From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: linuxppc-embedded@lists.linuxppc.org Subject: Re: linuxppc_2_5 source tree (and others) In-Reply-To: Message from Cort Dougan of "Thu, 10 May 2001 21:14:08 CST." <20010510211408.P1595@ftsoj.fsmlabs.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 15:43:25 +1000 Message-ID: <23573.989559805@msa.cmst.csiro.au> From: Murray Jensen Sender: owner-linuxppc-embedded@lists.linuxppc.org List-Id: On Thu, 10 May 2001 21:14:08 -0600, Cort Dougan writes: >I'm not sure what the current plan is at BitMover but I believe that's a >feature of BitKeeper/Pro but not BitKeeper/Open. I don't know the exact situation either - all I can go on is their website, which describes two versions of BitKeeper - BK/Pro and BK/Basic. The BK/Basic page says it provides everything that BK/Pro does, except for: - Hierarchical repositories - Ability to resolve rename conflicts in anything other than the master repository - Rollback - Global multi-site - Event triggers - LOD (line of development) support There is also a description of BK/Web, which appears to be a third part. Based on this, I am assuming that BK/Basic is (or will be) the free version, and BK/Pro is (or will be) the commercial version that you must pay for. It seems to me that it would be pointless to use BK/Basic only for the Linux kernel - all this stuff, and LODs in particular, are too useful. I have no problem with them selling software, and I quite like BitKeeper - it feels right, like it has the correct approach to software version control (at least in the case where there is a large number of distributed developers and one single entity being developed consisting of a huge number of files - exactly the case with the Linux source). However, I would question the use of closed-source, non-free software to develop open-source, free software - in effect, it makes the software being developed (in this case Linux) closed and non-free - imagine, for example, if you had the Linux source, but had to pay for a compiler to build it - and not just any C compiler - you had to buy company X's compiler. Now I know there are other methods available of getting the source besides BK (rsync, ftp of tarballs, etc), but you don't get the version control info, which I reckon is getting almost as essential as the compiler these days. >Linux developers >(possibly all open-source people) are able to get BitKeeper/Pro. (I assume you mean for free - but obviously binary only; no source code) This would be welcome - but how does one qualify as a "linux developer" or an "open-source person"? If I can register for free with an independent organisation and BitMover recognised this then great - but if it is left up to BitMover to decide whether I qualify, this seems somewhat less than satisfactory. Sorry for rambling - this is really just an academic argument - the real world rolls on... (we may even pay for BitKeeper :-) Cheers! Murray... -- Murray Jensen, CSIRO Manufacturing Sci & Tech, Phone: +61 3 9662 7763 Locked Bag No. 9, Preston, Vic, 3072, Australia. Fax: +61 3 9662 7853 Internet: Murray.Jensen@cmst.csiro.au (old address was mjj@mlb.dmt.csiro.au) ** Sent via the linuxppc-embedded mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/