Mutual benefit, painful parting, false martyrdom

Mutual benefit, painful parting, false martyrdom

Posted Apr 7, 2005 7:31 UTC (Thu) by jwb (subscriber, #15467)
In reply to: Mutual benefit, painful parting, false martyrdom by jasone
Parent article: The kernel and BitKeeper part ways

I would tend to agree with everything you wrote, and go further. Any measure of an exchange between a commercial entity and free software development communities which has money as its main focus is plainly fatuous. The free/open software phenomenon is predicated on the idea that the release of the software maximizes the benefit to everybody, or at least a very large group of people. Anyone who contributes does so because they expect to reap that benefit.

Then for anyone to come along, like McVoy, and make themselves a martyr by saying that the Linux community has taken their vast charity stabbed them in the back is ridiculous. McVoy is a rational actor and he made his decision that he was going to contribute BitKeeper and he would reap the benefit of good publicity and, more indirectly, a better Linux kernel. Think how ridiculous it would be if someone like (choosing randomly) Vixie was to come along and pull the plug on kernel.org, because someone at OSDL was starting up a competing internetworking business, and cry about how he tried to be charitable but look what those two-faced Linux people went and did? That would be absurd, and the present situation is equally absurd.

I'm really a disinterested observer on this topic, since I'm not involved in kernel development, or SCM development. But you can't ignore the shamelessness on display here. I always perceived that the clause in the BK license was intended as an escape for BitMover, and that, given the nature of hackers and hacking, its invocation was inevitable. Now that McVoy has used his escape, and presumably has got what he wanted from his contribution, he shouldn't be acting like the last three years were a unidirectional act of charity.

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