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Bruce Perens Tells Linus Torvalds To Cool It
Eh-Wire writes "Bruce Perens has weighed in on the controversy surrounding Andrew Trigdell's attempt to 'reverse engineer' the proprietary Bitkeeper code management software of Larry McVoy and the ensuing fallout with Linus Torvalds. Not only does he tell Linus Trovalds to 'Cool it!' he also suggests, 'Larry sees conspiracies that don't exist.' Sounds like Bruce is a bit worked up about this."
They made up a quote, but they also said right afterwards that it was, in fact, not real, so while it's debatable whether that really is good journalistic style, they did not attempt to actually mislead people, and there is no reason to assume that they're doing so now, either.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Strange question. Linus says (in essence) "reverse engineering the over-the-wire protocol employed by a closed-source application is morally wrong". Bruce says "that's not true, and FWIW, you didn't seem to have a problem when the same thing was done for Samba, either".
How could that NOT be pertinent to FOSS? Open source / free software is not just about writing code; unfortunately, maybe, but that's the way things are, so it's better to deal than to ignore.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
"There are times when Linus Torvalds can be a real idiot, and this is one of these times," said Perens.
I'm no kernel developer so I have no clue as to if Linus is "[being] a real idiot". However I do have a goodly bit of management experience and this kind of talk is bad no matter how you slice it.
Saying these kinds of things to the press can only hurt the whole OSS movement as it give all the MS, Sun, et all shills plenty of ammo to use. I can see press release from MS now, "And even Linus' colleagues wonder about his decision making process, going so far as to call them idiotic." Does that statement reflect what was originally intended? Of course not but this is the era of the spin and you can bet that they will use it in whatever way they can.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
If you actually read the article you can see that the sentence Actually he didn't - we just made that quote up. immediately follows the "made up" quotes. It was a joke to make a point by analogy to reverse engineering Microsoft file formats.
In the Bruce Perens article, he makes another analogy -- to the work Trigdell did reverse engineering the SMB protocol. Both articles are pointing out this weird blind spot Linus seems to have in accepting something that is generally supported by the community and completely legal: reverse engineering proprietary protocols is a good thing which frees the open source community from vendor lock in.
If I write an article using the comparison "this is like the Pope saying 'I don't believe in god'" - only Slashdot would get "The pope don't believe in god" out of this :)
How could that NOT be pertinent to FOSS? Open source / free software is not just about writing code; unfortunately, maybe, but that's the way things are, so it's better to deal than to ignore.
It's not pertinent because it won't further the cause. It's a blind alley. Perens thinks he can dethrone the king of Open Source by slinging mud at him -- perhaps justly -- perhaps not.
Linus is right about his moral statements right now, even if at one point or another in the past he was amoral. Perhaps he's realized what I've known for years, that Open Source does not have to be a reverse-engineered byproduct to be of any value. It can be 100% orginal.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I think Perens is really making sense here. (Not that he always doesn, but this time around he hit the nail on the head.)
Why reverse engineering the smb protocol should be considered a good thing, while reverse engineering the protocol bitkeeper uses is beyond me and though Linus has come out strong against the latter he still didn't explain how he can still consider the former to be a good thing.
And above all, I think Linus is behaving very unfair towards Tridgell, who has done nothing illegal, didn't break any contract, but just did what he has done with other things already, which were always considered to be a good thing. Why doing the very same thing considered good in other circumstances now should lead to Torvalds attacking him is again beyond me.
It's pertinent because this small fiasco has the ability to radically destabilise kernel development.
Pretty much everybody except Linus is in agreement that Tridge isn't doing anthing untoward, nothing different from the work he did in writing Samba.
Everybody see that Linus is being hypocritical at best, and perhaps a bit nepotistic as well.
That sort of attitude doesn't go over well in the OS community and if he keeps it up then it's going to be a major destabilising influence on kernel developement specifically - this is how unnecessary forks begin.
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Saying these kinds of things to the press can only hurt the whole OSS movement as it give all the MS
What you are saying is carp. There is no way that rudementary working ethical debate can hurt the OSS movement because it's bigger than any of these players. That's why it's such an advantage over the closed model.
Each of these guys could be pictured in some lewd manner on the Smoking Gun and the whole Open Source movement would still march on!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
There's a difference between reverse-engineering SMB and reverse-engineering Bitkeeper: noone has ever agreed to not reverse-engineer SMB just by running it. This is different from Bitkeeper. Now how does this make a difference here, where Tridgell didn't use the Bitkeeper software? He must have been listening to someone's network traffic, and either he was eavesdropping, or that other person allowed it, and this could be construed as a violation of the Bitkeeper license.
Also, McVoy has claimed that Bitkeeper saw unusual usage patterns or something like that, so maybe Tridgell even tried his software on Bitmover's servers, which to some degree would explain their anger.
Personally, I still believe that what happened is better for the Free Software movement overall. Hopefully, management people get told this story with the right spin, i.e. proprietary software means you have no rights.
My hat's off to Linus for his work and stewardship of the kernel.
That doesn't make this right, however. Linus is unequivocally wrong in creating double standards for the morality of reverse engineering, and I don't think the community is going to forget that.
I'm not vilifying Linus, I'm aying that the guy's human, not the demigod that the slashbot party portrays.
He just cannot be in such a sensitive position and remain "just an engineer".
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Well.... I think so, yes.
The fact is that I think this is a fairly important debate.
Was Linus wrong for using a propietry tool for the development of the kernel and essentially forcing all kernel developers to follow him?
Could this situation been forseen?
Is Linus angry with Tridge because it actually shows up his previous bad decision and the only way for him to save face is to badger Tridge?
Is McVoy behaving like a spoilt kid and taking his ball home because somebody didn't want to play his game?
I'm personally with Tridge and Perens all the way on this one (not that anybody will care). Reverse Engineering is legal. McVoy needs to deal with that.
If we get a schism, then so be it. It's an important line to be divided by in the development of a Open Source / Free OS.
This thinking I find funny. Lets say that Microsoft gave a free product, and then later charged money. There would be hell to raise, including statements like, "See I told you the evil borg had a hidden agenda".
Well, bitkeeper did a bait and switch with the Linux kernel and that is NOT funny! Bitkeeper should have known this and not made the offer in the first place, and Linus should not have accepted the offer!
In this one situation Linus and Bitkeeper screwed up, and made a bad decision that impacts something that many many people rely on!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Honestly, I have no idea why you do ever get so angry, maybe an anger management course would help you find out and cope with the problem?
Anyway, nobody is disputing the immense input of Linus for OSS (to put it mildly), however that doesn't mean that he always has to be right on anything he says, does it?
On the other hand, while I think your characterization of Bruce Perens is unfair, to say the least, even if you were right this would make his arguments wrong automatically, would it?
So please, take a look at what the issue is here, what the involved parties had to say about it, weigh their arguments and then decide who you agree with and who you don't agree with.
Simply basing your opinion on the issue on personal preference surely isn't the most intelligent thing to do and I'm pretty sure it also constitutes a logical fallacy (I think it amounts to an ad hominem, but I'm not really sure).
You say that as if reverse-engineering is something bad, though. I say the opposite is true - it's a good thing, as it furthers interoperability between different products and prevents vendor lock-in (which, incidentally, is just the stunt that Larry seems to be trying to pull now by claiming that the metadata of projects hosted on BK is somehow copyrighted to BitMover). Maybe you'd argue that being "100% original" is better, but again - welcome to the real world, kid. Interoperability *is* a real concern.
To give an example... has anyone ever sent you something as a Word document instead of (say) a PDF? If yes, then (unless you actually paid for a copy of Word) you probably were quite happy that you could open that Word document with OOo, too, especially if you happened to be running something other than Windows. Would you argue that the OOo developers did something wrong by allowing you to do that?
Why would "morally right" be equivalent to "does not mess with the business model of $company who'd obviously prefer if there was no competition and everyone would be forced to pay for their own products"? That doesn't make sense, at all.
And as for Bruce thinking he can "dethrone" anyone, I doubt that's true, either - but why disagreeing with someone and pointing out flaws in their reasoning would be an attempt at "dethroning" (or "slinging mud", for that matter) is beyond me, too.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Okay first things first, everyone should pull their heads in. Linus should give a detailed explanation of how he thinks that reverse engineering is a "Bad Thing", Tridge should break his cone of silence and let the community in on what exactly he was doing, and Larry should get used to the fact that people in the "Open" Source Community are going to want to have a SCM that meets their requirements, both in terms of technical abilities and licensing issues.
I think this is what Bruce was trying to say.
If any of the above mentioned do happen to read this (seriously doubtful I know) this does not imply disrespect for your previous work, just that my seven year old acts like this when he gets pissed off too.
that is an intersting interpretation and an intersting point in itself. however a reverse engineered unencumbered client-replacement is either beneficial to all as a stop gap or diverting effort for the FLOSS to roll their own valid and (r)evolutionary replacement.
-- after all, larry apperently made no money from the free linux clients only loss and his money came from the service he provides in his server software. and maybe more people would've adopted BK and paid for it -- who knows.
tha fact of the matter is ; it is about choice. you are free to hack; you are free to choose what you use and what you do with software.
the BK clients did not let you do that.
these conditions not ebing met give rise to a favourable ecosystem for reverse engineering or completely new Free replacements.
i/ restrictive licence on what your 'intent' is.
ii/ you could only use the official BK client
iii/ the free BK client was crippled.
it was a reverse engineer waiting to happen.
however, i would have imagined that larry feared 'one good turn deserves another', is that these wily open source hackers would cobble together an ENTIRE replacement.
but thats not my main point.
inspired by your statement i think i would go one further; linus is upstaging even RMS himself by allowing himself to be martyred on restrictive closed source software. by showing that he is fallible like us, capable of sin. he shows anger, and revenge -- all the dark side of the force.
we see the error of his non free pragmatism and learn how he atoned for all our non-Free sins.
the man is a genius. thank you.
i shall never hear an mp3 again!
maybe he got sick of esr talking about how Free is abstract and only novel but Open Source pragmatism like Linus's is what counts.
whatver it was we are now approachoing a new higher plateau of maturity. lets sieze on it.
on a legal note: i don't like mcevoy; he comes accross as arrogant and ethically unsound.
is it a gross mischaracterisation by the OSS press?
his products, OTOH, should be put under the microscope for any copyright violations. he sounds so paranoid and fervent taht i am sure he is the sinner "methinks the lady doth protest her [innocence]too much".
or the tainted see guilt and shame everywhere.
thanks,
che
I don't recall hearing about Microsoft donating free licenses to Linux or Samba developers.
When you continously give something of value to a group of people, and they 'condone' a member of their group to do something that jeopardizes your livelyhood (how you pay your rent and provide for your family) then it is understandable that you might want to stop giving to that group--especially when the gift was costing you around $500,000/year. Seriously, think about this scenario without associating it with open source, etc. You bet your ass you'd stop giving to that group!
The ideal solution would've been for the 'troublemaker' to leave the group, so that the gift-giver would have no grounds to stop giving to the entire group. But nooo....that was too simple for them to consider.
Linus did the right thing because all the open source SCM solutions sucked for the past few years. There are some really cool open source solutions like SVK and monotone, but they probably could've used another couple years to become robust enough for a large, complex project like the Linux kernel.
Linux clearly benefitted from Bitkeeper. And Bitkeeper probably benefitted from all the publicity.
People should select SCM software based on technical merits and user productivity rather than religious views on licensing. The idiocy and fanaticism of both corporate monkeys and GPL fanatics never cease to amaze me. Linus avoids these two opposite extreams and did what was best for the Linux kernel--unfortunately, the fanatics surrounding Linus put an end to a good thing.
BTW, I'm a very satisfied Subversion 1.1.4 (Debian server) and TortoiseSVN (Windows client) user so I've nothing against open source SCM products for my needs. I just know that for the Linux kernel, there really isn't anything as appropriate as Bitkeeper.
And I pray that ClearCase doesn't become the SCM for Linux (in case IBM offers a very generous license). Not because it is closed source, but because I didn't like my experiences with it.
Sure, this may be the same thing that happened with Samba but linus never made any claims about the legality. Something which may be technically and legally similar is not necessarily just as good a strategic idea.
In the case of microsoft we had a widely deployed piece of software that the open source community needed to interact with for compatibility reasons. Nothing of the kind is true with BitKeeper. In the case of BitKeeper the open source community could have simply built their own incompatible protocol and not have to worry about being shut out of the market by a BitMover monopoly. On the other hand in the case of microsoft the open source community couldn't simply build a better protocol than Samab but really needed to be compatible.
Secondly, while it's possible I very much doubt that the BitKeeper protocol was being reverse engineered from the expensive pro version. Most likely it being reverse enginered from the free versions (or at least comped versions). Unlike microsoft which needs to keep Samba out there in every windows box BitMover was just allowing this free usage as a donation/PR move and could easily revoke it without comprimising their buisness model.
In short by trying to reverse engineer this protocol it seems that Andrew? gave the impression that the 'price' of donating expensive software to open source projects is to have your market advantages reverse engineered and probably implemented in free projects. So while sure he has just as much right to reverse engineer in samba the first instance is an important blow against a monopoly trying to use propietary protocols to unfairly strangle competition. In this case there was no similar monopolistic pressure (there isn't a strong installed base of BK users who we need to be compatible with) and made it look like there was a steep price for trying to help the open source community.
Regardless of what you think of the deciscion to use BK or the need to reverse engineer this project having someone paid by the SAME organization which is the beneficiary of the free software (or at least appears to be in the media) is surely a bad move politically. It certainly would give me pause if I was a manager at a big corporation thinking of donating some helpful development tools to some open source project.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
With "reality" you're surely meaning "ideological purity".
What I really like about Linus, unlike the likes of RMS, Perens and many slashdotters, is that he puts technical facts way ahead of political non-sense when making decisions.
How was it costing them that much? Such figures are just like the IRAA's 'cost of piracy' figures - pure Bull.
Look at the 'cost'..
- is it costing BK the value of the licenses?
.. No. That's revenue that they could have gained if the kernel developers chose to buy it independantly
- is it the cost of developing bug-fixes?
.. don't make me laugh - they have to do that anyways.
- Is is the cost of implementing features necessary for a huge distributed development team?
.. considering that this is precisely what BK was designed for, a large amount of such improvements would be required or requested by their paying customers anyways.
- Bandwidth and server costs?
.. yes, they are costs that BK would have to bear, but I doubt very much that it comes to anywhere near the half a mil a year quoted.
Let's look at what BK gained from the deal- They got massive and public prof that the system did what it was supposed to and worked well at this scale - how many other projects (OS or proprietary) as large would use it and allow BK to say they were using it?
- Massive, massive, huge unspeakable amounts of good publicity - it went from a fairly niche product to something that every linux hacker has discussed overnight!
- I would imagine a large number of big customers would have moved to BK purely for those two points alone.
That makes no sense at all.Tridge should leave what group, exactly?
The group of BK users - that he wasn't a part of anyway? - or the OSS group? "sorry mate, that guy over there doesn't like the look of you, so you will have to give up your hobby. Stop coding now and stop giving stuff away"
You do realise thatthe entire foundation, the whole point, the differentiator of open source software is licensing. The license issue is a hugely important issue, otherwise Linux would not have made it much further past Linus' initial realease. Those people with the skill enough and cared enough to want software with user-friendly licenses picked it up and helped along to bring things where they are - if you don't get the licensing point, you simply do not get open source software.
The Register has been completely biased about the matter so I wouldn't take their word on anything. Linus is pissed off at Tridge because he messed up the deal with McVoy and wasn't even trying to produce anything functional to replace BK. "He just wanted to see what the protocols and data was, without actually producing any replacement for the (inevitable) problems he caused and knew about."
Everybody seems to forget that McVoy contributed more than $500 000 worth of software to the osdl. Without the contribution, Tridge would have never been able to even try to reverse engineer the program.
Linus lost the use of the best SCM there is. Why shouldn't he be pissed?
Proprietary isn't (always) evil!
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Linus's description of kernel development as "corraling cats" still holds true. And you don't corral cats by putting a dog smack in the middle of them.
This was a bomb waiting to go off. Linus may be pissed, but reality does that to people when they don't adhere to it's laws.
Tridge didn't do anything wrong. In fact he excel's at doing things right. See the newforge interview to get an idea.
I rarely agree with Bruce's conclusions, but this is one of the times he makes total realistic sense. Plopping the smartest, most dedicated GPL developers on a proprietary system without their consent is tantamount to treason in government. Like fingernails on a chalk board, you could hear the kernel developers principles twisting as Linus declared the use of BitKeeper law.
Linus made a bad choice. Now he gets to pay for it. Cause and effect. If BitKeeper was under an open cource license, then it wouldn't be subject to the whim's of one man's bowel movement on a certain day. But it is, and Linus should have had the foresight to see that.
He isn't just an engineer when he is steering the ship. He is the captain. He has the responsibility to look ahead of the curve, and to not get romanced by the easy way out when he's in charge. But he didn't. He fucked up. Now the role of a leader is to admit the mistake and ask for alternatives. Leave Tridge out of this. He did his job. I hope Linus does his.
if you want an example of a a community that cant make desicions because there's more red tape than in the ministry of beaurocracy then look at debian.
I think Torvalds being in control (presuming he's good - i dont actually know much about him) is a good thing because if a decision needs to be made, he can do it rather than waiting ages for a community to piss about for ages. (if the debian project ran the kernel, we'd still be on 1.x)
a) Someone has made a solution that is better than anything you have, and you are trying to find out what makes it tick so you can cheat and steal it.
b) Someone has made a solution that is pretty good, but which you have something just as good as, and you seek only interoperability*
It strikes me from what I've read that this whole BitKeeper fiasco is an example of the former i.e. that the open-source community do not have anything as capable as BitKeeper is, and this kind of reverse-engineering is, as Larry puts it, "riding my coat-tails", and is something I don't really like to see happen, nor would I sleep easily at night if I did. Samba, on the other hand (see extensive footnote below!) is different - I gather that very capable networking systems have already been created (although I could well be wrong about this - I know very little about networking) and so the open-source community has already proven that it has the brainpower required to produce something "as good as" Samba, and so is not cheating. If this is true, then I would not lose a wink of sleep from reverse-engineering Samba.
Another example I guess would be in video codecs - I see nothing wrong with reverse-engineering WMV so that it could be played in mplayer, as the open-source community already has xvid, which is at least almost as good as WMV (perhaps even better; I do not know).
* There is no conflict between "being as good as" and "not being interoperable with" i.g. "not being able to do the same thing as, in the same way". As an example, say I created a networking protocol that enabled one to share files, printers etc easily and transparently - i.e. does everything that Samba can do. However, I know nothing about the way that Samba works, so although on a network of computers running only clients and servers for my protocol, everything works just as well as it would in an all-Samba environment, put any of my servers and clients in a Samba environment and they will not work - my protocol, from the point of view of observed function, is just as good and capable as Samba, it's just they speak different languages.
But does Microsoft
1)has a license stating that windows users can't develop other competing products ?
2)refuse to license windows to say Novel or IBM who develops competing products ?
The answer is No !
Bitkeeper won't even sell you a license if you work on a competing product.If that is not being paranoid and unreasonable i don't know what is.
TechSutra
Hence, making the poster boy of Open Source appear to be a strong supporter of intellectual property rights.
Linus is a far more practical proponent than most give him credit for.
- ss1720
...in a post on another site. But his reasoning clearly held an obvious double-standard that I simply can't swallow. My only explanation for Linus' inability to see what's right in front of his face is that he's personally invested in the issue due to his friendship with the maker of BitKeeper. Anything else just doesn't explain how the normally rational and reasonable Torvalds can do a one-eighty on this particular issue and, quite frankly, be an complete dick about in the process (his post, if you haven't read it, was more like a typical slashdot flamefest response than what you'd expect from Linus).
This is one instance where Linus isn't thinking clearly. I'll cut him some slack since in the past he's been more clear-headed than all of Slashdot put together, but even so it means I'll be reviewing what he says and does more carefully in the future - at least until I'm convinced he's gotten over this momentary bout of insanity.
One thing I do agree with, and always will: 'open source' and 'free software' are not one and the same, nor is there any moral issue involved in using open/free or proprietary software. Both models are perfectly valid and the people who turn the whole mess into a good/evil holy war are fucking idiots of the first order. On that he is, and always has been, right on target.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
. . . just how many BitMover shares does Linus own?
Considerable, if what we're talking about is "mind shares."
Linus has a strong personal stake in useing Bit Keeper and a personal relationship built up by working with Larry over the past few years. Despite being a Finn he is experiencing something called "emotion."
Emotion can tend to make one say and do dumb shit that one wouldn't otherwise do or say, like that dumb shit you do and say when trying to talk to a pretty girl, or, if you're a geek, about a particularly pretty piece of software that you've been living with for years.
She moved out. He's going to miss her. I'll cut him a bit of slack during his grieving period. He'll get over it. Killer apps are like busses, someone tries to introduce a new propriatary model every year.
KFG
Wow, for once the Slashdot groupthink isn't pro-Linus. But I am. I'll explain why. First, you need to read the original thread to get a feel for what Linus is saying. At least read the first 15 posts there.
After you've read it, you'll come away with a few realizations:
Just think: if you were a bottleneck, if data and people were coming at you at a very fast pace all the time, and if there was tremendous pressure on you to build a platform that would rival Microsoft, one coping mechanism is to find tools that increase productivity. A lot. (Other good coping mechanisms include heavy drinking and vanishing without a trace.)
Now Linus, who has no ready alternative is staring down a barrel of loaded source code, knowing it's going to fire off in his face real soon now. And someone else has yanked his defense right out from under him. He has a real problem now. He's pissed. I can put myself in his shoes, I can understand his frustration. Basically, it's this: "Well great. WTF do I do now? Oh shit, stuff is backing up already. Thanks! That's fucking great!"
Is Torvalds wrong to blame Trigdell for reverse engineering? Yes. Is Torvalds wrong to feel horribly, disastrously inconvenienced by this? No, he has every right. Forget the technical arguments for a day or a week. This is a human issue right now. People were inconsiderate of each other, and now they're walking around with bloddy noses. Give them time to assess the situation. If Torvalds doesn't soften his position in a short while, fork, screw him, whatever. But give him some time for the fight or flight instinct to be peter out before you all write him off.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
There was only confusion because slashdot ran the story without the disclaimer and nobody RTFA'd before they freaked out.
Hmmm. I always side with the person having the strongest logical argument. Doing anything less is using emotions and predjudices to make judgements instead of one's noggin.
It's not pertinent because it won't further the cause. It's a blind alley. Perens thinks he can dethrone the king of Open Source by slinging mud at him -- perhaps justly -- perhaps not.
Linus isn't "the king of Open Source": he doesn't have any authority. If he starts screwing up too much technically or legally, he'll become irrelevant. And the only two major parts of Linux he is responsible for are the kernel and the name.
Linus is right about his moral statements right now,
No, he is not, at least not in my opinion, and apparently not in the opinion of many other people.
I've known for years, that Open Source does not have to be a reverse-engineered byproduct to be of any value. It can be 100% orginal.
No, it can't be. Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and all those other big companies are almost completely unoriginal. Reimplementation and reverse engineering is necessary, not only because it is silly to reinvent the wheel, but also because users expect and want familiarity and interoperability.
There have been plenty of 100% original systems, systems that were far superior to any of the currently popular systems, systems compared to which Linux is garbage, but they didn't succeed: the market doesn't want originality.
really brilliant people are just as capable of really stupid behavior as anyone. If there's any difference, it's that it's on a more grandiose scale.
If you point out that they're making asses of themselves they'll argue you into half agreeing with them. They'll have rationalized their behavior to a fare-thee-well. Even if you identify the fatal flaw in their theory, they'll ignore you -- they're brilliant after all and they're used to being right when everyone around them is telling them they're wrong.
Don't get me wrong -- I love working with super-smart, creative people. But when they get that glint of mania in their eyes, you just have to back off and let experience teach them a lesson. Their being wrong in this instance doesn't invalidat their briliance, it just makes them human.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Someone should develop some kind of output/interoperability standard and rally support in the closed source sector.
What dream world do you live in? There is no standard because companies do not want a standard. Technically, it is not really the lack of "standard" being the problem. It is the fact that companies go out of their way to prevent interoperability by not releasing specs so others could use the format. It is not just an oversight, it is by design.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
BSD has a long history of being a system full system, unlike Linux (kernel) or GNU (a set of tools with the aim of one day becoming a full clone of the base UNIX System). The BSD kernels are developed and maintained by the same people as the base userlands of the respective BSD systems, so there's never been a tendency to view the two as separate things (like Linux and GNU).
Linus is worked up about something and it may be something we've not heard yet, especially with Andrew's silence. Do we know there wasn't a conversation that this work by Andrew would screw over Linus's use of a tool that makes work very efficient for him? And if Andrew persisted, especially if there were other ways to accomplish the same thing, I'd be upset too.
I'm fortunate enough to have a boss that allows me to use the best tool for the job. I enjoy being allowed to choose the best tool, for me to get the task at hand done. Is sad that Linus isn't allowed the same without taking a beating especially when the end product he is part of is so useful to all of us. So much for choice and freedom. Oh there is, it's just not the typical Linux/Open Source zealot view of choice and freedom and if that view isn't accepted then you are evil.
I'll stand in the minority and say that I feel sad for Linus losing a tool that was so helpful in creating a tool I find so useful. Yeah, he had some outlandish comments but how many of us are perfectly logical when we lash out?
I for one cannot wait to hear the whole story before judging.
As every human being he can probably be an idiot at times (as Bruce so eloquently pointed out), but I'd apply the label "Evil" more to the likes of Monsanto , Diebold or Halliburton and their executives.
They are the ones that try to monopolize our food supply, they are willing pawns to disolve democracy, or they just lie and steal from the general public.
This is evil. Being an idiot on occasion is not.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Buttkeeper was basically designed for Linus - of course he likes it. It's a custom solution designed for the way he prefers to work. No one else really cares what revision control system they have to use. I've used at least a half a dozen over the years as I am sure most Slashdot users have as well - they are all basically the same. So Linus, stop your whining and grow up. Putting GPL meta-data in a proprietary format in the first place was stupid and was doomed to fail. Worse yet - he made this decision unilaterally without consulting all the GPL Linux code contributers. I'm surprised the unholy Buttkeeper/Linux alliance lasted as long as it did. I'm glad Tridge forced the free software community to wake up and eat its own dogfood. Tridge: 1, Linus: 0.
I find nothing "strange" about Linus' position.
That's fine, but its just your opinion. Linus' position has been described as 'bizarre' by more than one commentator, and plenty of people like Perens disagree with it.
In fact, if you read his reply in that thread...
Obviously I did read his reply, which is why I posted it incase anyone else wanted to read. As it turns out there seems to be some question as to whether it was really Linus posting, but lets say it is... the paragraphs you mention don't address the actual issue here. So Linus doesn't care whether software is closed or open source, he just cares whether it's good software, that's fine, but its not the issue. The issue is whether its Tridgell's fault that OSDL is no longer allowed to use BK. Linus thinks it is, Perens thinks it isn't and from what I've read I'm with Perens.
Tridge: 1, Linus: 0
Well that wouldn't be so bad, but unfortunately I think it's more like:
Tridge: 1, McVoy: -2, Linus: -10.
That's what makes this episode so really sad.
I just hope that some really close friend of Linus's (and no, I don't mean McVoy) sits down with him over a couple of bottles of scotch and explains the said truths to him. His mental shutters have closed down all around him atm, he just can't see what's obvious to the rest of the world.
I read all that crap, and Linus is still wrong.
Trigdell, who had no BitKeeper license, queried McVoy's server. McVoy revoked the licenses of people, including Linus, who had nothing to do with Trigdell's queries. It makes no sense for Linus to blame Trigdell. If I send McVoy an email he doesn't like, will he punch Torvalds in the nose? Will that be my fault, instead of McVoy's?
It's nice to see Linus admitting that licensing problems can make software as useless as technical flaws. In fact, he now seems to think that license barriers are a form of incompatibility, and it's irresponsible to risk having such problems. Good for him. Maybe someday he'll connect those dots and realize who really fucked up.
-- . . ramblin' . . .
It's pragmatic to to reverse engineer proprietary to gain access you need. Linus is not pragmatic here.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Yes, but the problem, as several people have pointed out now, was that the closed nature of the tool may have mode it not "the best tool available". Was it the best in terms of functionality and performance? Apparently. But those aren't the only things you need to evaluate when buying or using a product. You also need to take into account things like cost, risk, reliability, and (particularly in the OSS world) licensing. I'm not an OSS fanatic by any means, but even I could see that Linus' adoption of BK was a bad move.
Regarding Tridge's efforts, I don't see that it makes one bit of difference whether BK was paid for or a gift. In either case "violating the conditions" of using the product would be bad. But Tridge was not a BK user. He was not violating the conditions of using the product. That's what got McVoy pissed: he couldn't stop Tridge by revoking Tridge's license, because Tridge never had one in the first place. So instead McVoy started threatening others in the vicinity.
Linus has every reason to be angry. Someone took away a very useful tool from him. I'd be pissed.
Yes. And that someone was Larry McVoy. Not Tridge.
And then you sent McVoy another email anyway. Yes, it's within your rights, and clearly, McVoy is a total fucking jackass. But Linus can still be mad at you without being anti-email, and without having double standards. Given that you thought sending that email was important and worthwhile, you're probably not doing anything wrong either. Two good people can disagree, as is clearly the case with Linus and Tridge.
I just hope that Tridge's legal concerns are speculative. That could be fucking twisted.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The best research ever done on prolonged exposure to cold and methods of healing and recovery was conducted by Josef Mengele.
Sometimes ethics matters more than productivity.
I hate to indulge in more remote amateur Torvalds psychoanalysis, but this strikes me as the real puzzle, where did he get his absolute hatred of other version control systems? Even the admittedly clunky CVS has been sucessfully used to manage some huge software projects (gcc in the open source world; and I've seen it in use on many large proprietary projects, like Irix and Netscape).
My theory: he likes simple tools when he can get away with using them (vi vs emacs, shell vs perl) and started out with an aversion to source control in general. Then he had to keep arguing with people pushing for CVS, and he got backed into the position of being a version control snob, who refused to touch anything but the Very Best. Then his friend came along and showed him a nice shiney toy.
You're coming down on the side of "immediate expediency" in this debate, but a lot of us are taking a longer term view. You don't go beserk winning a battle if it risks losing the war.We seem to go through this all the time. There are people who think that "practical", "technical" concerns should trump everything, and there are other people who talk about "morality" and "ethics" and so on; but what the issue always seems to be to me is "short-term" vs "long-term" thinking. Yeah, you need to survive in the short-term, but you also need to be going some place worth being in the long-term. Maybe there's a problem with always phrasing things as "technical" vs. "moral"... or maybe there's a problem with people who don't understand that "morality" is usually a synonym for worrying about the long term.
I agree with Bruce Perens for the most part, but I think many people are not addressing Linus' argument directly (even though I do not believe it is a valid one!)
Linus does not believe that Trigdell did anything wrong by reverse engineering bitkeeper. He believes that what he did wrong was knowingly break up the "agreement" that Linus and McVoy had only to see the protocol. Trigdell did not intend on making a compatible client (or any software for that matter).
Perens does touch on this a little bit by saying Linus should not worry about what Trigdell does in his spare time (legally). I agree. If Linus and McVoy's agreement was that weak, it should never have been relied on for something important. For many people, developing free software is a hobby. Samba started as a hobby. If Trigdell wanted to examine BK's protocols as a hobby, that's his right.
Perhaps Linus is not being a dunce in this situation. Perhaps he sees that his friend Larry is enraged and irrational. Perhaps Linus is willing to put the welfare of the kernel above his own public image.
If all of the above is true (and that is a big if), then it could be that Linus is blaming Tridge and praising Larry in order to ensure that there is a smooth transition from Bitkeeper. If Linus came out rooting for Tridge isn't it likely that Larry would yank Bitkeeper immediately and not allow a smooth transition to some other solution?
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
And without Linux and OSDL, no one would care who BitMover or BitKeeper is. Face it. Linus used Larry to develop and enhance Linux just as much as Larry used Linux and the OSS community to enhance BitKeeper. For there to be any animosity over this is childish. Sanction OSDL and Tridgell, give Linus his personal BitKeeper license, and stop being a daft prick. I find the fact that McVoy won't give Linus a license because he still works at OSDL to be most deplorable. I haven't seen such antics since the kindergarten sandbox...
You don't need to know anything about automobile engines to understand why buying a car with a hood that can only be opened by the dealer is not a good idea.
What the heck are you talking about? There's nothing about any open source or free software license that makes you wait until anyone agrees before you release code.
Smart developers and enterpreneurs are learning to make money off free software. Hint - people want services and systems.
Nonsense. Copyright and patents that make knowledge private are state interventions in the marketplace; free software is closer to true free market conditions than proprietary software.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I'd be disappointed too if a person who had cooperated and facilitated my efforts over a many year period was being taken advantage of by my allies.
Lets posit that BitKeeper contributed to the success of the Linux movement/project by providing a superior free capability that wasn't there before and did it at some expense charging nothing (but gaining some good karma/publicity).
Now you can reverse engineer legally. But should you?
Or should you allow that deviation from OSS purity because that person/company tried to be helpful to your efforts?
Would you be upset that something so bound up in your way of doing your work (which many consider vital to the OSS) is attacked in such a way as to cause you to have to change the way you do your work? At a cost of disruption and productivity...how many fixes aren't going to get reviewed as thoroughly because Linus has to switch the way he works (and even go off and develop an application like SCM)? Kernel guys are precious. Linus is especially vital and any distraction from his efforts to produce the best kernel possible is bad.
This is ridiculous and unproductive discussion. How about instead of pointing fingers (read: shut the f*** up, Bruce, you're no help here), we start a more open discussion of how to solve the SCM crisis Linus/Linux find themselves in?
Open Source SCM solutions are crap compared to BK at solving the distributed source code problem (as stated by Linus). Personally, I think they are crap at many other aspects of SCM as well (access control, ease of use, ease of administration, etc.). We've had a surge of new Open Source SCM tools crop up recently, but either they went unsupported by all but the initial developer, burnt out at 0.3.1, or failed to solve any really useful or interesting problems (Subversion, for example), or made design decisions that make installation/maintenance a nightmare (Subversion again).
Perhaps a UI wrapper around Arch (which has the ugliest command line interface known to man) would be a start. Or perhaps some additional tools to help with Darcs. Or perhaps Linus is right and we need a completely new tool that _actually_ solves the problem (if these don't already).
The point is, let's discuss moving forward and stop wasting our breath on stupid accusations. We're acting like children, for Christ's sake.
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
Ok, lots of arguments about closed/open, but the bottom line is: bitkeeper was made available free of charge. There were of course conditions involved in this deal, but they were quite non-restrictive. No one was forbidden of working in free solutions. Linus Itself was clear about his willingness in embracing open tools once they meet the needs. Nevertheless, it's a deal.
It's a fact that only a few individuals who develop the kernel are bound to OSDL, but OSDL is the entity to whom Bitkeeper was handed and thus is expected to go along with the deal.
Tridgell is bound to OSDL, just like Linus. He was expected to follow his employer's commitments.
People can argue endlessly about if Bitmover overreacted, if Linus' initial decision was wise, it open source is the one and only way, if reverse engineering is good or bad, if Linus is a moron , etc. I have no strong opinions about that.
But the bottom line is: Tridgell did something unnecessary just because he wanted to.
If you do not like the game, get out of if or change it. Linus is pissed because he lost a precious tool because of actions wich did not had any useful goal. This is stupid and I give him full reason in this respect.
Like I said "The only thing people are "doing without" is the "paying for" part " Weither the content providers would have gotten paid or not, is incidental to the fact that people are benefiting from the having.
which is of course true. however, the question wasn't "are they having this for free?" but "would they still have it if the only way they could get it would be to pay $15" for which the answer is no. It doesn't matter how much the "cover price" is, if you aren't going to pay it - it only matters if that is your only choice, in which case you have to decide - is this purchase worth the price?
I would be astonished if the OSDL would have been willing to cough up $500,000 for software Linus wasn't even sure he wanted to use, and which prevented him from managing the tree in the way he used to (Linus formerly pulled just those patches he wanted from any given submission and left the rest alone; BK forces him to accept or reject a submitted patch as a whole - which he freely admits took him time to get used to, and meant he had to give up some control over his source tree)
-=DaveHowe=-
Personally I think one of the central issue of this conflict is Linus' claim that Tridge "just wanted to see what the protocols and data was, without actually producing any replacement for the (inevitable) problems he caused and knew about".
I wonder how Linus can know that. How can he make this claim without providing any supporting evidance for what he believe Tridge's intention was. To me it doesn't seem to be anything more than a wild and totally biased speculation.
Consindering Samba took years to become somewhat usable, it's fairly evident "over the wire" reverse engineering takes time, and to expect Tridge to come with a "replacement" right away is in fact pretty sureal.
Advocating ideology before technical merit is a slippery slope that is best avoided. What if the next President was deeply religious and decided to outlaw working on sundays? Should the entire country lose a whole day of productivity and fall behind the rest of the world just because of the President's beliefs?
It's OK to have deeply held beliefs, but it's not OK to try to force others to believe in them too. Linus puts pragmatism above ideology, and it's his right to do so. If people don't like it, then they don't have to work with him, after all, Linux is Open Source, programmers don't need permission from Linus to work on the kernel. But calling him names and accusing him of a lack of moral values just goes to show how immature people are, even supposed leaders like Bruce Perens end up looking badly.
Allow me to repeat: AFAICT Tridge was not bound by any license. What McVoy has done is void the licenses of legitimate BK users due to the actions of someone who wasn't even a BK user. That is, as you say, McVoy's right. But it also his choice. Tridge was not doing anything illegal, nor was he (AFAICT) violating the BK license. But apparently whatever Tridge was up to annoyed McVoy enough that McVoy decided to try emotional blackmail: "I can't legally stop you from doing what you're doing, but if you keep doing it I'll be nasty to your friends and colleagues." Should Tridge have stopped? I dunno - depends on your stance on blackmail I suppose. But the fact remains that it was McVoy that chose to use the threat of BK withdrawal to stop something he disagreed with.
Please don't refer to RMS as a fanatic. Sure, he has some ideas that are difficult for many to accept, but they are well thought out, valid arguments. Take them or leave them.
When people get overexcited and start hurling expletives and vague analogies, it's generally a sign that they recognise they're probably not going to win the argument on the basis of reason.
The simple fact is BitKeeper is better than the OSS alternatives, and was provided at no cost. From a pragmatic perspective, there was absolutely no reason not to use it: it was a win-win for Linux and BitMover. At the same time, if and when an OSS alternative were to reach and then exceed the capabilities of BitKeeper (and those who believe OSS is a superior development model assume this would have happened eventually), it would have been pragmatic to change to it.
Forcing a switch whilst OSS alternatives are still technically inferior, as Tridgell did, doesn't do any good at all for Linux.
As for GCC, if there were a significantly better C/C++ compiler available at no cost to Linux developers, it would make perfect sense to use it. There isn't, so this is simply a straw man you're setting up so you can knock it over. Again, this is what people do when they realise their argument isn't supported by reason.
More horseshit. Commercial users were paying for their use of a proprietary product.
Do you know what a subsidy is? Commercial users of BitKeeper were providing income to BitMover, some of which was used to develop and support the free version of BitKeeper. This latter activity is what in English is called a subsidy. You can call it horseshit all you want, but that won't change reality.
If Larry wanted to support OSS, he would continue to do so. In reality, when his product was threatened with obsolescence by someone reverse-engineering his protocol, he pulled the plug. Which is EXACTLY why OSS should NOT rely on proprietary products or any side-line "support" from them.
He pulled the plug because Linux developers (not Tridgell, but the licensed BitKeeper users cooperating with him) were violating the licence they had agreed to. There was no need at all for this to happen, it was just destructive behaviour of ideologues. Mind you, this tiny harm is completely insignificant in comparison to all the good that Tridgell has done for open source, and I don't mean to imply otherwise.
It has NOTHING to do with "ideology" (except for those ideologues who make it so) - it has to do with strict pragmatism and protecting yourself from the actions of others. OSS is about being independent of proprietary company actions. Linus was wrong to violate this concept.
It is for some people, and not for others. Some people support OSS because they believe it is a better development model, and will ultimately produce better and cheaper software than proprietary development models. To such people (the pragmatic wing of the OSS movement), it's all about getting the best software, and nothing whatsoever to do with avoiding proprietary software. Avoiding proprietary software is a notion which reflects the views of the ideological wing of the OSS movement, who prefer inferior open source software to superior proprietary software (even if the latter is much better, is cost-free, etc.).
Your argument that it has something to do with 'protecting' Linux developers from BitMover ignores the fact that BitKeeper has improved the Linux development process more significantly than an open source alternative could have done, and more importantly, that there is nothing stopping Linux migrating to another revision control system (as we're seeing now). The claim that Linux needed 'protection' from BitMover is just another straw man.
What's more, HURD isn't finished and there's no problem with the concept of forking Linux anyway. If RMS wants a kernel now, that works, and for some reason dislikes something about the way Linux is developed, all he has to do is copy the entire thing to Savannah.org and appoint someone to maintain it. It is, after all, licensed under the GPL.
Torvalds has done some dumbass things of late, and criticising Andrew for wanting to create a Free Software client that interoperates with the SCM Torvalds has adopted is one of them. It's also downright unethical, given he knows McVoy is threating lawsuits, and Andrew is limited to the extent to which he can respond to Torvalds, and given the extent to which Torvalds is himself lying about what's happened.
Conspiracy? Nope. Just smart people doing dumb and nasty things.
Oh, and "Ovum's Barnett": If we agreed with you, we wouldn't have GNU based operating systems such as RedHat and Debian. Linus's little kernel would be an asterisk. Without people wanting certain basic freedoms when they receive software, we'd be using Windows and Unix. Why wouldn't we? I find it remarkable people actually pay you money to come up with this drivel.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.