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Linus on Subversion, GPL3, Microsoft and More
victor77 writes "Linus has repeatedly slammed Subversion and CVS, questioning their basic architecture. Subversion community has responded...how valid is Linus's statement?" This and many other subjects are covered in this interview with Linus.
Sunday, August 19, 2007: Did Microsoft's Men In Black ever met Linus Torvalds? But why is he so critical of GPLv3? Why does he slam Subversion? What would happen to the kernel development if he chooses to do something else more important? These are some of the questions Linux/open source community from around the globe wanted to ask Linus. And, here is Linus candid and blunt, and at times diplomatic. Check if the question you wanted to ask to the father of Linux is here and what does he have to say...
Q: What are the future enhancements/paths/plans for the Linux kernel? --Subramani R
Linus: I've never been much of a visionary -- instead of looking at huge plans for the future, I tend to have a rather short timeframe of 'issues in the next few months'. I'm a big believer in that the 'details' matter, and if you take care of the details, the big issues will end up sorting themselves out on their own.
So I really don't have any great vision for what the kernel will look like in five years -- just a very general plan to make sure that we keep our eye on the ball. In fact, when it comes to me personally, one of the things I worry about the most isn't even the technical issues, but making sure that the 'process' works, and that people can work well with each other.
Q: How do you see the relationship of Linux and Solaris evolving in the future? How will it benefit the users?
Linus: I don't actually see a whole lot of overlap, except that I think Solaris will start using more of the Linux user space tools (which I obviously don't personally have a lot to do with -- I really only do the kernel). The Linux desktop is just so much better than what traditional Solaris has, and I expect Solaris to move more and more towards a more Linux-like model there.
On the pure kernel side, the licensing differences mean that there's not much cooperation, but it will be very interesting to see if that will change. Sun has been making noises about licensing Solaris under the GPL (either v2 or v3), and if the licence differences go away, that could result in some interesting technology. But I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude to that.
Q: Now that the GPLv3 has been finalised and released, do you foresee any circumstance that would encourage you to begin moving the kernel to it? Or, from your perspective, is it so bad that you would never consider it? -- Peter Smith / Naveen Mudunuru.
Linus: I think it is much improved over the early drafts, and I don't think it's a horrible licence. I just don't think it's the same kind of 'great' licence that the GPLv2 is.
So in the absence of the GPLv2, I could see myself using the GPLv3. But since I have a better choice, why should I?
That said, I try to always be pragmatic, and the fact that I think the GPLv3 is not as good a licence as the GPLv2 is not a 'black and white' question. It's a balancing act. And if there are other advantages to the GPLv3, maybe those other advantages would be big enough to tilt the balance in favour of the GPLv3.
Quite frankly, I don't really see any, but if Solaris really is to be released under the GPLv3, maybe the advantage of avoiding unnecessary non-compatible licence issues could be enough of an advantage that it might be worth trying to re-license the Linux kernel under the GPLv3 too.
Don't get me wrong -- I think it's unlikely. But I do want to make it clear that I'm not a licence bigot, per se. I think the GPLv2 is clearly the better licence, but licences aren't everything.
After all, I use a lot of programs that are under other licences. I might not put a project I start myself under the BSD (or the X11-MIT) licence, but I think it's a great licence, and for other projects it may well be the right one.
Q: Currently are there any Indians who you'd like to highlight as key contributors to the Linux kernel?
Linus: I have to admit that I don't directly work with anybody that I actually realize as being from India. That said, I should clarify a bit: I've very consciously tried
This one is not (yet) slashdotted:
http://www.efytimes.com/archive/144/news.htm
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
He did slam CVS indeed, SVN likewise. In Linux talk at Google about Git[video] he mentions SVN and their credo at on time being something along the line of "CVS done right", commenting that "there is no way to do CVS right."
The article linked here is light on details concerning SCM, though.
Indeed!
And here is the reaction from the subversion team. For those of you who don't want to RTFA, they basically say they agree, its not appropriate for something like Linux.
BTW, isn't this all old news? His original comment on subversion was dated from 05
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Think that could be because its an Indian news site and the guy himself is Indian?
Believe it or not, just because something is published on the world wide web doesn't mean it has to cut out everything of local interest.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
and if you're a programmer or an admin that knows sql server, then you know to disable this before you go into production. again, this is not a problem with the product. saying such would be like saying solaris is trash because it enables everything plus the kitchen sink, unless you tell it not to...
oracle is all great and fun if you have the money to cough up for it. sql server has great performance at a fraction of oracle's cost. of course, a competent architect will know when to use sql server and when to use oracle.
Damnit, it's a paradigm shift that Linus is talking about. True distributed source code management brings an entirely new way of working. It enables very fast merging at a very fine granularity, which lets you use casually use this information (about what changed and when) in a way that changes the nature of how you work! It's the same sort of difference that code completion or Google search made. Once a certain kind of very useful information -- that has always been available, but a bit inconveniently -- becomes like running water out of the tap, it enables ways of working that just wouldn't have been practical before.
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If you really want to know what Linus is talking about from the man himself, watch this Google Tech Talk. It's over an hour, but there's nothing like hearing it straight from the horse's mouth.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-21993320
I used to use CVS (and still do for some projects). Then I switched over to SVN. It was remarkably unremarkable.
Then, a few months ago, there was a /. article on git. It sounded interesting so I tried it... and was thoroughly impressed.
I was up and running in about 20 minutes. You can use cvs/svn like commands, *but* you get local / decentralized repositories with fast forking and merging.
Start a project. Type "git init" and you've got a repository in place (you don't have to initialize and then check it out). "git add ." and "git commit" and you've got your first revision.
It took a little bit more effort to figure out how to push/pull from a remote repository, but it's fairly straightforward. A bunch of people can work in a group, have their own local repositories, and then merge their changes (along with the revision history). It's awesome.
The only reason I haven't switched all of my projects over to it is that the IDEs I use (Xcode and Eclipse) don't have good git integration (as far as I know).
See also: 0.10 history, 0.02 & 0.03 history, 0.01 history
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)