BitKeeper EULA Forbids Working On Competition 694
Col. Klink (retired) writes "BitKeeper's new EULA forbids working on the competition. Larry McVoy has told Ben Collins that he can't use BK because he works on subversion (a free revision control program). In fact, you can't use BitKeeper if you OR your company have anything to do with competing software. Free Software advocates who were upset when Linus decided to use non-Free software now have the opportunity to say 'I told you so.'"
For what a EULA is worth (Score:4, Informative)
It's a New EULA, so the old one did not mention it?
The solution is simple: continue to use your existing version.
They can... if they purchase it! (Score:4, Informative)
If the submitter had followed the thread on LKML more closely he would have realized that it is only forbidden to use the *free* (i.e. openlogging) version of BK to develop a competing product. They can still *purchase* a commercial license and develop whatever they want with it.
-- kryps
Re:What does BitKeeper exactly do? (Score:5, Informative)
You can find a probably biased comparison here:
http://www.bitkeeper.com/Products.Comparisons.CVS
-- kryps
Not possible (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why don't they use standard CVS? (Score:1, Informative)
> Is the kernel just too big for it?
CVS is far from being perfect, but it's not the matter of the project size.
For example, NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD all use cvs for the whole source tree and it's way bigger than Linux kernel.
Re:They can... if they purchase it! (Score:2, Informative)
Well this is quoted from the free license. The commercial license does not include this section.
-- kryps
Re:Why don't they use standard CVS? (Score:5, Informative)
CVS has too many inherent limitations to make it a good choice for large-scale projects. Although it's been around for just ever and is fairly solid, there are a couple of issues that make CVS a sub-optimal choice.
First, CVS is built on top of RCS and, as such, doesn't handle binary files. Okay, that's a fib; it sorta kinda does, but it's very klunky, and easily prone to errors. Further, it's easy for the "binary-ness" of a file to be lost (i.e. be treated as text), resulting in all kinds of nasty corruption. Best Practices will avoid this, but everyone has to be on their toes all the time.
Second, CVS has no notion of "transactions". Let's say you check in a bugfix/new feature to the kernel. The change involves modifying six different files. CVS does not see this checkin as a single transaction, but six completely separate ones. So a lot of information about the scope of a given change is not easily found. The only way you can know a particular change affected multiple files is by noticing that their checkin comments are identical. Further, if you perform a checkin against multiple files and one or more of them has a conflict (someone else checked in a change before you did), CVS will simply halt at the conflicting file; earlier files successfully checked in up to that point are not backed out. Thus, the repository is left in an inconsistent state. Best Practices can avoid this but, again, everyone has to be on their toes.
Other source control systems don't have these problems. In particular, Subversion is transaction-based, so groups of files checked in at once either all get checked in, or none of them do, keeping the repository consistent. Also, Subversion handles arbitrary meta-data for each file, including its MIME type, so the "binary-ness" of a file cannot be lost or modified unless you expressly change its MIME type. Even better, Subversion will automatically perform newline translation to/from your local platform when checking out/in text files.
For small projects with small numbers of people, CVS is perfectly okay. But beyond a certain scale, CVS's limitations start to get in the way, and you need something better.
Schwab
Re:What does BitKeeper exactly do? (Score:3, Informative)
The reason Subversion, BitKeeper, and a whole host of other next-generation SCM products are being developed is because CVS just plain doesn't cut it for most serious development. It works, but not nicely.
Subversion is not distributed, so while having independent, distributed source trees is a nice feature of BitKeeper that some projects require, it is not the only reason to switch.
Re:Why don't they use standard CVS? (Score:3, Informative)
- CVS cannot move files and keep a track of the log.
- CVS directory handling is quite horrible
Now, I use CVS as everybody else here does, it works, sure. But there are some problems that should be fixed (and cannot be because of the CVS base), that's why I'll probably switch to Subversion [tigris.org] soon. It's still under heavy development, but it gets better from day to day.
Let's support some free software instead of proprietary ones !
Please see Larry's comments (and responses) (Score:3, Informative)
1) "In fact you can't use BitKeeper if you OR your company have anything to do with competing software."
The above applies to
Furthermore, Larry has demonstrated that even if you
2) It has been made very clear by several of the core developers that accessibility to Linus's merges has been made much easier since his trial/adoption of BK. See here [theaimsgroup.com], here [theaimsgroup.com], and here [theaimsgroup.com].
3) This is hardly a "new EULA."
Please see the thread at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=10
Read the whole discussion on LKML. (Score:5, Informative)
"
From: Larry McVoy
Subject: Re: New BK License Problem?
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 16:44:06 -0700
> And that's perfectly fair. However as worded in your license today, the
> individuals who work for those companies and have nothing to do with
> the competitive software you are worried about can't use your product
> to work on open source software.
Yes, that's true. But that doesn't mean we can't make exceptions, we can
and do.
> defined on www.opensource.org, may apply for a waiver to
>
> stating
> 1) Which company they work for
> 2) Which Open Source Project(s) they are going to be using the
> Bitkeeper software for
> 3) Identify if they are working on this project in their "free" time or
> as part of their
> job definition
>
> If granted the waiver will only cover the stated Open Source project(s)
> you have named. If you expand your use of the BitKeeper software to
> other Open Source project(s) you will need to apply for a waiver for
> those project(s) as well.
If *I* had suggested this language I would have been flamed off the face
of the earth. The people who are complaining the loudest are complaining
that BitKeeper limits their choices or takes their freedom away or whatever.
They absolutely *despise* any sort of authority figure and the idea of
coming begging to BitMover for a waiver each time just makes them crazy. "
In short?
If you want to use Bitkeeper for the development of something to replace it, you have to purchase a commercial license. Otherwise, you can use the "gratis" license.
McVoy just killed BK (Score:2, Informative)
Re:For what a EULA is worth (Score:5, Informative)
The solution is simple: continue to use your existing version.
The old EULA is revoked automatically as soon as Bitmover changes the Bitkeeper test suite so that the old version no longer passes it. In essence, this means that Bitmover can revoke old licenses at any time.
IANAL, but I know I can't rely on Bitkeeper (the vendor doesn't want me to, obviously). Maybe the commercially sold version is different, I don't know.
Bitkeeper is probably really nice software, so we can only hope that Red Hat (or someone else) buys Bitmover one day and licenses Bitkeeper under the GPL.
aegis: a free software alternative (Score:5, Informative)
Re:clarification for a tired dummy (Score:3, Informative)
Yes using BitKeeper equals contributing code to some project . But using BitKeeper does not equal contributing code to a project competing with BitKeeper
You can use BitKeeper and other version control software for developing software for a completely different purpose (like for instance Linux), the question was what the EULA has to say about that.
I actually doubt this statement in the BitKeeper EULA has any relevance for European users. I guess it is only in America you can legally make such ridiculous claims.
Re:BitMover is NOT the "bad guys" (Score:3, Informative)
This is just not true. There is the commercial license (the BKCL) and there is the free license (the BKL). Both differ in many points and there is no clause about development of competing products in the BKCL. Check your sources.
-- kryps
Re:aegis: a free software alternative (Score:4, Informative)
However, the process implemented by Aegis closely mirrors the Linux development process: a developer makes changes, some subsystem maintainer reviews it, and Linus integrates it into the official tree. But there's a drawback: this only works if all developers have access to the same repository, on the same filesystem.
Aegis has got a distributed development model, but it doesn't offer the same repository tracking features as Bitkeeper. I don't know if this is relevant in the kernel context, IIRC Linus has complained more than once that the repository tracking (which links changesets to particular repositories/revisions) prevents him from automatically applying patches to the master repository.
Re:Read the whole discussion on LKML. (Score:4, Informative)
In short?
If you want to use Bitkeeper for the development of something to replace it, you have to purchase a commercial license. Otherwise, you can use the "gratis" license.
This isn't an accurate statement, or at best it's misleading. Say you want to work on two projects -- one a version control program, the other the Linux kernel. For the version control stuff, you use your own software (or CVS or anything not BK), and for Linux you use BK (which apparently you don't have to do, but it integrates best). Nope, can't do it. Because you work on a competing project, you can't use BK for free for anything. I think this is the biggest problem.
Apparently you're allowed to buy your own license, but most people don't have $5,000 to shell out (I've seen the price list) for a single copy.
Prices for BitKeeper (from BitKeeper) (Score:5, Informative)
If you want the short version, it's $5,800 for a single license, and then $1,200 / year starting the second year (the first year's included in the base price) for service and upgrades (and you have to keep it current. You can't just pay $1,200 3 years down and try and get upgrades).
So anyone who says that an Open Source developer should just "buy themselves a copy", isn't really understanding that you don't go to Best Buy and plunk down $50.
Re:Prices for BitKeeper (from BitKeeper) - removed (Score:5, Informative)
That was clearly marked as confidential not to be disclosed. See page 7
right above the price list. Posting it is a blatent violation of our
copyright and causes our company material damage. If our lawyers find
that link still working tomorrow morning at 8am, you'll be the first
entity we have sued for copyright violation. Ask around, what you are
doing is serious with serious legal exposure for you.
I'm not exactly sure why I'm not allowed to post it, as nothing says "you may not post this", but it is copyrighted to them, but I don't really know what that means. They're probably just using the fact that they have more lawyers than me (greater than zero vs. zero) to bully me around.. but ah well. I suppose I don't really care about BK anymore.
Re:Prices for BitKeeper (from BitKeeper) - removed (Score:5, Informative)
This is one of the emails I got back:
[my email quoted]
> But I suppose I'll take it down. And you're causing your company more
> material damages in what you're doing than what I'm doing.
[his email]
Actually, every time you slashdot kiddies get your undies in a bundie our
sales go up. Thanks.
Just thought I'd share that..
Re: Can't Work On Competition... (Score:3, Informative)
Is Subversion stable enough for me to use for my own projects?
We believe that Subversion is stable and have confidence in our code, in fact, we've been self-hosting since September of 2001--eating our own caviar so to speak. We declared alpha because we're ready for the world to try Subversion.
Hope this helps
Re:moot point (Score:3, Informative)
What Larry's upset about is that the Subversion developers made a BK gateway so that Subversion could be used in Linux kernel development more easily.
Presumably that's a threat to his business -- it could be the first step in moving kernel development off of BK and onto Subversion.
So he changed the license to (effectively) prevent this.
Re:For what a EULA is worth (Score:2, Informative)
> Tom Lord to be utterly penniless [...] is just
> wrong
Of course, I strongly agree.
> (as in, unable to buy beer, much less pay rent)
I am as happy as one can be under these circumstances to report that, much to my surprise, I was able to buy both this month's rent and this week's beer on the last dribs and drabs of a friend's credit. But, yeah, it's pretty bleak.
But, hey