Linus Drops BitKeeper 548
ravenII wrote in to mention a story running on CNet, which discusses Linus Torvald's decision to no longer use BitKeeper. From the article: "Linus Torvalds is looking for a new SCM for his project's source code after a conflict involving the current management system, BitKeeper. 'I've decided to not use BK (BitKeeper) mainly because I need to figure out the alternatives,' Torvalds said in a posting. 'Rather than continuing things as normal, I decided to bite the bullet and just see what life without BK looks like.' Coverage on the BitKeeper announcement from earlier this week is also available. Update: 04/10 16:36 GMT by Z : Updated to reflect the story's origin.
He should use ClearCase. (Score:4, Funny)
I believe even Microsoft don't always 'eat their own dogfood' on this one.
Re:He should use ClearCase. (Score:5, Informative)
Unless you are on the same LAN as a Clearcase server, the thing is treacle slow because it sends dozens of packets flying back and forth just to figure out what items to put on a context menu. If you're using a VPN then creating a snapshot view can take many, many hours and even simple things like checkouts / checkins / diffs take minutes.
And because it works so badly over the WAN, if you have multiple sites you must replicate - more expensive servers, more admins and more licences.
It's not even a good source control system. It doesn't do anything aside from a dynamic view that can't be done by most other systems. Dynamic views are more trouble than they're worth anyway.
I truly pity companies who "bet the farm" on this junk. I pity IBM who had a perfectly usable source control system in CMVC who had to switch to this Rational junk.
For all its faults even CVS would be better. And with Subversion being available and UI frontends like TortoiseSVN, Subclipse etc. there really is no reason to be stuck with Clearcase.
ClearCase blows donkeys (Score:3, Informative)
I can't count the number of times I've gotten build failures because I updated my view in the middle of someone else's big commit. WTF is that all about?
If I wanted that, I could use SCCS.
And don't get me started about the voodoo that is config.spec.
Hmm. (Score:5, Funny)
Or you could teach your code to two hundred trained squirrels, a la Tim Burton. Then every time you changed some code, you could train another squirrel. Not only would you have an army of Code Squirrels at your command, but... eh, you'd probably be locked up...
Re:Hmm. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm confused...
Linus is Willy Wonka, and the rest of the kernel developers are Oompa Loompas?
What has me confused isn't so much that I think that that's true, but that it just seems so right somehow.
Better headline might be: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Better headline might be: (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, have you ever head of BitKeeper outside of Linux discussions? Have you ever seen an ad for BitKeeper anywhere? Even if the quoted figures are right ($500,000/year), that's pretty cheap advertising for the amount of coverage.
(I've known about BK/BitMover for a long time simply because I know of Larry McVoy. But aside from that association, I've never heard of either.)
Three Words (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Three Words (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Three Words (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Three Words (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Three Words (Score:5, Funny)
Not safe enough. Its only a visual safe after all. What this situation calls for is a box that once closed, will remain shut and untampered with. A lockbox, you might say...
Re:Three Words (Score:5, Interesting)
The Java CMVC client is actually pretty nice. Sucks less than VSS by a good bit.
*NOTE TO MODERATORS* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*NOTE TO MODERATORS* (Score:5, Interesting)
What is new, that Linus wrote his own SCM [lwn.net] (README here [lwn.net])
Maybe it will appear in 1-2 days as another slashdot story?
Q & A SCM? (Score:5, Insightful)
What qualities does a replacement have to have, and what are the present alternatives missing?
Re:Q & A SCM? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Q & A SCM? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Q & A SCM? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Q & A SCM? (Score:4, Insightful)
person_who_loses_job_after_bubble_burst != donald_knuth
Re:Q & A SCM? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Q & A SCM? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a programmer, I'm going to let you in on the BIG secret: getting the initial requirements right is NOT an easy question. It's the difference between success and failure, between on time and late, between on the money and over-budget.
Ask any coder how much time they spent convincing people that what they thought they required was
- stupid
- a waste of resources
- going to cost too much
- better put off until a later iteration.
- not practical
- at cross-purposes to the projects' goal
- all the above
There's a reason we have terms like "feature creep" and "kill your first baby" (to kill your first baby means "don't get too attached to the code you wrote, because you're probably going to have to throw it all out at some point". Peopel can actually get attached to a chunk of code they wrote, that seemed elegant at the time, but just doesn't cut it, and they won't throw it out because of the psychological investment they have in it)....Being able to accurately spec out any non-trivial project is not easy.
Distributed Version Control with SVK (Score:5, Informative)
He seems to be writing his own (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, it's self-hosting and sparse (the previous thing he wrote when confronted by the inavailability of something he wanted) is also available stored in it. Probably, be the middle of next week (if not the end of the weekend), he'll have if set up as sufficient for his purposes, and other people will be filling in support for the way they work.
Really not (Score:5, Informative)
No, not really. What Linus is doing looks completely different [kernel.org]. It is quite similar to Monotone if anything, in fact. It has quite a good description of itself in the README [pasky.or.cz] (skip the top part there :-) ).
One consequence of what he is doing is that it is trivial to do e.g. pulling from remote repositories (basically just two rsync commands), or diffing arbitrary two trees. You can see my scripts [pasky.or.cz] as an example.
GNU Arch? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:GNU Arch? (Score:5, Funny)
,,Oh+God@I_hope_he,,doesnt+use++arch.
=I,couldn't++bear=the=pain.
Re:GNU Arch? (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe the main problem with GNU Arch is that certain operations are way too slow, especially for a project the size of the kernel. Linus said in one of his emails that Monotone looked like the best contender, and the Monotone website says that they use an essentially different paradigm from Arch. Iduno what they might mean by that, but it might be another thing that won't fit for the Kernel with gnu arch.
BitKeeper Website (Score:5, Interesting)
"BitKeeper has made me more than twice as productive, and its fundamentally distributed nature allows me to work the way I prefer to work - with many different groups working independently, yet allowing for easy merging between them." -- Linus Torvalds
Re:BitKeeper Website (Score:5, Insightful)
The quote continues being true. IMO the reason why Linus is dropping BK is the license and flamewars - BK is great, but maybe the free alternatives have got better in those 3 years and now they're "good enought" to use with the kernel. It'd be certainly better if bitmover would make BK free, but that's not going to happen.
Re:BitKeeper Website (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition to dropping the free version, Bitmover is refusing to sell even commercial licenses to the OSDL or it's employees, which includes Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton.
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine that. A company pulling their license and then refusing to even sell licenses to you or your employees.
Re:Actually... (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea why the BK people have done this, but it strikes me as being an incredibly foolish thing to do.
This whole absurb scenario is an object lesson to not choose proprietary software produced by idiots.
Re: Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oooh---there's an attractive offer. Quit your job, but receive a free BitKeeper license. I wonder if Larry would make me the same generous offer?
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, you indeed were living in a shoebox :-) because BK was always licensed on a condition that the licensee does not work for a competitor, and does not work on a competing product. The definition of "competing" was at BK owner's discretion, and a lot of Subversion folks were denied the license two years ago. This was a bad deal from the start, and quite a few people said so on LKML. They were right. Search Google or LKML archives, they should have lots of discussion about that.
Re:Actually... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure. You can't purchase explosives without a license. You can't buy many drugs without a prescription. You can't buy many weapons in USA, and in other countries you can't buy any weapons period. These are external restrictions imposed on the company, but the company refuses to sell you just the same.
But if you want an example of company's own decision, a most obvious is when the company refuses to sell itsel
Re:BitKeeper Website (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though an agreement was reached that this developer would stop doing this, apparently he continued.
Larry McVoy (and BitKeeper) responded by saying that they were removing the Free BK license, and employees of OSDL (which Linus is) were not eligible for a free license under any conditions.
At this point
Re:BitKeeper Website (Score:3, Funny)
Like Google, providing a free web search service running on a free OS (Linux) using free/open protocols (HTTP over TCP over IP) and serving pages in a free/open standard (HTML).
And no one used Sendmail and BIND, those free programs aren't used at all by any one with any economic signifcant right?
(Note, I was being sarcastic - just thought I'd make that clear before someone with an itchy trigger finger mods this post as "Flamebait".
Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper (Score:4, Insightful)
Now they'll be known for screwing over Linus Torvalds. I wonder how well they'll fare in future technology evaluations? I can hear the discussions now: "Gee boss, BitKeeper is nice and all but if they screwed over the guy who writes Linux , how do you think they'll treat us after they have our money?"
Re:Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, last I heard, that's neither illegal, immoral, or unexpected when you release a product to the world. I'm sorry they're unhappy about it, but it seems a bit naive to think that it won't happen and a bit stupid that they'd PO one of their most visible references over it.
Re:Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly the core issue, and exactly why BitKeeper isn't worth considering.
Re:Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft vs. BitKeeper (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper (Score:3)
BK doesn't want me using their products in certain ways? Well, I don't want to be paying money for a product from a company who maintains such a massive degree of intere
Re:Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper (Score:5, Insightful)
I find the current brainwashing efforts of "intellectual property" proponents to make us believe there is anything wrong with reverse engineering highly immoral, contradictory with human civilization and ignoring its history.
Re:Mindshare and image bloodbath for BitKeeper (Score:3, Informative)
According to Bruce Perens (I think), in posting on /., the situation is not so simple.
Larry kept changing the terms of the free licenses
The OSDL employee was doing the reverse engineering in his own time, he was not being paid by OSDL to do it.
How would you like your emplyer to tell you what you can and cannot do in your spare time?
What about Bazaar-NG? (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a link to LWN where he talks about it (Score:5, Informative)
http://lwn.net/Articles/131313/ [lwn.net]
Check the "made the first version available" link towards the top
The question no one has asked (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you
Re:The question no one has asked (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The question no one has asked (Score:5, Insightful)
Big conglomerate groups of random people on the Internet aren't that good at developing something totally original. It's much more common to let some commercial entity 'develop the product spec' first.
OSS/FS Software Configuration Management (SCM) (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps the SCM Solution is not the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
What tool can we find to fit Linus' methodology.
The question that nobody ever asks is:
Do Linus' methodologies actually benefit the project?
I'm going to say something that will make people angry, but I don't mean it as flame bait:
The Linux kernel is in absolute disarray, has been since 2.2.x, and is only getting worse as the project grows.
The kernel development process is a highly distributed one, with individuals all over the world implementing their own corner of the universe and sending it in diff form to the Great Linux Mutex in the Sky: Linus.
All these people, all over the world, doing things their own way. Limited cohesion, inability to pick a good design and stick with it for more than 5 minutes. Here are two examples from the stable kernels
Firewalls:
2.0.x: ipfwadm
2.2.x: ipchains
2.4.x: iptables
Event Handling:
2.0.x: None
2.2.x: None
2.4.x: dnotify
2.6.x: inotify
The VM system has been swapped out - several times! - in "stable" kernel branches. Nowdays Slashdotters are saying that it is the distribution's responsibility to maintain a stable kernel tree.
So, here's my point. Maybe the BSDs really have something going for them by maintaining a centralized development model where major changes are planned, documented, and subjected to stringent review across the board before being included in the kernel.
Here are the above examples for FreeBSD:
Firewalls:
2.x: ipfw & ipf
3.x: ipfw & ipf
4.x: ipfw & ipf
5.x: ipfw2 & pf
Event Handling:
2.x: none
3.x: none
4.x: kqueue
5.x: kqueue
FreeBSD consistently implements well thought out systems and incrementally improves them over the years. Time and time again FreeBSD issues solid stable releases. Even the releases that are publicly declared not ready for production are more stable and have fewer dark hairy corners than Linux.
Maybe it's time for Linus to re-evaluate his model and bring some true software __engineering__ to the Linux development process. Instead of being the Great Mutex in the Sky, he can be the great organizer and enabler of an organization of people working together to implement well thought out, well designed systems.
Just a thought from an anonymous coward.
Re:Perhaps the SCM Solution is not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If Linus did Linux the *BSD way, a few things would have to change.
Firstly, and foremostly, he would have to develop, and guide, the userland as well. That is part of the reason for the apparent stability of BSD interfaces - for some kernel->userland interfaces the implemetnation is hidden (for example, things that are used only by libc). Whether this is a good or bad thing on the partof the BSD's is irrelevent, it is a fundementaly different approach.
Currently, Linux provides a set of kernel level interfaces, and the GNU libc utiliese some of these to provide the standard C library. Some of the kernel interfaces are standard, (POSIX file stuff, sockets etc), some are not (Firewall, some threading interfaces etc).
Most fundementally, the reason I reject your conclusion can be best expressed as a question: "If the linux process is so poor, why is it more popular than *BSD?"
One can discuss that question ad nauseum, but I suspect that part of the reason is that it is _not_ tightly controlled. If you have a method for making some part better, the Linux apprach says: show me the code, convince us it's better. The *BSD approach says: Show me the code, convince us it's better, get somone on the core team to sponser it, shedule it for the next (or prehaps one after next) release, and wait.
Thus, Linux has a lot more mobility, and can utilise new approaches sooner than *BSD - for good or ill [0].
My personal thoughts is: Linux is not broken. The development model works as well now as it used to, thus there is no need to change. Let the two approaches co-exists, let people use whichever they feel like. If that means that Linux becomes a testbed for ideas, and *BSD cherry pick, then so be it, that's fine. If that means that Linux evolves and *BSD stagnates, so be it, that's fine. If that means that Linux is unstable and *BSD is stable, so be it, that's fine. In practice, the last two will be indistinguishable for a long time after one of them occurs.
Let them be different - choose your favourite model, and be happy with it. But if the other one results in something you prefer, consider that both are trade-offs, and neither is perfect.
[0] This can bring problems. The various VM saga's are prehaps a canonnical example here.
Re:Perhaps the SCM Solution is not the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
No offence, but logically-speaking an argument by appeal to popularity is pretty weak. There are a great many reasons why a thing may become popular, of which superior quality is only one.
Begin with a solid theoretical foundation.. (Score:3, Insightful)
FIRST come up with a rational, rigorous theory of version control. What is a "change"? What does it mean to apply changes and their inverses? What is a conflict? Etc, etc. Come up with theorems and rules based on that foundation.
THEN implement it all in a product. Or better yet, many products, but base them all on the same theory. I.e., let them compete on ease of use, security, speed, etc., rather than just who has the best ad-hoc collection of features.
The author of Darcs does have a "theory of patches" but it's not rigorous (by his own admission). However it's a start.
I think having a solid theory, divorced from any particular implementation, would be a great idea, would yield a consistent set of terminology, and would allow those tough corner cases to be solved with more understanding.
Does anyone else agree?
PS: McVoy himself has talked about the mix of theoretical and practical that BitMover employed to create BitKeeper. It's not just an academic argument. You'll get a better product if you THINK then ACT rather than leaving out the first step. And yes, besides the fact that it's not open source, BitKeeper *is* the best SCM system out there.
Linus didn't scale. (Score:5, Insightful)
The most important thing that Bitkeeper did was to show the developers what was possible with the right tools. Anyone that reads the LKML knew that this day would come sooner or later and many of the SCM developers have used the time to improve their tools. What we really need to do is thank Larry for the use of his program (it was a great help) and move on. I don't think that Linus and the other kernel developers will ever go back to the days before fine grained changelogs, distributed source trees, and the ease with which patches from any one tree can be applied to any other tree. I think, if anything, that the biggest thing that dropping Bitkeeper will do at this point is to accelerate the development of better (and more distributed) SCM's.
Thanks Larry! And more importantly: Thanks Linus, Alan, Andrew, Marcello, Rik, et al. Your work and dedication is much appreciated! ;-)
P.S. Kernel.org has a new SCM written by Linus (in his directory) that is available for your perusal.
Sarcastic post... (Score:4, Insightful)
As we all know, Linus has more resources at his disposal than Bill Gates. [slashdot.org] Why can't he just have some of his minions design, from scratch, a distributed source configuration management package that can do everything he needs, and have it ready within six months? Then, he and his crew could suffer along with Subversion [tigris.org] and the distribution problems it will pose for them, for six months, before Linux can be hosted on Linus' own DSCM software.
It shouldn't be quite that hard to do, with all the resources he has... When Theo had a problem with (I believe it was) the license for the SSH program included prior to OpenBSD 2.6, he thought about it for a while and then busted out his own implementation. If he could do that, then Linus with all his resources can bust out a DSCM.
Yes, this post is totally sarcastic. But seriously, who said you can't take Subversion, rip out its guts, and make it distribution-aware.
Re:Sarcastic post... (Score:4, Informative)
RIchard Stallman Knew This Would Happen (Score:5, Informative)
It is the spirit that says, "You have no right to use Bitkeeper, only
temporary privileges that we can revoke. Be grateful that we allow
you to use Bitkeeper. Be grateful, and don't do anything we dislike,
or we may revoke those privileges." It is the spirit of proprietary
software. Every non-free license is designed to control the users
more or less. Outrage at this spirit is the reason for the free
software movement. (By contrast, the open source movement prefers to
play down this same outrage.) "
- Richard Stallman Oct 13 2002, 3:50 pm
Maybe he is not a mad man, but actually a very wise man.
Here is the discussion link: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/linux.kernel/
Re:RIchard Stallman Knew This Would Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
He's both, he's an insane genius. In 20 years time we'll all be saying "We should have listened to RMS". At times he can appear petulant but if I'd been spent a couple of decades warning people about non-free software and been derided while been proved right time and again I'd probably not be a happy bunny either.
One day we'll listen to him BEFORE things start to go all runny but that will probably cause the universe to end.
p2p? (Score:3, Insightful)
my 2 cents...
C'mon, You Knew This Was Going To Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
So, in conclusion, big frickin' deal. BK got a few years of valuable, free beta testing, Linus got some work done, and the Open source folks got a reminder as to why the Free source folks got religon.
Re:How about... (Score:3, Funny)
Ba-dum-tish! Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal, tip your waitress!
Re:How about... (Score:4, Informative)
Here's [lwn.net] why not (read the PS).
Re:How about... (Score:5, Informative)
How about reading Subversion's writeup [tigris.org] on why that's not a good idea?
Re:How about... (Score:3, Interesting)
Can you imagine a commercial software vendor releasing something like that?
Re:How about... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How about... (Score:5, Informative)
if you read the article, you would see that linus adresses this.
Re:How about... (Score:3, Informative)
It is also quite easy to use svk together with a central Subversion repository, to get the best of both worlds.
dupe, but anyway..... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, when Linus started to use BK he promised things would be at least as good as they were before - and it's true (they've been better in fact), people still gets -rc's in GNU diff format at kernel.org. The official way of distributing patches has always been "clean", I don't know why people whined so much about BK, it's OK for me if Linus wants to use a propietary tool himself, as long as I'm not forced to use it. I've certainly not used or needed to use it for years, and I'm one of those people who tries -mm and -rcs all the time...
(and those who claim that people should behave differently and "give example" just because they're "leaders" can go to hell)
Re:dupe, but anyway..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:dupe, but anyway..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then RMS should apply that to himself because he needed to use non-free software when he started to develop GNU. And until linux was there, I guess he couldn't use a free kernel either.
BK is not different from thi
Re:dupe, but anyway..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:dupe, but anyway..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:not surprising though (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Writing non-free software is antisocial
or
2. If a job is based upon antisocial behaviour, one should get some other job
Personally I can't see how you could argue against 2, unless you are in fact antisocial and just don't care. RMS has been making a case for point 1 for years now, and the recent news with regards to BK is more supporting evidence for his argument.
Reading your comment to the interview, I can't understand your vehemence. It's irrational. If you have a choice of doing something bad or doing something good, why insist that it's okay to do the something bad? I don't want to put words into RMS' mouth, but I get the impression that when he states something like: "It is better not to program at all than to program non-free software", it's not a statement about the utility of free versus non-free software -- as you noted in your comment, a lot of non-free software is very useful -- but instead it is a statement concerning how programming as a practice in today's society should be carried out. Programming non-free software is not bad because it makes useful software -- that would be silly. It's bad because it supports a system in which non-free software proliferates and causes huge amounts of waste. It is essentially the same point as the one you quote.
The horrible irony of it all is that most non-free software is non-free by default, not because the owners of that software are profiting significantly by having it be non-free. Most software is written for internal use for internal projects. Embedded software is usually specialised to its hardware and of limited use to competing manufacturers. In as much as it is not limited, a culture of free software allows the programmers to write original software, not re-write what others have done hundreds of times before.
If hypothetically free software were to become the only legal form of software as of tomorrow, the vast majority of programmers would still be in a job. And those jobs would be better.
Re:not surprising though (Score:4, Insightful)
You are casually conflating "work for hire" and "non-free"!
Almost all the programming work I do is for a private company. It is work for hire in that sense. Some of it incorporates GPL software and thus is by necessity GPL licensed itself. The other software could just as well have been licensed as free software as well. It doesn't matter. Being free or non-free is orthogonal to being payed or not for programming.
It is only an issue when it comes to selling software itself, unenhanced by other software, as a product. Because it is what makes the Microsofts of the world, and because it is very visible, it feels like this is what programming is all about. But it really carries a disproportionate impact.
On your other point: we all have a choice, it is true. But you could say it is a choice to be antisocial
How about... Arch or Monotone (Score:5, Interesting)
Somehow Arch was immediately mentioned on the original thread about Linus's intent to switch away from BitKeeper, but somehow only Subversion has been mentioned on this one. Arch was created specifically with the goal of replacing BitKeeper as the SCM for the Linux kernel source, as it says on their web page:
Re:How about... Arch or Monotone (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How about... Arch or Monotone (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is a quote from Linus:
"I'm playing with monotone right now. Superficially it looks like it has tons of gee-whiz neato stuff... however, it's *agonizingly* slow. I mean glacial. A heavily sedated sloth with no legs is probably
faster."
Darcs is interesting, but it already has a bad rep in regards to speed and scalability because of the Haskell infrastructure. I wouldn't put the kernel on it. There are also concerns about getting otehr developers to support it because of the Haskell code base. Right now it's a one man show.
Subversion already is well proven on large projects - the question is whether SVK is mature enough.
My guess is what is going to happen is that the kernel guys will do something custom, perhaps on top of or in conjection with SVK and SVN. Monotone, Darcs, etc aren't very likely, and Subversion by itself doesn't fit the distributed work flow of kernel development.
Distributed operation? (Score:5, Informative)
Is Subversion decentralized? Even the Subversion maintainers admit [tigris.org] that the Linux kernel development atmosphere doesn't mesh well with the centralized CVS/SVN model. There exists SVK [elixus.org], a decentralized hack on Subversion, but is it mature?
Re:Not an option. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Other reasons... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:In post-9/11 Soviet Korea (Score:5, Funny)
To enforce this amendment, any discussion involving cliche proliferation will be punished with negative moderation. For good measure, the poster will also be sent to Guantanamo.
Re:Netcraft confirms it (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Slashback? Some info on Bit Keeper (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe the slashdot eds should start [?]-linking Wikipedia articles in story blurbs the way they used to with Everything2...
Re:CVS? (Score:5, Funny)
Now that's a great idea. I'm sure Linus didn't even look at that option when he decided to use a SCM!
Re:CVS? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:CVS? (Score:5, Informative)
CVS may be the solution to some things, but it's not a solution to the problem Linus is trying to solve.
Re:open source (Score:5, Insightful)
If a comparable open-source SCM had existed at the time, I'm sure they would have considered it. (and no, CVS didn't count as comparable
Re:open source (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:open source (Score:4, Informative)
If they had used an opensource SCM from the start, we'd still be somewhere in the 2.4 kernel, and Linus would be insane. Linus picked BitKeeper because it was the only SCM system available that could handle the job.
Re:How Does It Feel Linus? (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole point of Open Source is that people have CHOICES ABOUT WHAT THEY USE TO DO A TASK. If they don't like it they can tweak the code so it does what they want.
Last time I checked, using BitKeeper constituted a CHOICE on the part of Linus. One of the core principles behind OSS.
CVS is abysmal, and Subversion doesn't fit the Linux development model. Proprietary software may be evil, but if it's the best tool for the task then why should people deal with inferior OSS crap, which may need serious hacking to make it do what they want, when there's the option - the CHOICE - of using proprietary software?
Re:How Does It Feel Linus? (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet, so many Open Source/Free Software people try to convince everyone that they should only use Free/Open Source Software, thus attempting to lock everyone in to using only that type of software.
If you truly believed in *my* freedom, you would respect my choice to use whatever I believe to be the most appropriate tool for the job.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)