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Posted to dev@subversion.apache.org by Ben Collins-Sussman <su...@red-bean.com> on 2005/10/12 01:04:50 UTC
disturbing Bitkeeper threats
I just found this post on a friend's blog:
http://www.serpentine.com/blog/software/mercurial/bye-for-now.html
The poster (Bryan O'Sullivan) is a key Mercurial developer, and
apparently Larry McVoy has persuaded him to stop working on Mercurial
-- on moral grounds, perhaps? -- because he uses Bitkeeper
commercially at his job. I'm rather amazed that he agrees with Larry.
I'm not sure what to think. Years ago, Larry changed the 'free beer'
BK license to prevent a Subversion developer from using BK. But in
this case, Larry has no legal ground to stand on.
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by David Waite <dw...@gmail.com>.
I believe he was referring to purchasing software as a service, versus
purchasing software and having it treated the same as purchasing a
material good like a book.
On 10/13/05, Matthias Wächter <ma...@tttech.com> wrote:
> Daniel Berlin schrieb:
> > Welcome to the wonderful world of not owning software.
>
> Well - as much as I dislike licenses for commercial (closed source)
> software and agree with your statement, licenses like the GPL are the
> base for open source software which in fact you cannot 'own' as well
> (even if you don't have to pay for it to 'have' it).
>
> - Matthias
>
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by Nicolás Lichtmaier <ni...@reloco.com.ar>.
>> Welcome to the wonderful world of not owning software.
>
>
> Well - as much as I dislike licenses for commercial (closed source)
> software and agree with your statement, licenses like the GPL are the
> base for open source software which in fact you cannot 'own' as well
> (even if you don't have to pay for it to 'have' it).
It depends on your definition of owning. In case of GPL software you,
we... the mankind, own the software as a whole. It's a philosophical
discussion, not suitable for this list =) .
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by Matthias Wächter <ma...@tttech.com>.
Daniel Berlin schrieb:
> Welcome to the wonderful world of not owning software.
Well - as much as I dislike licenses for commercial (closed source)
software and agree with your statement, licenses like the GPL are the
base for open source software which in fact you cannot 'own' as well
(even if you don't have to pay for it to 'have' it).
- Matthias
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by Daniel Rall <dl...@finemaltcoding.com>.
On Tue, 11 Oct 2005, Daniel Berlin wrote:
...
> Uh, i would hope nobody would be stupid enough to buy licenses from
> someone that allows them to terminate them randomly.
>
> I imagine Larry just threatened not to allow them to *renew* them.
This is correct. However, I've heard that there's also a clause in the
EULA which requires users to upgrade to the latest version, meaning that
as soon as the next BK release is available, BitMover has you over a
barrel.
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by Daniel Berlin <db...@dberlin.org>.
On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 20:12 -0500, kfogel@collab.net wrote:
> Ben Collins-Sussman <su...@red-bean.com> writes:
> > On 10/11/05, Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org> wrote:
> > > So Bryan might not agree with Larry. He might simply want to keep his
> > > job,
> >
> > You're probably right, the employer probably got scared, and gave
> > Bryan a choice of either working on Mercuria or keeping his job. It's
> > probably not Bryan's fault here.
> >
> > Still, it upsets me that Larry makes such war on the open source
> > world. It's amazing what damage the mere *threat* of a lawsuit can
> > do.
>
> In this case the more immediate threat is probably the withdrawal of
> the commercial licenses. (Though without Larry McVoy or Bryan's
> employer speaking openly about what has been threatened and what
> hasn't, we can't know for sure.)
Uh, i would hope nobody would be stupid enough to buy licenses from
someone that allows them to terminate them randomly.
I imagine Larry just threatened not to allow them to *renew* them.
Welcome to the wonderful world of not owning software.
--Dan
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by Toby Johnson <to...@etjohnson.us>.
Branko Čibej wrote:
> In the circumastances, I'd suggest it's time to announce that svn-2.0
> will be the "Kill BitKeeper" release. It's becoming obvious that far
> from helping the OS community, which McVoy's been bragging about, he's
> actually actively working on killing off open source projects.
>
> Lots of commercial software vendors are capable of cooperating with
> the OS world. BitMover seems to be going down the SCO path.
And not only that, he has the gall to leave a quote from Linus Torvalds
on the homepage.
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by David Weintraub <da...@WeintraubWorld.net>.
Actually, all we can do is speculate what is going on which makes me
nervous. We might be feeding evil intentions where none really exist.
We don't know what was said or to whom.
Until we get more information of what Bryan and and Larry are up to,
we have to keep an open mind of what is going on.
On Oct 12, 2005, at 9:55 AM, Branko Čibej wrote:
> kfogel@collab.net wrote:
>
>
>> Ben Collins-Sussman <su...@red-bean.com> writes:
>>
>>
>>> On 10/11/05, Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> So Bryan might not agree with Larry. He might simply want to
>>>> keep his
>>>> job,
>>>>
>>>>
>>> You're probably right, the employer probably got scared, and gave
>>> Bryan a choice of either working on Mercuria or keeping his job.
>>> It's
>>> probably not Bryan's fault here.
>>>
>>> Still, it upsets me that Larry makes such war on the open source
>>> world. It's amazing what damage the mere *threat* of a lawsuit can
>>> do.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> In this case the more immediate threat is probably the withdrawal of
>> the commercial licenses. (Though without Larry McVoy or Bryan's
>> employer speaking openly about what has been threatened and what
>> hasn't, we can't know for sure.)
>>
>>
>
> In the circumastances, I'd suggest it's time to announce that
> svn-2.0 will be the "Kill BitKeeper" release. It's becoming obvious
> that far from helping the OS community, which McVoy's been bragging
> about, he's actually actively working on killing off open source
> projects.
>
> Lots of commercial software vendors are capable of cooperating with
> the OS world. BitMover seems to be going down the SCO path.
>
> -- Brane
>
>
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>
>
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by kf...@collab.net.
Branko Čibej <br...@xbc.nu> writes:
> In the circumastances, I'd suggest it's time to announce that svn-2.0
> will be the "Kill BitKeeper" release. It's becoming obvious that far
> from helping the OS community, which McVoy's been bragging about, he's
> actually actively working on killing off open source projects.
Oh, I think that's been on the roadmap all along, but more in the way
that Linus Torvalds says Linux will kill Microsoft Windows: not as a
goal, but as a pleasant, albeit unintentional, side effect :-).
> Lots of commercial software vendors are capable of cooperating with
> the OS world. BitMover seems to be going down the SCO path.
100% agreed.
(Speaking only for myself, of course. If CollabNet has a corporate
line on BitMover, I don't know what it is.)
-Karl
--
www.collab.net <> CollabNet | Distributed Development On Demand
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by Branko Čibej <br...@xbc.nu>.
kfogel@collab.net wrote:
>Ben Collins-Sussman <su...@red-bean.com> writes:
>
>
>>On 10/11/05, Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>So Bryan might not agree with Larry. He might simply want to keep his
>>>job,
>>>
>>>
>>You're probably right, the employer probably got scared, and gave
>>Bryan a choice of either working on Mercuria or keeping his job. It's
>>probably not Bryan's fault here.
>>
>>Still, it upsets me that Larry makes such war on the open source
>>world. It's amazing what damage the mere *threat* of a lawsuit can
>>do.
>>
>>
>
>In this case the more immediate threat is probably the withdrawal of
>the commercial licenses. (Though without Larry McVoy or Bryan's
>employer speaking openly about what has been threatened and what
>hasn't, we can't know for sure.)
>
>
In the circumastances, I'd suggest it's time to announce that svn-2.0
will be the "Kill BitKeeper" release. It's becoming obvious that far
from helping the OS community, which McVoy's been bragging about, he's
actually actively working on killing off open source projects.
Lots of commercial software vendors are capable of cooperating with the
OS world. BitMover seems to be going down the SCO path.
-- Brane
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by kf...@collab.net.
Ben Collins-Sussman <su...@red-bean.com> writes:
> On 10/11/05, Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org> wrote:
> > So Bryan might not agree with Larry. He might simply want to keep his
> > job,
>
> You're probably right, the employer probably got scared, and gave
> Bryan a choice of either working on Mercuria or keeping his job. It's
> probably not Bryan's fault here.
>
> Still, it upsets me that Larry makes such war on the open source
> world. It's amazing what damage the mere *threat* of a lawsuit can
> do.
In this case the more immediate threat is probably the withdrawal of
the commercial licenses. (Though without Larry McVoy or Bryan's
employer speaking openly about what has been threatened and what
hasn't, we can't know for sure.)
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by Ben Collins-Sussman <su...@red-bean.com>.
On 10/11/05, Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org> wrote:
> So Bryan might not agree with Larry. He might simply want to keep his
> job,
You're probably right, the employer probably got scared, and gave
Bryan a choice of either working on Mercuria or keeping his job. It's
probably not Bryan's fault here.
Still, it upsets me that Larry makes such war on the open source
world. It's amazing what damage the mere *threat* of a lawsuit can
do.
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Re: disturbing Bitkeeper threats
Posted by Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org>.
On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 08:04:50PM -0500, Ben Collins-Sussman wrote:
> I just found this post on a friend's blog:
>
> http://www.serpentine.com/blog/software/mercurial/bye-for-now.html
>
> The poster (Bryan O'Sullivan) is a key Mercurial developer, and
> apparently Larry McVoy has persuaded him to stop working on Mercurial
> -- on moral grounds, perhaps? -- because he uses Bitkeeper
> commercially at his job. I'm rather amazed that he agrees with Larry.
>
> I'm not sure what to think. Years ago, Larry changed the 'free beer'
> BK license to prevent a Subversion developer from using BK. But in
> this case, Larry has no legal ground to stand on.
Well, Larry can revoke a business's license to use BitKeeper. That is
probably what happened in this case. The employer then needs to choose
to forget using BitKeeper, lose the employee causing the problem with
BitMover, Inc, or ask the employee to stop causing the problem.
So Bryan might not agree with Larry. He might simply want to keep his
job, if BitKeeper is important enough to his employer. It could also
be that the phrase "as long as I continue to use the commerical
version of BitKeeper" is key in Bryan's post. Could be that his
employer is now working on moving off BitKeeper :-)
Cheers,
-g
--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/
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