An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 26, 2004 20:30 UTC (Sun) by hppnq (guest, #14462)
In reply to: An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet) by dvdeug
Parent article: An Interview with Tom Lord of Arch (O'ReillyNet)

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.

(Log in to post comments)

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. ;-)