Re: [Bitkeeper-announce] RFC: BK license change

[david parsons <orc@pell.portland.or.us>]

Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> No, we're not GPLing it but we are making a few adjustments and wanted to
> make sure that it was an improvement, not a regression, in the eyes of
> the free users.  Sorry for the intrusion, I'll be as brief as possible.
> 

> 3(c) Maintaining Open Source.  Our intent was that the free use of
>      BitKeeper was for the purpose of helping the open source community;
>      it was not to provide commercial users a free product.  We have had
>      a number of cases where managers up to VPs have told their engineers
>      "just don't put anything useful in the checkin comments and then we
>      can use it for free".  Not what we had in mind.  So we're adding
>      a clause which says that we reserve the right to insist that you
>      make your repositories available on a public port within 15 days
>      of the request.

    This addendum is somewhat [1] annoying, because I switched over to
    BK for _everything_ a couple of years ago and now I've got a
    moderately large body of stuff that is NOT open source (my resume,
    my dns, little proofs of concept projects that I did for people.
    I've not made one red penny off any of this [particularly since the
    economy has gone south and put me out of work for the past year.
    But I'm still not opensourcing my resume.]) that's under bitkeeper.
    If I upgrade to a bk that uses the new license, then I get to play
    the exciting game of ``break the new license and defraud my former
    employers'' [2], which is about as appealing as Linus's alternative
    approach to resolving software patent issues.

                  ____
    david parsons \bi/ [1: pronounced ``extremely'']
                   \/  [2: or, alternatively, buy it, but this involves
			   bitmover actually telling me how much it would
			   cost AND having a job[3] so I could buy it.]
		       [3: The Oregon economy really sucks, so this is
			   filed under the category of ``sick jokes'' ]