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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 19:14 UTC (Sun) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998)In reply to: An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) by lm Parent article: An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet)
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.
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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.
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