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The BitKeeper non-compete clauseThe BitKeeper non-compete clausePosted Oct 10, 2002 1:58 UTC (Thu) by lordsutch (guest, #53)Parent article: The BitKeeper non-compete clause I think this episode underlines the need for a truly free SCM system that Linus is comfortable with using. The developers of arch, Subversion and other advanced SCM systems need support to make that happen. While I respect that Larry has a business to run, and perhaps even agree that GPL-licensed software is hardly a fountain of innovation, as opposed to duplication, he's the one who chose to build up his business by portraying himself as a friend of free software, as embodied in the Linux kernel. He shouldn't be surprised that when he publicly goes after important members of the developer community (BenC is not only a 1394 developer and Subversion hacker; he's a former Debian Project Leader too) it's gonna get him bad publicity.
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Arch Posted Oct 10, 2002 3:53 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] I'm afraid that the originator of "arch", Tom Lord, is unable to work on it any longer due to personal issues. So don't count on it. I'm disappointed, I did all I could to help, it didn't work. I know that there were other people working on it, and there was at least one full rewrite in progress (to Perl), but I'm not currently in touch with any of the other developers. I'd like to hear from them. Email to bruce@perens.com please .Bruce
Arch Posted Oct 10, 2002 16:21 UTC (Thu) by lordsutch (guest, #53) [Link] I believe Walter Landry is one of the guys working on arch at the moment (he's posted some about it on debian-devel); try wlandry -at- ucsd.edu.
It's only going to get worse Posted Oct 10, 2002 4:53 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Sorry if this ends up a duplicate. My original posting on this topic seems to have gotten lost.Don't think the situation will remain the same. Larry's business barely makes payroll. He's not getting more investment. He knows that it would take a very little push to get him to the point that he can't make payroll. Subversion is going to give that push. Especially since anger is a great motivator in the free software community, and now there are a lot of angry people who want subversion to do just that. What Larry is doing with the pernicious license terms is attempting to hold off the inevitable for a little longer. But Bitmover will be sold or will have a new investor who changes the management. The best scenario is that the new investor is "one of us" and takes the thing free. But that's not the likely scenario - the likely one is that we lose the current free beer rights. We'd better make sure that subversion is ready for Linus (or whoever) to use, because a day will dawn when we suddenly need it. Bruce
It's only going to get worse Posted Oct 10, 2002 16:52 UTC (Thu) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link] > Larry's business barely makes payroll.We have 3 months of payroll in cash today. We have 5 months of payroll I don't know kind of smoke you're crackin but we're nowhere near being I do not hate to burst your bubble at all, Bruce, since you are spreading 1 down, 10000 to go :)
It's only going to get worse Posted Oct 21, 2002 21:33 UTC (Mon) by wolfrider (guest, #3105) [Link] Larry, I respect your work and your efforts to help out Linus et al.I can tell that you are sincerely trying to be a "good guy" and then you get flamed for your efforts by ppl who don't know any better. Don't let the bastards grind ya down. --Wolfrider
Why I said that you had trouble making payroll Posted Jan 27, 2003 21:27 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Larry,
You are correct that I know nothing about your business internals...
Regarding your propensity to threaten lawsuits, I only remember our Thanks From lm@bitmover.com Sat Aug 10 17:57:35 2002 Return-Path: ⟨lm@bitmover.com&rang Delivered-To: bruce@perens.com Received: from bitmover.com (bitmover.com [192.132.92.2]) by perens.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A9DD228A0 for ⟨bruce@perens.com⟩ Sat, 10 Aug 2002 17:57:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from work.bitmover.com (work.bitmover.com [10.3.9.1]) by bitmover.com (8.11.6/8.11.2) with ESMTP id g7B0vRE27017; Sat, 10 Aug 2002 17:57:27 -0700 Received: from work.bitmover.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by work.bitmover.com (8.12.4/8.9.3) with ESMTP id g7B0vROe004201; Sat, 10 Aug 2002 17:57:27 -0700 Received: (from lm@localhost) by work.bitmover.com (8.12.4/8.12.4/Submit) id g7B0vQDq004199; Sat, 10 Aug 2002 17:57:26 -0700 Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 17:57:26 -0700 From: Larry McVoy ⟨lm@bitmover.com&rang To: Tom Lord ⟨lord@regexps.com&rang Cc: lm@bitmover.com, lord@morrowfield.regexps.com, arch-dev@regexps.com, ghudson@MIT.EDU, dev@subversion.tigris.org, tiemann@redhat.com, poole@affero.com, bruce@perens.com, dev@bitmover.com Subject: Re: what proofs look like Message-ID: ⟨20020810175726.A2468@work.bitmover.com&rang Mail-Followup-To: Larry McVoy ⟨lm@work.bitmover.com&rang, Tom Lord ⟨lord@regexps.com&rang, lm@bitmover.com, lord@morrowfield.regexps.com, arch-dev@regexps.com, ghudson@MIT.EDU, dev@subversion.tigris.org, tiemann@redhat.com, poole@affero.com, bruce@perens.com, dev@work.bitmover.com References: ⟨58C671173DB6174A93E9ED88DCB0883D04760B50@red-msg-07.redmond.corp.microsoft.com&rang ⟨200208101855.LAA09281@morrowfield.regexps.com&rang ⟨20020810115423.A2031@work.bitmover.com&rang ⟨200208101923.MAA09649@morrowfield.regexps.com&rang Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i In-Reply-To: ⟨200208101923.MAA09649@morrowfield.regexps.com⟩ from lord@regexps.com on Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 12:23:10PM -0700 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.1 required=5.0 tests=IN_REP_TO,FOR_FREE,US_DOLLARS_2 version=2.31 X-Spam-Level: Status: O On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 12:23:10PM -0700, Tom Lord wrote: &rang I had hoped to reply to your earlier note in as positive and &rang constructive a mode as possible, to get past the difficult &rang garbage, and into the space of making improvements of mutual &rang benefit. &rang &rang Do you think that's possible? No. Please take me off the CC list of this thread. As gently as possible, with no ill will intended, I want you to hear that I can't help you. I don't have the extra money that you need and I doubt that anyone else does. [ Delete now if you don't want to know why we didn't take Tom's path ] It's perhaps worth pointing out that I've been running a company doing SCM type stuff for 5 years. We own our IP and we use legal means to force people to pay us for it. And we have a good product, many people think it is better than clearcase. Even with all that, the last 5 years have been a non-stop struggle to scrap together payroll every 2 weeks. It's a constant source of stress, there are houses, families, kids, all of whom depend on me finding the money to keep things going. It's incredibly hard. My health sucks as a result of doing this, you have no idea of the toll it has taken. And the part that you just can't seem to hear is that there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that we would have made 1/100th of the money we have made if we gave away our software for free. And there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that we would have made 1/100th of the money we have made even if we had all the good parts of arch, BK, subversion, and clearcase put together in a GPLed package. The market simply will not pay for obscure products unless they have to do so. You may have a different opinion but what you are finding out is that your opinion is wrong and that's a painful process. I'm sorry for you, I tried to warn you but it's understandable that you didn't listen, we don't produce anything remotely approximating free software so we're automatically in the "evil corporate" camp. What you didn't get is that I'm you. I have the same ideals, the same goals, the same dedication, the same drive to help the world. I can just hear you saying "if that's true then BitKeeper would be GPLed, you self serving bastard". Not so. My goal was, is, and will remain a goal of providing support for Linus and Linux. The difference between me and you is that I have realized what it really costs to produce a decent SCM system and then continue to support and evolve it. It's a HUGE cost. Given that my goal was to help Linus and that I believed that he needed a production quality system, my choices were to get on the dot com wagon and get VC and/or make it commercial. Otherwise it was never going to get finished. GPL was not an option. I choose not to go the VC route because the VC guys don't share my goals. Their only goal is to make more money. Which means as soon as they thought that giving BK away to the open source crowd didn't help them make more money, they'd put a stop to that. So I passed on that, turned down $6M from a top 3 VC firm, just wasn't worth the risk. We went it alone, but we had to make it a for profit concern or we'd never have gotten to where we are. And we're nowhere near done. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you saying "thanks for the BK advertisement" but that's not the point. The point is that the goal of helping out the portion of free software community with difficult SCM problems FORCED us into a corporate model. You can whine all you like about how evil that is, how I've sold out, whatever, but the reality is that you are begging for money so you can get to a 1.0 release and we are shipping a tool that 2000+ Linux kernel developers use world wide. For free. And it has met the goal of helping Linus. BK still sucks, it has tons of problems, but those problems will get solved precisely because we have a business model. You don't. Your business model is charity. That's not going to work. I'd be far more impressed with you if you were demonstrating that I was wrong by showing me how to develop a system that works, in all the corner cases, and is self supporting through a business model that somehow works with an open source product. I'd LOVE to see that. I hate the idea of not shipping source, it pisses me off to no end. But it is a fact of life that if we ship it, people abuse it. And then we go out of business. And then the product doesn't get finished. At any rate, I don't think you are listening to any of this, so just listen to this one thing: please stop mailing me about this. Feel free to flame me a few more times if that makes you feel good but don't expect a response, I've procmailed you into /dev/null. Sorry, but I have work to do and this is too much additional stress. Good luck, I'd love nothing more than to have you show me a business model which proves me completely wrong, but until you do, I don't want to hear about your problems. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm
It's only going to get worse Posted Oct 17, 2002 10:27 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link] If that would happend, I hope we as a community could "buy" BitKeeper (exatcly what was done for Blender). Perhaps that is something that could be appropritate to Bitmover? If the large players could cough up their share of money right away to free Bitkeeper? That would be a great contribution. Come on, it can't be impossible they've wasted more money than that on really lousy projects.
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