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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. "
how come this wasnt even an option in the current poll here. let the replies like "welcome to /. flow"
fifteen jugglers, five believers
As in "You daft git!"
What an awful zdnet article, "But now it seems that some open source developers haven't kept up their end of the bargain. " Tridge wasn't bound the by the license. "Tridgell's decision to reverse-engineering Bitkeeper. The resulting clone would violate BitMover's intellectual property -- something McVoy wasn't going to sit back and watch happen." Again, no, it wouldn't. My understanding is that reverse engineering for interoperability is legally fine. Think of Samba..
I thought that's what Southerners say to their dawgs?
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git 'er done!
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
maybe the kernel programmers should take 2 weeks and fix the basic flaws of git, like the business of not storing deltas to files
Reverse engineering BitKeeper for fun and profit
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I guess this is the logical place to note the newest Groklaw story, Tridge Speaks where Tridge tells his side of the story, or at least a brief overview from his perspective.
The monotone hackers have the same design as this new git tool. They already adapted their visualisation tools to make pretty screenshots of the kernel patches development history: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/monotone-devel/2 005-04/msg00183.html
chris
If you follow the Linux Kernel mailing list at all, it has been fairly apparent for the past week at least that Linus would be using "git" to manage the kernel. He has been putting a lot of time into it. So, my guess is, yes - the editors had "inside" knowledge
http://lists.seyza.com/pipermail/gnu-arch-dev/2005 -April/001097.html
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.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Linguistic genius!
A blog I run for the wealth
GIT is under active development and the fact that exist doesn't mean it will be the "definitive" tool, althought it will probably do. I think it can be considered a "0.1 version". There has not been "official release" of git, they're just testing it
From Groklaw
Groklaw's stevem heard Tridge's speech today at the LCA 2005 conference, Australia's national Linux conference, and he has a report for us:
This was taken from my memory of Dr. Andrew Tridgell's keynote at this years LCA2005 Conference.
Essentially Tridge did *NOT* do anything that anyone could ever possibly ever take as breaking a BitKeeper licence, as far as I can see. How was it done? He, like any good sysadmin would, first off telnetted to the BitKeeper port on a BitKeeper server.
$ telnet thunk.org 5000
WhooHoo! Connection! So, next obvious step that we *all* do is type in the obvious:
help
Back came a list of commands to manipulate the BitKeeper server and ask things of it. Well, according to Tridge, a bit of reading of the LKML (Linux Kernel Email List) shows that the "clone" command is the way to checkout someones source code repository.
So Tridge's massive "reverse engineering" project came down to a single line of shell script:
$ echo clone | nc thunk.org 5000 > e2fsprogs.dat
Hey presto, Tridge has just checked out from a BitKeeper repository into the file e2fsprogs.dat.
The audience was laughing and cheering Tridge on as he explained just what a Mountain had been made of this Molehill. And I mean made by both sides of the issue -- those who he said he was some Uber Reverse Engineering Wizard and those who claimed that he MUST have used a BK client.
Funny report, isn't it? Anyway, now you know Tridge's side of the story.
There's two major flaws in the ZDNet article, really - outside of the fact that they unfortunately buy into McVoy's lies and FUD, they get two things outright wrong.
1) BitKeeper's "free" license does not say that you can't use BK to work on a competing product - it says that you cannot work on a competing product AT ALL, no matter whether you use BK for it or not.
2) It's not true that Tridge hasn't "kept up their end of the bargain". He never used BK at all, so why would he be bound by BK's license? McVoy may not like what Tridge did, but let's face it, reverse engineering for compatibility is perfectly acceptable - even the much-maligned DMCA explicitely allows it, because lawmakers realized that it's important.
So, McVoy can rant and rave all he wants - the fact remains that HE is the one who did not keep up his end of the "bargain". The bargain was that kernel developers get to use BK for free, and BitMover gets free advertising - now that the company has established itself, it doesn't need that sort of advertising anymore, so they're just looking for a convenient excuse to pull the plug on the "free" BK.
The fact that McVoy doesn't admit that is probably to be expected, but still, it doesn't change the fact that he spreads just as much FUD and lies as Darl McBride, Laura DiDio, Maureen O'Gara, Steve Balmer and so on.
I, for one, sure hope he gets what he deserves.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
from one of TFAs:
But that's not what Tridge did... He didn't create something new and impressive. He just tore down something new (and impressive) because he could, and rather than helping others, he screwed people over. And you expect me to respect that kind of behaviour?" wrote Torvalds
Come on!, so what if someone makes a program that implements a cool funcionality from another?? I see it in every game that has been developed in the last 20 years!, thats why whe have genres!, also, that would mean that OpenOffice is bad! or what about the same Linux (Unix clone??) or all the BSD's.
I think Linus went to far with that, so also to do SAMBA was a "non respectable behaviour" to him? wtf without SAMBA I bet they would be a really, REALLY big amount of people (and companies) not using Linux these days.
If he does not want to use it, then do not do it, but do not flame the author for doing it, and tell that is not a respectable behaviour! it seems that the most notable figure of Open Source has acquired a Not-So-Open State of Mind.
my 2C
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
If it allowed him to work efficently (and it did) for quite some time
Very simply that time has passed, and NO-ONE other than Linus himself knows what works best for HIM and his direct team
The flaming is useless hes "The Man" and what he wants for us in Linux land is pretty much Law, besides, how many of YOU psting all these nasty comments about his original BitKeeper descision actually were granted access to it directly, NONE.
Linus is a pragmatist not a rabid OS advocate but willing to use closed source tools if its a winning situation for him.
"Jeremy Allison, who wrote Samba with Andrew 'Tridge' Tridgell, is sticking up for his friend in the row over BitKeeper."
Yeah, well, so is nearly all the world, except for Linus and Larry McVoy. I'm sorry, Linus' actions are just plain hypocritical here. I can understand how he was pissed at losing a useful tool. I can't understand how he can promote McVoy at the expense of our freedoms, especially to reverse Engineer.
Mod me down, but Linus has too big of a head on his shoulders. He is NOT indespensible, thanks to the GPL. What does go around, comes around. And this action won't be forgotten. With all due respect to him, I think it's one of his biggest blunders in the history of Linux.
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).
And this is his way of saying fork you.
Think for yourself.
Yep, GPL (v2)...
Its in the file called 'COPYING'.....
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Complete message here
Linus has always been consistent about one thing: you use the best available tool and screw the politics.
That's why he quit developing his shaky kernel (and the Linux kernel WAS pretty shakey back then) when BSD-Lite was released and jumped on the BSD bandwagon.
Whoops, wrong universe.
"Torvalds could have done something constructive: he could have written the best damn OS [Operating System] on the planet, and believed that open source generates better things, and competed against AT&T that way," says a Bell Labs Spokespers in the posting.
I can see it now...
"There's damn bug som'er in mem.c, can you see if you squish that son'va'bitch?"
"Public? I made it a private construct. Torvalds threw it in public."
"If you construct your own low level CMS when the other one runs away,you just might be a redDevneck."
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
I think that attitude marks a great rift between open source (OS) advocates. There are those who support both OS and proprietary software (PS), and those who think all PS is wrong. Judging from their public statements, Linus is in the first camp, and Richard Stallman is in the second.
Myself, I think free people should be able to to choose whatever approach they want, and good luck to them. And I'm bloody tired of all the fanatics in the world who take a good cause and elevate it to a mindless religion.
There is no "appeasment" here because there is no enemy.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
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?
C17H21NO4
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.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I found this on kernel.org:
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/
It's empty at the moment but we'll probably be seeing the source code appearing in it soon.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world: Those who write in decimal and those who don't
Linus Torvalds chose to use it knowing the bizarre conditions McVoy had stipulated. McVoy stipulated it couldn't be used to develop Free Software alternatives (and, it appears, has extended this stipulation to cover "having a vague connection with someone who develops a Free Software alternative")
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Read the last couple of lines on this link: http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/lin ux/story/0,10801,101207,00.html
Indeed, it might be good to read the entire article, much better than I remember Computer World particularly when compared to other articles on this topic seen elsewhere.
I found this on LXer.com this morning.
Bot Assisted Blogging
If Linus adopted Arch or Monotone, he would basically be admitting that he could have adopted open source tools in the first place and avoided the whole BitKeeper stupidity. So for ego reasons, he has to build a new tool.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Communication protocols are methods, not works of authorship. Methods cannot be copyrighted, but they can be patented. What is your evidence otherwise?
Nobody except maybe McVoy should have gotten upset over this anyway. It seems to me that at least the free version of Bitkeeper was subject to the CalvinBall License. The problem is that Tridge doesn't seem to play CalvinBall. Something like this happening was inevitable.
Might as well mention that it looks like Darcs is getting the git religion also.
A software package named git - also known as the 'Gnu Interactive Tools' - allready exists.
http://www.gnu.org/software/git/git.html
Think at it as a combination on Midnight Commander with emacs keybindings & config. Me and a lot of people use this usefull shell.
So please change the name of this source versioning package.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
A better frontend is already coded. See git-pasky.
It is early days, of course, but this git should be easy enough to use for anyone who's been using cvs, subversion or the others. You do "git commit", "git commit", "git log", etc. And it's fast. On my poor laptop, "git diff" takes 0.1 second over the entire 235M kernel source.
This is the frontend to Linus' git stuff, and may be renamed Cogito to prevent confusion.
#1. BitKeeper is McVoy's code and he is allowed to do anything he wants with it. You're right that he could have pulled the "free" client at anytime and held the kernel source as "hostage".
... no one did anything ILLEGAL and they all made decisions based upon their stated values.
#2. Linus chose to use BitKeeper knowing all of that. He still chose it because it seemed to be the best product around that would meet his needs. Linus did not seem overly concerned about the potential for losing the "free" client.
#3. Tridge did not break any laws when he started to reverse engineer the packets.
So
Where's the problem?
Well, Tridge should have known that his work would piss off McVoy and that it could result in the loss of the "free" client. Yet he did it anyway WITHOUT writing a SCM that was as good or better than BitKeeper.
So, the only thing that Tridge is guilty of is not having a replacement ready for when everything blew up.
McVoy decided that he didn't want to deal with Tridge's work and just pulled the "free" client to stop what he viewed as a threat to BitKeeper.
So the only thing McVoy is guilty of is attempting to protect his own project.
Which leaves Linus suddenly without an SCM and he blames Tridge for wreaking a working situation without having a replacement ready.
So, the only thing Linus is guilty of is venting publicly.
So why is everyone picking sides? That comes down to each person's values.
A.) Those who value Open'ness more than functionality support Tridge because they believe Linus was wrong to push a proprietary product.
B.) Those who value functionality more than Open'ness support Linus because the system was working and it was helping development and there isn't an equivalent system to replace it yet.
But those are simply judgement calls based upon each individual's value set. Neither is more "right" or "wrong" than the other, except in your opinion.
Subversion is awsome:
I started using the Subversion (SVN) source control tool at home instead of CVS (they have convert scripts to convert the old CVS repos)... I use it to store about 2GB of sound and art data as well as source code and configuration files for my system, basically anything I might want to get a previous version.
My frontend is TortoiseCVS, which is integrated in the explorer windows - which makes for a really easy and intuitive interface.... No more synchronizing two separate windows. Just use explorer, very simple.
It handles binary files automatically (by autodetection using heuristics on the data and through configurable mime types), and stores binary diffs so your database doesn't get bloaty. In the recent 1.2 version of SVN they've added locking to the databgase in case you're working with others on binary (not-mergable) files.
For linux there's GUIs as well if any of you do that thing... And there's other options than just Tortoise on Windows...
They support several database formats including Berkley DB, as well as a filesystem database (similar to what cvs used)...
Access can be local filesystem, or remote over WebDAV (http) or over SSH (what I'm using, it's secure, encrypted, good!)...
TortoiseSVN even comes with a graphical merge tool (TortoiseMerge).
If you're looking for source control, I recommend Subversion. It's free, cross platform, and awesome... I would almost recommend to everyone, but I still have some features I still want to test before going that far... They still need to release 1.2 final (write-locking for binary files), and TortoiseSVN needs to support the locking feature in the 1.2 client...
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
Now we'll have other people who make:
GitTorrent
Gimp-Git
Kgit
Gititude
Of course there are some important differences. Like the fact that Vesta's been around for over a decade, and has been in production use for microprocessor design at Compaq and Intel for over 6 years.
CVS is teh suck. Use Vesta instead.