Sounds like the Spanish civil war [LWN.net]

Sounds like the Spanish civil war

Posted Nov 9, 2003 17:58 UTC (Sun) by vblum (subscriber, #1151)
In reply to: Silly zealots by lm
Parent article: An attempt to backdoor the kernel

IMO, one of the saddest spectacles in history is the Spanish civil war. It was lost not
necessarily because the republican forces were weaker than their fascist opponents. It was
lost because different factions among the antifascists attempted to eat one another at a
time when they should have stood together.

Not that Free Software vs Big Money is even remotely similar to that - for all their market
dominance and strategies, Microsoft et al. have a many good people and have nothing to do
whatsoever with people the likes of Franco - this here is software, not crimes against
humanity!

But the lesson is an important one - in Spain, the idealists failed miserably because they
refused to distinguish between their friends and their true enemies. It's a history well worth
a read - it makes you want to cry.

Ciaran: I respect your stance for free software (and usually appreciate your comments; I only
respond because I think this thread is over the top). However, is it really a good idea to
alienate those who are actually on our side? For all the "proprietary or not," Larry has done
the FLOSS community a rather material favor. He could have chosen otherwise.

Larry: I read many of your posts on why you keep BK licensed as it is; and, I see your need to
run a business carefully to keep it stable. But: How certain are you that you could not (in the
longer-term future) get away with a service + dual licensing model (such as Qt et al)? I
realize that your customer base are developers, and that makes it difficult - these people
are the very people that know how to clone and run a development-oriented system.

On the other hand, your customers also face deadlines (at least if they're in big companies)
- they might just pay for service from the source. Dual licensing would likely appease this
unfortunate noise that keeps surrounding your substantial and, presumably, widely
appreciated contributions. That noise must be exasperating, too - any thoughts?

cheers, V.
(Armchair General)
[my content management is reiserfs; my IDE is emacs]

(Log in to post comments)

war

Posted Nov 9, 2003 19:28 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

BitKeeper offers an immediate practical convenience on condition that we ignore the issue of freedom. If we accept this deal, will we ever have a Free Software SCM that rivals BitKeeper?
We didn't all accept the proprietary Qt. Now we have GNOME, and Qt has been GPL'd.

If Linus chose Arch, the whole community would have benefitted from increased developer interest in Arch. Maybe it would now have the features it lacks compared to BitKeeper.

BitKeeper is not a friend of the Free Software community. It's a friend to Linus, but Linus is not fighting for our freedom.

this here is software, not crimes against humanity!
The software divide between 1st & 3rd world countries is a humanitarian problem. Free Software is a solution.

re:war

Posted Nov 9, 2003 20:30 UTC (Sun) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

errm ... just to explain my wording (crimes against humanity) - I wanted to put my own
example back into perspective, and only my own - nobody else had implied anything
remotely similar to Franco et al here, and I just wanted to make sure I could not be misread.
If my implication was that anyone else had - sorry about that.

I do see the freedom-related issues, but there must also be a path to get there; BK seems to
me a reasonable part of that path. Look at Qt vs. Gtk - yes, Qt is now GPL'd thanks to the
tireless pointing to the issue, and the world is now a better place for that. But - without
KDE, I highly doubt that Gnome would have taken off anywhere near the way it did - this
was a beautiful example of how creative competition can work.

If Larry's contribution ultimately ends up making Arch (or whatever else) a stronger system -
great. And if this can be done without hurting Larry's business in the long run (cause he
doesn't seem like a bad guy, and I'm sure he'll be happy to adapt if he can) - all the better.

re:war

Posted Nov 10, 2003 11:11 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Software was going proprietary, so RMS started GNU, Qt was proprietary, so he started GNOME, BitKeeper is proprietary, so he endorsed Arch and it's now a GNU project. It's true that solutions are born from problems, but I wouldn't use this as a basis for supporting the problem :-)

Sounds like the Spanish civil war

Posted Nov 9, 2003 21:54 UTC (Sun) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link]

Re: could we make a business based on service

The service model has been tried before in this space. We *spend* more in a year providing free services to the open source world than has ever been made from supporting an open source management system. Ask Tom Lord how easy it is to convince people to spend money in this space, he spent the last year begging for enough money to keep his internet connection on.

Contrast that with having to pay a dozen engineers and you start to get the picture.

Re: BitKeeper limits your freedom

I really don't want to argue about this and I would like this to be my last post to this thread (and I'm off to the beach with my family and no laptop so there is a good chance :)

We are sensitive to the needs of the open source world and we do our best. BK has always made it trivial to get the data out of BK if you want to do that. If that's not enough, we built and run the BK->CVS gateway so that the zealots don't even have to touch BK. That's as much as we can do, if it doesn't make you happy, I'm sorry about that, but I can't help you.

Sounds like the Spanish civil war

Posted Nov 9, 2003 22:15 UTC (Sun) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

I know - no annoyance intended, thanks for taking the time to respond. I guess I always
have the Trolltech example in mind. I also realize BK and Qt cater to different spaces.

Have fun at the beach! (I should be in the mountains, really ...)