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No more bitkeeper for kernel developers

KernelTrap, Slashdot.

The KernelTrap story seems to pretty much just print a Bitmover press release. I suppose the other side(s) of the story will come out soon.

Much of what I would say about it is already said by other people in the kerneltrap or slashdot comments. In particular This comment is spot on:

If BitMover stated up front that all licenses would be withdrawn from all Linux developers in the event that any single Linux developer tried to reverse engineer BitKeeper, then Linus was a total idiot for agreeing to that license.

If BitMover did not state those conditions up front, then they are being evil and manipulative in yanking licenses from unrelated parties in a fit of pique over what one person is doing in his own time.

To head off any FUD at the pass: there is copious documentation of where the bazaar-ng design ideas came from. Almost all are from places other than bitkeeper; where bitkeeper has had an influence it is through things people have said about it e.g. in the kernel BK usage docs.

I have heard from some kernel maintainers that even before this they weren't using bk except to sync from Linus.

I'd really like bazaar-ng to be a great kernel development system, and I think the performance will be good, but it's going to take a while to get enough features in place for even early adopters, maybe 2-3 months.

I suspect Larry understands that if he cut them off in 2006, no one would care so much, because the open systems would be good enough. Perhaps that's why it's been done now.

It's a great demonstration of the risks of putting critical data in a system whose licence can be revoked at any time.

I was rather amused by Larry's notion that it's unacceptable for a platform vendor to compete with their application vendors. Microsoft or Apple would never do that, oh no.

The fact is that any successful product is going to attract competition. It's a predictable outcome of a free market, and not any kind of moral failing of the open source community. There is no point whining about it.

If you've been left out in the cold by Bitkeeper I encourage you to check out bazaar-ng.

posted Thu 7 Apr 2005 in /software/vc | link

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