LWN: Comments on "The BitKeeper non-compete clause"

Why I said that you had trouble making payroll

BrucePerens — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 21:27:43 +0000

Larry,

You are correct that I know nothing about your business internals...
except what you tell me. I based my feeling about how hard it was for
you to make payroll, and how you felt about Open Sourcing his product,
on the following email, which appeared on at least one public list,
in which you very clearly wrote that it was a pull making payroll.

Regarding your propensity to threaten lawsuits, I only remember our
last two phone conversations, which I think both ended unpleasantly.
I have no wish to goad you, but I don't want to seem as if I'm making
things up.

Thanks
Bruce

From lm@bitmover.com  Sat Aug 10 17:57:35 2002
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Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 17:57:26 -0700
From: Larry McVoy ⟨lm@bitmover.com&rang
To: Tom Lord ⟨lord@regexps.com&rang
Cc: lm@bitmover.com, lord@morrowfield.regexps.com,
	arch-dev@regexps.com, ghudson@MIT.EDU, dev@subversion.tigris.org,
	tiemann@redhat.com, poole@affero.com, bruce@perens.com,
	dev@bitmover.com
Subject: Re: what proofs look like
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Mail-Followup-To: Larry McVoy ⟨lm@work.bitmover.com&rang,
	Tom Lord ⟨lord@regexps.com&rang, lm@bitmover.com,
	lord@morrowfield.regexps.com, arch-dev@regexps.com, ghudson@MIT.EDU,
	dev@subversion.tigris.org, tiemann@redhat.com, poole@affero.com,
	bruce@perens.com, dev@work.bitmover.com
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On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 12:23:10PM -0700, Tom Lord wrote:
&rang 	I had hoped to reply to your earlier note in as positive and
&rang 	constructive a mode as possible, to get past the difficult
&rang 	garbage, and into the space of making improvements of mutual
&rang 	benefit.
&rang 
&rang Do you think that's possible?

No.  Please take me off the CC list of this thread.  As gently as 
possible, with no ill will intended, I want you to hear that I can't
help you.  I don't have the extra money that you need and I doubt 
that anyone else does.  

[ Delete now if you don't want to know why we didn't take Tom's path ]

It's perhaps worth pointing out that I've been running a company doing
SCM type stuff for 5 years.  We own our IP and we use legal means
to force people to pay us for it.  And we have a good product, many
people think it is better than clearcase. 

Even with all that, the last 5 years have been a non-stop struggle to
scrap together payroll every 2 weeks.  It's a constant source of stress,
there are houses, families, kids, all of whom depend on me finding the
money to keep things going.  It's incredibly hard.  My health sucks
as a result of doing this, you have no idea of the toll it has taken.
And the part that you just can't seem to hear is that there is ABSOLUTELY
NO CHANCE that we would have made 1/100th of the money we have made if
we gave away our software for free.  And there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE
that we would have made 1/100th of the money we have made even if we had
all the good parts of arch, BK, subversion, and clearcase put together
in a GPLed package.  The market simply will not pay for obscure products
unless they have to do so.

You may have a different opinion but what you are finding out is that
your opinion is wrong and that's a painful process.  I'm sorry for you,
I tried to warn you but it's understandable that you didn't listen,
we don't produce anything remotely approximating free software so we're
automatically in the "evil corporate" camp.  What you didn't get is that
I'm you.  I have the same ideals, the same goals, the same dedication,
the same drive to help the world.  I can just hear you saying "if that's
true then BitKeeper would be GPLed, you self serving bastard".  Not so.
My goal was, is, and will remain a goal of providing support for Linus
and Linux.  The difference between me and you is that I have realized 
what it really costs to produce a decent SCM system and then continue
to support and evolve it.  It's a HUGE cost.  Given that my goal was to
help Linus and that I believed that he needed a production quality system,
my choices were to get on the dot com wagon and get VC and/or make it
commercial.  Otherwise it was never going to get finished.  GPL was not
an option.

I choose not to go the VC route because the VC guys don't share my goals.
Their only goal is to make more money.  Which means as soon as they
thought that giving BK away to the open source crowd didn't help them
make more money, they'd put a stop to that.  So I passed on that, turned
down $6M from a top 3 VC firm,  just wasn't worth the risk.

We went it alone, but we had to make it a for profit concern or we'd 
never have gotten to where we are.  And we're nowhere near done.

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you saying "thanks for the BK advertisement"
but that's not the point.  The point is that the goal of helping out the
portion of free software community with difficult SCM problems FORCED us
into a corporate model.  You can whine all you like about how evil that
is, how I've sold out, whatever, but the reality is that you are begging
for money so you can get to a 1.0 release and we are shipping a tool that
2000+ Linux kernel developers use world wide.  For free.  And it has met
the goal of helping Linus.  BK still sucks, it has tons of problems, but
those problems will get solved precisely because we have a business model.
You don't.  Your business model is charity.  That's not going to work.

I'd be far more impressed with you if you were demonstrating that I
was wrong by showing me how to develop a system that works, in all the
corner cases, and is self supporting through a business model that
somehow works with an open source product.  I'd LOVE to see that.
I hate the idea of not shipping source, it pisses me off to no end.
But it is a fact of life that if we ship it, people abuse it.  And then
we go out of business.  And then the product doesn't get finished.

At any rate, I don't think you are listening to any of this, so just
listen to this one thing: please stop mailing me about this.  Feel 
free to flame me a few more times if that makes you feel good but 
don't expect a response, I've procmailed you into /dev/null.  Sorry,
but I have work to do and this is too much additional stress.  Good
luck, I'd love nothing more than to have you show me a business model
which proves me completely wrong, but until you do, I don't want to 
hear about your problems.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

wolfrider — Mon, 21 Oct 2002 21:44:01 +0000

"we will go back to CVS" -- WRONG. Linus never used CVS for kernel development, that was one of the reasons why BK was so desperately needed.

It's only going to get worse

wolfrider — Mon, 21 Oct 2002 21:33:10 +0000

Larry, I respect your work and your efforts to help out Linus et al.

I can tell that you are sincerely trying to be a "good guy" and then you get flamed for your efforts by ppl who don't know any better.

Don't let the bastards grind ya down.

--Wolfrider

It's only going to get worse

job — Thu, 17 Oct 2002 10:27:23 +0000

If that would happend, I hope we as a community could "buy" BitKeeper (exatcly what was done for Blender). Perhaps that is something that could be appropritate to Bitmover? If the large players could cough up their share of money right away to free Bitkeeper? That would be a great contribution. Come on, it can't be impossible they've wasted more money than that on really lousy projects.

Arch

job — Thu, 17 Oct 2002 10:22:21 +0000

There are a few things brewing in the Arch community. The new central place seem to be this one: Arch

That site lists a few exciting contribution from Walter Landry, who calls his creation larch.

Free software to the rescue.

leandro — Thu, 17 Oct 2002 08:32:18 +0000

> BSD was under a legal cloud, so he couldn't use it.

He could, just as the GNU people used. He couldn't be sure of his legal status, so he perhaps would have to analyse his own patches to BSD before deciding if he could share them or not, or even refrain from publishing them at all.

Remember, copyright is not about usage, but copying.

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

JoeBuck — Wed, 16 Oct 2002 20:47:08 +0000

BM is not giving a gift to the Linux kernel development community. It is making a wise business decision. The only reason you and most other people have heard of BitKeeper is because Linus uses it. That publicity has translated into tons of free advertising, and reviews from publications that otherwise never would have heard of the product.

It is costing BM money to support the kernel hackers who use BK, but again, that's merely a wise investment. Any successful software product needs a set of skilled beta customers to bang on it and help get the bugs out.

Given that the free BK license is not a gift, it makes sense to evaluate its consequences. It's been valuable to Linus, although that value looks greater because before BitKeeper Linus wasn't using any SCM system. However, there are down sides as well, as more and more kernel hackers find themselves either disqualified from using it or prevented from doing other work that interests them.

Accordingly, it should be seen as only an interim solution. In the long term, as ESR says, open source software gets written to scratch an itch; it would be in Larry and BM's interest to try to make BitKeeper itch as little as possible, otherwise they will only accelerate its eventual replacement.

For example, earlier reports suggested that BM would disqualify all (for example) Red Hat employees from using BK for free if any Red Hat employee worked on any competing SCM project. If they are backing off of that extreme position, it's a wise move.

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

kunitz — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 14:54:32 +0000

It's not helpfull in the long term, that the development on the Linux kernel is depending on the success of Lary McVoy's company. I find it more and more dangerous, that open-source starts to depend on centralized infrastructure like Source Forge or the Bitkeeper open-logging server. I wait for the day this infrastructure will be ICANNized.

I would argue for a formal contract between the Linux community (Linux International) and BitMover Inc. This contract should define, what happens if "free" Bitkeeper-Licensing will be terminated or changed and how interoperability with current and future open-source SCM projects can be supported. This contract should be based on the fact, that BitMover wins high product awareness and market penetration by the application of BitKeeper for Linux kernel development.

OpenCM

zooko — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 23:09:30 +0000

There's also OpenCM. It is immature, but is directed by Jonathan Shapiro, who has done excellent research on capability security theory.

Free software to the rescue.

rfunk — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 17:36:51 +0000

Also I am amazed to see that, if Linus had applied to Linux the reasoning he uses to justify BitKeeper usage, Linux would never have seen light. The better tools to the task at the time Linux got started were the BSD Unices...

At the time, BSD was under a legal cloud, so he couldn't use it.

It's only going to get worse

lm — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 16:52:25 +0000

> Larry's business barely makes payroll.

We have 3 months of payroll in cash today. We have 5 months of payroll
coming in within the next 20 days. Most of our customers are lease based
which means we have a steady revenue stream, one which covers our costs.
We've been profitable for 4 years, which is saying a lot.

I don't know kind of smoke you're crackin but we're nowhere near being
"pushed over the edge".

I do not hate to burst your bubble at all, Bruce, since you are spreading
categorically false information about us, but the only way we'll withdraw
the free use product is if we let people like you annoy us. Since you
don't use BK and you don't do any kernel development, you don't rise
to the level of annoyance.

1 down, 10000 to go :)

Arch

lordsutch — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 16:21:50 +0000

I believe Walter Landry is one of the guys working on arch at the moment (he's posted some about it on debian-devel); try wlandry -at- ucsd.edu.

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

dkite — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 16:17:20 +0000

I find this whole thing unfortunate. Mr. McVoy has very generously contributed to the kernel development in a very useful way, as the article mentioned. The free software developers have a habit though of looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth.

I think the current economic situation has pushed Bitkeeper into a corner. The 'normal' response is to tighten up, get defensive. All this is doing is making the teeth look alot worse.

I suspect there will be a replacement soon. I was even tempted to sit down and figure out a way, something way beyond my skill or time availability. I am sure a number of hackers have been equally piqued.

I think the flame wars on the linux kernel forums will seem mild mannered compared to the ugliness that is going to come with this issue.

Derek

And what about the non-free licenses?

emk — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 13:27:29 +0000

Does Larry allow developers of version control software to use BitKeeper under his proprietary license, without severe price discrimintation? If not, his attempts to penalize kernel contributors who work on version control software is fairly sketchy.

I'm surprised LWN took such a soft position on this license. I know that I'd get grumpy if any of my development tool vendors (free or proprietary) started taking an interest in what kind of software I was writing. Microsoft's done this a few times, and the Linux community has soundly condemned them each time.

Larry keeps changing his licensing terms after many users have become committed to his system, and his licensing terms place unusual and difficult burdens on some of his users. That's not nice.

One point to Richard Stallman, for predicting trouble. I'll be looking into Aegis.

Correction: Perforce is FREE for OpenSource use

faramir — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 13:11:21 +0000

This article states that no commercial source management system
is available for free use. In fact, Perforce has had an offer
on their web site for free licenses for OpenSource projects for
some time now. The offer is still on their web site on the page:

http://www.perforce.com/perforce/price.html

Reading the license document that is linked off of the page,
it seems that there might be issues because the software is
written to be licensed on a per user basis, but the offer is
still there...

Free software to the rescue.

massimiliano — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 12:07:50 +0000

> Also I am amazed to see that, if Linus had applied to Linux the reasoning
> he uses to justify BitKeeper usage, Linux would never have seen light.
> The better tools to the task at the time Linux got started were the BSD
> Unices...

While I agree on many worries about the bitkeeper license... I think that
at the time he started (with his brand new 386) Linus didn't want to use
"the best tool for the job": he was interested in developing such a tool
(operating system) himself.

Now, with a SCM, his position is different: he is not interested in writing
one (he is still busy with his OS), so he just looks for "the best tool for
the job".

Of course, I wish we had a free SCM with all the features BitKeeper has,
and I will take a look at Aegis soon... for now, I stick with CVS, keeping
an eye on Subversion.

Ciao,
Massimiliano

Free software to the rescue.

leandro — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 11:07:34 +0000

Now we see RMS wisdom in action.

I never understood why Linus never evaluated Aegis, and why Subversion is being pushed so hard. AFAICS, Aegis does most or all of what BitKeeper claims to do and Subversion targets, and could be used by Linus with similar results and less controversy.

Also I am amazed to see that, if Linus had applied to Linux the reasoning he uses to justify BitKeeper usage, Linux would never have seen light. The better tools to the task at the time Linux got started were the BSD Unices...

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

lacostej — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 07:34:24 +0000

Something I don't understand is that people get scared wih a 'what if BK is removed from us?' question. The answer is: we will go back to CVS (or any other open source tool that has matured enough to replace it). That's all. No loss of productivity compared to what we used to have. The loss of migrating back will, as I understand it, probably be less important than the gain we had using BK during the last months.

So stop complaining. Say thanks to Larry who gives us some help, even if temporary, for free. That's his own contribution do Open Source. And it is a much bigger one than spending time complaining on mailing lists. If you are afraid that this gool tool is to be removed from you, then go and spend as much time as you can using it!

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

alan — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 06:50:56 +0000

From the link you gave, Linus was not encouraging BK's use at all. In fact he mentioned that the ACPI team was trying to use it and didn't quite get it right, ( and says that the ALSA patch was even more difficult to deal with).
He seems to be concerned about technical excellence, not licensing issues.
That's fine with me.

As for the price of licensing, I once sat down with Oracle in a series of meetings and asked for a price quote. I got $800,000 quoted for the project I was working on. My coworkers and I sat down and reviewed everything in detail, and when we were finished, the quote was $200,000. I can understand why Larry wouldn't like his prices spread about. Every negotiation is a consists of haggling out a deal. Posting his numbers will just scare off potential customers that he may be able to give discounts to in exchange for the probable future customers.

Fyodor, thank you for your work on nmap. It is unquestionably the best.

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

alan — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 06:39:14 +0000

Larry has notably poor customer service skills. This is forgivable, as he is an engineer, not a customer service rep.
What about the other side, the businesses that are looking in on BM, as a test case. They want to know, 'Can we work with the open source community?'. Yes, there are nasty licensing tricks BM *could do in the future, but focus on what it's track record is now, in generously supporting the kernel development team. If BM, a reasonably benevolent company with real innovations that are making a tangible difference, has a difficult time in pleasing the community with a very reasonable licensing scheme, it may discourage others from releasing software for open systems, as a futile effort not worth trying.

I agree that the dependence on closed software for kernel development is a situation that needs rectifying. However, BitMover only needs a slight innovative edge, to appease the demanding high-end customers from whom they intend to make a living. They will move on to bigger and better features, and customers, and they'll be able to say that their software dramatically improved the quality of a popular and large open source kernel, Linux. Features that give BK it's current edge will find their way into arch and subversion. I'm sure that is how this series of events will come to pass.

In the meantime though, the ability of a company to work with the community and make a living will be gauged by the many present and future businesses who are silently observing, looking for a successful model that is both profitable and opensource friendly. There are those who really want this to work, so how beneficial is it to abuse the first wave of those who are really trying?

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

fyodor — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 05:56:47 +0000

Yes, this restriction supposedly only applies to the free version. But Larry can easily exclude people he doesn't like from the paid version via discriminatory pricing. Note how he immediately threatens lawsuits when someone posts the BK pricelist. Even if the pricing was not discriminatory, few open source hackers have an extra $5,800 lying around for a single-user Bitkeeper license. So if you are or ever want to be a kernel hacker, Larry wants you to think long and hard before contributing that little Subversion or CVS patch. It is true that you can still "work around" using Bitkeeper for kernel development, but Linus seems to be encouraging its use more and more.

I for one plan to resist this bogus, anticompetitive license. I am surprised the LWN article treaded so lightly. I wonder what they would have written if the MS EULA was changed to exclude developers of competing operating systems? I am currently developing the Nmap Security Scanner[plug], but I hope to find time to help with Subversion as well. The best way to fight BK is to write a compelling replacement. My best wishes go out to those who are already doing such admirable work!

-Fyodor

It's only going to get worse

BrucePerens — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 04:53:00 +0000

Sorry if this ends up a duplicate. My original posting on this topic seems to have gotten lost.

Don't think the situation will remain the same. Larry's business barely makes payroll. He's not getting more investment. He knows that it would take a very little push to get him to the point that he can't make payroll. Subversion is going to give that push. Especially since anger is a great motivator in the free software community, and now there are a lot of angry people who want subversion to do just that. What Larry is doing with the pernicious license terms is attempting to hold off the inevitable for a little longer. But Bitmover will be sold or will have a new investor who changes the management. The best scenario is that the new investor is "one of us" and takes the thing free. But that's not the likely scenario - the likely one is that we lose the current free beer rights. We'd better make sure that subversion is ready for Linus (or whoever) to use, because a day will dawn when we suddenly need it.

Bruce

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

Ross — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 04:17:15 +0000

Larry seems to be quite reasonable on granting exceptions
to this clause in the license for those who aren't working
on version control software. So pragmatically, this isn't a
problem right now.

But we should all realize we are relying on BM's good will
and that is less than optimal. I would suggest that the
kernel developers should avoid becoming overly dependent
on BK or any other product outside of our control.

In fact, this whole thing reminds me of another problem:
Putting way too many open source eggs in SourceForge's basket.

Arch

BrucePerens — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 03:53:50 +0000

I'm afraid that the originator of "arch", Tom Lord, is unable to work on it any longer due to personal issues. So don't count on it. I'm disappointed, I did all I could to help, it didn't work. I know that there were other people working on it, and there was at least one full rewrite in progress (to Perl), but I'm not currently in touch with any of the other developers. I'd like to hear from them. Email to bruce@perens.com please .

Bruce

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

corbet — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 03:00:31 +0000

Actually, it's been some time since source for BK has been posted. They quietly withdrew that a while ago. BK is a true closed-source application these days.

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

dlang — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 02:49:41 +0000

Also the non-compete clause only applies to the FREE use of bitkeeper, if you pay for a licence this doesn't apply to you at all (although if you purchase a licence and then write a program that works very like bitkeeper you can probably expect a lawsuit about copying it's look-and-feel)

In addition Larry has stated that he has already issued some waivers to kernel developers who work for companies that develop SCM systems to allow them to continue useing bitkeeper for kernel development.

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

dlang — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 02:39:44 +0000

One correction is that Bitkeeper source is available (remeber the flame wars over the fact that bitkeeper required the modified versions to still pass the regression tests that among other things verified that you didn't remove the openlogging portion)

There are restrictions on what you can do with the modified version so it's not 'Open Source' by the legal definition, but you can look at the source and verify what it is doing.

David Lang

The BitKeeper non-compete clause

lordsutch — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 01:58:23 +0000

I think this episode underlines the need for a truly free SCM system that Linus is comfortable with using. The developers of arch, Subversion and other advanced SCM systems need support to make that happen.

While I respect that Larry has a business to run, and perhaps even agree that GPL-licensed software is hardly a fountain of innovation, as opposed to duplication, he's the one who chose to build up his business by portraying himself as a friend of free software, as embodied in the Linux kernel. He shouldn't be surprised that when he publicly goes after important members of the developer community (BenC is not only a 1394 developer and Subversion hacker; he's a former Debian Project Leader too) it's gonna get him bad publicity.