Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]

Larry McVoy
2003-05-01T02:08:22Z

On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 03:58:08PM -0400, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> > That's what I meant by chasing. If you are chasing the leader you are
> > automatically more at risk because you are trying to play in the leader's
> > playing field and they can change the rules to screw you up. You build
> > a better playing field and you turn the tables, now the leader is the
> > follower and they have to play by your rules.
>
> Then... if you're so confident about you remaining the leader in the SCM
> world, why are you afraid of possible BK clone attempts? The leader will
> _always_ be chased regardless. That's part of being a leader.

Read my lips:

It's not about BitKeeper
It's not about BitKeeper
It's not about BitKeeper

The thread was about corporations and powers which are orders and orders
of magnitude more powerful than we will ever be.

But since you insist on harping on BK, I get what you are saying, but we
are cranking out code faster than you can type. I have an engineer here
who has over 100 active BK repositories, just that one person can code
circles around all the BK cloners stacked up and then some. We're all
like that, we're nuts, we live to code and we are pretty good at it.
Linus has the BK source, ask him what he thinks.

We're not worried that the BK cloners are going to keep up. Look at
Subversion, that's a funded project, serious programmers (good ones),
open source, etc. They admit that they can't do what BK can and we
started more or less at the same time (I worked alone for a year or so
before they started but our teams started up about the same time).

It's absolutely true that I'm pissed off at the kernel people looking
at cloning BK. Why shouldn't I be? We busted our ass to produce
a much better tool to help out the kernel effort and got "rewarded"
with people saying they'll clone it. That reaction just disgusts me.
Those people ought to consider the benefits that BK has provided, the
fact that any free replacement is years away, and the fact that we could
pull the plug tomorrow and shut down the free use of BK. Balance your
actions against the reactions.

Yeah, I'm pissed. If you were me you would be livid. It sucks to try and
help and be distrusted and crapped on. We've had 5 years of "you're just
evil corporate bastards" and so far we have never done a single thing to
deserve that. We've done nothing but provide the best technology we can
possibly build for free. Whatever, that's life, we certainly didn't do
this for the love and rewards we would get from the so called "community".

But worried about these guys? Come on. Read Pavel's "source" tree.
Read the mailing lists. It's absolutely true that I'm outraged at
the attempts to clone our technology by the people we are helping.
Threatened? Gimme a break. If you think we are threatened you don't
have the foggiest idea of how good our technology is, how good our
programmers are, or how dedicated we are to making the best solution.

As one open source luminary said "It will take them 5 years to catch
up to where you were last year and unless you guys are idiots you'll
be more than 5 years ahead of them then". Exactly. Nobody here is
sitting back and resting, we think what we have is garbage and have a
clear vision as to how to make it be great. We're doing that. If the
copiers can do better, that's very cool, but we'll probably respond by
hiring them if they are really that good, we're always looking for people
as passionate as we are about this stuff.
--
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Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm