BK and git: Lessons learned (or not)

Posted Mar 25, 2007 3:05 UTC (Sun) by kevinbsmith (guest, #4778)
In reply to: The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek) by bronson
Parent article: The Torvalds Transcript (InformationWeek)

Linus (and the world) got lucky with git, and many folks have learned the wrong lesson from the whole affair. I don't mean that Linus isn't a great programmer or that git isn't a great tool. What I mean is that the BK folks *chose* to give the kernel folks several weeks to stop using BK, rather than terminating all kernel dev licenses immediately (which they could have done). And git turned out to be relatively quick and painless for Linus to write.

If either of those (or other factors) had come out differently, the kernel could have been hurt very badly by the whole BK experience. Was BK net positive? With hindsight, I would say yes. Could it have been a disasterous net strong negative? Absolutely. The risk was high (and was known at the time BK was selected), the bet was made, and Linus got lucky and won.

Wrong lesson: Depending on closed source for a key tool is fine, because git easily replaced BK.

Right lesson: Depending on closed source for a key tool is very risky, and you really don't know how things might turn out.