Linus on the BK withdrawal
Linus on the BK withdrawal
Posted Apr 6, 2005 17:27 UTC (Wed) by hppnq (guest, #14462)In reply to: Linus on the BK withdrawal by mcelrath
Parent article: Linus on the BK withdrawal
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.
Posted Apr 6, 2005 19:13 UTC (Wed)
by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
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Posted Apr 6, 2005 19:47 UTC (Wed)
by hppnq (guest, #14462)
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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.
Posted Apr 6, 2005 20:14 UTC (Wed)
by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
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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.
Posted Apr 6, 2005 20:57 UTC (Wed)
by hppnq (guest, #14462)
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(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".)
Posted Apr 6, 2005 19:43 UTC (Wed)
by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
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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.
Posted Apr 6, 2005 20:15 UTC (Wed)
by hppnq (guest, #14462)
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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.)
Posted Apr 7, 2005 6:57 UTC (Thu)
by jarto (guest, #3268)
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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?
Posted Apr 7, 2005 8:17 UTC (Thu)
by gowen (guest, #23914)
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Posted Apr 7, 2005 9:41 UTC (Thu)
by gvy (guest, #11981)
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Quote/link, please. Or STFU :-/
Posted Apr 7, 2005 13:11 UTC (Thu)
by gowen (guest, #23914)
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Posted Apr 7, 2005 14:29 UTC (Thu)
by jarto (guest, #3268)
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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. Should you let those people you've helped for free walk all over you and jeopardize the future of your company?
Posted Apr 7, 2005 15:54 UTC (Thu)
by GreyWizard (guest, #1026)
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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.
Posted Apr 8, 2005 10:52 UTC (Fri)
by gowen (guest, #23914)
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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
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.
Linus on the BK withdrawal
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.Linus on the BK withdrawal
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.
Linus on the BK withdrawal
>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.Linus on the BK withdrawal
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.
Linus on the BK withdrawal
> 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
Linus on the BK withdrawal
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.
> But once he's made his opinion clear that he's not going to helpJFYI: "gowno" is "shit" in Russian
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 :title removed because gvy is a silly child, who'd be better of at /.
"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."
As to "gowno" -- grow the hell up. It's not even the same letters as my log in.
-- Larry McVoy on lkml, 11 Feb '05
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.
Linus on the BK withdrawal
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.
Linus on the BK withdrawal
Yes, exactly what GreyWizard said
Linus on the BK withdrawal