I have one set of comments on this message and then I'll remain silent
because every time I get dragged into this topic it turns out to be a
big time waste.
On Mon, Apr 10, 2000 at 11:14:04AM -0400, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> My impression on BitKeeper is that there are three problems:
>
> 1. It appears to be in no danger of being useable soon. I've been waiting a
> long time.
Source management is something that shouldn't break. You've been waiting
so that we can give you something that we don't think can break. I'm sorry
that that bothers you, but we get to make the call as to when it is ready.
It seems usable at this point. We have quite a few different sites
using it, some of them for more than a year, and it works. We have 256MB
of changelog comments sent back here, if that is any indication of the
usage. I think that is around 20,000 changesets but I'm not really sure.
The Linux/PPC people have been using it for quite a while for both the
2.2 and 2.3 branches, you might talk to them and see if they agree with
your assessment.
As to release dates, we'll do an official release this month. We've already
opened the release up to anyone who wants it.
> 2. It's not open source.
Oh, brother. You haven't read the license. I don't know if you'll
think it is open source after you have, but maybe you should read the
license and think about it.
Regardless of your feelings about its open-source-ness, BK has a model
that means it will continue to be developed and supported. The open
source model applied to source management generated less revenue per year
than I currently spend in salaries, more than 3 times less.
In other words, the open source model applied to this problem space
didn't work the one time it has been tried and I personally believe
it will never work. What you believe may be different and you can do
whatever you want. We want to have a product we can support, and we have
a model that allows that. You should take a closer look at the model,
it is designed to give you what you want and give you a professionally
supported product. It's a better model, in our opinion, than traditional
open source models. Better for you, for us, and for commercial customers.
If you really hate the model, that's cool too. You can always do what you
are doing, start yet another development effort. You're a smart guy, so
we'll be happy to watch what you do and maybe learn something.
> 3. It requires that all changes be published (to BitKeeper) in order to use
> it without charge. Even in open source projects, there are good reasons not
> to distribute things until they are ready. If nothing else, you don't want
> to release something until it's content has been checked to make sure that
> you actually have the right to release it.
This is INCORRECT. BitKeeper has _never_ required you to publish your
changes, it requires you to publish your check in comments. It has never
asked you to publish your source.
I'm a surprised that someone of your stature would make such an obviously
incorrect statement in a public forum.
> All that being said, if the result of the dcms-dev discussion is that Larry
> finishes BitKeeper and gets on the open-source bandwagon for real I'ld be
> delighted to use what he has. He's a smart guy.
FYI - "Larry" isn't doing BitKeeper, BitMover is. There are people here
who have worked every bit as hard as I have, as well as people who know
a lot more about this space than I do.
-- --- Larry McVoy lm@bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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