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

[Colin Walters <walters@debian.org>]

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.