Centralized vs decentralized [LWN.net]

Centralized vs decentralized

Posted Feb 27, 2004 4:12 UTC (Fri) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698)
In reply to: Centralized vs decentralized by lm
Parent article: subversion 1.0 is released

Subversion can in fact do one thing that BitKeeper can't. It can be used for development of new and improved free software (or open source) version control systems.

On multiple occasions the ability to patch CVS and Subversion has been useful to me. And in general, I try to run as little closed source software on my computers as possible.

If I really needed the decentralized model, I think I'd investigate GNU Arch before switching to BitKeeper.

Years ago, I attended a talk you (L.M.) gave at SVLUG about BitKeeper. I was fully prepared to dislike it due to its being based (at that time) on SCCS. But you did such a good job of explaining the reason for that decision, the advantages of it, and the advantages of the decentralized model in general, that I left the talk feeling like I'd been fully converted to the BitKeeper religion.

But when I tried to push BitKeeper at my job, I immediately ran into trouble. Emailed requests for pricing and other licensing information went unanswered. And the per-seat pricing information that was available on the web site was ludicrous. The per-seat price went UP as the number of developers increased. My company was near one of the quantity thresholds, and we were concerned that if we added just a few more developers, we would cross that threshold and suddenly have to pay not just a higher price for the new seats, but possibly to "upgrade" the old seats as well. Yet no one at BitMover cared to even answer questions about these policies.

By comparison, when I investigated Perforce, I had no difficulty finding out about their pricing and licensing.

Ultimately the company chose to stick with CVS. Were the decision to be made today, Subversion probably would be a serious contender. In fact, I'm trying to encourage my current employer to switch from CVS to Subversion.

I fully recognize that BitKeeper is a much more powerful system, and I even agree with your arguments as to why free software isn't likely to match it any time soon. But eventually free software will catch up. It wasn't that many years ago that people didn't think free software would match Excel, and I'm not sure it does 100% even now, but it's close enough.

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