Linus on the BK withdrawal [LWN.net]

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 19:13 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
In reply to: Linus on the BK withdrawal by hppnq
Parent article: Linus on the BK withdrawal

I think convincing Linus to start using an SCM and then allowing a situation to occur in which Linus feels compelled to stop using BitKeeper is likely to throw a lot more support behind an open-source replacement. I wouldn't be surprised if Linus himself makes Monotone (or a new system of his own) do everything that he needed BitKeeper to do, much like he did with sparse. If Larry had left things at some previous state, an open-source SCM just wouldn't be nearly as interesting to work on.

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Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 19:47 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link]

And still BitMover is on the map as a technology leader. (Who isn't, eh? ;-) The fact that there might be an Open Source alternative for BitKeeper in the near future -- which is a quite optimistic view -- doesn't change anything about that.

Joe's interpretation of how things went is the only one I've read so far that explains most of the *facts* without adding too much haphazard guesswork. Still, I think there is room for a bit more nuance: I do think that Larry has been genuinely wanting to help Linus out all along. Just not, literally, at all costs. Combine that with the fact that of course BitMover != Larry.

(Hey, we could always ask him, no? ;-)

Anyway, I am not even really interested in this whole affair. I do care about how we're going to continue from here. And I'm quite afraid that Linus won't be that motivated to start writing SCM software himself -- sparse is an entirely different beast. But who knows.

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 20:14 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

I do think that Larry honestly wanted to solve the SCM problem, and honestly wanted to have a viable strategy for funding the research, which wasn't really getting done (or not getting done sufficiently effectively). And he honestly wanted to help Linus and Linux development, and it seems like he has done that. And I think he doesn't want BitMover to go out of business and put the people who have done a lot of great work on the problem out of work.

I just think that he's making some strategic errors on the business side in how he's going about it. I think he could probably get better PR results out of the whole thing, more money to work on it, and be more beneficial to the community if the licensing was simply such that it didn't generate so much flaming and wasn't chasing off Linus.

I wouldn't count Linus out on doing the SCM himself; sparse was completely different from anything else he'd done when he did it, too.

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 20:57 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link]

Well, I think the comment Linus made at the end of his post to LKML is significant: the monotone developers are aware of his problems.

(I do share your observation up to some point, but again, "Larry" is not "BitMover", and apparently there are technical "issues" that would prevent Linus to keep using BitKeeper as well, so at least from one point of view this is not solely a question of "business strategy".)