Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge)

Posted May 11, 2004 22:44 UTC (Tue) by vmole (subscriber, #111)
In reply to: Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge) by spot
Parent article: Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge)

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.

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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
> proprietary one, he'd have taken a hell of a lot less crap.

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.