Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Pekka Savola]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 05:18:40PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > 3) If you had built a decent system instead of sitting around and whining,
> >    we could be doing something else instead of sitting around listening 
> >    to your whining.
>
> Larry, rest assured that exactly this is happinging right now
> all over the world. You are not feeling the backlash now,
> because it takes time, but it will happen, and you made pretty
> much sure of that. 
>
> You are pulling a Qt. By changing the license to BK to
> discourage development of BK alternatives you made sure that
> Subversion and other projects get plenty of new and highly
> motivated developers - you actually encouraged the development
> of BK alternatives just like the non-free license of Qt as the
> foundation of KDE spawned the Gnome project.
>
> The clock just started ticking and when we reevaluate this
> discussion in one or two years time, the complete strategic
> stupidity of this particular license change from BKs POV view
> will be evident.

I agree 100%; I'll just add one word:

OpenSSH

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "Tell me of difficulties surmounted,
Netcore Oy                   not those you stumble over and fall"
Systems. Networks. Security.  -- Robert Jordan: A Crown of Swords

Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Richard Stallman]

The new restrictions on Bitkeeper, saying that people who contribute
to CVS or Subversion and even companies that distribute them cannot
even run Bitkeeper, have sparked outrage.  While these specific
restrictions are new, their spirit fits perfectly with the previous
Bitkeeper license.

The spirit of the Bitkeeper license is the spirit of the whip hand.
It is the spirit that says, "You have no right to use Bitkeeper, only
temporary privileges that we can revoke.  Be grateful that we allow
you to use Bitkeeper.  Be grateful, and don't do anything we dislike,
or we may revoke those privileges."  It is the spirit of proprietary
software.  Every non-free license is designed to control the users
more or less.  Outrage at this spirit is the reason for the free
software movement.  (By contrast, the open source movement prefers to
play down this same outrage.)

If the latest outrage brings the spirit of the non-free Bitkeeper
license into clear view, perhaps that will be enough to convince the
developers of Linux to stop using Bitkeeper for Linux development.

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[William Lee Irwin III]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 06:48:22PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
> The new restrictions on Bitkeeper, saying that people who contribute
> to CVS or Subversion and even companies that distribute them cannot
> even run Bitkeeper, have sparked outrage.  While these specific

Outrage == non kernel hacking related flamewar. I was not particularly
happy with that fluff flying across the list (and quickly procmailed
that thread to /dev/null), and I'm not particularly happy with your
new message on that subject appearing here. In fact, I had my own
questions about BK, and I prudently directed them elsewhere.

Please keep traffic on this list technical in nature. If you've got
actual code or a discussion thereof to post, I'd be happy to see it.


Thanks,
Bill

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Rik van Riel]

On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Richard Stallman wrote:

> If the latest outrage brings the spirit of the non-free Bitkeeper
> license into clear view, perhaps that will be enough to convince the
> developers of Linux to stop using Bitkeeper for Linux development.

What would be even better is if it convinced free software people
to develop a tool as good as, or better than, Bitkeeper.

Until such a tool exists I'll tolerate Bitkeeper's licensing, since
my use of bitkeeper seems to increase rather than decrease the amount
of free software that's available.

regards,

Rik
-- 
Bravely reimplemented by the knights who say "NIH".
http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/
Current spamtrap:  <a href=mailto:"october@surriel.com">october@surriel.com</a>

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Xavier Bestel]

Le lun 14/10/2002 à 01:00, Rik van Riel a écrit :
> On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Richard Stallman wrote:
> 
> > If the latest outrage brings the spirit of the non-free Bitkeeper
> > license into clear view, perhaps that will be enough to convince the
> > developers of Linux to stop using Bitkeeper for Linux development.
> 
> What would be even better is if it convinced free software people
> to develop a tool as good as, or better than, Bitkeeper.
> 
> Until such a tool exists I'll tolerate Bitkeeper's licensing, since
> my use of bitkeeper seems to increase rather than decrease the amount
> of free software that's available.

Maybe we should start using Intel's compiler in place of gcc for x86
arch ? After all there's no such good free compiler ..

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Rando Christensen]

Sun, 13 Oct 2002 18:48:22 -0400: Richard Stallman (Richard Stallman
<rms@gnu.org>):

> The new restrictions on Bitkeeper, saying that people who contribute
> to CVS or Subversion and even companies that distribute them cannot
> even run Bitkeeper, have sparked outrage.  While these specific
> restrictions are new, their spirit fits perfectly with the previous
> Bitkeeper license.

I would think that if there were a list of people who shouldn't need to
be told "If you don't like licensing, build a better replacement", RMS
would be at the top of that list- After all, isn't that why GNU was
made?

The GNU foundation has given the world MANY good GPL'd replacement
software for plenty of unix utilities, a bunch of which have your name
on them. That's good, we're appreciative of that, but unfortunately,
none of those can do for the kernel what BK has been doing, as it's
advocates have said many times.

So, get out there and provide us with another quality replacement. You
of all people should know where to start.

-- 
< There is a light that shines on the frontier 
And maybe someday, We're gonna be there >
<Rando Christensen>
<rando@babblica.net>
<software - http://babblica.net>
<personal - http://digiwano.org>
<monkeys - http://illuzionz.org>

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Larry McVoy]

Our position:

1) No free licenses for our competition, they can buy them if they like.
2) The software is not open source because the open source business model
   doesn't have a prayer of supporting the development costs.
3) If you had built a decent system instead of sitting around and whining,
   we could be doing something else instead of sitting around listening 
   to your whining.

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 06:48:22PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
> The new restrictions on Bitkeeper, saying that people who contribute
> to CVS or Subversion and even companies that distribute them cannot
> even run Bitkeeper, have sparked outrage.  
> restrictions are new, their spirit fits perfectly with the previous
> Bitkeeper license.
> 
> The spirit of the Bitkeeper license is the spirit of the whip hand.
> It is the spirit that says, "You have no right to use Bitkeeper, only
> temporary privileges that we can revoke.  Be grateful that we allow
> you to use Bitkeeper.  Be grateful, and don't do anything we dislike,
> or we may revoke those privileges."  It is the spirit of proprietary
> software.  Every non-free license is designed to control the users
> more or less.  Outrage at this spirit is the reason for the free
> software movement.  (By contrast, the open source movement prefers to
> play down this same outrage.)
> 
> If the latest outrage brings the spirit of the non-free Bitkeeper
> license into clear view, perhaps that will be enough to convince the
> developers of Linux to stop using Bitkeeper for Linux development.
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Kristian Koehntopp]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 05:18:40PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 3) If you had built a decent system instead of sitting around and whining,
>    we could be doing something else instead of sitting around listening 
>    to your whining.

Larry, rest assured that exactly this is happinging right now
all over the world. You are not feeling the backlash now,
because it takes time, but it will happen, and you made pretty
much sure of that. 

You are pulling a Qt. By changing the license to BK to
discourage development of BK alternatives you made sure that
Subversion and other projects get plenty of new and highly
motivated developers - you actually encouraged the development
of BK alternatives just like the non-free license of Qt as the
foundation of KDE spawned the Gnome project.

The clock just started ticking and when we reevaluate this
discussion in one or two years time, the complete strategic
stupidity of this particular license change from BKs POV view
will be evident.

Kristian

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Tim Hockin]

> The clock just started ticking and when we reevaluate this
> discussion in one or two years time, the complete strategic
> stupidity of this particular license change from BKs POV view
> will be evident.

...and I would have gotten away with it, too, if not for you meddling kids
and that pesky dog of yours!

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Henning P. Schmiedehausen]

Kristian Koehntopp <kris@koehntopp.de> writes:

>You are pulling a Qt. By changing the license to BK to
>discourage development of BK alternatives you made sure that
>Subversion and other projects get plenty of new and highly
>motivated developers - you actually encouraged the development
>of BK alternatives just like the non-free license of Qt as the
>foundation of KDE spawned the Gnome project.

No. SCM simply isn't sexy enough to keep people interested. (See:
"Mozilla"). Even Gnome didn't invent its own Qt. They used already
existing Gtk.

Larry is completely right here and his business model works find for
such a piece of vertical software like SCM.

	Regards
		Henning

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen       -- Geschaeftsfuehrer
INTERMETA - Gesellschaft fuer Mehrwertdienste mbH     hps@intermeta.de

Am Schwabachgrund 22  Fon.: 09131 / 50654-0   info@intermeta.de
D-91054 Buckenhof     Fax.: 09131 / 50654-20   

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Henning P. Schmiedehausen]

Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> writes:

>Our position:

>1) No free licenses for our competition, they can buy them if they like.

free beer, not free speech, right? :-)

	Regards
		Henning

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen       -- Geschaeftsfuehrer
INTERMETA - Gesellschaft fuer Mehrwertdienste mbH     hps@intermeta.de

Am Schwabachgrund 22  Fon.: 09131 / 50654-0   info@intermeta.de
D-91054 Buckenhof     Fax.: 09131 / 50654-20   

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2002 at 06:48:22PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
> If the latest outrage brings the spirit of the non-free Bitkeeper
> license into clear view, perhaps that will be enough to convince the
> developers of Linux to stop using Bitkeeper for Linux development.

It's still linuxand not GNU/Linux, so I'd suugest you troll with your
advice on some FSF list.

Re: Bitkeeper outragem, old and new

[Jeff Garzik]

Richard,

By this point, BitKeeper users will continue to be BitKeeper users and 
BitKeeper haters will continue to be BitKeeper haters.  No one's mind is 
changing about BK these days -- either they like it or they don't.  The 
debate has reached the level of emacs vs. vi, pro/anti-abortion, gun 
control, <insert favorite political issue here>.

No one's mind is being changed, there's just a lot of energy wasted on 
pointless ranting.

Thus, you should have seen even before hitting 'Send' that your message 
was nothing but a lot of hot air, slashdot fodder and a troll.  Would it 
not be logically more productive to direct FSF efforts instead towards 
funding Arch or SubVersion development?

	Jeff, a humble BitKeeper user and kernel developer