From discussion-admin@fsfeurope.org Thu Mar 7 07:56:51 2002
Is there anything we can practically do to change the bk decision? It looks like bk has raised more than enough technical problems of its own. Maybe Aegis solves some of them? Aegis also have problems marketing themselves. PDF manuals, really, in this day and age! ;_)
IMHO, its pointless persuing this - linus knows the BK guys quite well (from what it seems). And while I sympathise with people that say its isn't Free, its is free as in money, and the developers will implement any sensible ideas people suggest, and have stated several times that it is a very complex bit of software, far more complex than say the kernel. This requires a full time staff to develop it, and they are being paid to develop it by companies that require such a software - the BK people are trying to give the best of both worlds, and I personally wish them the best of luck.
But on the otherhand I realise the danger (whatif BK 'goes bad' when we are all dependant etc) but they have added clauses that it will go GPL if they go out of business, etc etc. and are trying to counter most of the usual bad points.
It helps to visit the BK web site and read first hand information before writing mail that is based on estimations....
BK will bekome GPL if openlogging.org goes offline for 90+ days.
Jörg
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1 schilling@fokus.gmd.de (work) chars I am J"org Schilling URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix
Joerg Schilling schilling@fokus.gmd.de wrote:
BK will bekome GPL if openlogging.org goes offline for 90+ days.
One "solution" hinted at by the critique from the original posting says that to let BitMover go bankrupt will resolve this problem.
A less charitable one would be to DoS it for that long.
I think it's unfair to accuse us of commenting based on second-hand information. I spent far too long yesterday reading the bitkeeper site, the LKML threads, the Aegis and Subversion sites, etc. As these are primary sources, how are they second-hand?
On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 01:04:57PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
But on the otherhand I realise the danger (whatif BK 'goes bad' when we are all dependant etc) but they have added clauses that it will go GPL if they go out of business, etc etc. and are trying to counter most of the usual bad points.
It helps to visit the BK web site and read first hand information before writing mail that is based on estimations....
I generall agree that good information should be used to judge. Mr. Moffitt's critic contained a quote of the license. Assuming that the is correct, his article might be the better source in comparison to BK's website:
| Unfortunately, the license presented online (both at the website and | in the download area) is not the most current BitKeeper license. | There are further restrictions in the license version which | accompanies the software that are not mentioned on the website.
BK will bekome GPL if openlogging.org goes offline for 90+ days.
Mr. Moffitt's analysis even offers a funny point about this, after he explained why this is quite different from other semi-free licensing models that are more acceptable:
| The humorous aspect to this clause is that the best way the Free | Software community has of obtaining a free BitKeeper is to not use | it at all, refuse to promote it, and wait until BitMover fails as a | company. By using the software, a user is helping ensure that it | stays non-free.
What do you say to the other problems Mr. Moffitt described, like the termination for support costs or the powerful possibility to restict any user through adaptations of the regression rules?
Do you think these dangers are acceptable?