Re: BitBucket: GPL-ed KitBeeper clone

Larry McVoy
2003-03-09T19:48:20Z

On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 09:20:45AM -0800, Zack Brown wrote:
> People in the know hint at these features ("naming is really important"),
> but the details are apparently complicated enough that no one wants to sit
> down and actually describe them.

What part of "40 man years" did you not understand? Do you seriously
think that it is easy to "sit down and actually describe them"? And if
you think I would do so just so you can go try to copy our solution
you have to be nuts, of course we aren't going to do that. It took
us year to figure it out, we're still figuring things out every day,
if you want a free SCM you can bloody well go figure it out yourself.
The whole point of the non-compete clause in the well loved BK license
is to say "this stuff is hard. If you want to create a similar product,
do it without the benefit of looking at our product". That seems to be
lost on you and a lot of other people as well.

It's perfectly OK for you to go invent a new SCM system. Go for it.
But stop asking for help from the BK crowd. Not only will we not
give you that help, we will do absolutely everything we can to make
sure that you can't copy BK. Everything up to and including selling
the company to the highest bidder and letting them chase after you.

Get it through your thick head that BK is something valuable to this
community, even if you don't use it you directly benefit from its use.
All you people trying to copy BK are just shooting yourself in the foot
unless you can come up with a solution that Linus will use in the short
term. And nobody but an idiot believes that is possible. So play nice.
Playing nice means you can use it, you can't copy it. You can also
go invent your own SCM system, go for it, it's a challenging problem,
just don't use BK's files, commands, or anything else in the process.
We didn't have the benefit of copying something that you wrote, you
don't get the benefit of copying something we wrote.

You don't have to agree with us, you can do whatever you want, but do
so realizing that if you become too annoying we'll simple decide that
supporting the kernel isn't worth the aggravation. As for you armchair
CEO's who think we're racking in the bucks because of the kernel's usage
of BK, think again. That is not how sales are made in this space, sales
are made at the VP of engineering, CTO, CIO, and/or CEO level. If you
think those guys read this list or slashdot or care about the kernel
using BK, think again, they don't. All they care about it is how much
it costs and how much effort it will save them. And they all know that
their development model is dramatically different than that of the
kernel so any BK success here is of marginal interest at best.

BK is made available for free for one reason and one reason only: to
help Linus not burn out. That's based on my personal belief that he is
critical to success of the Linux effort, he is a unique resource and has
to be protected. I've paid a very heavy price for that belief and I'm
telling you that you are right on the edge of making that price too high.
--
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Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm