Come back to earth, please.

Posted Apr 6, 2005 16:53 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026)
In reply to: Linus on the BK withdrawal by pizza
Parent article: Linus on the BK withdrawal

Hello? McVoy stated in no uncertain terms that his main motivation for the license restriction was to make it more difficult for anyone to create a BitKeeper competitor. Do you really think he would tolerate reverse engineering from a paying customer? Think again. Even if he has explicitly said he would allow it (I've never read anything to that effect) that would just be spin until a paying customer actually contributed to a free software revision control system. Rest assured if that ever happens the fur will fly.

While I'm on the subject, why is it that when Bill Gates gives software away without charge and puts create terms in its EULA to control the behavior of people who agree there is an uproar but when Larry McVoy does the same people declare him some kind of unappreciated folk hero? Microsoft ought to hire this guy for their public relations department.

Actually, yes

Posted Apr 6, 2005 17:04 UTC (Wed) by bos (guest, #6154) [Link] (9 responses)

Larry has explicitly said, in public and in private, that paying customers are not prevented from working on open or closed source SCM tools. As a paying customer, I've seen and signed off on the commercial BK license, and there are no clauses to that effect in there.

Actually, yes

Posted Apr 6, 2005 17:48 UTC (Wed) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

Well, that's interesting. One of three things is necessarily true here: either you're full of beans (I have no reason to doubt you), McVoy's claims are merely opportunistic spin that would be retracted the moment he discovered a paying customer contributing to a competing system or McVoy is a moron. Placing restrictions on what people who download the free tool can do with it is, as has been clearly demonstrated and easily proven with McVoy's own words, a public relations problem. That has some cost, at least in emotional terms. But if you don't also constrain the paying customers it is also a pointless exercise.

Suppose I'm an evil developer with the skills to reverse engineer protocols who wants nothing more than to "steal" McVoy's precious intellectual property. All I have to do is buy a license. Suppose I don't have the cash. No problem! I'll just get a job with a company that has a BitKeeper site license. Of course, I could probably raise the money in hours if I solicited donations from the hordes of grumpy kernel hackers who flame about the BitKeeper license in the first place, but I'd probably have to use a psuedonym to throw off the sales people. Either way the restrictions in the no charge license are not a significant obstacle to me. All they do is create grief for McVoy.

I remain convinced of what I said in my original post: once this happens the fur will fly. McVoy is more rabid about protecting his secret sauce than just about anyone and while he might be a jerk he is anything but stupid. The claim that he would tolerate competition from paying customers while spending his time threatening legal action on the Linux kernel mailing list seems to me deeply disingenuous.

Actually, no

Posted Apr 7, 2005 16:42 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (7 responses)

http://lwn.net/Articles/103727/

BitMover has actually refused to sell someone a license because they suspected that a developer employed by the prospective customer would contribute to a free software source control system. Maybe paying customers are not prevented from working on source code management tools, but if so that is only because BitMover does a background check to decide whether someone is likely to do so before allowing them to become a paying customer in the first place. Do you really mean to suggest that McVoy would ignore the situation if he discovered a paying customer who had passed this screening process later decided to work on a competing project?

If not then my comments in the grandparent post are exactly correct.

Actually, no

Posted Apr 7, 2005 16:55 UTC (Thu) by bos (guest, #6154) [Link] (6 responses)

The guy in question (a) was obnoxious and (b) had said in advance that he wanted to clone BK, so of course they didn't sell him a license. People like that can be a major support burden, and often cost a lot more to deal with than one can make off licensing and support fees.

What occurs *after* someone buys a license is an entirely different thing, because there's then a well-defined legal agreement in place that puts specific obligations on both parties.

As to whether Larry would ignore it if he discovered that a paying customer was working on cloning BK, I'd expect that to depend on the circumstances (surprise, surprise). I do know that a number of companies have bought BK licenses, with Larry's foreknowledge and assent, explicitly so that their employees could continue to work on competing open source SCM tools.

Having it both ways?

Posted Apr 7, 2005 17:47 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (5 responses)

On the one hand, we have a clearly documented case where McVoy will refused to sell licenses to someone who declared, in advance, that he intended to work on a competing source control system (I'm not convinced that obnoxiousness and support costs were the reasons because McVoy himself emphasized the competitive issue exclusively in his first comment). On the other, you seem to claim that McVoy happily sold licenses to other companies who claimed, in advance, that some of their developers were currently working on competing source control systems -- all under license terms that place no restrictions on what those developers are able to do with BitKeeper.

Sorry, but this time I actually *do* think you're full of beans. Maybe you could name these companies and provide some sort of linkable evidence?

Having it both ways?

Posted Apr 7, 2005 18:11 UTC (Thu) by bos (guest, #6154) [Link] (4 responses)

Sure. Red Hat has some commercial BK licenses; this has been public knowledge for a while. My recollection is fuzzy, but I believe that David Miller refused to use BK without a commercial license because of the restrictions in the free license.

I also know that at least one much larger company has bought commercial BK licenses for somewhat similar reasons, but I'd rather not say who.

Are we discussing the same thing?

Posted Apr 7, 2005 20:50 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] (3 responses)

Each of your examples is problematic. RedHat is not well known for their work on source control products. They do quite a lot of kernel development, and if they have a license it is probably intended to resolve cases like this one. That is hardly a reasonable example of competition. David Miller does not directly contribute to any project that competes with BitKeeper, so his purchase is irrelevant. Meanwhile, I'd rather not argue about this mysterious larger company you'd rather not name.

Are we even discussing the same thing? My point is that is that Larry McVoy is zealous about preventing anyone who contributes to a project he considers competitive from using BitKeeper. This is supported by his own statements, such as:

The Subversion folks would like nothing better than to displace BK. That's fine, but they don't get to use BK to do it.

He does not say they don't get to use BK "unless they pay for it." Clearly he doesn't want them to use it at all. To the extent the paid license doesn't explicitly enforce this it's either an oversight or a lazy attempt at spin that would be immediately reversed if it ever became relevant. (I'm not sure exactly how this reversal would be implemented, but a simple license change would probably work because customers like you will eventually need updates, support or both. There may even be a clause allowing BitMover to alter the license unilaterally.) I find it unimaginable that McVoy would not take immediate action in response to competition from a customer.

Are we discussing the same thing?

Posted Apr 7, 2005 21:05 UTC (Thu) by bos (guest, #6154) [Link]

Sure, Red Hat isn't interested in SCM; they still use CVS to do most of their work, for example. The mysterious larger company actively works on SCM, but I doubt there's any overlap between their BK users and their SCM developers.

Certainly, Larry has been pretty vigorous about preventing naked competitors from using BK when he's had foreknowledge.

Are we discussing the same thing?

Posted Apr 12, 2005 19:20 UTC (Tue) by zander76 (guest, #6889) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, I don't know if I would say that RedHat is not a treat. RedHat is a commercial organization and if at anypoint they saw profit in SCM then they would be in there.

And your point is...?

Posted Apr 12, 2005 19:35 UTC (Tue) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

RedHat does not compete with BitMover today. That they could do so at some point in the future is irrelevant because the same can be said for any company that might consider purchasing BitKeeper. Refusing to sell on this basis would mean refusing to sell at all.