Re: bitkeeper

Larry McVoy (lm@bitmover.com)
Sat, 03 Oct 1998 23:41:27 -0600


: Consider this statement from a closed-source advocate: "Even one of the
: most popular open source projects around, Linux, can't get about the
: business of developing their system without the assistance of
: commecially-developed, closed-source software. What does that tell you
: about the viability of open source software when you really need to get
: the job done?"

This is exactly the argument I don't want to have. It is you, not me,
that is casting things as either "open source" or "closed source".

BitKeeper isn't "closed source". You can get the source and you can
fix it if you want to. You can redistribute patches as long as you
don't apply them, redistribute the result, and call it BitKeeper (if
you want to call it BitKeeper+a_patch_to_fix_umask_bug, that's fine).
You don't have to pay for it you are working on anything that meets the
open source definition, if you are an educational institution, or you
are a small shop starting out.

It is my opinion that you should seriously consider products of this
nature. The RedHat approach of just say no is bogus - all it means is
that you have to go down load the latest ghostscript because the 3 year
old Redhat version doesn't talk to whatever the latest printers are.

Think.

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