git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 5:17 UTC (Thu) by lm (guest, #6402)
In reply to: git by jmmc
Parent article: Tridge wins the 2005 Free Software Award

I stated for years that this stuff was hard and people said that I was wrong. The open source press people have been crowing that a replacement was "made in weeks". That's complete nonsense. Linus has been working on this since April and he _continues_ to work on it. As do a bunch of other people. And it's obviously not done because if it was then why are they working on it? Oh, so they "replaced BK" in a few weeks did they? I don't think so and neither does anyone else who actually uses these tools to do real work. Our sales have doubled in the last year, do you think that would happen if there were a free alternative? Oh, wait, that's all due to my stellar marketing talents. Uh-huh. Right. That's worked out so well with you.

Git is cool, I like it, but the idea that BK was replaced in a wink of the eye is pure marketing bullshit. If you want to believe it, that's fine, but it's still bullshit. And I personally find it somewhat self-serving that the open source press touts that but forgets about all the good BK did for the community. Does anyone remember Linus about to burn out? Does anyone remember that BK prevented that by helping him scale? Nooooooo, we're just the evil corporate guys out to screw you. Yup, right again. Not.

The point is that we gave something of value to the community, in good faith, and Tridge screwed that up. If it weren't for him, the kernel would still be in BK and progress would be 100% focussed on the kernel. Instead, what you have is a bunch of very talented people wasting their time on something they had and could have continued to have for free. Yeah it wasn't open source and it pissed RMS off. So what? It helped the kernel in a big way and no matter what the silly press says, no BK has taken its toll on the pace of kernel development.

Linus made it pretty clear when he said that he would have respected Tridge if Tridge was actually make something better. But that wasn't the case. Tridge was simply trying (and failing) to rip off our development efforts. He doesn't understand 1/100th of what we do about this stuff, all he did was upset the apple cart. Whoohoo. Good for him.

You tell me what's better: Linus working on the kernel or Linus working on an SCM tool.

Come on people, it's fun and all to piss and moan about this and it's fun to pretend that the open source community prevailed, but the reality is that you don't have something as good as BK and you have critical people wasting their time on trying to create a replacement simply because Tridge wanted to be a "hero". Way to go Tridge. Nice work. And for this he gets an award. That's pathetic. I'm not Tridge so I can't speak for him but if I had done what he has done I'd be ashamed of myself. That work isn't science, it isn't advancing the art, it's just a ripoff. You award ripoffs? What about the bum down the street stealing TVs for his drugs? Shouldn't you award that too? What's the difference?

Tridge is a very smart guy. If he wanted to sit down and spend the multiple years it would take to write a good SCM system there is a very good chance he'd do a better job that we did, in my opinion he is smarter than I am (he'd have a tough time because all of our engineers are smarter than I am. But still.) The point is that he didn't do that. If he had, I'd be here singing his praises, I respect good engineering. I'm not that thrilled with ripoffs, ripoffs are dramatically easier and ripoffs aren't innovative. Imagine what Tridge could have done if he sat down and worked on things for a few years. You guys might have something better than BK. Hell, I'd lead the award committee for that effort, good engineering is good engineering and everyone respects that.

Getting an award ought to be something for *advancing* the state of the art. Tridge got awarded for ripping off commercial software in violation of the licensing terms. You guys are proud of this? Really?

(Log in to post comments)

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 5:31 UTC (Thu) by kirkengaard (guest, #15022) [Link]

Ahh, Mr. McVoy. Your indignation and personal pronouns. Bitterness ill becomes a professional.

Not that you have a grudge here, or anything. Not that he took your clients. Your clients were trying to leave.

Note that Linus continues to both work on Linux and git, and that he has even offloaded the brunt of the SCM work onto people who are far more interested in making it into a good, GPL SCM. Not that you worry for his occupational health over all concerns. We don't seem to have a crisis of work conflict here. What's better is Free Software. What's better is itches you can scratch if you want to. Tridge had an itch. So did half the world, Linux-wise. And BitKeeper wouldn't let them scratch it, but it got them interested enough to try. Linus, of all people, was willing not to scratch it, because it wasn't his itch, and you gave him a tool that helped him scratch what was his itch. Not that he's a one trick pony. Unless you mean to imply that he can't code for more than one project at a time?

You made a great tool, but you had to tell us what we couldn't do with it.

You have only yourself to blame for selling it to a bunch of rebellious tinkerers for use with their pet project.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 5:42 UTC (Thu) by kirkengaard (guest, #15022) [Link]

And again, as below, you have to stop advancing baseless accusations. Proof or silence.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 5:50 UTC (Thu) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link]

One of the mistakes I've made in the past was to engage with every random person who came along and challenged what I said. I just don't have the time to repeat that mistake over and over.

If you have something substantive to say, I'll consider it and reply if I can say something useful. If you are just flaming (which forgive me for saying, it appears that you are doing) then I'll pass. My apologies, I know my track record is to dive right in there but I've got a lot of other stuff going on.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 6:13 UTC (Thu) by kirkengaard (guest, #15022) [Link]

Consider me laughing at you for your role-reversal attempt.
Consider it to be the first purely emotion-driven comment from me in this exchange.

I understand that you can't say something useful in rebuttal. I understood it before I got the whole lm username reference. You being someone in real life hasn't changed that.

Good night, sir.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 11:03 UTC (Thu) by pjm (guest, #2080) [Link]

"critical people wasting their time on trying to create a replacement"

For the last decade or two, thousands of people (including Larry McVoy, Linus, Tridge, and many LWN readers) have been spending time trying to create a replacement for what already existed: Unix and various other proprietary software. We usually don't consider such development as being a "waste of time", even in cases where the "replacement" remains functionally inferior to the existing, proprietary, software, and even where the existing software was available free of charge.

I make no claim as to whether Tridge's actions to bring this displacement about are laudable or not. I presume that the mentioning of Tridge's BitKeeper interoperability work (after a longer paragraph of other contributions) is intended primarily to affirm the importance of using Free Software for Linux development.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 11:17 UTC (Thu) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link]

Or to paraphrase : Why would anyone waste their time trying to replicate SMB, when they could just buy Windows XP Server?

Why, its uncannily analogous to someone stealing televisions to buy drugs.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 11:53 UTC (Thu) by henning (guest, #13406) [Link]

In my understanding he get the award mainly for his work on samba and
rsync, and not for the whole bitkeeper thing. And getting this award for
samba and rsync is IMHO highly justified, perhaps you can acknowledge
that too.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 15:42 UTC (Thu) by Zarathustra (guest, #26443) [Link]

> I stated for years that this stuff was hard and people said that I was wrong.

And as anyone that is not delusional can see now, you were completely wrong, not only there is git, but there is also Mercurial, which in 7000 lines of python provides everything one will ever need from a distributed version control system, many improvements still are possible, but that is true of any piece of software, what matters is that it works right now, and it does what people needs. (And I'm sorry to break this to you, but it's much faster and cleaner than bk will ever be)

...there are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. -- C.A.R. Hoare, The 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture

It seems to me that bk follows the second way, no wonder it was so hard to build and took so much effort, pity you didn't learn much from Unix, once upon a time you had more sense than others, but you seem to have forgotten about the value of simplicity.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 17:30 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Equating telnetting to a widely publicized port on a widely publicized host and typing `help' with drug abuse and theft is very silly.

Penalizing anyone for telnetting to a widely publicized port on a widely publicized host and typing `help' is incredibly silly.

Still, it advertised just how risky it was to ever use BK for anything, regardless of the (very high) quality of the implementation and design, and *that* is a good thing.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 18:50 UTC (Thu) by avr (guest, #27673) [Link]

>And it's obviously not done because if it was then why are they working on it?
So BK development is stale ?

>actually uses these tools to do real work.
I think linux kernel development qualifies as "real work"

>Does anyone remember Linus about to burn out? Does anyone remember that BK prevented that by helping him scale?

You keep sayin that, and there might be some truth to it. But...
In my eyes what happened was that the workflow restructured itself and some kernel developers grew into positions that offloaded Linus and made the workflow more scaleable.
The most obvious example here is Andrew "the man-machine" Morton, whose mm tree, in the new role of mainline gatekeeper, has been a great positive influence on kernel development. The new 2.6 kernel-development model bears witness to this I think.
It was *people* that lightened Linus' workload and bitkeeper was the tool that may have helped to restructure the workflow.
As I see it BK was far from the is-all-end-all solution to Linus' impending burnout and claiming it was, just because it happened to be there at the time, is a very lopsided view.

>The point is that we gave something of value to the community, in good faith, and Tridge screwed that up

The point is bitkeeper introduced artificial walls inside the kernel developer community and some tried to undo that.

The whole affair was a most striking example of "dividing users and taking away their freedom." Usually we think of "users" as "end-users", but this reminds us that developers are themselves users as well. There were "haves" and the "have-nots" in the kernel developer community and the vendor used this dichotomy to exercize his influence.

>what you have is a bunch of very talented people wasting their time

I fail to see how advancing the current state of Free Software can be considered a waste of time.

>Linus made it pretty clear...
Linus is the one who made a mistake in the first place.
He assumed "The best tool for *the* job" was "The best tool for *my* job" and not "The best tool for *our* job".
As most mistakes regarding Freedom the implications are usually ill-considered and hard to undo.

>on something they had and could have continued to have for free.
The key word being "could". No hard guarantees were given that it would always be available for free regardless of the whims of the copyright holder, and look what happened.

>You tell me what's better: Linus working on the kernel or Linus working on an SCM tool.
Linus and peers working on and with Free Software.
Aside from ethical considerations, anything else would be counterproductive in the long run.

>Tridge was simply trying (and failing) to rip off our development efforts.
Or maybe he was just curious about interoperability. Apparently he even went out of his way to comply with the arbitrary terms of the license even though he had no need for one.

Wild speculation is hardly good grounds for slanderous remarks.

>You award ripoffs? What about the bum down the street stealing TVs for his drugs? Shouldn't you award that too? What's the difference?

>Tridge got awarded for ripping off commercial software in violation of the licensing terms.

Tridge probably got awarded for Samba and rsync and perhaps even a little for exposing the dangers of *proprietary* software by exercising his rights.
He also *allegedly* broke licensing terms regarding *proprietary* software according to the copyright holder who, instead of affirming their rights in an appropriate manner, resorted to sleazy business tactics and harassment.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 21:04 UTC (Thu) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

It was people that lightened Linus' workload and bitkeeper was the tool that may have helped to restructure the workflow. As I see it BK was far from the is-all-end-all solution to Linus' impending burnout and claiming it was, just because it happened to be there at the time, is a very lopsided view.

No, he's right. Bitkeeper didn't "happen to be there at the time", that is the lopsided view. It was the enabler for Linus's new workflow. There are things you can villify Larry for, I know it's a popular pasttime, but you crossed the line into rewriting history.

Linus was a very picky customer, he hated CVS and similar systems, and Larry basically built BK around the Linus use cases. It has since matured and diversified, but originally it was to be that tool intended to allow Linus to use version control without hating it.

git

Posted Jan 26, 2006 23:01 UTC (Thu) by avr (guest, #27673) [Link]

>It was the enabler for Linus's new workflow.
An enabler is far from a complete solution.
Who knows what might have happened had the mm tree risen as the focal point of patches without bitkeeper?

>but you crossed the line into rewriting history.
A lot of credit for fixing Linus' workflow problem was lying around unclaimed, either because of modesty or because of disinterest, and bitkeeper scooped that all up and claimed it as its own.
Less pronounced dynamics in the background beside the adoption of bitkeeper were also important, just not as easily pinpointed.

I think it's not "rewriting history" but a parallax view on the whole affair. Sure bitkeeper had a role in it, but in my opinion bitkeeper is not the single silver bullet that saved kernel-development that it is made out to be.

Oh, get a hobby

Posted Jan 26, 2006 21:19 UTC (Thu) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link]

Larry wrote:

The point is that we gave something of value to the community, in good faith, and Tridge screwed that up. [...] Linus made it pretty clear when he said that he would have respected Tridge if Tridge was actually make something better. But that wasn't the case. Tridge was simply trying (and failing) to rip off our development efforts. He doesn't understand 1/100th of what we do about this stuff, all he did was upset the apple cart. Whoohoo. Good for him. [...] That work isn't science, it isn't advancing the art, it's just a ripoff. You award ripoffs?

Larry, I notice your strategic choice of wording, here: "ripoff", which fortunately for you is sufficiently fuzzy in meaning that it merely suggests rather than directly denotes theft. I suspect this means you aren't feeling quite lucky enough about the libel statutes to be more direct. You're really big on accusations ("violating the license") but somehow never up to proving it in court. So, why should we believe you? You come across as just another drive-by Internet flamer.

So, I think it's frankly pretty shameful for you to go around villifying Tridgell. And it lacks class. You claim to have a successful company: Try acting that way.

...people wasting their time on trying to create a replacement....

Indeed, who needs Linux, Samba, etc., right?

Meanwhile, ArX, Bazaar-NG, Codeville, darcs, Mercurial, and Monotone continue to attract fans and learn from each other.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

Oh, get a hobby

Posted Jan 28, 2006 3:03 UTC (Sat) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link]

Hey, I've got a hobby, http://www.bitmover.com/lm/house - I'm busy riding around on my tractor. It's way more fun than arguing with a bunch of geeks.

But since I'm here what the hey. I'm sure you'll flame me into next week but don't expect a reply, OK? No offense but arguing with you guys isn't really that much fun and I like to have fun.

All the systems you mentioned existed before we pulled free BK so I'm not sure what's your point.

I think I probably need to write paper or a blog that details all this stuff but here's a summary:

People think that the reverse engineering of BitKeeper is the same as the reverse engineering of the SMB stuff. That's not at all true. BK was something that was given away for free to anyone so that they could work on open source and enjoy BK's benefits. To me this is an obvious difference, we created something useful and gave it away for free under the terms "we're helping you so don't screw us" and Tridge came along and decided to screw us.

The 14 year olds in the crowd all go "yeah, Tridge! Open source is kewl!" but that's lame. We're not Microsoft, we weren't trying to rip people off, we were busting our asses to help the open source community. We gave away our products, we provided free support and machines (at a cost of $500K/year) in good faith. All we asked was that people respected our IP, which, BTW, is exactly what the GPL asks.

It's one thing to reverse engineer Microsoft stuff, they've never helped you. Perhaps I'm naive, but I think it is dramatically different to reverse engineer the work of a company who is doing everything to help you. Does the phrase "biting the hand that feeds you" ring a bell? Perhaps not, but it should. The fact that few of you see the difference isn't really a good thing for open source, this has been a very visible thing and it doesn't show the open source community in a good light. Like it or not, if you dig into the facts we were an excellent member of the community and the community crapped on us. If you want people with money to help you, this story is not going to help that goal.

What a hobby

Posted Jan 29, 2006 16:17 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

I'm busy riding around on my tractor. It's way more fun than arguing with a bunch of geeks.

Oh, so now riding around on a tractor is fun? Obviously not so much, since you keep coming for more.

We're not Microsoft, we weren't trying to rip people off, we were busting our asses to help the open source community.

You are much worse than Microsoft. With them you know what their true position is; but BitMover were posing as friends when you are not. The only good you have ever done is to show further proof that freedom is more important in the long run than convenience.

We gave away our products, we provided free support and machines (at a cost of $500K/year) in good faith.

You gave free hosting and a lease on your program in exchange for visibility. No good faith required.

All we asked was that people respected our IP, which, BTW, is exactly what the GPL asks.

Not in the least. The GPL is designed to let you know what your software does and how to modify it; not to protect any "IP". In fact, Stallman and the FSF have repeatedly repudiated the concept of "intellectual property". Your goals were to forbid people from learning what your software did, i.e. to keep your knowledge to yourselves.

Just to show you the difference: if your goals were really the same as those of the GPL, you could have used it to publish your software under it. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? There you have it. Different requirements, different goals.

The fact that few of you see the difference isn't really a good thing for open source, this has been a very visible thing and it doesn't show the open source community in a good light.

It's good to have some common ground. The software libre community could not care less: as we learn to disentangle ourselves from the prostituted concept which is "open source", events like this (and people like you) help us see why freedom is important after all. The "open source community" increasingly appears in a bad light to us too.

The software libre (or free software) community comes out with an A of this mess. In a few weeks there was a good enough free replacement of an expensive proprietary tool which was causing controversy and division; it was adopted and used and expanded upon, showcasing the strengths of free software. It was as if BitKeeper had never existed.

Like it or not, if you dig into the facts we were an excellent member of the community and the community crapped on us.

You can keep saying it but that does not make it true: you were not an excellent member of the "community". In fact you were not even a member. Witness your long term contributions: right now, what have we gained from you? A saner Linus, according to you; but other kernel maintainers never used BitKeeper and managed to get their work done and keep their alternative trees. In fact you may have delayed his work on git several years, causing a lasting fragmentation in the free code management panorama. This suited you well, which shows your true colors.

So you gave the Linux kernel some free hosting and a lease on your program. In truth, when you got tired of the "community" you took your ball home and left nothing of value. In contrast, look at Tridgell's work: they are lasting contributions which are there for everyone to use freely -- and by the way are essential tools in any admin's box. BitKeeper is an anecdote.

If you want people with money to help you, this story is not going to help that goal.

Sorry, we don't need no sugar daddies. We (and this is a rhetorical "we") want to work with serious people who have something useful to offer, be it code, hardware, bandwidth or jobs. With no strings attached; otherwise the whole "freedom" thing would make little sense. Luckily there is no shortage of "people with money" (even, you know, big companies) who understand what is needed. As to the rest they can go away and count their millions, ride their tractors or whatever they do. No hard feelings.

Oh, get a hobby

Posted Jan 31, 2006 1:20 UTC (Tue) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link]

Larry wrote:

But since I'm here what the hey. I'm sure you'll flame me into next week but don't expect a reply, OK?

Larry, there's certainly no call to flame you. That is the last thing from my mind. You and your firm have a fine product that deserves every bit of the success it's been gaining against ClearCase and the like.

At the same time, you are publicly impugning the integrity of one of the most thoroughly ethical people most of us know, and basically asking us to take your accusation of illegality on pure faith, since you are unwilling to litigate it (but glad to hurl mud in public that you decline to back up). I'm sorry, but that's neither convincing nor acceptable, and in fact is outright offensive.

People think that the reverse engineering of BitKeeper is the same as the reverse engineering of the SMB stuff. That's not at all true.

What seems to have happened was Tridge studying BitKeeper's publicly observable behaviour to create an open-source, interoperable client, SourcePuller — which he did. You spent a lot of time decrying it, and calling it unethical. When people question you how on earth Tridge writing an interoperable client from his own efforts could be unethical, you assert that he did it through unlawful means — but then decline to put your money where your mouth is and prove it in court, preferring to float loose charges in public where you don't have to prove them.

And meanwhile, you also digress onto non-sequitur justifications about how it's wrongful because your firm provided this-and-that generous benefits to the community. Stipulating those benefits, you have nonetheless ducked the question and conveniently changed the subject.

The accusations, given your declining to prove them, do you little credit. Nobody's flaming you, but, again, shame on you for that sort of behaviour, which is no way for the head of a serious business to conduct himself.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

git

Posted Jan 27, 2006 13:41 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

Instead, what you have is a bunch of very talented people wasting their time on something they had and could have continued to have for free.

What, are you dissatisfied with the state of the current 2.6.x branch? Anything missing in the latest 2.6.15 kernel?

It helped the kernel in a big way and no matter what the silly press says, no BK has taken its toll on the pace of kernel development.

Ah, you don't want to say so, just imply it in a convoluted way.

Well, IMHO good craftsmen must be able to make their own tools, or at least modify them at ease. Linus could inspect and sharpen his BitKeeper tool using you as a middleman, but the rest of the world could not. Now we have git which everyone can inspect and modify at will, and therefore everyone has won.