Re: New BK License Problem?

[Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>]

On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 03:46:29PM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> > The clause is specifically designed to target those companies which
> > produce or sell commercial SCM systems. [...] The open source developers
> > have nothing to worry about.
> 
> and:
> 
> On Sat, 5 Oct 2002, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> > > Larry, I develop for the Subversion project. Does that mean my license
> > > to use bitkeeper is revoked?
> > 
> > Yes.  It has been since we shipped that license or when you started
> > working on Subversion, whichever came last.
> 
> 
> this kind of sudden change in Larry's written opinion within 24 hours is
> that makes this whole issue dangerous. Fact is that Larry is free to
> license his product under fair or unfair terms - it's his. While we
> already gave BK/BM tons of feedback, free beta-testing and free publicity,
> all we have is this volatile promise that the binary bits of BK are going
> to remain licensed - and with every day it will be harder and harder to
> move the repository.

In all honesty, Larry and I have a dislike for each other. I've emailed
him in private venting my frustration against him in the past. I wasn't
very nice at all. It's no surprise that he has a grudge against me.

His decision above is more of a power play against me to smack me down,
than anything else (something he's admitted to me in private email since
sending that email to the list). He got his payback.

Question is, if he shows a history of using license interpretation to
handle personal grudges, how long before he gets pissed at someone else
and inteprets his license in another way to toss around power over users
of his product...a way more damaging than simply losing ones right to
use BK freely.


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