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SourceGear acquires Cyclic

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the getting-more-stuff dept.

David Neto writes "SourceGear Corp., the parent of AbiSource, has acquired Cyclic. SourceGear will assure continued development of CVS. " Good news for all-SourceGear is going to be the new parent umbrella for AbiSource, trying to extend their name in the public domain.

37 comments

  1. Re:CVS, why the bad rep? by Uksi · · Score: 1

    I don't know why. Look at CVS in use at Mozilla.org (huge, gigantic project), AbiSource.

    I've been using CVS for a moderate-size project and it's one of the best things that happened to our development process.

  2. Re:GNU Icon by sterwill · · Score: 1

    The picture is of a gnu, otherwise known as a wildebeest.

  3. Re:CVS, why the bad rep? by rillian · · Score: 1

    Interesting, in my experience, I have found CVS to be quite stable. Far better than some of the commercial VC's I've used.

    That may well be. As I said, cvs is the only tool like this I've used. Mostly I've noticed a problem with zombie locks on cvs.on.openprojects.net...see all the complaints on the mesa-dev list.

    Personally I found the admin setup and getting a secure version very straightforward and simple

    Perhaps you'd consider writing a how-to (or patching the manual) with some of the tricks for doing this? I found the documentation a bit scattered on the subject of security, especially with anonymous access. Perhaps I'm just dumb, but I think some step-by-step instructions, or a list of what needs what permissions would help a lot.

    Which you can remove directories from the tree -- not intuitively, but that is why getting directory handling better is on the todo list.

    Hmm, is there a way to do it while still being able to access the structure under the old revision numbers?

    So all in all, I would agree cvs has some issues (mine actually aren't any of those listed, has to do with the cvs edit feature). Of course the issues I am concerned about I am writing patcheds to fix :).

    More than I can say! Hmm, is cvs in cvs anywhere? Hopefully SourceGear will set up a more open up the development infrastructure.

  4. Re:Uh, okay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "In any case, I can get support for Windows 95 and Windows NT just fine [...] When was the last time you tried getting support for linux 1.0?" And you for Windows 3.1? How about Windows 1.0? XENIX? NT 3.1?

  5. GPL wins again... by Seth+Cohn · · Score: 3

    That's the beauty of GPL or other open source software: Someone always steps up to the plate
    and takes over.

    Try to get support for anything 5 years old from a major 'software vendor'... good luck.
    Try to get support for a GPLed program, and odds are someone will be willing and able... and it's almost never abandoned, unless something superior (and often compatible) comes along.

    Good for SourceGear aka AbiSource

    --
    Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
    1. Re:GPL wins again... by bliss · · Score: 1

      Yeah like getting support for dos 6.22.

      --
      The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
    2. Re:GPL wins again... by Seth+Cohn · · Score: 1

      Look again: the GNU logo is the topic.

      CVS is GPLed... AbiWord is GPLed...

      HOW was I misleading?

      --
      Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
    3. Re:GPL wins again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh please. Don't confuse the GPL with free or open source, or both. Your title is misleading.

  6. Good news indeed! by aedil · · Score: 3

    This is good news indeed, given that CVS is quite a nice source control system. With the past news that Cyclic was dropping support for it, and handing over support to the open source community, quite some people I spoke with did have worries about the future for CVS. While open source communities tend to work well, it is more of a problem to get an established project like CVS under new "management".

    With the still existing "fear" from many companies to bring what they consider unsupported software in-house, this may actually ensure that some doors stay open for CVS to enter the business world.

    1. Re:Good news indeed! by bliss · · Score: 1

      The main thing I like about it is that it allows me to get updates much faster than I could normally.

      --
      The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
    2. Re:Good news indeed! by tgeller · · Score: 2
      I second that. Cyclic has done a great job of keeping CVS vibrant while staying true to free-software ideals. I'm glad to see Jim shepherded it into new hands rather than let it wither when it was time for him to move on to other things.

      I don't know SourceGear as well as Cyclic, but was impressed with their showing of AbiWord at the last LinuxWorld in San Jose. (An anecdote: Linus came up and started playing with it while I was in the booth, and seemed quite impressed.) Their commitment to free software is clear, and I have no worries about the future of CVS under them.

      This is a good match.

      --Tom Geller

      P.S. A version of the P.R. letter with a quote from Jim is at http://www.cyclic.com/cvs/letter_cvs.html

      --
      Tom Geller
  7. Re:Spelling Suggestor by sethg · · Score: 1

    Somebody I know once did editorial work for a multimedia encyclopedia. One entry, describing a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, said that the treaty was signed by "Answer Sedate and Meantime Begin".

    --
    send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
  8. Re:Opensource.org domain by bliss · · Score: 1

    Although not many people always read the comments and then sometimes only high moderated comments but it really is a good forum.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  9. Spelling Suggestor by NNland · · Score: 1

    Hrm, from what I've seen, it looks like they could use a decent spelling suggestor considering that there doesn't seem to be one...

    *wink*
    Time to put a CS assignment to good use.

    1. Re:Spelling Suggestor by bliss · · Score: 1

      Would that be spell checker instead of suggestor?

      --
      The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
    2. Re:Spelling Suggestor by sterwill · · Score: 1

      For AbiWord? Actually, AbiWord has a spelling checker, but it currently doesn't suggest any alternatives. :) I'd never thought about it this way, but it really does need a "spelling suggestor".

    3. Re:Spelling Suggestor by bliss · · Score: 1

      Try aspell it works quite well and has quite a selection of alternatives works with british, standard english, and a few others I think.

      --
      The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  10. Uh, okay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Five years old? The timestamp on cvs-1.10.6.tar.gz is 17-May-1999. How do you measure the age of software?

    In any case, I can get support for Windows 95 and Windows NT just fine, thank you very much.

    When was the last time you tried getting support for linux 1.0? I thought being told to upgrade to the latest and greatest was what we hated about Microsoft?

    1. Re:Uh, okay by cyba · · Score: 1

      OK, but microsoft requires you to _pay_ for 'the latest and greatest' (or rather 'latest bugs' :)

  11. Re:Future of AbiWord by bliss · · Score: 1

    I thought *emacs and company were a better choice.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  12. Re:CVS IS THE SHIZ-NIT, BE-OTCH!!!111!! by bliss · · Score: 0

    Really mature now they will impose limits on the size of comments it just goes to show you that idiots DO have a place after all: to make the internet loose freedom.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  13. GNU Icon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Does the GNU icon look like a little security-blanket-carrying turd in Mickey Mouse shoes to anyone else? Isn't the GNU mascot supposed to be a gnu (or at least some kind of antlered, four-legged beastie)?

    1. Re:GNU Icon by bliss · · Score: 1

      Now that you mention it....
      Really it is if you go to http://www.gnu.org is shows a bison or something like that. I just think the picture just sucks.

      --
      The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
    2. Re:GNU Icon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can see the full-size (albeit not full-color) version of the graphic here. It's too bad the small size hides the curve of the tummy; the whole thing does tend to look "too round" at first glance.

      Personally, I like it. It's the slickest GNU-related graphics there is, really (compare the other works under /graphics that they try to pass off as art }:-)

      Incidentally, to whoever created the /. icon in question-- is there anywhere we could grab the full-size, colored original? It's very nicely done, and it'd be spiffy to make new (GNU?) banners/buttons/logos out of it!

  14. Re:Learn to spell: "lose" is not spelled "loose" by bliss · · Score: 0

    Oh ok well I guess it's better to spam a site like slashdot than to make a simple spelling error or state a political opinion. I really don't use CVS but you don't see me swearing at it inarticulately or in a derisive manner. And the day that humanity ceases to make mistakes will be the day life gets really boring. Why do you think they have spell checkers.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  15. CVS, why the bad rep? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've got a question thats been bothering me for a while. Why is it that I hear so many people who claim that CVS sucks? For instance, Linus said that CVS isn't right for the job of managing the kernel, and that guy who is authoring Bitkeeper really hates it too. But I have never read an article where someone substantiates their distaste for CVS - whats wrong with it?

    Just as a note, I haven't really put CVS into serious use, I've only used it for my ~5k loc projects.

    1. Re:CVS, why the bad rep? by strobert · · Score: 1

      Yes the stale locks problem does happen on some projects. Not sure why, I've have seen it reported from time to time on info-cvs, but haven't experienced it yet myself. I think it happens when people using it kill off clients in the middle of using it in wierd ways.

      Anon setup is a little interesting, I would recommend looking at the info-cvs mail archive. There has been a recent thread on that subject.

      Basically right now cvs stores files not directories, so if all files in a sub-dir are cvs remove'd then the next update -dP will clip the dir from the local working directory. and updates on an old rev will of course re-create it.

      cvs is definently in cvs. write access is slow in coming. basically you show you can write good patches before access is given (which is how the linux kernel works in reality). I personally don't have write access yet, but I haven't submitted a patch yet, so I don't think I deserve it yet. Which I greatly prefer controlled access to anyone who shows up gets commit access.

      With the switch out there has been discussion in the cvs communitee about commit access, and it probably will get loosened a bit. But the development model already is fairly open.

      (which go ahead and mail me if you want more info -- I tend to lose track of /. articles I have responded too at times)

    2. Re:CVS, why the bad rep? by rillian · · Score: 2

      Personally, I think it's wonderful. My most extensive experience with it has been in the glx project, and it's worked very well. Not being a professional programmer, it's the most sophisticated system I've every used. From talking to some of my friends, I understand it has some advantages over a lot of the commercial offerings, so we may not be missing much. :) I also use it to keep track of the data and analysis routines for my scientific work.

      That said, there are lots of problems. It's not been terribly stable in my experience. It has poor support for binary files. Administration isn't fun (or easy) and it's difficult to set up securely. It's not very smart: particularly glaring ommisions are that you can't remove directories once they're added to the source tree (!), and moving files around is a pain. The notion of "code branches" could be more powerful (and easier to use). It's not easy to perform clean backups or mirrors either, and the command line options are neither elegant nor consistent. That's my personal list so far. :)

      Basically, it's a hack on top of rcs, and it's starting to show. It could probably benifit from a complete rewrite in the next year or so, with the addition of things like a security model and support for distributed (and mirrored) repositories. bitkeeper is something like this, but not free software. prcs is another, gpl'd, attempt headed by Josh MacDonald, author of xdelta; there's no client/server for it yet, though.

    3. Re:CVS, why the bad rep? by rillian · · Score: 1

      Personally, I think it's wonderful. My most extensive experience with it has been in the glx project, and it's worked very well. Not being a professional programmer, it's the most sophisticated system I've every used. From talking to some of my friends, I understand it has some advantages over a lot of the commercial offerings, so we may not be missing much. :) I also use it to keep track of the data and analysis routines for my scientific work.

      That said, there are lots of problems. It's not been terribly stable in my experience. It has poor support for binary files. Administration isn't fun (or easy) and it's difficult to set up securely. It's not very smart: particularly glaring ommisions are that you can't remove directories once they're added to the source tree (!), and moving files around is a pain. The notion of "code branches" could be more powerful and easier to use. (This is probably the part linus objected to--I couldn't imagine trying to track all the kernel patches that way. maybe with a gui front-end and database to keep track of the options... :) It's not easy to perform clean backups or mirrors either, and the command line options are neither elegant nor consistent. Oh yes, and it could be faster. That's my personal list so far.

      Basically, it's a hack on top of rcs, and it's starting to show. It could probably benifit from a complete rewrite in the next year or so, with the addition of things like a security model and support for distributed (and mirrored) repositories. bitkeeper is something like this, but not free software. prcs is another, gpl'd, attempt headed by Josh MacDonald, author of xdelta; there's no client/server for it yet, though. Personally, I'd like to see a cross between cvs, an eternity server, and Debian's apt package tool. :)

      Nevertheless, I think it works fine for medium sized projects and really helps facilitate/speed up internet-based development. Beats mailing patches around!

    4. Re:CVS, why the bad rep? by strobert · · Score: 1

      Interesting, in my experience, I have found CVS to be quite stable. Far better than some of the commercial VC's I've used.

      The biggest lacking in feature I see (and one of the biggeset improvments bitkeeper has over it) is multiple repositories that can sync themselevs up. Now there do exist add-on packages to CVS that do just that (haven't tried them yet... one of these days)

      Personally I found the admin setup and getting a secure version very straightforward and simple (compared to PVCS, MKS SI, and QVCS)

      Which you can remove directories from the tree -- not intuitively, but that is why getting directory handling better is on the todo list.

      As for branches, I have found cvs's branching support almost too easy to use. I think branches shouldn't be heavily used and with cvs it is too easy to create and use a branch. And so far with the branches I have had to do under cvs the process was easy to do (again compared to any of the other VC's I have used)

      So all in all, I would agree cvs has some issues (mine actually aren't any of those listed, has to do with the cvs edit feature). Of course the issues I am concerned about I am writing patcheds to fix :).

  16. Opensource.org domain by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
    This is entirely off-topic, but what better way to broadcast a message than via slashdot?


    Yes, I know that opensource.org is down. No, I don't know why buoy.com stopped serving their DNS. Yes, I know I'm still the admin contact. Yes, if the OSI guys email me, I'll do whatever is necessary to help them.


    We return you to slashdot, already in progress :-)


    Thanks


    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  17. Re:Actually, "the shiz-nit" is a compliment. by bliss · · Score: 1

    Actually in proper english grammer it would be "more clearly" not "more clearer".



    Just couldn't resist.

    --
    The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic --Joseph Stalin
  18. Also check out PRCS... by Paul+Crowley · · Score: 1

    If you're looking for an alternative to CVS's complexity, check out PRCS. I've found it to be an amazingly clean system to set up and use, with a simpler model of what's going on. No client/server yet; version 2.0 will support full disconnected distributed operation.
    --
    Employ me! Unix,Linux,crypto/security,Perl,C/C++,distance work. Edinburgh UK.

    --
    Xenu loves you!
  19. Re:Future of AbiWord by Aereque · · Score: 1

    Yes. We're not directly affiliated with the GNOME leadership, but I have definitely heard them (Miguel, specifically) give a strong sense of blessing to AbiWord as 'the GNOME wp'.

    Currently, AbiWord just uses GTK+, and makes no use of GNOME-specific APIs. Havoc has mentioned in his GNOME Summary that the AbiWord needs someone to join in and help give AbiWord some truly GNOME-ified support, but no one has come forth with patches yet.


    --
    Eric W. Sink
    Software Craftsman
    SourceGear Corporation
    --
    Eric W. Sink
    Software Craftsman
    SourceGear Corporation
  20. Re:Future of AbiWord by cheeser · · Score: 1

    As I understand it, AbiWord has already been designated as the "official" gnome word processor. There is a link on gnome's site about the gnome workshop and it lists the components that make up the workshop.

    --

    --
    http://cheeser.blog-city.com

  21. oops, good point. by bugbear3000 · · Score: 0

    I just coughed and accidentally spit on my 20" monitor. oops. I can see the RGB pits more clearly now.

    BTW, "grammer" is actually spelled "grammar".

  22. Wonderful! by Uksi · · Score: 1

    This is great: now CVS will have more potential development going on because of more "company support" behind it. Also, SourceGear will provide support for CVS users, something that Cyclic decided to recently abandon. This will definitely rock.