CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project [LWN.net]

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 7, 2010 22:56 UTC (Tue) by bender.rodriguez (guest, #70008) [Link] (17 responses)

Here, have some money so that we can look more convincing that we love Open Source (don't mention anybody that we love Open Source as long as it is developed only on our platfrom but csiiii, be quiet...)

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 7, 2010 23:51 UTC (Tue) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (16 responses)

I share your sentiment, but actually the facts don't quite fit it. They are donating money to Hg, which is cross-platform. That money will benefit users of Hg everywhere, not just Windows. So actually this is a (rare) positive act from Microsoft.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 0:34 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (2 responses)

Seconded. More like this, MSFT. Also, fix your damn ASL compiler already.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 1:00 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

I'd be amazed if you can find a genuine functional issue caused by Microsoft's ASL compiler being fairly lax when it comes to the spec. What issues we still have are usually due to vendors depending on implementation details rather than the spec, and even the Intel ASL compiler won't save you from that.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 1:41 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

Alright. I bow to your superior knowledge and experience in this matter.

Vendors: Fix your damn code already! :)

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 12:48 UTC (Wed) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link] (12 responses)

There is always a "boy who cried Wolf" problem with such things though. Yes, on the face of it, $25,000 to a project with no visible strings attached is a good thing. But anybody who actually delves into the history of that large corporation would smell more than just a rat at even the best offer. This is what "being evil" and not doing business does to your company's reputation. I can't honestly say that such a reputation is ill-deserved.

However, if on the other hand they are funding third-party companies to sue their own rivals at the same time (previous SCO lawsuits, current Google lawsuits), one should *always* be cautious about their intentions. Someone once asked me why I don't "work for Microsoft or something" - my reasoning was quite clear, you couldn't ever pay me enough. A lot of people I know are equally suspicious and equally as damning of the company because of non-unreasonable reasons.

Some things can be tax write-offs and actually help *save* the company money. Some things can be brought up in court cases as evidence of acts supporting such endeavours even if they just gave the money to a random OpenSource project that they have no intention of using. Some things can be a random bone thrown to try to garner PR from something that is quite literally a drop in the ocean to MS to a project that isn't really competing directly with any of their major offerings. You don't see them putting a few thousands dollars, say, towards Eclipse, or Gnash, or Samba, or any other of a million and one OpenSource projects that they have contact with or use.

MS is a business. Like any other, the bottom line is profit. I hate that it's enshrined in the UK's legal definition of a business that its primary aim must be profit. And MS, as a business, rarely play by the rules or even do what people would consider "fair".

There's nothing wrong with a bit of healthy skepticism.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 13:37 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (11 responses)

You sound like you think a company pursuing profits is a bad thing. It's a fantastic thing and the fact that Microsoft feels sending a quarter of a million dollars to a open source project will help it's bottom line is just about the best possible thing you can ever expect for open source with regards to businesses.

The only bad thing is that Microsoft has the chance to invoke the 'guns' of the government through the patent system and use that to terrorize other projects and companies.

Except for that tidbit it would pretty much be all sunshine and rainbows. Especially if Mercurial could really use that money in any way it seemed fit.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:06 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (6 responses)

> It's a fantastic thing and the fact that Microsoft feels sending a quarter of a million dollars to a open source project [...].

Man, you're off by an order or magnitude.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:29 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (5 responses)

Let me know why it's a bad thing that Microsoft has given Mercurial all that money then.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:49 UTC (Wed) by Alterego (guest, #55989) [Link] (4 responses)

25.000 is not a quarter million.
It is a really small contribution, and you are off by one order of magnitude...

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 15:08 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (3 responses)

Ah, my mistake. I read 250,000 for some reason. Thanks for the correction.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 17:23 UTC (Wed) by caitlinbestler (guest, #32532) [Link] (2 responses)

Probably because $250,000 is what a *real* contribution would have been.

Face it, at this amount this is nothing but a cheap ad.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 17:41 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (1 responses)

Meh. It puts them in the highest-tier position (http://mercurial.selenic.com/sponsors/) like GOOG and Fog Creek. The same arguments can be presented there.

Perhaps the biggest / only difference is the lack of (widely-circulated?) press release. I'm not seeing a press release from GOOG; perhaps I'm just missing it.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 9, 2010 10:47 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link]

Meh. It puts them in the highest-tier position (http://mercurial.selenic.com/sponsors/) like GOOG and Fog Creek. The same arguments can be presented there.

It's nice to have companies donate money to worthy causes, but from my experience with seeing how hard it can be to attract conference sponsorship, I imagine that this level of contribution is the smallest a reasonably large company can give without the budgeting being a hassle.

For a conference, you'd think that setting sponsorship levels at $10000 and lower would attract lots of sponsors because such money is peanuts to a large corporation, and they get a reasonable amount of good, focused publicity, but it's rather likely that someone in such a corporation whose job it is to throw money around for promotional initiatives or "community encouragement" sees small donations as making more work for them: they'd rather throw down a larger amount and use up their budget more quickly doing less work. And I know of one large company who sponsored a conference and never got round to pay the invoice in the end: that says a lot about the corporate mindset, I think, and the organisers of that conference have shown considerable restraint in not naming and shaming the company in question.

So, it's nice to see a contribution that someone in Microsoft thought was worth their while making, but the observation about maximising goodwill is completely valid, too. They, Google and Fog Creek are all doing good business around Mercurial.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:25 UTC (Wed) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link] (3 responses)

A company pursuing profits isn't a bad thing - as long as it's not the *only* thing. I don't expect any serious business to make a loss or "break-even", I expect them to make profit. My businesses did.

I'm just saying that it shouldn't be their *primary* aim, like most companies regard it. Surely your primary aim is to actually do your business and do it effectively and well? Customer service probably comes below that and above profit too. Otherwise you get no end of compromises made in the name of profit-increase (no new pencil for you until you provide the worn-down stub of your previous pencil!).

And it was $25,000 - which is less than half of one fairly-decent salary for a programmer which is what the donations were publicly advertised they would be going towards. The money is good - spend it, of course, and wisely and on something that will push the project forward (I don't use Mercurial so I really don't care about that side).

But the question has to be asked "Why?". If, say, the FSF, or the Linux Foundation donated $250 to a closed-source tool, you would have to be equally as suspicious. That's still probably orders-of-magnitude out in its equivalence to Microsoft spending $25,000, and without the previous reputation that Microsoft has to tar it. And yet you'd STILL get suspicious about a project deciding to donate money to something that they will ultimately see no benefit from, and which kinda goes against everything that their public announcements, mission statements and even press releases from their top brass have been saying for years.

Why does a company go overnight from "GPL is a cancer" to supporting a GPL-based project that's *NOTHING* to do with them?

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:55 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

> A company pursuing profits isn't a bad thing - as long as it's not the *only* thing.

As long as you take external coercion out of the picture and the profits are gained for voluntary exchange then profits are a result of providing value and goods to your customer better and more efficiently then otherwise is possible if somebody else did it. That is your increasing your wealth by increasing the wealth of society at whole so that it's a net gain for everybody.

In that case then pursuing profits in themselves are a virtue.

Remember: Just as long as it's voluntary. As long as people are free to choose you or your competitors then they will choose to spend the money on what business maximizes their own interest. That is spending money on your business increases their own wealth as a result.

> I'm just saying that it shouldn't be their *primary* aim, like most companies regard it. Surely your primary aim is to actually do your business and do it effectively and well?

How can you remain in business by doing a worse job then your competitors?

> Customer service probably comes below that and above profit too. Otherwise you get no end of compromises made in the name of profit-increase (no new pencil for you until you provide the worn-down stub of your previous pencil!).

I don't really understand your example.

If I have to spend time fumbling around with a stub of a pencil or spend my time looking for a lost good pencil instead of doing my job then profits of my employer will suffer because they will be spending money on me doing something other then what makes them money. Therefore in attempt to pursue profits it's important for them to make sure that I have the proper tools to get my job done in a efficient manner.

If I am a customer of a pencil maker and they have a attitude were I need to provide them remnants of my old pencil before they will sell me a new one at exorbitant prices then I'll just buy a pencil from a different company or use a pen. Anybody wanting to sell pencils to people need to make sure that they do it in a way that benefits their customers and pleases them. :)

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 23:44 UTC (Wed) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link]

>As long as you take external coercion out of the picture and the profits are gained for voluntary exchange then profits are a result of providing value and goods to your customer better and more efficiently then otherwise is possible if somebody else did it. That is your increasing your wealth by increasing the wealth of society at whole so that it's a net gain for everybody.

There is an hidden assumptions: that such transaction are between two and only two parties . that these parties are fully informed, and are free (you did mentioned that one, I just re-assert it for completeness).

In real life such transactions are rare.

As soon as Ads are in play for instance, you have at least 3 parties in each transaction. the 'service' provider, the end-user and the Advertiser (in practice there is a Ad broker, an ad agency and a company that pay for the add, all of which are different goals, none of these goals being the interest of the end-user).

For exmaple:
- Microsoft pay Verizon to force Bing upon Verizon's customers.
- Apple block ip-phone Apps
- NBC acquire a monopoly on the Olympic and MS pay them to force SilverLight on the masses.
- The poster child of such dysfunctional scheme being the US health care system: Employees Are customers of Doctors. Doctors are paid by Insurance, Insurance cater to employer, and employer employ employee. Result the employee is twice remove from the insurance, and the later rightfully consider the employee as a burden, not a customer.

>I'll just buy a pencil from a different company or use a pen. Anybody wanting to sell pencils to people need to make sure that they do it in a way that benefits their customers and pleases them. :)

But in real-life the party that buy the pencil and the party that use it are two distinct entities and most of the time have competing goals.
and that is exactly how 'you can remain in business by doing a worse job than your competitor'. Because 'worse' here is being assess from the point of view of the pencil user, not the 'pencil procurement officer' point of view.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 10, 2010 7:54 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

As long as you take external coercion out of the picture and the profits are gained for voluntary exchange then profits are a result of providing value and goods to your customer better and more efficiently then otherwise is possible if somebody else did it. That is your increasing your wealth by increasing the wealth of society at whole so that it's a net gain for everybody.
In that case then pursuing profits in themselves are a virtue.

I'm afraid that Adam Smith disagrees with you. There are many, many situations which can apply which can prevent this rosy picture from coming true, and normally many of them apply at once. You need a lot more than just 'no external coercion'. One trivial additional condition, for instance: monopolies and quasi-monopolies. Note that due to network effects computing is ridiculously monopoly-prone. I doubt the conditions you suggest have applied to the computing market for even one single day in its entire history.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 0:37 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (1 responses)

CodePlex.com is MSFT's SourceForge-wannabe, and is apparently the entity doing the donation.

CodePlex.org is the CodePlex Foundation, which is pretty much totally distinct. I think I read about this somewhere you might find familiar...

While the new foundation is not strictly related to CodePlex.comMicrosoft's SourceForge-like repository for open source codethey share the name from the "CodePlex brand", as well as supporting the "same mission", according the foundation's FAQ.

(http://lwn.net/Articles/352831/)

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 16:50 UTC (Wed) by stephenrwalli (guest, #70030) [Link]

Yes -- I can confirm as the CodePlex Foundation technical director that it wasn't us giving money to Mercurial. We're a non-profit. We are a separate organization. This was definitely the Microsoft forge site, codeplex.com, donating to the project. And yes, it's a good thing.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 0:47 UTC (Wed) by donblas (guest, #63860) [Link] (6 responses)

Let's not demonize Microsoft for what can be considered a good act with no strings attached. They do plenty of things that can rightfully earn scorn, this however isn't one of them.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 1:33 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link]

Agree 100%

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 7:10 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (3 responses)

All conduct by/on behalf of any large corporation with a track record of obnoxious behaviour is subject to the "Greeks bearing gifts" caution.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 9:43 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

It's not like they are buying off Mercurial with this donation. Judging by the page http://mercurial.selenic.com/sponsors/ the $25 000 puts them in the same league as Google and Fog Creek Software as donors.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 13:29 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link] (1 responses)

Any large corporation already has a track record of obnoxious behaviour, be it IBM, Oracle/Sun, or any other alledged friend of open source software.

I'm glad that mercurial is licensed gplv2+, which would nip many cases of nefarious intent in the bud. It's a good license for taking gifts and donations at face value, even if they come from Baby Mulching Machinery Inc.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 9, 2010 23:07 UTC (Thu) by dag- (guest, #30207) [Link]

What, they are funding viral licensed software ?

Why aren't there any big headlines now ?

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 11:42 UTC (Wed) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link]

Microsoft does not do anything without something attached... even that which seems innocuous has one some where.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 8:57 UTC (Wed) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link] (11 responses)

Keeping up dying project to avoid efficiencies of scale, if everybody uses one VCS?

</flame>

Just kidding ...

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 10:34 UTC (Wed) by cladisch (✭ supporter ✭, #50193) [Link] (10 responses)

They do not have their own DVCS, so it's quite possible that they (intend to) use Mercurial internally.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 10:47 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (guest, #31018) [Link] (5 responses)

Plus they need one that works in MS Windows...

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 12:10 UTC (Wed) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link] (4 responses)

Of course, I don't have any personal experience, but apparently both jgit and http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/ are considered almost useful.

But, if they switch to Mercurial, I know at least about one friend who would be the most happy man in the world (he suffers under TFS).

So, go Microsoft!

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 14:40 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

Msysgit is just a ported version of git. We use it here all the time, works like a charm.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 19:31 UTC (Wed) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link] (1 responses)

One of the advantages of hg is that it can mangle windows and unix line endings so that linux and windows people can work together easily. Does this work for you in git or is it not an issue for your project?

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 19:34 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

It works OK in git. Though we did have some problems when it was not turned on at the beginning.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 9, 2010 13:54 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

Same here. The only real problem is that git-svn is sloooooooow on Windows. Also gitk and git gui are very nice tools that work exactly the same on Linux and Windows.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 11:44 UTC (Wed) by wazoox (subscriber, #69624) [Link] (3 responses)

BTW anything will be a tremendous improvement over SourceSafe.

VSS is only for peasants

Posted Sep 8, 2010 12:03 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

Internally Microsoft uses modified version of Perforce called "Source Depot". VSS is just not capable enough. Perhaps they plan to make Hg capable enough and switch to it - simple self-serving reason, not a deep nefarious plan...

VSS is only for peasants

Posted Sep 8, 2010 12:13 UTC (Wed) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link]

Aren't they using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server ???

VSS is only for peasants

Posted Sep 8, 2010 17:09 UTC (Wed) by Doogie (guest, #59626) [Link]

VSS is unsuitable for any purpose, AFAIAC.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 13:27 UTC (Wed) by tuxmania (guest, #70024) [Link] (13 responses)

I really hope the Mercurial peeps has the courage to switch onto GPLv3. Somehow i imaginge thats not something that will happen now that Microsoft has their fingers in the cookie jar.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 17:35 UTC (Wed) by chad.netzer (subscriber, #4257) [Link]

http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/License#Will_you_relice...

They just re-licensed from GPLv2-only to GPLv2+ this past year, requiring consent from contributors (even I was contacted, and I no longer have a clue what trivial thing I contributed.) :) But anyway, they are now GPLv3 compatible.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 17:56 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (11 responses)

I hope that they have the courage to remain GPLv2 compatible.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 18:42 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (10 responses)

What's the purpose of staying GPLv2-only compatible?

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 21:57 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (2 responses)

Getting funding from Microsoft (Microsoft is actively giving money to project so that they do not move to GPL3).

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 22:24 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (1 responses)

[citation needed]

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 22:39 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

see the many public comments by Linus for one example.

I fully recognize that many people believe that GPLv3 is better, and for their code I believe that they have the right to choose what license they use.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 22:17 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (6 responses)

because a lot of people believe that GPLv2 is a better license for their purposes than GPLv3

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 22:24 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (5 responses)

I am assuming that you're one of "a lot of people."

In what ways is the license better, and what purposes are those?

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 23:27 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (4 responses)

Simply put ...

GPL2 is a pretty simple licence

GPL3 is new, untried, and contains an awful lot of language that shouldn't be there! (That's not a criticism of the people who wrote v3 - it's a criticism of the lunatics who made a rewrite "necessary". A *copyright* licence should not (need to) contain *patent* language :-(

Cheers,
Wol

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 10, 2010 20:38 UTC (Fri) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link]

> A *copyright* licence should not (need to) contain *patent* language :-(
GPLv2 includes patent language too, see sections 6 and 7 and it's a very good thing.
Enjoy your GPLv1 ;)

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 12, 2010 16:52 UTC (Sun) by dark (guest, #8483) [Link] (1 responses)

GPLv2 is not "pretty simple". I speak as someone who has often had to explain the "unless that component itself accompanies the executable" exception to the exception in section 3 :)

Since free software licenses have to be understood by free software programmers they should be simple, and I'd say the GPLv2 is on the far edge of acceptable complexity.

I don't yet know whether the GPLv3 is even more complex, but it is twice as long and that does not bode well.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 13, 2010 4:54 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

V2 is pretty simple when compared to V3.

Patent language in a copyright license

Posted Sep 12, 2010 22:05 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

A *copyright* licence should not (need to) contain *patent* language

Agreed. But as long as the only way to distribute software is to work around software patents, such language is indeed required. The Apache License 2.0 contains it too. Are you against the ASLv2 too?

By the way, ASLv2 is almost 4 times as long as ASLv1.1 (and it was also new and untried when it came out). I guess you opposed the switch to ASLv2 too when it came out? (Don't really care about it, but just wanted to point out the straw man.)

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 16:46 UTC (Wed) by phunter_codeplex (guest, #70028) [Link] (7 responses)

Just to clarify, Microsoft's CodePlex Forge (www.codeplex.com - Open Source Project Hosting) donated the $25,000, not the CodePlex Foundation (www.codeplex.org). We want to make sure credit is given to the right group.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 17:42 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (6 responses)

Any comment on what the terms of the donation were, if any?

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 21:41 UTC (Wed) by mpmselenic (guest, #57902) [Link] (5 responses)

Just like any Mercurial sponsor, Microsoft gets their logo on the sponsors page and a warm fuzzy feeling. Oh, and I also did a brief interview for their blog post.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 8, 2010 21:45 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (4 responses)

Great! Did the others have hidden agreements?

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 9, 2010 7:42 UTC (Thu) by Fowl (subscriber, #65667) [Link] (2 responses)

They wouldn't be very hidden if they told you!

*rollseyes*

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 9, 2010 14:11 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (1 responses)

It'd be hidden if it were not apparent without further digging.

duh.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 9, 2010 15:20 UTC (Thu) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

Sorry, the "duh" was out of place, in knee-jerk reaction to your "*rollseyes*" which is also out of place. I rescind the "duh;" sorry.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 10, 2010 14:57 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]

A-HA! So you don't deny there *were* hidden agreements from the other vendors! I *knew* this "Mozilla Foundation" was up to no good!

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 9, 2010 10:19 UTC (Thu) by lmb (subscriber, #39048) [Link]

I find this quite fabulous: an Open Source project so popular that at least one of its key contributors (and project leader) gets to work full-time on it on donated money. Talk about success, baby. Congratulations, Matt.

So Microsoft is donating money to Open Source development, with no strings attached? Seems to be all in order, and an impressive win for Open Source: apparently, even MSFT has realized that there are areas where OSS is the right model. Infrastructure that is hard to monetize: that's how it started with Linux too.

(Troll: given the choice nowadays, I'd rather cheer for MS than for Apple, anyway.)

I have been personally extremely happy with hg. While both git and hg seem to be doing essentially the same thing, I find it easier to wrap my head around how hg is used. So I'm quite happy to see that picked up.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 9, 2010 18:38 UTC (Thu) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link] (3 responses)

A lot of people are looking for hidden motives here. I think it may be as simple as this: Mercurial is a major competitor of Git. Git is the dvcs used for Linux. Strengthening and improving Mercurial has the potential to undermine the acceptance and use of Git, which reduces the potential contributor pool for Git.

Note that I'm not saying that this is their motive (not even necessarily a secondary motive). I'm just saying that if you want to be paranoid, you don't actually have to look too far. :)

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 10, 2010 14:41 UTC (Fri) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link] (1 responses)

Nice conspiracy theory talent :).

I wonder why people cannot simply accept that an entity can give a bit of money to a project which is useful to them without planning to kill the world. Someone said it already, 25k$ is less than a newspaper advertisment :).

(and yes, I got your point that you did not actually imply any hidden second motive)

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 10, 2010 16:22 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Especially since the git and Mercurial communities don't seem to be actively fighting about contributors. If anything, the tangle of stuff that is git these days seems to suggest that there is an overabundance of contributors to the project and not enough direction. Mercurial, on the other hand, may not have all the bells and whistles of git but it is arguably a much more straightforward piece of software to deal with for many people.

Anyway, git may be the DVCS of choice for the Linux kernel, but enough free software projects opt for Mercurial for it to not make a big difference to the world whether Microsoft backs Mercurial or git, or none of them or both.

CodePlex.com donates $25,000 to Mercurial project

Posted Sep 10, 2010 20:46 UTC (Fri) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link]

Here's another explanation: if Matt Mackall starts working on Mercurial full time then he won't be contributing to the Linux kernel anymore. ;)

No, I don't think this was actually Microsoft's motive; Matt himself asked for money for this purpose.