Hardly. Sun isn't a patent/copyright terrorist like SCO. In fact, Sun's whole strategy around the CDDL is to _prevent_ litigation, not cause it.
Every month or so Jonathan says something to convince us he's no friend. Then, a bunch of middle managers from Sun try to smooth it over as best they can and tell us they are really out to save us. Then the next month Jonathan does it again. Who do you think I should listen to?
Divert the resources in the demonstratably finite pool of OS developers to create a tool which met the need. Divert resources to adapt to the tool as it evolves. Lose effort and suffer inefficiencies as long as the evolving tool fails to support critical requirements.
I've been to this argument before. I remember when it was about why I should accept TrollTech's non-Open-Source license on Qt. People who did not want to accept that started GNOME. And as GNOME came along and threatened to eclipse their work, TrollTech was convinced to Open Source the Qt library. Their company literally took off with that decision. It's much, much larger now. But there never had to be a GNOME if TrollTech had only figured things out earlier.
If I had to take it from people who are getting my product for free, I would have walked away a long time ago.
They were people who never wanted his stuff for free. They didn't want it on his terms at all. It was just that Linus took the deal disregarding their advice.
Will kernel developers be happy to wait around while the bugs gets sorted out?
About as happy as they have been with GCC bugs. They have seen more than their share of those, and they will deal with them in the same way.
Time will tell if that is good enough.
Couldn't I apply all of your arguments to Open Source in general? Shouldn't they be using Microsoft C and Visual SourceSafe for the wonderful support they'd get?
I can't imagine how much money Tigris have put into Subversion at this stage, and look at the criticism the product continues to incur and the major back-end overhauls that have been taking place.
Whatever they were thinking of, it didn't work. That's business - sometimes you lose. It seems that others have better ideas than Subversion.
with it's gargantuan achievements over recent years - still relies on private support and private funding in one way or another.
That's OK. Read my Economics paper. It will explain how and why, when it works, and when it does not.
That's sort of a back-handed endorsement that would not help to sell Larry's product.
Re:Free software and open source are not the same.
on
No More BitKeeper Linux
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Do not accuse me, or the Open Source movement, of dismissing software freedom. That's Eric Raymond's individual gig, and perhaps that of some other people who should know better. The deprecation of Stallman and Free Software was an unfortunate thing that Eric did. I didn't condone it and have never approved of it. I have always considered Open Source to be a gentle introduction to Stallman's philosophy for business people. Once people are using the software, they will be willing to learn more.
It's not clear to me that OSDL ever agreed to a bitkeeper license. Linus brought Bitkeeper there with him. And even Linus accepted Bitkeeper before the anti-reverse-engineering provision was in the license. But I agree that it's a demonstration that breaking licenses loses you all rights to the software. From the minute that Larry inserted the anti-reverse-engineering provision, this was destined to happen. Some of us knew better than to put ourselves in the position of having it happen to us. I never entered into a Bitkeeper license, I never used the product.
what do they do when the revision control system hits a bug or the database gets corrupted, and no-one is available to fix it?
They fix it. That's our way.
Are the monotone developers going to walk out of their day-jobs and support the kernel SCM for nothing ?
They will support it as well as they can without leaving their day jobs. That's pretty much how the kernel got far enough along that the kernel developers were finally able to get paid to work on it.
Of course what might happen is one of the big corporations such as RH or IBM will generously fund an engineer to work on one of these SCM systems
This was already going on, anyway - there are several folks funding various sorts of Open Source version control. But the point is that whether or not the help is coming from a corporation, the software will be under an Open Source license and thus we can walk away from the corporation if we wish, and keep the software going on our own.
Before you have sympathy for the BK "people", go back and look at how Larry has comported himself. He created this latest incident, and could have kept the world's most publicized programmer endorsing his product just by keeping his mouth closed.
First, don't assume it was OSDL screwing over anyone. Larry changed the deal, repeatedly. It started out that we just had to use his "notification server", and then other odd terms came up at intervals like termination of the license for those who attempt to make other software compatible with Bitkeeper through reverse-engineering. OSDL refused to terminate an employee or consultant who was also reverse-engineering Bitmover as a hobby Open Source project outside of OSDL. Had they terminated that person, the hue and cry would have been greater.
There was never a chance that this relationship could work, because of the lack of an Open Source license and the mercurialism Larry regularly displayed.
I accept that it might have been the only working solution at the time, but Linus would have done better if he'd said it was temporary until a good Open Source product came along. Because it was anyway. There are consequences. 1000 people are going to have to learn a new facility, that facility is going to have to be deployed and files are going to have to be moved into it in a laborious version by version process to convert them, etc. There is also all of the surplus heat produced by the multi-year argument that Bitkeeper brought and some loss of productivity because of that, includng some untold number of people who would otherwise have worked on the kernel but bugged out because of the Bitkeeper decision.
I can hardly think any more convincing example of the superiority of OSS than what just happened.
I think it's a demonstration that Open Source is more dependable. We understood that, but it seems paradoxical to outisders that it is the exclusive rights-holder, the very company that purports to support the software, that reduces dependability.
Well, mine isn't best but I sure want to be counted as an "I told you" on this one too. But it seems like lots of people told him so, and we all got dissed because they said we weren't pragmatic. Well, we were pragmatic, and the folks who thought they were the pragmatic ones weren't thinking through consequences all of the way to the end-game.
The question is where to go now? My preference would be GNU Arch, as it's more decentralized. But it may not be ready for this heavy a use, and I am hardly an expert in revision control.
Oh, right. I am part-owner of Progeny. They helped too. So there.:-)
If the UL project brings in enough support $$, you will see it pay for people to do maintenance work directly into the Debian repository. If it doesn't, you won't. I think it's worth a try.
My feeling is that the presence of trolls is itself a form of censorship that penalizes intelligent discourse. I am not locking you out of the laundromat, there are 10,000 other outlets available through your browser. I'm just making sure that the shows put on in my theater are the highbrow ones.
I dug up a number of installer bugs in the UL development and emailed them directly to Joey Hess. Currently, I have redirected volunteers from UL to Debian. We don't need them at UL until the Debian problem's off the critical path.
NO ANONYMOUS COWARDS and editors willing to boot the trolls off. CT has odd ideas that he shouldn't "censor" that way. My feeling is that refusal to provide someone with a podium is not censorship, they can go elsewhere and say whatever they want.
Having spent a lot of time reading slashdot, I am unfamiliar with this "responsibility" concept and I thought "duty" was a waste product. If you can explain those terms I'd be glad to help you.
I haven't invested much in the slashcode and its themes, because I'm replacing it with a ruby on rails re-implementation. That doesn't use tables for layout and isn't wired into the web server, and has a lot more isn'ts and doesnt's that make it easier to maintain than the slashcode. I may get that to the point where I start showing it to people today.
Ugh. Of course I meant "no credibility". But you're right, maybe we need a longer vaporware period in order to be taken seriously by business people:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Every month or so Jonathan says something to convince us he's no friend. Then, a bunch of middle managers from Sun try to smooth it over as best they can and tell us they are really out to save us. Then the next month Jonathan does it again. Who do you think I should listen to?
Bruce
I've been to this argument before. I remember when it was about why I should accept TrollTech's non-Open-Source license on Qt. People who did not want to accept that started GNOME. And as GNOME came along and threatened to eclipse their work, TrollTech was convinced to Open Source the Qt library. Their company literally took off with that decision. It's much, much larger now. But there never had to be a GNOME if TrollTech had only figured things out earlier.
Bruce
Just because that would be in your best interest, does not mean that you are not free to flame Richard.
Bruce
They were people who never wanted his stuff for free. They didn't want it on his terms at all. It was just that Linus took the deal disregarding their advice.
Bruce
About as happy as they have been with GCC bugs. They have seen more than their share of those, and they will deal with them in the same way.
Time will tell if that is good enough.
Couldn't I apply all of your arguments to Open Source in general? Shouldn't they be using Microsoft C and Visual SourceSafe for the wonderful support they'd get?
I can't imagine how much money Tigris have put into Subversion at this stage, and look at the criticism the product continues to incur and the major back-end overhauls that have been taking place.
Whatever they were thinking of, it didn't work. That's business - sometimes you lose. It seems that others have better ideas than Subversion.
with it's gargantuan achievements over recent years - still relies on private support and private funding in one way or another.
That's OK. Read my Economics paper. It will explain how and why, when it works, and when it does not.
Thanks
Bruce
That's sort of a back-handed endorsement that would not help to sell Larry's product.
Bruce
Bruce
Ransom is on the board of Progeny today. I sure am glad he's not out dissing the GPL on behalf of my company.
They fix it. That's our way.
Are the monotone developers going to walk out of their day-jobs and support the kernel SCM for nothing ?
They will support it as well as they can without leaving their day jobs. That's pretty much how the kernel got far enough along that the kernel developers were finally able to get paid to work on it.
Of course what might happen is one of the big corporations such as RH or IBM will generously fund an engineer to work on one of these SCM systems
This was already going on, anyway - there are several folks funding various sorts of Open Source version control. But the point is that whether or not the help is coming from a corporation, the software will be under an Open Source license and thus we can walk away from the corporation if we wish, and keep the software going on our own.
Before you have sympathy for the BK "people", go back and look at how Larry has comported himself. He created this latest incident, and could have kept the world's most publicized programmer endorsing his product just by keeping his mouth closed.
Bruce
The point is that Ransom used to go around saying the same stuff about the GPL. It didn't help his company. And look what they became.
There was never a chance that this relationship could work, because of the lack of an Open Source license and the mercurialism Larry regularly displayed.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
I accept that it might have been the only working solution at the time, but Linus would have done better if he'd said it was temporary until a good Open Source product came along. Because it was anyway. There are consequences. 1000 people are going to have to learn a new facility, that facility is going to have to be deployed and files are going to have to be moved into it in a laborious version by version process to convert them, etc. There is also all of the surplus heat produced by the multi-year argument that Bitkeeper brought and some loss of productivity because of that, includng some untold number of people who would otherwise have worked on the kernel but bugged out because of the Bitkeeper decision.
Bruce
I think it's a demonstration that Open Source is more dependable. We understood that, but it seems paradoxical to outisders that it is the exclusive rights-holder, the very company that purports to support the software, that reduces dependability.
Bruce
The question is where to go now? My preference would be GNU Arch, as it's more decentralized. But it may not be ready for this heavy a use, and I am hardly an expert in revision control.
Bruce
If the UL project brings in enough support $$, you will see it pay for people to do maintenance work directly into the Debian repository. If it doesn't, you won't. I think it's worth a try.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
Bruce
Sure. Just tell me the details. bruce at perens.com
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Having spent a lot of time reading slashdot, I am unfamiliar with this "responsibility" concept and I thought "duty" was a waste product. If you can explain those terms I'd be glad to help you.
Bruce
Ugh. Of course I meant "no credibility". But you're right, maybe we need a longer vaporware period in order to be taken seriously by business people :-)