Who made BK go closed/proprietary?

Posted Apr 11, 2005 23:28 UTC (Mon) by hppnq (subscriber, #14462) [Link]

It amazes me that, after more than six years of intensive debate about all aspects of BitKeeper, people are apparently still shocked and outraged at how things have turned out. Worse, people seem to have been ignoring the quite obvious signs -- Larry's repeated statements about reverse engineering, the BitKeeper license and how it has changed, Linus' remarks about using BitKeeper, and so on and so forth -- right up until this very day.

Basically it is really as simple as this: no-one is or has been forced to accept the BitKeeper license and use the software. This applies to all BitKeeper users, by the way, Open Source developers and companies alike.

Of course, in practice, things are a bit more complicated. Linus Torvalds using BitKeeper is not the same as Joe Random Hacker using BitKeeper. BitMover may have been applying excessive pressure on companies or individuals with respect to what they -- BitMover -- regard as improper use of their software. And while kernel hackers have always had the option to not use BitKeeper, and victims of BitKeeper's aggressive license enforcement policy have always had the opportunity to seek legal counsil, in practice these things are complicated by other factors: peer pressure or lack of financial means to take BitKeeper to court, respectively, to name a few.

The thing is: all of this is irrelevant now, like it always has been. If you didn't see this turn of events as a possible outcome from the very start, you are incredible naive, or you haven't been taking the signs seriously.

It is irrelevant whether BitKeeper was written especially for Linus, or whether BitMover produced a commercial tool making clever use of the high profile gained by hosting the Linux kernel, or whether the BitKeeper license changes were morally just, and whether Larry's efforts to prevent reverse engineering would hold their own in court.

People who keep insinuating that Linus was somehow tricked into using BitKeeper, and that BitMover has now shown its real face as a deceiving company, are either extremely naive or displaying a distorted view of the actual events for some other reasons (I guess a lot of the current anger originates in disappointment, which is understandable).

Of course BitMover was thrilled that Linus decided to use BitKeeper. Of course Larry tried to help Linus by listening to him and adjusting BitKeeper to the needs of Linux kernel development. Of course those involved have made mistakes in the whole process. Of course this has always been a suboptimal marriage between a commercial product and Open Source: all the key players have said nothing else and all the evidence is out there, go read LKML and LWN for a starter.

Suggesting otherwise is a gross injustice and an insult to both Linus, Larry and their respective intellects. It also makes you look foolish. It demonstrates that you can't or don't want to see the difference between actual events and the interpretations that inevitably pop up as a result of them, or that you are a member of the innuendo or spin doctor faction. Or it could just mean that you have found an easy way to get back at Larry.

This doesn't mean that it is impossible that indeed, there was a Master Plan of ripping of Open Source, or that Linus was foolish to start using BitKeeper. But if this whole sad story breathes one thing, it is "compromise". If you can't see that, you'd better keep your uninformed opinions to yourself. And if you do know better, show us the evidence that sustains it.