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Oh, get a hobbyOh, get a hobbyPosted Jan 31, 2006 1:20 UTC (Tue) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943)In reply to: Oh, get a hobby by lm Parent article: Tridge wins the 2005 Free Software Award Larry wrote: But since I'm here what the hey. I'm sure you'll flame me into next week but don't expect a reply, OK? Larry, there's certainly no call to flame you. That is the last thing from my mind. You and your firm have a fine product that deserves every bit of the success it's been gaining against ClearCase and the like. At the same time, you are publicly impugning the integrity of one of the most thoroughly ethical people most of us know, and basically asking us to take your accusation of illegality on pure faith, since you are unwilling to litigate it (but glad to hurl mud in public that you decline to back up). I'm sorry, but that's neither convincing nor acceptable, and in fact is outright offensive. People think that the reverse engineering of BitKeeper is the same as the reverse engineering of the SMB stuff. That's not at all true. What seems to have happened was Tridge studying BitKeeper's publicly observable behaviour to create an open-source, interoperable client, SourcePuller — which he did. You spent a lot of time decrying it, and calling it unethical. When people question you how on earth Tridge writing an interoperable client from his own efforts could be unethical, you assert that he did it through unlawful means — but then decline to put your money where your mouth is and prove it in court, preferring to float loose charges in public where you don't have to prove them. And meanwhile, you also digress onto non-sequitur justifications about how it's wrongful because your firm provided this-and-that generous benefits to the community. Stipulating those benefits, you have nonetheless ducked the question and conveniently changed the subject. The accusations, given your declining to prove them, do you little credit. Nobody's flaming you, but, again, shame on you for that sort of behaviour, which is no way for the head of a serious business to conduct himself. Rick Moen
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