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An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet)An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet)Posted Sep 26, 2004 15:03 UTC (Sun) by lm (guest, #6402)In reply to: An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) by hppnq Parent article: An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet)
Rather than respond to all of your comments, which would just fan the flames, let's try this.
It's easy for you to tell us we have done the wrong thing and perhaps that's all you wish to do. I tend it act in good faith so I tend to believe that some of you are genuine in your dislike for our choices. OK, fair enough. So what should we have done? GPLing it wasn't an answer, BK would be no better than Arch because there is no way to pay for not fun work. Patents probably would have been a better choice for protection but remember that I had a goal of helping Linus, and there was little chance that he would adopt a patented technology.
I tried for years to explain our choices and it always ended up in a flame fest just like this. So you tell me what we should have done and for that matter what we should do today. I'm really interested in seeing what you suggest, believe it or not, all of this fuss is because this is the best way I could find that met all the goals, including the goal of helping Linus.
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An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 26, 2004 15:54 UTC (Sun) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link] I forgot to add that I'm not going to be around today to comment on your suggestions though I will read them later. I'm hanging out in my shop making metal shavings:
This is the last completed project, a restoration of a parks planer:
http://www.bitmover.com/lm/parks/
and this is the current project, getting an old mill working:
http://www.bitmover.com/lm/mill/
and I have to admit that I like working on these old tools one heck of a lot more than arguing the finer points of licensing. It would be nice if you guys came up with a model that (a) made you happy, (b) kept Linus happy, and (c) made us enough money that I could spend a lot of time in the shop and never, ever, ever have a licensing discussion again. Any time any of you want to take over the job of running BitMover you just send in your application, OK?
Protecting BitMover's livelyhood Posted Sep 26, 2004 15:54 UTC (Sun) by Felix.Braun (subscriber, #3032) [Link] Anybody who has followed Linux kernel development for the past couple of years must be convinced that your company has developed a highly capable tool by looking at the evidence provided in the form of the high quality kernel releases (which was probably exactly the effect you intended). Irrespective of your legitimate commercial intentions, the way you chose to promote your product has greatly benefitted the FLOSS community by increasing the kernel maintainers' productivity. You deserve to be applauded for this. Patents probably would have been a better choice for protection but remember that I had a goal of helping Linus, and there was little chance that he would adopt a patented technology. However, it seems to me that you take Linus to be more stupid than he is. Do you really think that he would have rejected a patented technology just because they are EVILTM, but he would tolerate a sales practice that achieves the same effects? If he accepts BitMover's decision not to grant a free license to developers who intend to develop a free alternative, maybe he would not have rejected BK as a tool even if it included patented technology.
"So what should we have done?" Posted Sep 26, 2004 15:55 UTC (Sun) by kevinbsmith (guest, #4778) [Link] Speaking only for myself, and with the benefit of hindsight, I would suggest two actions that may or may not be applicable to the past, present, or future, in this universe or any other:
1. Don't keep changing the license. An unstable (and especially a revokeable) gratis license is scary. The fact that the non-gratis license also seems to be unstable and revokeable (at least in how it is enforced) is really scary. If people find a loophole that you find catastrophic, try to close all similar loopholes once and for all, rather than tightening your grip in a series of small steps. If they find another loophole, it might be better to just leave it open (possibly with a plea based on ethical/moral grounds for people not to use it). Also, realize that your goal of strict control may be incompatible with your desire to have the gratis version used on the Linux kernel.
2. Don't try quite so hard to ride the FLOSS (free/libre open source software) coattails. You have released a gratis product that helps certain open source developers. Big deal--so has Microsoft. That does not make you a patron of FLOSS, so don't expect FLOSS advocates to heap praise upon you. You continue to fight hard against certain other FLOSS projects (arch being an example). Expect to be criticized for that. You are not part of the FLOSS community, so don't expect to be treated as if you were.
It's a very emotional topic, and I appreciate that you are doing your best to run a business. Your abrasive public persona ceratinly doesn't help your cause. Hopefully you already realize that.
I also acknowlege that the kernel has benefitted greatly (at least in the short run) by using BK. I'm still concerned about the long run, however.
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 26, 2004 16:24 UTC (Sun) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] [ Thanks, Larry. Indeed, let's not get into another flame fest. ;-) ]I do believe you are trying to satisfy a number of constraints while solving a difficult problem, and that your intentions are good. Accepting a license, however, means that I cannot trust anything that is not in the license. Any restrictions and rights regarding the software (say, BitKeeper) have to be in there, fair, square, and unambiguously, or I won't accept it. I'm sure companies are even more anal about this than I am, especially the ones that are your (potential) customers. Have you ever considered using the GPL (or similar) for the basic, freely available functionality, and selling vendor added functionality and services to your customers? That way, I think, you get the best of both worlds. I see that it still involves the risk you are afraid of taking now, but I cannot believe that your customers are merely buying a license for the software. Surely you provide lots and lots of additional services? Sell that, and make us all happy. ;-) You wouldn't be the first to choose this path, others are doing it rather succesfully, I think. Even if you concentrate on the actual software development and not so much the accompanying services, you would still do a lot better than your possible competitors, right? (Being the programmer that you are, I mean. ;-) This is a time for new business models, and I respect the one you have chosen, even if I don't think it's the best solution. (By the way, the current changes in business models are not restricted to producers. The way things are going now, the fact that software is Open Source might very well be the reason why consumers will choose to buy it in the first place.)
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 26, 2004 19:14 UTC (Sun) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link] GPLing it wasn't the question in my mind. The problem with your license in my mind is that it plays all these games with who can and can't use the software; there seems to be hidden land mines for all those who don't want to be tied exclusively to BitKeeper forever. A "no reverse engineering" clause is at least user neutral.
And, as someone else said, don't expect us to ever love your non-open-source license, even if it's more reasonable. Your goals and needs aren't ours, and even if we understand why you're doing it, doesn't mean we have to like it. To those of us who consider ourselves part of a free software community, you're an outsider, and will always be so long as you use don't use a Free license.
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 26, 2004 20:30 UTC (Sun) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Why rub his nose in it? You don't like the license, just don't use BitKeeper. Even if I do agree with you on the technical points (I'd rather see BitKeeper get GPLed), it's not up to us, and coming down on Larry won't help the discussion. ;-)Not everything is black and white -- and it's certainly not "us against them" here --, and though I think Bitmover's behaviour is likely to scare away customers (because of the apparent potential customer screening and reverse engineering obscurity), it is still their decision, up to some legal point. Really, let's not start flaming each other to smithereens here.
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 27, 2004 3:41 UTC (Mon) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link] Not every discussion is a flame. He asked for suggestions, he got suggestions. If he doesn't want to hear comments about his decisions in this matter, he's welcome to avoid discussion groups where it's being discussed.
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 27, 2004 10:40 UTC (Mon) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Telling people off because they do not do exactly what you would like them to do is hardly a discussion. ;-)Relax. Larry merely responded to a comment that involved him, he didn't ask for your opinion on his position in the Open Source community. If you disagree with him (and you've got plenty of reasons to do so), just stick to the facts. It might just be that he has contributed more to Open Source than you.
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 27, 2004 15:54 UTC (Mon) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link] If telling people off because they don't do exactly what you want is hardly a discussion, what exactly are you doing? I've never told him what to do; I've merely explained my viewpoint. Larry has complained about people taking advantage of their freedoms; that could be construed as "did not do exactly as he would like them to". Why is it that you don't respond to him?
It's not about who has contributed more to Open Source (aka the dick length war). I respect what he's done in the past, but he's not a member of the community as long as he's wearing the BitKeeper hat. There are many free software programmers who also write proprietary software, they just don't claim that the free software community should respect them for that.
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 27, 2004 16:34 UTC (Mon) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Again, relax please. Take the time to read the comments. If I didn't make myself clear, please let me know and I'll try to express myself better, okay? But don't twist my (or someone else's) words or insinuate something that has never been said -- I won't respond to that.What I am trying to get through to you, is that the Open Source community is more than just a bunch of people who release software under the GPL. There are very valid contributions one can make, that do not directly involve developing free software: allowing people to use your hardware, bandwidth, time, intelligence, yes even your proprietary software, in order to further the development of Open Source. At least, that's the way I see it. You are free to have your own opinion. But even by the narrowest of definitions, I would consider Larry part of the Open Source community, because of past contributions and his current involvement; I would even consider BitKeeper to be part of its infrastructure, if only because lots of kernel developers use it to develop one of Open Source's flagships. (There are many more Open Source projects that use it though.) Mind you: you may not like BitKeeper's part in Open Source development, but it is a fact. So, while you are very much entitled to disagree with me on anything you like, I found the last paragraph your top comment extremely rude, unnecessary and not at all representative of any community I would like to think I am part of. I've tried to tell you that in, I think, quite a reasonable way. Now we can argue at length about who said what and how it is to be interpreted, but we'd be boring the pants off of every other visitor of this page. I could also post the links to my direct responses to Larry on this very page, but that would be silly, right?
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 29, 2004 2:17 UTC (Wed) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link] The free software community is a collection of people who work on free software, by whatever means. People who actively discourage other people from working on free software aren't part of that community. It's not good behavior for a member of that community to encourage the use of free software, either. I realize there's more than one definition of the community, but that's part of mine.
I suggest you follow your own advice. You use smileys to hide your attacks; they don't help. I read your comments, and insinuating that I don't is rude. If you want me to read your comments in a friendly light, I suggest you give me the same courtesy.
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 29, 2004 5:29 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Oh well. ;-)
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 27, 2004 11:32 UTC (Mon) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] One point to bear in mind.
Larry has said, right from the get-go, that the only thing he was opposed to was someone using BitKeeper to "build a better BitKeeper". This appears to be a perfect case of exactly that scenario.
While I'm concerned about the "we won't even sell you a licence" aspect, a scenario like this should have been forseen because Larry has been saying this sort of thing for ever. BitKeeper has a lot of "trade secrets" and other stuff in it that Larry wants to protect. Can you blame him for not wanting people to lift that and put it into "Free" version-control systems.
And as he has said in the past, the trouble with GPL'ing it is that it would cut off a large chunk of his revenue. Without that revenue, he couldn't afford to pay people to work on it. And without a paid development staff, new development would hit a brick wall - I know - I'm trying to build a Free clone of an existing system, and without time (which needs money) progress is horribly slow :-(
Cheers,
An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) Posted Sep 27, 2004 12:43 UTC (Mon) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Exactly.The interesting thing, of course, is that Larry's problem is usually solved by patenting the invention. If the patent system hadn't been so horribly abused, this could have been a good, pragmatic -- but not perfect -- solution to the problem. So let's consider the chances of someone building a "better BitKeeper" with patents out of the way. First, the scenario in which BitKeeper is released under the GPL. The way I see it, all Open Source developers who merely care about a SCM system would probably contribute to it, rather than taking the source and cloning it, or using vital parts of it in a new system. Really, most people have got better things to do than to write another major piece of software. Apart from that, it is not that simple to rip off an Open Source project. Why doesn't Hans Reiser fork the Linux kernel and be done with the constant hassle over ReiserFS? Because it just would not work. The Linux kernel has plenty of momentum, and that is without any corporate backing. The pure power of Linux is *exactly* the fact that the development process involves many, many people contributing to it (partly because of BitKeeper ;-). Given the current state of affairs in the SCM world, BitKeeper would not have a lot of trouble attracting committed, enthusiastic community of developers and users. That leaves the people who have got the intention and the means to grab BitKeeper, slap the name BitSneaker on it and sell it as if it were their own. Quite possibly the intention is there, but are the means too? Because BitKeeper is released under the GPL in this scenario, BitSneaker would have to be Open Source too -- so at least the competition would be fair in that respect. But as long as BitKeeper is backed by enough Open Source developers, the BitSneaker project is doomed: BitKeeper will continue to become better and better and therefore alone more interesting to customers. The second scenario is, of course, the one where BitKeeper is released under a closed license. Ignore the fact that people can use it free of charge -- Bitmover has made sure that anyone with an interest in SCM systems can never contribute anything to BitKeeper. Now, all the burden of developing it is on Bitmover's shoulders. There are plenty of developers with a need for a good SCM system, but they cannot use BitKeeper. Inevitably, this problem will be solved by those people, be it by contributing to arch, cvs or starting from scratch. It may take a couple of years, but they will get there. At that point, BitKeeper has an Open Source competitor for sure. People were laughting at OpenOffice two or three years ago, and now we see Microsoft releasing the code to Office to selected parties. Apart from the Open Source developers, who just want a working SCM system, we still have those who might have the intention of making money off of BitKeeper technology. The fact that the license says "Thou shalt not poke" will not stop them from trying to see how BitKeeper ticks, and it will probably not hold in court anyway (IANAL ;-) if there is no evidence of line-by-line copying and something like a patent that protects BitKeeper's internals. It will, of course, be more difficult to extract the interesting bits from BitKeeper, but it will not be impossible. Even worse, competitors might get away with an inferior product that looks like it does the same thing (think VHS versus Betamax) because no one will be able to look at the internals of both programs. That's a long story, and it's not even complete. ;-) Of course it is biased, but in a fair way, I would hope -- the bias is away from common notions, like the one that Open Source is easy to rip off and closed source is not.
To Larry Posted Sep 27, 2004 5:15 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] What you did was OK, as long as you realize it won't be forever. You made some money, and are making some money, but since you don't have patent protection it's temporary; at some point, the free software replacements will be good enough. If you spout off at the mouth at those ungrateful wretches cloning your code, you'll only alienate people; if you attempt to slow down cloning efforts by trying to withhold licensing from whole organizations because they have one person who's helping out with arch, or monotone, or whatever, you'll just dry up sales faster.You can still compete, for a while, based on better services and support, while keeping your app proprietary. But you need to recognize that at some point your existing revenue stream is going to go away. If, by then, you have other products and services in the pipeline, or new capabilities in BK others can't match, you'll make it, otherwise you won't. But your righteousness just makes you look bad. Making BK available to Linus wasn't charity, it was marketing, and brilliant marketing at that. The publicity you've received is more valuable than if you spent 100% of your revenue on advertising; it is the main reason why your paying customers know who you are. Because of this, the Linux kernel developers and users are not in your moral debt. Also, because of this, getting into bitter arguments with free software developers counteracts the logic of helping out Linus in the first place: you're trying to get good publicity for your product. The last thing I'd want to recommend to my boss is a supplier who appears to always be on the verge of suing his customers. If I were in your position, I'd be quieter and less defensive. If people beat you up for not being DFSG-free, you can simply say that you respect their choice not to use your software; it's not worth arguing. Same if they beat up Linus for using your stuff; you don't need to fight that one. Write a FAQ and point people to it when they make the same point again and again.
To Larry Posted Sep 27, 2004 6:11 UTC (Mon) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] You make some good points, Joe, though I think Larry really has been looking for a solution that would allow him to both help Linus (for whatever reasons, obviously marketing was one of them) and make a lot of money out of his product. Righteousness doesn't have to enter the picture, we all try to look like we're right. ;-)(Better stick to the facts. One of those is, that Larry has made several contributions to Open Source. Someone else made the observation that Larry is not a part of the Free Software community because of the BitKeeper license -- so much for righteousness. ;-)
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