Re: BK scales, Bitmover doesn't [was Re: BK stuff ]

[Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2001 at 03:59:56PM -0600, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> (I'm quite sure this is off-topic, but oh well :-/ )

Seems like your outgoing mail filter needs some work if you know it's
off topic and you post anyway, but what the hey, it's Christmas.

> However, the real problem I see is that althought Bitkeeper (the product)  
> scales very well, Bitmover (the company) does NOT. Bitmover needs income 
> to scale, and I'm worried that if BK takes off for kernel development, 
> the demands on Bitmover from kernel developers will far outstrip the 
> increase in income they get from 'commercial' developers. If this happens, 
> it's only going to end in everyone getting pissed off. 

This is way off topic.  I could make similar claims about people using
what your company, Monta Vista, does but you don't see me posting in the
kernel list about their layoffs, business practices, etc.  I certainly
could, but it shows no class (not that I've been accused of having lots
of class, but FUD seems too tasteless for me).

Regardless, to put minds at ease, we're fine.  While we would welcome
more revenue (who wouldn't?), we've never had a layoff in our 4 year
history and aren't planning any.  In addition, we've managed to support
you and the PPC team for almost 2 years without it being a problem,
I'm not sure why it should become a problem now.  Oh yeah, tack on MySQL
as well, that's been under BK for longer than Linux/PPC.  Of course, if
you are worried about it, since Monta Vista has gotten so much benefit
out of BK, they could help ensure the continued development by buying
a support contract.  Hint, hint.

What if we do go out of business?  What's wrong with that?  If we go
under, BK reverts to a pure GPL license.  That can't be a problem,
right?

Seems to me it's a win/win.  We either stick around and support it because
the business model is sound, or we go under and you get it like any other
open source product.  Yeah, it's better if we stick around because BK
is pretty complex, but if the open source crowd can handle the kernel,
gcc, X, etc, they can handle the BK source base, so I really don't see
the problem here.  What am I missing?
-- 
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Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm