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11 Years After Git, BitKeeper Is Open-Sourced (phoronix.com)

Posted by msmash on from the a-day-late-and-a-dollar-short dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Eleven years after Linus Torvalds developed Git after a falling out with BitKeeper for managing the Linux kernel source code, BitMover Inc has finally decided to open-source the BitKeeper VCS. The latest BitKeeper release has made the code open-source under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license. The community edition code is available from BitKeeper.org. Does BitKeeper now stand a chance against free software systems like Git and SVN?To offer some context, Larry McVoy, the CEO of BitMover -- the company that makes BitKeeper -- offered free BitKeeper licenses to various open source projects -- Linux kernel utilized it as well. However, later, Australian computer programmer Andrew Tridgell reverse engineered BitKeeper protocol in an attempt to make his own client. Torvalds didn't like this practice, and accused Tridgell of "playing dirty tricks with his proprietary source code tool of choice," and as a result, he wrote Git.

5 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. Too late by bool2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If BitKeeper had done that in the first place they'd still be relevant, possibly even the market leader.

    Do they stand a chance now? Not without some killer new features that can't trivially be copied and pasted into Git.

  2. Not Quite as Described by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative

    Andrew did not reverse-engineer the Bitkeeper transfer protocol. What Andrew did was to telnet to the Bitkeeper's server port, and type "HELP". Bitkeeper then obligingly told Andrew what its commands were, in the exact style used by all early TCP daemons like FTP, SMTP, etc.

    The problem was that Larry and Linus were good friends, and Larry had convinced Linus to use Bitkeeper even though Bitkeeper was under something less than an Open Source license. Larry had this odd license requirement that if you wanted to use Bitkeeper for free, you had to tolerate it making its logs public, and at some time added a requirement that you not use it to develop competing software. Larry promoted these requirements as a means to make money with Open Source, but his license wasn't really compliant with the Open Source Definition.

    Larry also got really nonlinear and pissed off a lot of the kernel developers. Which was probably the fatal step. Linus got tired of trying to hold two things together that did not want to stay together, and wrote git. This eventually destroyed Larry's company.

    It remains a lesson regarding how not to work with the community.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
    1. Re:Not Quite as Described by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative

      Linus actually was a real dick to Andrew.

      I had something to say about that.

      --
      Bruce Perens.
  3. Re:Too little, too late by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I remember him taking around 5 weeks off from kernel development. So, 2 weeks for the core is plausable. It proved that he's no one-hit wonder.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  4. Re:Larry McVoy threatened to sue me on /. years ag by John+Sirpa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Since this is Larry McVoy I wouldn't be surprised if it is true. A different story, but related:
    http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.mercurial.devel/3481

    I have seen and accepted many non-free licenses over the years and I'm fine with most of of them. But Larry McVoy and BitKeeper stepped over the line. I will never under any circumstance defend him or his work, his actions have been downright harmful to creation of free software at a lever which is simply unacceptable.