LWN daily pointed me to Jack Moffitt's critique of the BitKeeper license:
i.cantcode.com/writing/bitkeeper.html
It is worth a read. (Though it is a bit odd that he does not mention that the definition of the OSI basically explains the same differently what the FSF defined earlier. *wink* )
| With all of the restrictions that have been outlined, BitKeeper | seems almost free.
| If we amend the requirements to accomodate something that is almost | Free Software or almost Open Source, these boundaries will diminish | gradually and not only will our campaign be unsuccessful but we will | have weakened our efforts.
| BitKeeper under the terms of the BitKeeper License is neither Free | Software or Open Source software. It fails to meet the criteria and | therefore fails to meet the standards of freedom that these criteria | define and that the community have adopted. If the aim is to promote | Free Software and Open Source and preserve these rights and | freedoms, we should not be satisfied with almost free or almost open | source licenses like the BitKeeper license.
| 4. Conclusion | | Sometimes it is tempting to sacrifice our rights and freedoms for | convenience, but we should not do so. There are many problems with | CVS and other Free source management packages, and it would be nice | to move to a more robust and more well-designed tool. We are better | off to repair or fix the tools which are free, or if that is not | acceptable to create new free tools that preserve the the rights and | freedoms we enjoy.
| I also encourage Free Software hackers to avoid or cease using | BitKeeper in their own projects. It might not be as convenient to | use other tools, but in the long term we should be more concerned | with preserving those rights and freedoms we currently exercise and | enjoy daily. I personally have stopped using BitKeeper
| I encourage the entire community to support the efforts of Free and | Open Source projects in this area.
http://www.gnu.org/software/cvs/cvs.html http://subversion.tigris.org/ http://regexps.com/#arch http://prcs.sourceforge.net/ http://aegis.sourceforge.net/index.html