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Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge)
NewsForge interviews
Larry McVoy, author of Bitkeeper. "We are strongly committed to
helping the Linux kernel community and other open source projects. Not
everyone may believe this, but we'd be doing it even if there was no
benefit to us. It is our way of giving back some value for all the great
free software we use every day. We run our business on free software, we
develop our product with free software, the free software community has
been great for our business. All companies who benefit from free software
ought to find a way to help the people who are producing that
software."
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Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge) Posted May 11, 2004 22:22 UTC (Tue) by spot (subscriber, #15640) [Link] "We run our business on free software, we develop our product with free software..."But the end result is still un-free software. If he was serious about believing in the merits of free software, we'd have freely licensed source code for bitkeeper today. I'm a firm believer that all applications have a time and place, but McVoy seems to be a bit of a hypocrite here. Personally, I'd have liked for him to have been asked why bitkeeper remains closed-source to this day. And yeah, I suspect I know the answer too (Profit!).
Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge) Posted May 11, 2004 22:44 UTC (Tue) by vmole (subscriber, #111) [Link] Larry has repeatedly answered why BitKeeper isn't free software: he has to meet a payroll. You may not like that answer. But to develop the software he wanted to develop, that's the approach he took. He claims that BitKeeper couldn't have been developed as free software. You and anyone else are allowed to prove him wrong, of course; so far, no one has. (And, no, sorry, CVS/SVN/Arch/monotone/yadayadayada are not equivalent to BitKeeper.) Larry has not always handled it well. I think the "we can change the free-use license anytime" approach is an incredibly bad idea, he should pick a license and stick to it. But the funny thing is, if he had never released BitKeeper under any license except a standard proprietary one, he'd have taken a hell of a lot less crap.
Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge) Posted May 13, 2004 4:55 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] > Larry has repeatedly answered why BitKeeper isn't free software: he has to> meet a payroll. Then he should not also be saying "we'd be doing it even if there was no benefit to us." He can't have it both ways, and his attempt to do so is what earns him his bad reputation. > if he had never released BitKeeper under any license except a standard Exactly. He takes crap not only for releasing non-free software, but much worse for pretending that to do so is *helping* free software. It doesn't, and his posture that he wants to help free software while at the same time making his main offering a non-free application whose license actively discourages the production of other free software, is hypocrisy.
Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge) Posted May 11, 2004 23:19 UTC (Tue) by havoc (guest, #2261) [Link] Why is it that Free Software zealots feel the need to force their religion on the rest of us? I don't get it. I like Free Software. I love it! I benefit from it daily, but I have bills to pay, and the GPL projects I've contributed have failed to return even a single line of code from the community, but people are more than happy to use my products without contributing so much as a “thank you” note. On the other hand, the code I've kept closed has allowed me to keep the bills paid.Believe me, I'd love to see the same level of success that MySQL and SleepyCat enjoy, but let's all face it, not every Free project will attain that level of financial success, and some may some day. In the mean time, please let us give back to the community as we are able, and don't condemn us for doing the best we can.
Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge) Posted May 11, 2004 23:57 UTC (Tue) by spot (subscriber, #15640) [Link] I don't consider myself a zealot (advocate, yes), but realize that if every software developer took the Bitkeeper stance (use free software to make closed software), there wouldn't be any free software.I believe that good software stands on its own merits, and that it doesn't need to be closed to have a revenue model. I'm not disagreeing that Bitkeeper one of the best revisioning systems out there, I just think that it seems somewhat hypocritical to talk about how much benefit you gain from free software in developing closed software. Then again, I'm probably also an idealist. :)
Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge) Posted May 12, 2004 1:30 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] But he's also taking the opposite stance: he's providing closed softwarefor people to use to make free software. The fact that Linus is happy and productive (and I well remember when he was failing to scale) is a bigger benefit to free software than many free software projects provide. Instead of writing free software and selling services, he writes closed software and provides free services to free software. I personally think that he is wrong to prohibit developers of other version control systems from using the gratis version of bitkeeper, however. He's said that he couldn't have gotten bitkeeper right as an open source project, because it took a lot of concerted effort before it was sufficiently useful that it would have attracted a team. But if the problem is that hard, he shouldn't worry about competition, and if it's not, he's doomed anyway. Limiting who can use the gratis version just makes it less appealing to project leaders and less convenient for them, which in turn reduces the number of developers exposed to it, and reduces the market for the commercial version.
So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition? Posted May 11, 2004 23:17 UTC (Tue) by jae (guest, #2369) [Link] It is very interesting how Larry claims that Linus "switched to BitKeeper"The impression people *will* get is that BitKeeper is better than other version-control systems, when it fact BitKeeper is just better than *nothing*, since Linus didn't use any VC before. Larry should've been coaxed to say that Linus "switched from using no VC system whatsoever to using BitKeeper". But then this would've been a real interview and not just a heap advertisement. Of course this (using BitKeeper) is better than before, even 10x. Even CVS,
So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition? Posted May 12, 2004 3:51 UTC (Wed) by AdHoc (subscriber, #1115) [Link] Of course this (using BitKeeper) is better than before, even 10x. Even CVS, as crappy as it is, would have been a major improvement.Linux doesn't think so (at least according to the article). I don't know if he is smarter than you, but I'm pretty sure he is smarter than me. I'll go ahead and believe him :) I do know that we use CVS in a medium size development group at work where development is fast and somewhat chaotic. In some cases CVS is worse than just sending patches arround, because CVS enforces file level granularity. I would love to switch to bitkeeper. -AdHoc
So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition? Posted May 12, 2004 6:50 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] CVS would have been a lot better than the nothing that was there before. I suspect that SVN, Arch, or Monotone would show gains comparable to BitKeeper, at least in Linus's individual productivity. The total productivity gained from cross-repository management is harder to measure.I can't say much about BitKeeper because I'm not allowed to use it, though.
So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition? Posted May 12, 2004 8:10 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] > I can't say much about BitKeeper because> I'm not allowed to use it, though. Who's not allowing you to use it? Certainly not BitMover, as you imply by omission, as they allow /anyone/ to use it. Sure, the "gratis" version has some strings attached re developing free alternatives (strings which I don't believe make sense, for the reasons someone else already posted, but..), but that doesn't mean you can't use the money-ware version. Duncan
So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition? Posted May 13, 2004 4:48 UTC (Thu) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link] if you work for a company developing version control software you don't get to use the free version of bitkeeper.many people take that to read that they are forbidden to use it at all, but all it really means is that you will have to pay to use it.
So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition? Posted May 13, 2004 15:36 UTC (Thu) by vmole (subscriber, #111) [Link] I suspect that SVN, Arch, or Monotone would show gains comparable to BitKeeper, at least in Linus's individual productivity. Nope. Linus's main problem is dealing with patch merging, and merging multiple trees (aka branches). None of those tools comes close to BK in dealing with merging. Linus didn't use SCM tools before BK because the tools available to him didn't solve the problem. A lot of the BK feature set was driven by Linus's feedback. Now, CVS/SVN/etc. may be sufficient for your needs - they are for mine, or at least the cost of BK is still greater than the cost of the extra time I spend with CVS and SVN. But pretending they are currently equivalent to BK will just mean they never get better.
So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition? Posted May 12, 2004 14:15 UTC (Wed) by fandom (subscriber, #4028) [Link] I am pretty certain I have read Linus say that he used CVS at work andwouldn't even consider using it unless he got paid for it. So, in Linus opinion using it was worse than having no version system.
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