Re: BK kernel workflow

Larry McVoy
2004-10-27T04:18:35Z

On Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 08:00:18PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Larry can tell you that we've discussed the BK license in private, and he
> definitely knows that I'd really like for it to be an open source license.
> But I also suspect that Larry will tell you that I haven't been whining
> about it - I've been trying to come up with ways it could work out for
> him, considering that he's got employees to take care of, and I haven't
> been able to come up with anything that would convince him. Fair enough.

We (BitMover) wrestle with this all the time, or at least I do. I think
that the set of people on this list have no idea how painful it has
been for me to do what we have done. I started out as one of you and
liked it that way. I saw a problem, Linus needed a tool, and I saw a
solution, I could give him that tool. So far, so good. But the effort
required to produce that tool cost a lot of money. So I had to start
a company, get some help, get other people involved. This is a way
bigger problem than I can solve, and as I'm fond of saying, most of
the people at BitMover are dramatically smarter than I am and that's
what it takes.

I went to lunch one day and just for fun, err, morbid fascination,
I started counting up what I had put into BK and I stopped counting
at $600K. At the time, it represented 1/3 of the money I had made in
my life. 1/3. Any of you jerkoffs whining about our license given up
1/3 of what you have made to date to help Linux? I didn't think so.
And just for the record, no, I haven't made that back yet from BK, not
even close, I'm at least still $550K in the hole. I'm not complaining,
I'm just pointing out that the whiners are whining but they aren't
coughing up any money or any effort, they are just whining. Disgusting,
isn't it? It is to me.

The reason Linus hasn't come up with an answer for how we could open
source BK is that you guys think this is easy. It's one thing to
take a widely perceived as difficult problem and come up with an open
source solution and charge for it. It's quite another thing to take
a widely perceived as easy but in reality difficult problem and charge
for an open source solution. Just ask the SVN guys. That's not an open
source project, it's funded by HP and other big companies. The second
that funding dries up are you going to go work on SVN? How much code
have you contributed to SVN? Or Arch? Or whatever? What? Nothing?
But you still have the balls to think this is all easy. OK, that's fine,
and that's why Linus isn't getting anywhere with me.

I'm very less than thrilled with being crapped on for helping out in the
best way could. It's especially annoying when people do it who have no
idea what it took to help out the way we did. I've long since gotten
over any thought of being accepted by this community as part of them,
that's just dead. But if you think I'll sit by while jerkoffs like
Andrea and Roman piss all over us for helping, think again. As far as
I'm concerned they can kiss my ass.
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Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com