BitKeeper EULA Forbids Working On Competition

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.'"

Since when?

[Eudial]

Since when does ppl acutally read the EULA?

I can hear RMS now ...

[Strike]

... saying "told ya so!"

In Related News...

[sparkz]

Microsoft announce that all Windows licenses held by Open Source developers are null and void.

The BSA will be knocking on the door any minute... follow the white rabbit.

Things like this...

[testuser58]

Just make me feel like a sucker for choosing the "hip" GPL for my software. To think that I could have included a license that says something like:

• "by using this software, you agree to give me your car and talk to a jar of pickels at work for the first five minutes of every day."
  
• "by using this software, you agree to agree to the previous agreement, section D, which can be found in records department 41, level 9, building B. Yeah, see them to find out what you just agreed to, sucker."
  
  or
  
  
• "by using this software, you agree to tell me when you encounter bugs instead of emailing me I'll never use your software because it doesn't work good!"

Sigh... the fun I could've had...

Re:Consider ethics and software freedom.

[khuber]

otopico, you can't use your hammer to pount nails manufactured by our competitors.

We feel this is necessary to ensure the viability of our business.

Unfortunately your hammer was a free sample you obtained from the International Hammer Show 2001, and not the full commercial version.

We do sell a commercial hammer with no restrictions for $99.95.

Sincerely,
Ron O'Nail, U.S. Hammer Corp.

Re: RMS was right

[Black Parrot]

> Hating RMS is a religion.

For agnustics?

Re:Only the gratis license is affected

[gladiator72]

An excellent time to quote President Zaphod Beeblebrox: "WOW!"

It makes me quiver with abject glee to know with relative certainty that authors of printed publications will never resort to individual licenses (rather than the kind of license that is required to, for instance, make a movie or adapt the story to the stage) that would abjectly forbid any other author or potential author of a book in a similar genre from reading!

Imagine if H.G. Wells would have declared that anyone reading his books would be strictly forbidden from publishing a novel in the genre that would become known as science-fiction.

Imagine if chip manufacturer X were to forbid other chip manufacturers from using their(X) chips or any product that uses their chips in the design or fabrication of the competing chips.

Imagine if you were forbidden from using ketchup in your meatloaf!! AAAAHHHHH!!!!! Hrm... okay. I'm slipping. Heh. Yeah. Anyway.

Regardless of how simple and striaght-forward the BitKeeper product may be, I think Mr. McVoy is forgetting that folks that do kernel development have been using tools such as gcc, as, emacs, vi, lint, m4 thingies, troff, make, info... XWindows (for the love of God!) Needless to say, your average kernel developer is probably not the typical oh-my-i-just-cant-figure-this-out-when-is-bill-goi ng-to-come-and-save-me-with-another-bug-ridden-blo ated-version-of-his-operating-system-so-I-can-get- on-with-what-I-really-want-do
sort of end user. If he really thinks he can bully the egg-head* community in such a fashion, he's either much more brilliant than he's coming off as or his visions of becoming a respected revision control system author are going to intersect quite abruptly with the particular variety of fate known as limited-lifespan (at least as it pertains to projects that have large groups of developers that just might actually work for a competitor).

On a different angle, if the kernel community does not decide to ditch BK for some reason, it will make for entertaining legal stories if/when Mr. McVoy starts having people hauled in. Can you imagine the kinds of goodies that will be drifting through the minds of those junior-assistant-undersecretary-to-the-person-who- brings-water-to-the-one-who-gets-to-deal-with-the- silly-things officer at foreign state departments?

Mr. McVoy, please. I beg of you. Our glorious leader is already making us look extremely silly and annoying to the rest of the planet! Please do not exaserbate the situation.

Praise Cheezewiz...

* this adjective used out of respect