Torvalds Unveils New Linux Control System

BlakeCaldwell writes "CNet reports: 'Linux founder and leader Linus Torvalds has launched a new tool, called Git, to manage his software project, after a dispute led him to drop the previous system.' He will start using Git instead of BitKeeper to control the flow of updates and track changes in the kernel." We've covered this previously. Relatedly, ChocLinux writes "Jeremy Allison, who wrote Samba with Andrew 'Tridge' Tridgell, is sticking up for his friend in the row over BitKeeper. "

Comments

Git?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Isn't that a bit of a disparaging name in English as it is spoken in the Olde Country?

As in "You daft git!"

Obligatory

[mcrbids]

Now, expect a thundering herd of comments like:

Great! Now, Linus can be helping to build OSS counterparts to commercial software that can be truly trusted, rather than rely on the whims of a commercial vendor.

and

This is just another example of where OSS software is MORE RELIABLE than their commercial counterparts.

The thing is, they'd be right.

The only thing is to remember: The terms of Linus' use of BK was noncommercial which is poison to a commercial entity. The combination of closed-source + no charge == noncommercial. If it was OSS, with a GPL-like license, at least the OSS community could give something back to BK that wasn't money, but it wasn't, and BK had no opportunity to profit in ANY WAY from this move.

I'm not surprised this didn't work out well.

Eh?

[Aldric]

Although Torvalds is revered by many within the open source community as the founder of Linux, he also has detractors among the free software movement. There is even a conspiracy theory on news site Slashdot that the anti-Torvalds rhetoric may have the underlying aim of persuading the open source community to switch to Hurd -- an alternative to the Linux kernel that is being developed by the Free Software Foundation.

Did I miss something? I saw some comments to that effect in the stories, mostly as a joke except for the usual random nutcases that see conspiracies in everything that happens. Terrible journalism from zdnet here.

The rest of the article wasn't any better, being the most heavily biased piece of crap I've read since the last TCO study by Microsoft. Linus and Tridge both have valid points but the article paints Tridge as a villain breaking BitKeeper copyright (which he didn't) and terms of service (which he didn't agree to).

Erm, name change...

[Xarius]

There is a package manager, make-based one at that, out there called git. Site in german, package in English.

It's a good tool, which basically monitors source-built programs and creates an uninstallation script for them.

Won't this mean Linus' new tool will have to have a name change?

Based on the screenshot of the visualization...

[Svartalf]

I'd say that they are. In fact, several SCM tools are looking at what Linus has been doing with git and are giving the stuff due consideration (ARCH is going to pull all the "good" ideas coming from this- I think several other SCM projects are going to do the same...).

Yeah, I think Larry just stepped in a hornet's nest here- my only complaint about the whole thing is Linus' going on and on about bad ideas, etc. The only bad idea that was going on was his use of BitKeeper in the first place.

Re:Based on Monotone it seems

[Bombcar]

Heh. A quote:

And rsync takes care of the network replication.

So git, which had to be written because of something Tridge did, uses one of Tridge's programs. Whee!