Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Kevin Brown]

I'm not terribly concerned about the issue at-hand,
here, but I am motivated by the level of idiocy that's
appearing in my inbox right now.

> How do they have any business telling me what to
advocate?
> That doesn't sound like free speech nor free thought
to me.

I'm not sure free speech or free thought was at stake
here, Jeffs; the topic
was whether the use of bitkeeper compromised open
source ideology.  Colin
(and certain members of the club) were voicing their
concerns in a
professional manner.  Reducing that concern in an
altruistic shriek against
national socialism and your "violated freedoms" is a
bit simple-minded.
Your refusal to receive the petition in an
argumentative way is indicative
of *your* inability to exchange ideas.

Mr. Merkey, I think you're better off continuing to
hand your two cents over
to Novell in the future.  

Cheers,

Kevin


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[OFF- TOPIC]Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Kevin,

The comments you responded to were someone else's attached to the
original post, but since you addressed me I'll respond.   These
gentlemen were telling us what we should use and what we should think
about their views of open source.   Those opinions are fine, but Alan
and other folks bascially said it is a matter of personal choice and
freedom.  I'm sorry that we are  advocates of freedom rather than
mindless lumps of clay you can twist to your will.

I have a lot of bugs to fix and code to get ready to post, and will not
respond to this thread beyond this post.

Jeff


Kevin Brown wrote:

> I'm not terribly concerned about the issue at-hand,
> here, but I am motivated by the level of idiocy that's
> appearing in my inbox right now.
>
> > How do they have any business telling me what to
> advocate?
> > That doesn't sound like free speech nor free thought
> to me.
>
> I'm not sure free speech or free thought was at stake
> here, Jeffs; the topic
> was whether the use of bitkeeper compromised open
> source ideology.  Colin
> (and certain members of the club) were voicing their
> concerns in a
> professional manner.  Reducing that concern in an
> altruistic shriek against
> national socialism and your "violated freedoms" is a
> bit simple-minded.
> Your refusal to receive the petition in an
> argumentative way is indicative
> of *your* inability to exchange ideas.
>
> Mr. Merkey, I think you're better off continuing to
> hand your two cents over
> to Novell in the future.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Kevin
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email!
> http://mail.yahoo.com/

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 11:54:43AM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> That being said, I don't see any need for additional development, 
> unless people actually want increased functionality over that
> which we've traditionally had.  Things generally will appear to
> be unchanged for non-bitkeeper users because Linus will continue
> to push out the regular prepatches.  This *has* to be done anyway,
> so the testers can get at the tree promptly.
> 
> Also. The things being discussed here *matter* to some people.  Some
> of the comments made by Larry, David, Cort, Rik and others have
> coarsely sought to deligitimise the very reasons why a significant number
> of kernel contributors and users are here at all.  Those comments
> are monumentally insulting.

It's also "monumentally insulting" to be asking for BitKeeper to be able
to do what it already can do, exactly for the reasons you outlined.
We have done piles and piles of work to make sure that we can export
and import patches, so that if you want, your work habits do not change
one iota.  We did all that work.  It's done.  It's in the system.
Linus uses both import and export.  And we continue to fix things as it
becomes apparent that they need to be fixed.  We're busting our asses to
keep you happy and we get flamed.  And the flamers seem to think that
we are getting some great financial benefit by having the kernel crowd
use BK.  It's certainly true that BK is improving because the kernel
crowd demands enhancements.  It's not true that that has turned into
any financial benefit to us, we haven't made a single sale as a result
of Linus using BK.  That's OK, that's not why we did it.  But don't use
that as a justification to beat us up, it's simply not true.

The thing that seems to escape you is that BK came into existence because
I was scared to death of Linus burning out.  I still am.  I see no Linus
replacement on the horizon.  BK exists because I hope it will make him
able to last longer as the leader here, I do not foresee good things
happening if he goes away.  Our goal is to get him more relaxed.  Try and
remember that we are trying to help.  You can hate the fact that BK isn't
open source, I don't blame you one bit.  If I had stayed at Cobalt and
cashed out my millions, BitKeeper would be open source.  But I didn't.
So it isn't.  Get over it.  It can help now, we're trying to help now,
we make it easy to get out of BK, so if/when a better open source answer
arrives, you can get out.  What more can you possibly ask for?  I'm giving
you an answer which helps, with no lock in, and the most extensive set of
tools designed to make it so you can get out with all of your data intact.
And you say you are insulted.  I'm not sure it is you who should be insulted.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[michael bernstein]

On Thursday, March 7, 2002, at 03:15 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:

>   If I had stayed at Cobalt and
> cashed out my millions, BitKeeper would be open source.  But I didn't.
> So it isn't.  Get over it.  It can help now, we're trying to help now,
> we make it easy to get out of BK, so if/when a better open source answer
> arrives, you can get out.  What more can you possibly ask for?  I'm 
> giving
> you an answer which helps, with no lock in, and the most extensive set 
> of
> tools designed to make it so you can get out with all of your data 
> intact.
> And you say you are insulted.  I'm not sure it is you who should be 
> insulted.
>

Last time I checked, it didn't matter if a person had "cashed out their 
millions" for a program to go opensource.  So fucking what.  I'm a poor 
college student, as many are, and yet, I still see a lot of useful 
programs coming out.  The Gimp, for one, was written by students at 
Berkeley.  Last time I checked, no one was making money off of 
enlightenment, and they are all still poor.  Stop fucking whining about 
it and stop compromising your ideals for money.  Also, before you can 
say it, yes you've stated your ideals by saying that it WOULD have been 
opensource if you had money.  Well that means you believe in opensource 
somewhat at least.  Get over the money issue though.  There are a lot of 
people who could benefit from bitkeeper being opensourced, so why not go 
and do it?

Serve others, not yourself.

Michael Bernstein
bernstein.46@osu.edu

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

> I'm a poor college student

And I have two kids on their way to college.  Grow up.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Richard Gooch]

Larry McVoy writes:
> > I'm a poor college student
> 
> And I have two kids on their way to college.  Grow up.

And if you want to do Open Source development using BK, Larry's not
even asking for your money.

And now for my flame: CAN WE SHUT THE FUCK UP about this STUPID
thread?!?!? No developer is being forced to use BK. You can keep doing
it the old way. And if you want people to use an Open Source tool, go
write one. But shut up until you've got something "good enough" for
Linus.

I weep for all those poor electrons, their lives wasted on this
thread.

				Regards,

					Richard....
Permanent: rgooch@atnf.csiro.au
Current:   rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Florian Weimer]

Richard Gooch <rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca> writes:

> Larry McVoy writes:
>> > I'm a poor college student
>> 
>> And I have two kids on their way to college.  Grow up.
>
> And if you want to do Open Source development using BK, Larry's not
> even asking for your money.

Using BitKeeper might break the way security issues are currently
handled by distributors of the GNU/Linux system, due to the open
logging feature.

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  Weimer@CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE
University of Stuttgart           http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/
RUS-CERT                          +49-711-685-5973/fax +49-711-685-5898

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[yodaiken]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 04:05:33PM -0500, michael bernstein wrote:
> Serve others, not yourself.

Spending a lot of time working at the homeless shelter, eh? 



---------------------------------------------------------
Victor Yodaiken 
Finite State Machine Labs: The RTLinux Company.
 www.fsmlabs.com  www.rtlinux.com

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[John Jasen]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, michael bernstein wrote:

> Get over the money issue though.  There are a lot of
> people who could benefit from bitkeeper being opensourced, so why not go
> and do it?

rent. food. clothing. basic necessities and whatnot.

Just a thought.

> Serve others, not yourself.

I begin to smell the exuberance of youthful ideology.

Does anyone have a can of Lysol I can borrow?

BK belongs to bitmover. They can do whatever they want with it. Deal.

--
-- John E. Jasen (jjasen1@umbc.edu)
-- In theory, theory and practise are the same. In practise, they aren't.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, michael bernstein wrote:

> Last time I checked, it didn't matter if a person had "cashed out
> their millions" for a program to go opensource.  So fucking what.

> Serve others, not yourself.

Larry is doing us all a service by getting bitkeeper the
funding it needs to improve at the rate it has.

If the program had to survive as an open source program
without several people working on it full-time, I bet
many of the boring but necessary tasks still wouldn't
have been done ...

Source control just isn't one of those sexy things that
everybody wants to work on and on top of that it's deep
magic most people (especially me) can't figure out. ;)

regards,

Rik
-- 
<insert bitkeeper endorsement here>

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Alan Cox]

> programs coming out.  The Gimp, for one, was written by students at 
> Berkeley.  Last time I checked, no one was making money off of 
> enlightenment, and they are all still poor.  Stop fucking whining about 

Thats their planning. Some of them made poor business decisions, some of
them joined the wrong companies. If you think that being poor and suffering
are good for the soul there are a wide collection of religious orders to
choose from most of whom are full of people doing a lot more useful things
that whining on a mailing list

> it and stop compromising your ideals for money.  Also, before you can 

I have a better idea - its called keeping your ideals and making some
money 8) I've done that in the open source world both before and as part
of Red Hat. 

I've also had long talks with Larry and I agree with him about the BK stuff.
There are certain places where open source does not work well for business
models - Bitkeeper is IMHO -not-  commodity [Yet...]

Alan

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Petro]

(Yes, I'm behind on my email. This is what comes from compromising your
ideals and actually being good at something)

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 11:21:14PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > programs coming out.  The Gimp, for one, was written by students at 
> > Berkeley.  Last time I checked, no one was making money off of 
> > enlightenment, and they are all still poor.  Stop fucking whining about 
> 
> Thats their planning. Some of them made poor business decisions, some of
> them joined the wrong companies. If you think that being poor and suffering
> are good for the soul there are a wide collection of religious orders to
> choose from most of whom are full of people doing a lot more useful things
> that whining on a mailing list

    Actually, most of those religious orders are *not* full at this
    point in time, and are *very* eager for new members. 

-- 
Share and Enjoy. 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rusty Russell]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002 16:05:33 -0500
michael bernstein <bernstein.46@osu.edu> wrote:
> Last time I checked, it didn't matter if a person had "cashed out their 
> millions" for a program to go opensource.  So fucking what.  I'm a poor 
> college student, as many are, and yet, I still see a lot of useful 
> programs coming out.

Wow, a poor college student who has a decade of experience implementing
revision control systems?  Great!

> Last time I checked, no one was making money off of 
> enlightenment, and they are all still poor.

Wow! *Where* do you live?  In Australia, poor people don't live in
apartments in Bondi Junction with an ocean view, or drive a Nissan GTS
Skyline.

Sorry to deflate your fantasy...
Rusty.
-- 
  Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell.

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff V. Merkey]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 09:23:16PM -0500, Karl wrote:
> >All hail the non-profit nazis from Ohio State.  It's none of your
> >f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
> >American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel
> >debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware
> >analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.
> 
> 
>    I don't want to speak for our friends in Ohio, but I don't think they
> asked to inhibit you in any way shape or form. Their point was about
> official endorsement not personal choice. I think they went as far as to
> state that explicitly.
> 
>    Karl


Yeah, I saw that part Karl, but the bottom line in their position 
was to limit our choices and choose for us their oppresive views.  It's
also tortorious to post such a petition as a mean to attack a for
profit endeavor, whether the profit is kudos or consideration.  Try
pulling this on Novell or Microsoft, and watch how fast you go to court.

These people are bullies.  

:-)

Jeff

> 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[michael bernstein]

Do you have any clue as to what you can and cannot goto court for?  I 
have no idea where you or from or what kind of education you have, but 
in the "free" world, you can't take someone to court for picketing or 
protesting or petitioning.  It is built into the American system.  We 
are bullies?  I'd rather be a bully then someone who slanders others 
with references to those who chose to commit genocide.  If you are 
American and you don't realize how free speech works, then I strongly 
urge you to find out.  <FLAME>Then maybe you can speak about things in a 
more educated way, rather than coming off like a retarded 
gorilla.</FLAME>

cheers and much hope in your quest to find free speech,

Michael Bernstein
bernstein.46@osu.edu


On Tuesday, March 5, 2002, at 10:47 PM, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
> Yeah, I saw that part Karl, but the bottom line in their position
> was to limit our choices and choose for us their oppresive views.  It's
> also tortorious to post such a petition as a mean to attack a for
> profit endeavor, whether the profit is kudos or consideration.  Try
> pulling this on Novell or Microsoft, and watch how fast you go to court.
>
> These people are bullies.
>
> :-)
>
> Jeff
>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Opensource mailing list
> Opensource@mail.cis.ohio-state.edu
> http://mail.cis.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/opensource
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Please do not take off line postings to your private list and report to this
list.

Thanks

Jeff

michael bernstein wrote:

> Do you have any clue as to what you can and cannot goto court for?  I
> have no idea where you or from or what kind of education you have, but
> in the "free" world, you can't take someone to court for picketing or
> protesting or petitioning.  It is built into the American system.  We
> are bullies?  I'd rather be a bully then someone who slanders others
> with references to those who chose to commit genocide.  If you are
> American and you don't realize how free speech works, then I strongly
> urge you to find out.  <FLAME>Then maybe you can speak about things in a
> more educated way, rather than coming off like a retarded
> gorilla.</FLAME>
>
> cheers and much hope in your quest to find free speech,
>
> Michael Bernstein
> bernstein.46@osu.edu
>
> On Tuesday, March 5, 2002, at 10:47 PM, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> >
> > Yeah, I saw that part Karl, but the bottom line in their position
> > was to limit our choices and choose for us their oppresive views.  It's
> > also tortorious to post such a petition as a mean to attack a for
> > profit endeavor, whether the profit is kudos or consideration.  Try
> > pulling this on Novell or Microsoft, and watch how fast you go to court.
> >
> > These people are bullies.
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > Jeff
> >
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Opensource mailing list
> > Opensource@mail.cis.ohio-state.edu
> > http://mail.cis.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/opensource
> >
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Alan Cox]

Right from the start Linus has always said he isn't going to force anyone
to use bitkeeper. End of story. If you think its free enough -  use it, if
you don't (or you just think its crap software, dont use it)

In fact if it offends you enough to start a petition take the list of
names you get at the end and between you go write a better one under a
licence you prefer between the signatures.

Aan

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Colin Walters]

On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 18:58, Alan Cox wrote:
> Right from the start Linus has always said he isn't going to force anyone
> to use bitkeeper. End of story. If you think its free enough -  use it, if
> you don't (or you just think its crap software, dont use it)

The petition never mentioned "force".  And even if Linus (and the other
core maintainers) wanted to, they couldn't *force* anyone to use
BitKeeper.  The issue at hand is the strong pressure the official
advocacy places on the perhipheral developers.  We (the signers of the
petition), and others are unhappy with this.  That's what the petition
says.

> In fact if it offends you enough to start a petition take the list of
> names you get at the end and between you go write a better one under a
> licence you prefer between the signatures.

There are already replacements under development.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Zwane Mwaikambo]

On 5 Mar 2002, Colin Walters wrote:

> > In fact if it offends you enough to start a petition take the list of
> > names you get at the end and between you go write a better one under a
> > licence you prefer between the signatures.
> 
> There are already replacements under development.

Already in development? Good stuff! Be sure to make an announcement when 
its ready for production use, till then be a sport and hop along.

Cheers,
	Zwane

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff V. Merkey]

All hail the non-profit nazis from Ohio State.  It's none of your 
f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel 
debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware 
analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.  

It's pretty clear that the alumni of Ohio State University have the
finest sinsemilla weed around, and have been smoking it.  I guess
you guys will decide who we get to sleep with next, marry, and 
which type of cereal we get to eat. 

The motto behind open source was "freedom of choice".  So much for
progress.  Let's bring back slavery while we are at at.  I'll move 
back to the Indian reservation in New Mexico where I grew up since 
freedom is going away.

How about sending me some of the killer weed you guys have been smoking.
You can pass the crack pipe around while you're at it.

:-)

Jeff


On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 04:52:34PM -0500, The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University wrote:
> Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers
> 
> We, the undersigned members and officers of the Open Source Club at
> the Ohio State University, are unhappy with the advocacy of the
> proprietary[1] BitKeeper software for use in maintaining the Linux
> kernel.  The Linux kernel is an important symbol of Open Source and
> Free Software for many people, and a project in which many thousands
> have participated in active development.  It is fine if some kernel
> developers choose to use BitKeeper on their own machines, but
> officially endorsing proprietary software as the means of working on
> the kernel is a large step backwards for Linux, and for the Open
> Source and Free Software communities.
> 
> If the core Linux maintainers begin to advocate using BitKeeper, then
> there will be strong pressure on these peripheral developers to use
> BitKeeper too, since it would likely be easier than browsing the
> web-exported changelogs or fetching the latest diff from kernel.org.
> 
> Using a closed-source, proprietary source control system for the
> kernel is even worse than using other forms of proprietary software
> such as source code analysis systems, because the revision control
> metadata (version numbers, branches, changelog comments, etc.), would
> be stored in a format defined by the proprietary software.  This
> metadata is really a part of Linux, because people will want to use it
> when talking about the kernel.  Those who can't[2] or don't want to
> use BitKeeper are left out in the cold.  One of the most important
> parts of Open Source and Free Software is that we, the community, are
> in control.  But by using and advocating BitKeeper, we would lose part
> of that control.
> 
> In summary, please do not advocate BitKeeper for use by the general
> community.  The Linux development process seems to have worked up till
> now, and we can wait a little longer until Arch[3] or Subversion[4]
> are completed.  Moreover, full-featured, completely functional free 
> versioning sytems are currently available, such as PRCS[5] and CVS[6].
> We respect the kernel maintainer's freedom to use proprietary software 
> for their own purposes.  And we ask the kernel maintainers to respect 
> the community's freedom from entrapment by proprietary software.
> 
> -- The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University
> Signed by:
> Michael Benedict <zosima@zosima.org>
> Colin Walters <walters@debian.org>
> Matt Curtin <cmcurtin@interhack.net>
> Martin Jansche <jansche@ling.ohio-state.edu>
> Balbir Thomas <thomas.1037@osu.edu>
> Nicholas Hurley <hurley@cis.ohio-state.edu>
> Ryan McCormack <mccormac@cis.ohio-state.edu>
> Shaun Rowland <rowland@cis.ohio-state.edu>
> 
> [1] http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/user/x/i/xiphmont/Public/critique.html
> [2] Perhaps they aren't connected to the internet regularly enough,
>     for instance.
> [3] http://www.regexps.com/#arch
> [4] http://subversion.tigris.org
> [5] http://prcs.sourceforge.net
> [6] http://www.cvshome.org
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University]

Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

We, the undersigned members and officers of the Open Source Club at
the Ohio State University, are unhappy with the advocacy of the
proprietary[1] BitKeeper software for use in maintaining the Linux
kernel.  The Linux kernel is an important symbol of Open Source and
Free Software for many people, and a project in which many thousands
have participated in active development.  It is fine if some kernel
developers choose to use BitKeeper on their own machines, but
officially endorsing proprietary software as the means of working on
the kernel is a large step backwards for Linux, and for the Open
Source and Free Software communities.

If the core Linux maintainers begin to advocate using BitKeeper, then
there will be strong pressure on these peripheral developers to use
BitKeeper too, since it would likely be easier than browsing the
web-exported changelogs or fetching the latest diff from kernel.org.

Using a closed-source, proprietary source control system for the
kernel is even worse than using other forms of proprietary software
such as source code analysis systems, because the revision control
metadata (version numbers, branches, changelog comments, etc.), would
be stored in a format defined by the proprietary software.  This
metadata is really a part of Linux, because people will want to use it
when talking about the kernel.  Those who can't[2] or don't want to
use BitKeeper are left out in the cold.  One of the most important
parts of Open Source and Free Software is that we, the community, are
in control.  But by using and advocating BitKeeper, we would lose part
of that control.

In summary, please do not advocate BitKeeper for use by the general
community.  The Linux development process seems to have worked up till
now, and we can wait a little longer until Arch[3] or Subversion[4]
are completed.  Moreover, full-featured, completely functional free 
versioning sytems are currently available, such as PRCS[5] and CVS[6].
We respect the kernel maintainer's freedom to use proprietary software 
for their own purposes.  And we ask the kernel maintainers to respect 
the community's freedom from entrapment by proprietary software.

-- The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University
Signed by:
Michael Benedict <zosima@zosima.org>
Colin Walters <walters@debian.org>
Matt Curtin <cmcurtin@interhack.net>
Martin Jansche <jansche@ling.ohio-state.edu>
Balbir Thomas <thomas.1037@osu.edu>
Nicholas Hurley <hurley@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Ryan McCormack <mccormac@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Shaun Rowland <rowland@cis.ohio-state.edu>

[1] http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/user/x/i/xiphmont/Public/critique.html
[2] Perhaps they aren't connected to the internet regularly enough,
    for instance.
[3] http://www.regexps.com/#arch
[4] http://subversion.tigris.org
[5] http://prcs.sourceforge.net
[6] http://www.cvshome.org

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Colin Walters]

On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:41, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> 
> All hail the non-profit nazis from Ohio State.  

The petition came from a group of people in the OSU Open Source club,
not from the whole school (obviously) or even the whole club.

> It's none of your 
> f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
> American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel 
> debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware 
> analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.  

You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
*use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
software by the kernel maintainers.

> It's pretty clear that the alumni of Ohio State University 

The petition has nothing to do with the alumni of the Ohio State
University.

The rest of your message isn't worth responding to, so I won't.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Mike Fedyk]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 05:40:59PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:41, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> > It's none of your 
> > f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
> > American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel 
> > debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware 
> > analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.  
> 
> You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> software by the kernel maintainers.
> 

Use is another way of advocacy.  When you start using something, you get
used to it, and when you talk to others, you end up advocating it because
it's what you're used to, and probably other options aren't as good (to you).

IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...

Mike

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[H. Peter Anvin]

Followup to:  <20020305230143.GB5538@matchmail.com>
By author:    Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> 
> IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...
> 

A free license is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for
something to be Open Source.

	-hpa
-- 
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt	<amsp@zytor.com>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[David Lang]

change 'bitkeeper, is open source' to 'bitkeeper, has the source code
available, including provisions to allow you to modify it (as long as the
openlogging isn't removed'

David Lang

 On 5 Mar 2002, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> Date: 5 Mar 2002 15:14:19 -0800
> From: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
> To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of
>     BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers
>
> Followup to:  <20020305230143.GB5538@matchmail.com>
> By author:    Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>
> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> >
> > IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> > could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...
> >
>
> A free license is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for
> something to be Open Source.
>
> 	-hpa
> --
> <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
> "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
> http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt	<amsp@zytor.com>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Mark Mielke]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 03:14:19PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Followup to:  <20020305230143.GB5538@matchmail.com>
> By author:    Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>
> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> > IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> > could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...
> A free license is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for
> something to be Open Source.

CVS is a very limited configuration management tool. Subversion is still
under development.

The original post was petition with only something like 8 names. Fine,
everybody read it, many put their two cents in (including myself, here).

If BK meets all the requirements, and no other product does, then don't
give it a second thought, or a second post. I don't know what BK offers,
but I do know that products such as ClearCase are *significantly* more
useful, and usable than CVS. I am looking to subversion with my fingers
crossed, by not relying on their product to end up being the next
generation of configuration management for the future.

People are free to naively believe that other people are less for
using technically superior products, merely because the technically
superior products are distributed in a means that violates their
personal preference for how products should be distributed.

mark

-- 
mark@mielke.cc/markm@ncf.ca/markm@nortelnetworks.com __________________________
.  .  _  ._  . .   .__    .  . ._. .__ .   . . .__  | Neighbourhood Coder
|\/| |_| |_| |/    |_     |\/|  |  |_  |   |/  |_   | 
|  | | | | \ | \   |__ .  |  | .|. |__ |__ | \ |__  | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

  One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all
                       and in the darkness bind them...

                           http://mark.mielke.cc/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Chris Friesen]

Mark Mielke wrote:

> If BK meets all the requirements, and no other product does, then don't
> give it a second thought, or a second post. I don't know what BK offers,
> but I do know that products such as ClearCase are *significantly* more
> useful, and usable than CVS.

Just wanted to throw in my two cents.  I dislike clearcase.  It's dog slow,
doesn't support atomic updates of multiple files, and is generally a pain in the
butt to use.

Unfortunately, its the official versioning system at work and all new projects
are strongly encouraged to use it.

-- 
Chris Friesen                    | MailStop: 043/33/F10  
Nortel Networks                  | work: (613) 765-0557
3500 Carling Avenue              | fax:  (613) 765-2986
Nepean, ON K2H 8E9 Canada        | email: cfriesen@nortelnetworks.com

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Petro]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 03:46:04PM -0500, Mark Mielke wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 03:14:19PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > Followup to:  <20020305230143.GB5538@matchmail.com>
> If BK meets all the requirements, and no other product does, then don't
> give it a second thought, or a second post. I don't know what BK offers,

    We used to use it here, and it rocked. We just couldn't afford to
    use it any more, and that sucked. 

    CVS is a piss poor alternative. 

    I miss bitkeeper, and I didn't even use it all that heavily. 

-- 
Share and Enjoy. 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[David Lang]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Mike Fedyk wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 05:40:59PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote:
> > On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:41, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> > > It's none of your
> > > f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
> > > American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel
> > > debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware
> > > analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.
> >
> > You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> > *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> > that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> > petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> > software by the kernel maintainers.
> >
>
> Use is another way of advocacy.  When you start using something, you get
> used to it, and when you talk to others, you end up advocating it because
> it's what you're used to, and probably other options aren't as good (to you).
>
> IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...

In addition the metadata is in the SCCS format for compatability (there
may be extra data but it's just in text format and has no equivalent on
the other source control systems)

David Lang

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Michael Bernstein]

You are basically missing the whole point of the petition.  I didn't sign it
because I hadn't read my opensource mail in awhile, but if I had the chance
to I would sign it now.  As a forced user of proprietary software, I can
understand the individual needs of people for certain packages (Pro Tools
and other audio programs in my case).  However, when a whole movement based
on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
there is some hypocrisy going on.  Rather then griping about the
shortcomings of CVS or various other solutions, wouldn't it be better to
create a non-proprietary solution to the problem?  Are we forgetting why
Linux is around and where it came from?  In general, I don't agree with
Colin Walters on too many things, but on this subject, I am in total
agreement.  Also, it's amazing to see what kinds of levels people will sink
to when a real issue is brought forth.  The whole osu nazi thing, touching.
Maybe if my family wasn't gassed to death by the Nazis I'd find it a bit
funnier to compare us to them, but alas, I have midterms tomorrow and I
guess my humor isn't up to what everyone else's is.

I would really examine the path you are choosing and the message you let out
by FORCING people to utilize bitkeeper.  I've already lost most of my faith
in opensource, and in general, the whole bitkeeper issue is starting to
squash any faith I have left.

Michael Bernstein
bernstein.46@osu.edu


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Fedyk" <mfedyk@matchmail.com>
To: "Colin Walters" <walters@debian.org>
Cc: "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@vger.timpanogas.org>;
<linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>; <opensource@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of
BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers


> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 05:40:59PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote:
> > On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:41, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> > > It's none of your
> > > f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
> > > American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel
> > > debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware
> > > analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.
> >
> > You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> > *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> > that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> > petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> > software by the kernel maintainers.
> >
>
> Use is another way of advocacy.  When you start using something, you get
> used to it, and when you talk to others, you end up advocating it because
> it's what you're used to, and probably other options aren't as good (to
you).
>
> IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...
>
> Mike
> _______________________________________________
> Opensource mailing list
> Opensource@mail.cis.ohio-state.edu
> http://mail.cis.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/opensource
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff Garzik]

Michael Bernstein wrote:
> I would really examine the path you are choosing and the message you let out
> by FORCING people to utilize bitkeeper.  I've already lost most of my faith
> in opensource, and in general, the whole bitkeeper issue is starting to
> squash any faith I have left.

Lets stop the fud RIGHT NOW.

Nobody is forcing anybody to use BitKeeper.

Linus still accepts GNU patches via e-mail from primary kernel
maintainers a.k.a. lieutenants, as well as "regular" kernel developers. 
The pre-patches, patches, and full tarballs continue to be posted
uninterrupted, just like pre-BitKeeper.

	Jeff



-- 
Jeff Garzik      | Usenet Rule #2 (John Gilmore): "The Net interprets
Building 1024    | censorship as damage and routes around it."
MandrakeSoft     |

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[That Linux Guy]

Remember folks - DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!
> Michael Bernstein wrote:
> > I would really examine the path you are choosing and the message you let
out
> > by FORCING people to utilize bitkeeper.  I've already lost most of my
faith
> > in opensource, and in general, the whole bitkeeper issue is starting to
> > squash any faith I have left.
> Lets stop the fud RIGHT NOW.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Alexander Viro]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Michael Bernstein wrote:

> You are basically missing the whole point of the petition.  I didn't sign it
> because I hadn't read my opensource mail in awhile, but if I had the chance
> to I would sign it now.  As a forced user of proprietary software, I can
> understand the individual needs of people for certain packages (Pro Tools
> and other audio programs in my case).  However, when a whole movement based
> on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
> proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
> there is some hypocrisy going on.  Rather then griping about the

I don't know about "the movement", but some of us are interested in creation
of _WORKING_ software.  Free is preferable; GPL is usually tolerable; but
all that isn't worth anything is the design and code are crap.

Hypocrisy (or lunacy - take your pick) is coming from those who insist that
politically correct tools should be prefered even when they clearly suck.

If you feel that the worst problem is that non-free software exists - that's
your right.  And your problem.  IMNSHO the fact that majority of both free
and non-free software is choke-full of crap is slightly more troubling.
YMMV.

> shortcomings of CVS or various other solutions, wouldn't it be better to
> create a non-proprietary solution to the problem?

So why don't you and Colin go and do that?

BTW, bitkeeper doesn't solve the problems I have.  Ditto for CVS.  So I use
neither.  FWIW, BK is closer to what I need.  If it will ever get the things
I need right - I'll use it and damned if I'll hide that.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Dave Jones]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 08:05:05PM -0500, Alexander Viro wrote:

 > BTW, bitkeeper doesn't solve the problems I have.  Ditto for CVS.  So I use
 > neither.  FWIW, BK is closer to what I need.  If it will ever get the things
 > I need right - I'll use it and damned if I'll hide that.

 Preach on brother Viro.  Faced with the mammoth task of somehow
 syncing a 6MB diff with Linus, I decided it was time to devote
 an afternoon (which then turned into an evening) to seeing if
 bk can make this easier.

 There's nothing in bk that makes my life any more difficult, and
 potential for it to make it a *lot* easier. And Larry seems
 open to suggestions, dispelling the "its closed commercial blah" myth.

 Splitting bits up could become even easier soon if Larry and I figure
 out a way to implement some of my perverse ideas for bending csets
 into something more flexable than what they currently are.

 Syncing from Linus to my tree isn't difficult, its the splitting bits
 up to push his way that takes time. bk is halfway towards almost
 automating this for me.  CVS and friends don't even get to the
 start line here.

 Hours of diff/grepdiff/filterdiff/vim, vs a few clicky clicky bits
 in bk citool.

 If you don't like the license, fine. Don't use it, but at least
 give everyone else the option of making up their own mind before
 you try to force _your_ opinion on others.

-- 
| Dave Jones.        http://www.codemonkey.org.uk
| SuSE Labs

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Shawn Starr]

The only problem I have with BK is it's slow on a Pentium 200Mhz, vs
CVS. ;/ Wish that would be fixed.

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Dave Jones wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 08:05:05PM -0500, Alexander Viro wrote:
>
>  > BTW, bitkeeper doesn't solve the problems I have.  Ditto for CVS.  So I use
>  > neither.  FWIW, BK is closer to what I need.  If it will ever get the things
>  > I need right - I'll use it and damned if I'll hide that.
>
>  Preach on brother Viro.  Faced with the mammoth task of somehow
>  syncing a 6MB diff with Linus, I decided it was time to devote
>  an afternoon (which then turned into an evening) to seeing if
>  bk can make this easier.
>
>  There's nothing in bk that makes my life any more difficult, and
>  potential for it to make it a *lot* easier. And Larry seems
>  open to suggestions, dispelling the "its closed commercial blah" myth.
>
>  Splitting bits up could become even easier soon if Larry and I figure
>  out a way to implement some of my perverse ideas for bending csets
>  into something more flexable than what they currently are.
>
>  Syncing from Linus to my tree isn't difficult, its the splitting bits
>  up to push his way that takes time. bk is halfway towards almost
>  automating this for me.  CVS and friends don't even get to the
>  start line here.
>
>  Hours of diff/grepdiff/filterdiff/vim, vs a few clicky clicky bits
>  in bk citool.
>
>  If you don't like the license, fine. Don't use it, but at least
>  give everyone else the option of making up their own mind before
>  you try to force _your_ opinion on others.
>
> --
> | Dave Jones.        http://www.codemonkey.org.uk
> | SuSE Labs
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Mike Fedyk]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 08:46:27PM -0500, Shawn Starr wrote:
> 
> The only problem I have with BK is it's slow on a Pentium 200Mhz, vs
> CVS. ;/ Wish that would be fixed.
> 

How much (wall clock) time will it take to produce a patch with bk
compared to cvs?

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 05:50:49PM -0800, Mike Fedyk wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 08:46:27PM -0500, Shawn Starr wrote:
> > 
> > The only problem I have with BK is it's slow on a Pentium 200Mhz, vs
> > CVS. ;/ Wish that would be fixed.
> > 
> 
> How much (wall clock) time will it take to produce a patch with bk
> compared to cvs?

On a 1Ghz Athlon (love those CPUs, AMD rocks my world),

[/tmp/linux-2.5] time bk export -tpatch -r+ > /tmp/P

real    0m2.410s
user    0m1.170s
sys     0m0.050s

That's a hot cache number, it's slower if we have to go to disk.

Bk could be faster, it's on our list.  The main thing for performance is
memory.  BK uses the file system as a cache, it mmaps the files and wants
them in the cache, life sucks if you don't have enough memory to fit the 
entire tree in memory.  "Sucks" is defined as "it takes too long".  Our
holy grail in terms of performance is to have all operations take less than
250 milliseconds, i.e., you hit return and you get your prompt back.

We have a long way to go to achieve that, bummer, but true.  For some
things, we are really fast.  We pull changes from a remote site
amazingly fast.  The downside is that we are paranoid about data and
we run the equiv of a fsck on the repository every time you update it.
So if you have a repository with 20,000 files and you pull on a one line,
one file, bugfix, we still open up and check every single file's checksum.
Which sucks from a performance point of view.

On the other hand, it finds bad disks, bad memory, etc.  Right away, before
it corrupts all your data.  It found some bad juju at one of our commercial
customers today, in fact.

We're working on nested repositories (think CVS modules) and those will limit
the check to the update "module", that will help a lot.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Shawn Starr]

well let's see, it takes forever to do a bk clone its the verfication that
slows things down hugely.

Shawn.


On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Mike Fedyk wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 08:46:27PM -0500, Shawn Starr wrote:
> >
> > The only problem I have with BK is it's slow on a Pentium 200Mhz, vs
> > CVS. ;/ Wish that would be fixed.
> >
>
> How much (wall clock) time will it take to produce a patch with bk
> compared to cvs?
>
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Michael Bernstein wrote:

> Rather then griping about the shortcomings of CVS or various other
> solutions, wouldn't it be better to create a non-proprietary solution to
> the problem?

Come back when you've done that.

Until then, there is no good alternative to bitkeeper
and you're just making yourself look rediculous.

regards,

Rik
-- 
"Linux holds advantages over the single-vendor commercial OS"
    -- Microsoft's "Competing with Linux" document

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[David Schwartz]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002 18:36:08 -0500, Michael Bernstein wrote:

>However, when a whole movement based
>on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
>proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
>there is some hypocrisy going on.

	What?! It's really this simple, you use the best tool for the job. Why can't 
we advocate the tools that really do work best. Why do we have to be a 
movement based upon an inflexible ideology? (Or are you just mocking the free 
software movement by spitting your stereotype at it?)

	There would be no hypocrisy whatsoever in using BitKeeper if it was honestly 
believed to be the best tool for the job taking the licensing restrictions 
into account. There would also be no hypocrisy in not using it if it was felt 
that the licensing restrictions were too onerous.

	DS

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, David Schwartz wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Mar 2002 18:36:08 -0500, Michael Bernstein wrote:
>
> >However, when a whole movement based
> >on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
> >proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
> >there is some hypocrisy going on.
>
> 	What?! It's really this simple, you use the best tool for the job.
> Why can't we advocate the tools that really do work best.

I'm in it for quality software, not specifically for the ideology
of free software.

> Why do we have to be a movement based upon an inflexible ideology?

Not to mention, why should we have to conform to the ideology of
the "free software" crowd ?

cheers,

Rik
-- 
<insert bitkeeper endorsement here>

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Petro]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 10:34:46PM -0300, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, David Schwartz wrote:
> > On Tue, 5 Mar 2002 18:36:08 -0500, Michael Bernstein wrote:
> > >However, when a whole movement based
> > >on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
> > >proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
> > >there is some hypocrisy going on.
> > 	What?! It's really this simple, you use the best tool for the job.
> > Why can't we advocate the tools that really do work best.
> I'm in it for quality software, not specifically for the ideology
> of free software.
> > Why do we have to be a movement based upon an inflexible ideology?
> Not to mention, why should we have to conform to the ideology of
> the "free software" crowd ?

    'Cause you can't be a rebel if you don't wear the right boots. 

-- 
Share and Enjoy. 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rob Turk]

"Petro" <petro@auctionwatch.com> wrote in message
news:cistron.20020307023302.GG32504@auctionwatch.com...
> > Not to mention, why should we have to conform to the ideology of
> > the "free software" crowd ?
>
>     'Cause you can't be a rebel if you don't wear the right boots.
>

That's the whole difference between 'Software must be free (as in beer)' and
'Software must be good'. Embracing free software for the sake of rebelling
against commercial software means you cut your options to choose for the best
tool for the job. There's lots of good free tools out there. There's also a lot
of good commercial software out there that in some cases does a better job than
the free variants. Choose whatever gets you the best results.

Rob

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Kenneth Johansson]

On Wed, 2002-03-06 at 00:36, Michael Bernstein wrote:

> However, when a whole movement based
> on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
> proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
> there is some hypocrisy going on.  Rather then griping about the
> shortcomings of CVS or various other solutions, wouldn't it be better to
> create a non-proprietary solution to the problem?  

This movement you speak of is doing another kernel and I would agree
with this petition in that context but linux has never been about
anything else than doing cool things and sharing it with others.

> Are we forgetting why
> Linux is around and where it came from? 

Apparently!

> agreement.  Also, it's amazing to see what kinds of levels people will sink
> to when a real issue is brought forth.  The whole osu nazi thing, touching.

You are new to this list I see :) 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Colin Walters]

On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 18:01, Mike Fedyk wrote:
> Use is another way of advocacy.  When you start using something, you get
> used to it, 

Sure. 

> and when you talk to others, you end up advocating it because
> it's what you're used to, and probably other options aren't as good (to you).

There is a difference between advocating something personally, and
advocating it in one's official capacity as the maintainer of a
project.  It is the latter "official" sense which the petition is
against.

> IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...

You are wrong.

http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/user/x/i/xiphmont/Public/critique.html

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On 5 Mar 2002, Colin Walters wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:41, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> > It's none of your f_cking business what we use to develop software.
>
> You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> software by the kernel maintainers.

I strongly object to the fact that you're trying to stop
me from advocating the best piece of source control
software that I know.

<endorsement>
I use bitkeeper because it saves me lots of time and makes
my life easier. If you don't like it, you can use something
else instead and do all the work by hand, but I prefer to
have bitkeeper do the version tracking for me.

I don't know of any product that comes close to bitkeeper,
or even of anything remotely approaching the functionality
of bitkeeper, for me there is no real alternative.
</endorsement>

Now, are you about censoring my free speech in the name of
"protecting freedom and free software" or are you going to
write free version control software with the functionality
of bitkeeper so there is a free alternative ?

regards,

Rik
-- 
"Linux holds advantages over the single-vendor commercial OS"
    -- Microsoft's "Competing with Linux" document

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Colin Walters]

On Wed, 2002-03-06 at 11:04, Rik van Riel wrote:
> I strongly object to the fact that you're trying to stop
> me from advocating the best piece of source control
> software that I know.
> 
> <endorsement>

That's fine; you are free to ignore the petition, as was stated earlier.

> Now, are you about censoring my free speech in the name of
> "protecting freedom and free software" 

We don't have the power (or will) to censor you; only you and perhaps
your government have that power.

> or are you going to
> write free version control software with the functionality
> of bitkeeper so there is a free alternative ?

Since this seems to be a good representative of the "Why don't you write
your own" argument, I'll just respond to this one.  

The petition is in no way exclusive of writing our own versioning
control software.  Some of us might go on from here to hack on one, like
arch.  But if we had been associated with a particular competitior to
BitKeeper, then it would have been unethical to send the petition, since
it would be just a form of advertising for us.

I admit I have done a completely trivial amount of work on the Debian
package of arch, but besides that, I don't think any signer of the
petition was associated with a BitKeeper competitior.  We are just Linux
users who are concerned about the direction the kernel maintainers are
taking, because of the various problems associated with BitKeeper.

That being said, I personally will probably start getting more involved
with arch.  Hacking on a verison control system looks like fun.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Davide Libenzi]

On 6 Mar 2002, Colin Walters wrote:

> That being said, I personally will probably start getting more involved
> with arch.  Hacking on a verison control system looks like fun.

It is fun. I would not be surprised if after all this noise a XCVS project
would start. I understand what the goal of your petition was guys, but
you've to understand that there're a lot of developers for which Linux
kernel hacking turned to be from fun to work ( and fun, or better payed
fun ). And you cannot blame someone that uses the better tool ( for them )
to accomplish the job. If CVS would have done the job i think it would
have been employed a long time ago as long as i think that if an XCVS will
be available in a next future it will be probably used in this context.




- Davide

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Davide Libenzi wrote:
> On 6 Mar 2002, Colin Walters wrote:
>
> > That being said, I personally will probably start getting more involved
> > with arch.  Hacking on a verison control system looks like fun.
>
> It is fun. I would not be surprised if after all this noise a XCVS project
> would start. I understand what the goal of your petition was guys, but

> [snip] ... you cannot blame someone that uses the better tool

Bitkeeper has raised the bar, I hope the free version control
folks will do their best trying to jump to the new level  ;)

regards,

Rik
-- 
"Linux holds advantages over the single-vendor commercial OS"
    -- Microsoft's "Competing with Linux" document

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[David S. Miller]

Probably the most amusing consequence of this "petition" is that it
has given BitKeeper a lot of extra free publicity. :-)

In fact more than I've ever given it publicly, and that is the most
ironic and hilarious part.  ROFL.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 12:57:33PM -0800, David S. Miller wrote:
> Probably the most amusing consequence of this "petition" is that it
> has given BitKeeper a lot of extra free publicity. :-)

Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't find out, but I made up the whole thing,
there is no "Open Source Club" at Ohio state.  :)

I suppose this means you see through me when I post as Aunt Tillie,
saying that BitKeeper is the devil's work and wanting to know where
I can get Microsoft menuconfig.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Cort Dougan]

No!  Penelope doesn't exist either, then?  Please, tell me the it's true that
you made up Eric Raymond too!

} Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't find out, but I made up the whole thing,
} there is no "Open Source Club" at Ohio state.  :)
} 
} I suppose this means you see through me when I post as Aunt Tillie,
} saying that BitKeeper is the devil's work and wanting to know where
} I can get Microsoft menuconfig.
} -- 
} ---
} Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 
} -
} To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Evan Powers]

On March 6, 2002 03:57 pm, David S. Miller <davem@redhat.com> wrote:
> Probably the most amusing consequence of this "petition" is that it
> has given BitKeeper a lot of extra free publicity. :-)
>
> In fact more than I've ever given it publicly, and that is the most
> ironic and hilarious part.  ROFL.

I'm loosely a member of OSU's Opensource Club, but I didn't sign the petition.

Believe me, the irony isn't lost on many of us. ;-)

-- 
Evan Powers
powers.161@osu.edu (find my PGP key at www.keyserver.net, key ID 0x3445B541)