agree with the spirit of the agreement, and by not using the product, wasn't party to it.
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!
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.
There is something really wrong with a tool if some user tweaking a ChangeSet file causes damage that costs $35000 and needs a custom release to fix!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
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." ---
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?)
Not everyone that disagrees with you is a fucking Zealot. Get over yourself.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
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.
"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
In a word, "Yes". Just don't copy the source code, or people might get a bit irritated.
That is all.
How is reverse engineering BK right when the company he worked for said it wouldn't in a legal agreement?
In many countries, reverse-engineering is a statutory right that cannot be signed away. In these countries, that clause would have no standing.
I find it amusing that people are calling reverse-engineering immoral and unethical when many countries have deemed it even more important than the right to free speech (which you can easily sign away with NDAs).
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.
"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."
This is NOT reverse engineering, because you disassembled the original product into source, and looked at said source, you are no longer "clean".
Reverse engineering implies that you only use a binary implementation of a product and build a product that works like it, based solely on inputs and outputs from the binary product.
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.
Basically you would like to know all about his motivations. Who the f*ck cares? The entire problem is a hissy fit about somebody reverse-engineering a protocol and Tridge isn't the hissy.
But to answer for him anyway:
Why did he do it? Because he wanted to.
Is OSDL paying for it? Ask OSDL.
Why he kept going when OSDL promised he'd stop? He's not OSDL.
Was it worth it? Ask McVoy.
Why was reverse-engineering the only way? Because of the BitKeeper license.
Will he keep going with the project? If Linux falls back to BitKeeper.
Seriously this is just pissed-off.com 101. Reverse-engineering a protocol is not wrong, immoral or impolite. It does not require justification. Purposely keeping a protocol closed however, does.
"...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
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.
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." ---
If MS were to add this sort of clause to the EULA would it mean I can't reverse engineer the MS-Word .doc format because the receptionist at my day job uses Word?
According to the article Andrew Tridgell may have worked for ODSL, but he didn't use BK. I'm not sure how you can be bound by the licence of software you're not using.
Cogito, ergo sig.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
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Since Tridge isn't talking about it at the moment, I'll try to provide some insight.
"Why he thought it was important to start reverse-engineering BitKeeper, rather than any of the many more widely-used proprietary products out there"
-- Because the Linux kernel source isn't stored in those other proprietary products.
"Whether and why he's doing it on OSDL's nickel"
-- He did it on his own time, as has been stated numerous times.
"Why he kept going when, at least according to McVoy, OSDL promised he'd stop while they negotiated"
-- Who said he promised to stop? And why should he?
"Whether screwing up Linux kernel development was worth whatever it is he thinks he's achieved"
-- Sorry, it was BitKeeper that screwsd up kernel development by creating this mess. Which anybody with a clue could see coming years ago.
"Why reverse-engineering the BitKeeper project was the only way to achieve his goals"
-- Because there is no other way to get all the revision data out of BitKeeper repositories, and into free/open source repositories.
"Whether he'll keep going with the project now that the kernel won't be in BitKeeper format anymore."
-- He surely will, until every last bit of open source code has been released from locked-in BitKeeper repositories.
If you have any more questions, could you please phrase them in a less accusatory style.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I'm speaking like someone who wants linux to be the preferred choice to do computing. I want to help my mother and family use linux PCs, not XP. (Because XP is "easier", runs the programs they want to run, works on all hardware...) That won't happen if Linux doesn't become the widespread choice of platform for business.
I work in the information industry. I don't want to be working on Microsoft platforms 10 years from now because linux consistently stumbled, got a reputation for amateurish behavior and not being able to release quickly enough to satisfy customers, and lose the confidence of the industry.
You, on the other hand, mouth platitudes like an poser loser. "Hackers don't meet deadlines, they don't program for money, its purely for the knowlege and pleasure."
Yeah, I can see why your more comfortable with slowing things down, espousing F/OSS theory, getting rid of those damn capitalists. Accomplishing doesn't mean jack to losers like you. Worse, you think you're entitled to tell producers how they should do their job. (Man, I hate that Ayn Rand...)
Go become a HURD fanboy. They wouldn't be caught dead using BK. They're the ultimate in hacking. There's way more computer science theory in microkernel, multithreaded programming than an outdated monolithic kernel design like Linux. Leave Linux to the soulless masses...
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