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.

Comments

weak answer from Tridge

[winkydink]

Tridge offers his side

There is no doubt Tridge is being cast as the villain in this piece. Here's what he had to tell us when we asked him for his side of the tale:

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:

- In late February I wrote a tool that is interoperable with BitKeeper. The aim was to provide export to other source code management tools and provide a useful tool to the community.

- I did not use BitKeeper at all in writing this tool and thus was never subject to the BitKeeper license. I developed the tool in a completely ethical and legal manner.



Boy, I hate to say it, but whenever somebody "defers" on defending themself, it sure looks like they have something to hide. Why wait until some undefined "later" point to explain one's self, if one has nothing to hide?

Re:weak answer from Tridge

[winkydink]

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.

Re:weak answer from Tridge

[R55]

Larry McVoy is the criminal not Tridgell!
If Torvalds never, used BitKeeper and promoted it, Mr. McVoy would have less head weight.

IANAL

[Anonymous Coward]

AND APPARENTLY, LINUS, MCVOY, AND TRIDGE ANAL TOO. A THREE-WAY ANAL FUCKFEST!! YAY LINUX!!!

*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_
g_______________________________________________g_ _
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o_ _
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a_ _
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t_ _
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s_ _
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e_ _
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x_ _
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*_ _
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g_ _
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____o_ _
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____a_ _
t_______/\_|___C_____)/LINUX_\_(_____>__|_/_____t_ _
s______/_/\|___C_____)_INSIDE|__(___>___/__\____s_ _
e_____|___(____C_____)\_(TM)_/__//__/_/_____\___e_ _
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x_ _
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*_ _
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g_ _
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o_ _
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a_ _
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t_ _
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s_ _
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e_ _
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x_ _
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_

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Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.

No source code, no trouble

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again, if no source code were available we wouldn't be in this mess.

Tridge has reverse engineered BK by pulling out code out of BK tree. Why? Because he feels so strongly that software should be free that he thinks it's OK to resort guerilla tactics like this to liberate it.

Free software fanatics like him make me sick.

Then again, Larry is partly to blame for exposing the source code in the first place.

Re:hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Information wants to be free.

Just like convicted child-molesters want to be free.

Zealotry?

[kirkb]

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.

Re:My opinion hasn't changed

[bonch]

But in this post, Linus says he was writing scripts to export data in an SCM-independent format. McVoy actually offered to support this directly in BitKeeper, but Tridge insisted on "being difficult about it" and gaining access directly to the binary data. Linus suggests he's bitter at Tridge for it, and now he can't use BitKeeper.

Linux is copycat all over

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry McVoy is like a whiny little girl. He should know better that Linux-folks are just riding on every coat-tails they possibly can.

Even Linus is getting tired of all that OSS-crap. Nowdays his primary desktop is PowerMac G5 and he dualboots it all the time.

Re:Freedom Matters

[bonch]

People flame RMS zealots because RMS zealots flame anyone who uses something that doesn't fit their narrow definition of "free." These zealots go on and on about a "free world" that they define and others must follow.

That is not freedom. Freedom is letting me use BitKeeper if I want to. Remember that it is one of these RMS zealots who wasn't satisfied with BitKeeper providing an SCM-independent export function (McVoy offered it directly to Linus) and just had to reverse-engineer the binary data itself to make it "free." I'm sorry, but you guys look bad in this. The extremism of fitting everything into your definition is hindering progress--now we get to wait while kernel development seeks an alternative SCM.

If you wanted a free SCM to compete with BitKeeper, why didn't you guys write a new one yourselves? Software freedom apparently means not just access to source code, but access to anything else you want just because you want it to be "free." That's not the OSS movement I signed up on.

If people want to use BitKeeper, let them! It's called freedom of choice.

Re:You git!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with Tridge writing a program that can read Bitkeeper'd files ...

Yep, nothing wrong except his noble effort fucks up entire kernel development process for few months. Otherwise it's perfectly fine. Keep hacking, Tridge ! Way to go.

Re:Definitely disagree with McVoy

[glesga_kiss]

Sure, Larry might not like people cloning his program. Well, tough. A clone is what is needed for interoperability.

This has NOTHING to do with interoperability. There were clients available already for the platform, and it didn't produce closed-format output (a source checkout).

Tridge was license cracking. BK is charged per-client and he was attempting to get around that. Sure, his solution would have been OSS, but that wasn't the drive behind it.

Have none of you worked with licensed software before? I don't know a single vendor that would be happy for someone to make a client that did not respect their licensing. Perhaps BK's business model is to distribute the server and make money from per-seat cost (I don't know). This client would sink their business. They gotta eat.

This almost always happens.

[Futurepower(R)]

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?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably looked at the packets coming over the wire... just like the folks at the Samba/Wine project reverse engineer MS API's.

But that kind of attack is *so* much easier if you know what the packets represent, i.e. if you control at least one of the client or server, preferably both. I'd be surprised if he didn't.

You can freely download parent source code trees, child trees, and the BK changesets that map between them. BK changesets are simple patch files that say who created them, what tree they're based on, time, date, and some checksums. You can figure out what they mean just by staring at them.

But technically legit or not, that doesn't sound ethical to me.

The people who create the repositories and changesets own them. You are essentially arguing that it is unethical to read your own data. I call BS.

Re:why is it wrong to engineer?

[winkydink]

I dunno, that sounds to me a lot like justifying screwing someone's wife by saying something like, "hey she was passed out in my bedroom".

Re:You git!

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to understand why Tridge had to do any development of his own. I remember from the very early days of linus deciding to use bk that Larry McVoy was VERY helpful, in fact, bending over backwards, to give the kernel developers any and all the help they could ask for and implementing new features to fit their needs. And all of this at no real cost to any of the kernel developers. I can't imagine what changed, or why Tridge would need to do any development that Larry was either unable or unwilling to implement in bk. It sounds to me like Larry was indeed amenable with any suggestions the kernel developers had and helped out in any way he could. To continue down another path of development just for the sake of development doesn't make any sense. However if Tridge did want to write another SCM, then Larry was right in his course of action.

On another note, if you really believe that ALL software should be free, you are living in a utopian reality. The world is imperfect. Different economic philosophies and realities exist. Some demand equality for all. Others demand strict adherence to a natural order. Neither is right all the time. And so free software and proprietary software MUST exist in our imperfect world, else somebody starves or somebody misses out on the opportunities of an evolving world. Don't allow yourself to be fooled by fools.

Re:My opinion hasn't changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a useful website in regards to the issues surrounding the BitKeeper product