Linus on the BK withdrawal [LWN.net]

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 16:26 UTC (Wed) by dame74 (guest, #29082) [Link] (2 responses)

A solution is simple: as for Blender foundation, OSDL could buy Bitmover's products and convert their licences in GPL. Done! OSDL has cent enough to do that? ..so DO!

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 18:57 UTC (Wed) by bryce (guest, #16388) [Link]

Well, in that case, the lead Blender developer came with the code. Raw
source code without people having the domain-knowledge would be of
limited use.

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 19:04 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

You flunked economics, didn't you? ;-)

Seriously, is BK worth that much to OSDL? Buying BK would cost a good deal of money, I imagine, and that has to have a solid return on investment for OSDL, otherwise it would be absolutely moronic to spend the money on it. What is BK worth to OSDL, exactly? If Linus and crew are able to find another SCM that works well enough, then the worth of BK to OSDL would be near $0. If OSDL buys BK, open sources it, and loses the possibility to generate revenue by selling expensive licenses to big customers - BK's prime income method, I believe - then the worth of BK likewise drops compared to the worth of BK as a revenue generator like it is for BitMover. OSDL needs a solid financial reason to want BK and a solid plan on how to cash in on the investment. Simply going and buying a very expensive piece of software because Linus is too picky to use a "almost good enough" alternative would be a poor decision, and if the people in charge of OSDL were the kind to make such decisions, OSDL would be long gone and all its assets would either be unmaintained or sold back to proprietary development houses.

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 6, 2005 17:16 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (13 responses)

Larry's been executing a brilliant marketing strategy all along. Marketing people at startups everywhere should be taking notes.

Larry saw a business opportunity: the version control systems in common use all sucked to one degree or another. But developing a good one would require lots of resources, and open source work wasn't putting bread on his table. And he clearly had the entrepreneurial itch and wanted to start a company. But how to get into a business where the competition is of the size of IBM (ClearCase)? How would anyone ever even hear of his company? And how would he manage to get the product to the rock-solid level required if anyone is going to trust their precious source code to it?

The answer, of course, was working with Linus and the kernel developers. Give them a free-beer license in exchange for serving as dedicated beta testers, and get huge amounts of publicity, so that techs the world over would soon know what BitKeeper is. Get none other than Linus Torvalds to give you publishable quotes. You can't buy that kind of publicity. Once you get to the level you want to get to, drop the free-as-in-beer version, and give people a read-only client so they don't lose access to their own data. Voila, you've bootstrapped a successful company from nothing. I admire Larry for pulling it off. The only thing I don't care for is the notion that there was ever any kind of charity involved; this was always strictly a business proposition.

I don't believe that Larry was ever so naive as to think that the people who cloned Unix and the Windows GUI wouldn't try to clone BitKeeper, so I don't take the claims that the withdrawal of the free BitKeeper has something to do with cloning efforts seriously. After all, withdrawing the free version would only speed up, not slow down, the cloners (unless they lose interest because Linus stops using BitKeeper at the same time, perhaps?). The imperatives of business required that the free version be withdrawn sometime, the only question was the timing.

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 6, 2005 17:42 UTC (Wed) by bos (guest, #6154) [Link] (11 responses)

It was definitely a smart business move for Larry to help Linus out, no doubt about it, and he'll acknowledge as much to anyone. The rest of what you say is nonsense, though.

Larry really did bend over backwards, and for a *long* time, to accommodate people who didn't want to use the free BK due to its licensing restrictions, and who were mostly extremely rude about their demands. He did this long past the point where any reasonable person could call his motivations into question.

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 6, 2005 17:49 UTC (Wed) by mcelrath (guest, #8094) [Link] (10 responses)

I think JoeBuck and hppnq are spot on. How does Larry bending over backward change that this was all a marketing strategy? Even if totally unintentional (which I doubt), it's still a great case for marketing study.

After making my original post, I read a bit more, and it seems Larry often encourages the development of a free alternative. Perhaps this way he could pull bitkeeper support from linux in a way that didn't alienate linux users. After 3 years, there is still no comparable alternative, and perhaps his company didn't intend to wait this long to end their marketing ploy. Thus, they had to find a way/excuse to pull the plug.

-- Bob

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 6, 2005 23:09 UTC (Wed) by darthmdh (guest, #8032) [Link] (6 responses)

Easy. BitKeeper existed long before it was adopted by Linus. Linus adopted it because it was technically superior (and still is technically superior) to anything else that existed, and it was gaining popularity because of that (in a time when CVS was pretty much unmaintained, was failing security audits and wasn't up to the task of modern software development, and anything else in a usable state was proprietary)

All the crap about licences and so forth only started because certain so-called open source developers, who were more like information superhighway robbers, wanted to steal Larry's technically superior product.

And now, thanks to these thieves, we now no longer have a free BK tool. First we lost the source code (yes, BitKeeper used to be distributed with the entire source code back in the day). Now we've even lost the binaries. When we've lost twice, how can anyone claim we're winners?

There's no marketing ploys here, no malice, no excuses. Bitmover were getting constantly screwed by the community they loved and stuck around much longer than any other business would have. Thanks Larry & team, you have done gallantly and I wish you success for the future.

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 7, 2005 0:22 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

actually the real story is that bitkeeper was developed FOR Linus to use. that's what shifted Larry from his current projects to full-time work on SCM's.

as part of the process Larry had to figure out how he would pay for the development costs and developed the bitkeeper options we all know about.

I want to add my thanks to Larry. he did a lot of good in the process and I hope that kernel development doesn't suffer too much before something new gets good enough to use.

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 7, 2005 1:21 UTC (Thu) by darthmdh (guest, #8032) [Link] (3 responses)

No, it was developed because Larry had a passion for SCM tools, and a heck of a lot of experience in writing them, and wanted to contribute a decent one to the community and hopefully get rich on the side ;)

It was not developed specifically for Linus. When Linus adopted it for the kernel, it already had a rapidly expanding userbase. Bitmover promised and delivered free support to him, no doubt knowing full well that the Linux kernel is the dream test case for any distributed SCM development - an arseload of developers and others spread all over the planet and an extremely active tree with many branches. That being proactive in supporting Linus here would improve BitKeeper is a given.

Bitmover also had at that time (and I assume still do) many commerical clients paying for support - they didn't have to give Linus any help whatsoever - but what software engineer in their right mind is going to forsake the dream test case for their pet project? Especially one mutually beneficial?

I can't recall any options of note being added since the adoption by Linus, just a lot of polishing in the backend (eg improving the protocol to make updates much faster). But maybe my own use of SCM functionality isn't deep enough to notice everything so I'll believe you.

Bitmover already used revenue from support contracts and custom consulting to pay for development costs (like most software houses) and I assume this will go on regardless.

I know I've been somewhat negative in a few posts on the various articles in LWN on this topic today, I guess the bright side to the story is that BitKeeper is still around, still the best, there's a very good incentive for Open Source SCM alternatives to get their acts together (adoption by Linus Torvalds and possibly hundreds of thousands of others), and the usual anti-BK trolls now have to crawl back under their bridges and find something else to whine about meaning we won't see them for a while hopefully. I especially like the new kick in the pants for SCM developers which will hopefully benefit the open source community, and the opportunity to look at eg Monotone and Bazaar, neither of which I'd heard of until now. What can I say, I like new toys :)

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 7, 2005 1:37 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (2 responses)

Nobody claims BitKeeper was written especially for Linus, so I don't really see your point.

I agree with the kick though. ;-)

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 7, 2005 2:26 UTC (Thu) by darthmdh (guest, #8032) [Link] (1 responses)

Nobody claims BitKeeper was written especially for Linus, so I don't really see your point.

dlang wrote in the comment I replied to, in fact, opened it with "actually the real story is that bitkeeper was developed FOR Linus to use. that's what shifted Larry from his current projects to full-time work on SCM's."

I was addressing this mis-truth (apologies for not quoting it originally)

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 7, 2005 9:04 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

See your original post, to which dlang responded... There are many accounts of how BitKeeper was developed and adjusted to Linus' needs (google for "Larry McVoy Linus Torvalds Dave Miller").

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 7, 2005 6:41 UTC (Thu) by irios (guest, #19838) [Link]

> And now, thanks to these thieves, we now no longer have a free BK tool.

What exactly makes these people thieves that makes the Samba or NTFS teams heroes? After all they are all reverse-engineering proprietary protocols for their perceived benefit of the free software community.

Are we all thieves, in your eyes? You too?

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 7, 2005 20:20 UTC (Thu) by kasperd (guest, #11842) [Link] (2 responses)

> Larry often encourages the development of a free alternative.

If he really wanted to encourage the development of a free alternative, he should have removed those restrictions about using BitKeeper and working on a competing product. Not that they were ever as legally binding as Larry McVoy thought.

How were people supposed to write a competing product without trying out BitKeeper to find out what they were competing against. Don't you think BitMover tried the alternatives as well so they knew what they were competing against?

Is there really any business (software or not) where developers don't take a look on competing products to know what they are up against?

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 8, 2005 2:37 UTC (Fri) by darthmdh (guest, #8032) [Link] (1 responses)

There's a difference between developing a competing product, and producing a clone of an existing one.

The first has a future and is beneficial to society. The second is just pointless Xeroxing. What Larry was trying to prevent was the second, and he has every right to do so.

Cloning is stupid. How does the adage go; "those who do not learn from the past are doomed to reimplement it... poorly". If you're simply cloning something else you will always be at least one step behind, usually more. Take a look at all the OSS projects that attempt to imitate Microsoft Windows. They came close to getting Win95 and then Microsoft come out with the re-designed XP. They might come close to getting XP, but then Microsoft will come out with Longhorn. If you're constantly chasing someone else's coattails, you will always be behind them. Less than them. Worse than them. Also, all you achieve is to confuse and distract people, maybe divert funds from those actually creating/innovating (those being cloned) to the undeserved (the cheap knockoffs), create division and fanatical polarisation causing harm, not good.

Competition is meant to encourage innovation. Doing something new. And by something new, its not just change some keywords and remove some functionality (like Java/C# over C++). It's more like Lisp versus C (bad choice in examples, but I hope my point is clear). Solve problems that either haven't been solved before, or solve them in an unarguably better fashion, or at least different enough that there's some kind of mass appeal (functional versus procedural versus object-oriented versus ...). Raise the bar.

Notice how Microsoft never went after projects duplicating their UI efforts - because a) it shows flattery towards their UI (ie, there's good stuff there people want to copy) and b) they remain the ones out in front. But they did go after projects that did things better (such as Samba, which not only fixed bugs in the SMB protocol but ran on hardware existing in peoples networks that Windows could not run on, meaning people could stick with what they knew and loved - Microsoft's competitors (UNIX vendors) - not needing to not only purchase Windows licenses but even equipment Windows was capable of running on, dissolving future migration paths to their cruddier OS).

This is a textbook case for a business school

Posted Apr 10, 2005 10:56 UTC (Sun) by peet (guest, #29170) [Link]

Cloning is not always stupid. The classic example is when you have an unmaintained product (possibly, but not necessarily, closed-source). OpenCVS is just one example, but there are many. You might be reaching a bit to describe OpenOffice.org as a clone of Microsoft Office, but you wouldn't be reaching too far.

Even if the being-cloned product is actively maintained, cloning is not necessarily stupid. If it's unmaintained - and especially if it's closed-source - cloning can be an extremely useful thing to do.

This is tridge :)

Posted Apr 7, 2005 9:29 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link]

It's not about "Windows GUI" -- it's about Samba and Andrew Tridgell.

http://kerneltrap.org/node/4966

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 17:27 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (13 responses)

I think you underestimate Larry's technical competence, as well as his insight in all things Open Source. People have been hacking for years on suboptimal Open Source SCM software. The only thing that Larry has been trying to prevent (and he has publicly stated so on numerous occasions, also here at LWN) is that people use *his* software to further their own efforts, through reverse engineering. I think he deserves better than our unfounded criticism.

That, of course, doesn't mean that all the blame lies with the Open Source community per se. The BitMover press release provides enough clues to suspect the company of a huge publicity scam at the expense of Open Source in general and the Linux kernel in particular. In fact, the whole press release seems to have no other goal than exactly that.

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 19:13 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (3 responses)

I think convincing Linus to start using an SCM and then allowing a situation to occur in which Linus feels compelled to stop using BitKeeper is likely to throw a lot more support behind an open-source replacement. I wouldn't be surprised if Linus himself makes Monotone (or a new system of his own) do everything that he needed BitKeeper to do, much like he did with sparse. If Larry had left things at some previous state, an open-source SCM just wouldn't be nearly as interesting to work on.

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 19:47 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (2 responses)

And still BitMover is on the map as a technology leader. (Who isn't, eh? ;-) The fact that there might be an Open Source alternative for BitKeeper in the near future -- which is a quite optimistic view -- doesn't change anything about that.

Joe's interpretation of how things went is the only one I've read so far that explains most of the *facts* without adding too much haphazard guesswork. Still, I think there is room for a bit more nuance: I do think that Larry has been genuinely wanting to help Linus out all along. Just not, literally, at all costs. Combine that with the fact that of course BitMover != Larry.

(Hey, we could always ask him, no? ;-)

Anyway, I am not even really interested in this whole affair. I do care about how we're going to continue from here. And I'm quite afraid that Linus won't be that motivated to start writing SCM software himself -- sparse is an entirely different beast. But who knows.

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 20:14 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (1 responses)

I do think that Larry honestly wanted to solve the SCM problem, and honestly wanted to have a viable strategy for funding the research, which wasn't really getting done (or not getting done sufficiently effectively). And he honestly wanted to help Linus and Linux development, and it seems like he has done that. And I think he doesn't want BitMover to go out of business and put the people who have done a lot of great work on the problem out of work.

I just think that he's making some strategic errors on the business side in how he's going about it. I think he could probably get better PR results out of the whole thing, more money to work on it, and be more beneficial to the community if the licensing was simply such that it didn't generate so much flaming and wasn't chasing off Linus.

I wouldn't count Linus out on doing the SCM himself; sparse was completely different from anything else he'd done when he did it, too.

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 20:57 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

Well, I think the comment Linus made at the end of his post to LKML is significant: the monotone developers are aware of his problems.

(I do share your observation up to some point, but again, "Larry" is not "BitMover", and apparently there are technical "issues" that would prevent Linus to keep using BitKeeper as well, so at least from one point of view this is not solely a question of "business strategy".)

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 19:43 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (8 responses)

>The only thing that Larry has been trying to prevent is (...) that people use *his* software to further their own efforts, through reverse engineering. I think he deserves better than our unfounded criticism.

Forbidding reverse-engineering and refusing commercial licenses to people based on their opinions is morally corrupt as far as I am concerned, and illegal in a lot of juridictions anyway.

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 6, 2005 20:15 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

I don't think you understood what I meant to say: it's not that Larry doesn't deserve *any* criticism, just *unfounded* criticism. He's anything but stupid.

Let's try to refrain from useless moralism and stick to the facts. There are many people who *try* every trick in the book, whether it's legally or morally just or not. It's obvious that Larry has tried very hard to prevent other people using his software for their own purposes. It's not up to me to deliver the verdict on whether this is right in whatever respect, IANAJ, IANAP. I would have liked things to develop in another way, but that is an entirely different matter.

(You might find this an odd statement, but because I care quite passionately about freedom, I try to keep things *realistic* instead of academic. If you can only see black and white you're missing out on all the colours that make up the spectrum that is real life.)

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 7, 2005 6:57 UTC (Thu) by jarto (guest, #3268) [Link] (6 responses)

> Forbidding reverse-engineering and refusing commercial licenses to people based on their opinions is morally corrupt as far as I am concerned, and illegal in a lot of juridictions anyway.

Morally corrupt? Excuse me but how's the weather in the world you live in?

I understand Larry's point very well. Why should he help anyone in creating a competing product or reverse-engineering his?

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 7, 2005 8:17 UTC (Thu) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link] (5 responses)

Why should he help anyone in creating a competing product or reverse-engineering his?

No-one's suggesting he should help. But once he's made his opinion clear that he's not going to help, and that he'll be as obstructive as possible (no licenses sold to people working on SCM), he should stop pretending to be the good guy.

JFYI: "gowno" is "shit" in Russian

Posted Apr 7, 2005 9:41 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link] (1 responses)

> But once he's made his opinion clear that he's not going to help

Quote/link, please. Or STFU :-/

title removed because gvy is a silly child, who'd be better of at /.

Posted Apr 7, 2005 13:11 UTC (Thu) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link]

Erm. OK. You want evidence that Larry won't help clone BK. He's only said it a million times, and written at least 3 license clauses precisely to that effect. How about this one :

"It's pretty clear what you want to do and you keep asking for us to help you and the answer now, and forever, is no, we aren't going to help you create a copy of our product."
-- Larry McVoy on lkml, 11 Feb '05

As to "gowno" -- grow the hell up. It's not even the same letters as my log in.

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 7, 2005 14:29 UTC (Thu) by jarto (guest, #3268) [Link] (2 responses)

No-one's suggesting he should help. But once he's made his opinion clear that he's not going to help, and that he'll be as obstructive as possible (no licenses sold to people working on SCM), he should stop pretending to be the good guy.

You're suggesting that the only way someone can be a good guy is by letting themselves be a**fu*ked. Look at it from his point of view:

1. You spend a lot of resources to create an excellent piece of software.
2. You let Open Source people use it for free to create Open Source software. Especially the Linux kernel.
3. Some people in the OS community want to reverse engineer it and create a competing free version.
4. You try to solve the problem with the license.
5. You notice that someone working for OSDL is doing reverse engineering.
6. You ask OSDL to stop it.
7. OSDL doesn't want to or can't stop the person.

Should you let those people you've helped for free walk all over you and jeopardize the future of your company?

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 7, 2005 15:54 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (1 responses)

Should you let those people you've helped for free walk all over you and jeopardize the future of your company?

No, you should not. You should do exactly what Larry has done. He has every right to change his business strategy in response to perceived threats. However, he should not be claiming that his company is the most open source friendly that anyone is ever going to see. That claim is absurd. Furthermore, he should not suggest that the open source communty has failed and must strive to be more like the marine corps. This merely demonstrates that he doesn't understand the principles that this community stands for in the first place.

Personally I'm quite pleased that McVoy will be withdrawing the free client. As long as BitKeeper was free enough for Torvalds there was little actual need for a free software replacement. Once the kernel development team adopts Monotone or whatever they eventually choose that project will get an enormous amount of feedback and attention from smart people. I'm sure that after a few years of this the result will be as good or better than BitKeeper for free software development. Since McVoy will be now be focusing on proprietary software developers everybody wins.

Linus on the BK withdrawal

Posted Apr 8, 2005 10:52 UTC (Fri) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link]

Yes, exactly what GreyWizard said