Re: BK kernel workflow

[Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>]

From: Roman Zippel (zippel@linux-m68k.org)
> What someone does in the privacy of his home is outside the scope of the 
> GPL, this means the kernel repository is the private toy of Linus and he 
> leaves the decision who may play with him to Larry.

Anyone who thinks this is incorrect.  Yes, I have a lot of influence
on the license under which BK is shipped, I own more than 50% of the
stock in BitMover.  On the other hand, I have a board of directors, we
call board meetings for any serious decision and I have never overridden
the board.  Not once.  And it is extremely unlikely that I ever will, the
whole point of the board (at least in our company) is to have a sounding
board where we make sure we aren't doing something stupid.  There are
calmer heads than mine prevailing and there isn't any way that Roman &
Co are going to piss me off enough that we will do something stupid.
There is zero chance of that.  We've set up process to make sure that
doesn't happen.

> This is also means that Linux history recorded in bk is not part of the 
> public record. 

It is indeed part of the public record, Linus has it and so do about 
10,000 other people.  Let's look at that, shall we?  Suppose I lost 
what little mind I have left and said, against the advice our board,
I'm sick of whiners like Roman, let's shut them down and revoke the 
BK license.  Never mind the fact that I can't do that, any court in
the world would spank us hard for trying to do it, let's just suppose.

So there you are with a pile of bits on disk.  Are you really suggesting,
Roman, that the collective intelligence of the free software world
is so pathetic that they can't extract the information they want from
those bits?  Remember, you already have the nightly BK2CVS snapshots
on master.kernel.org and we can't retract those even if we tried.
You have that and the bits on disk and your brain.  And you can't get
what you want?  How lame is that?  Are you really saying, in public,
that you can't handle that?  I know you are smarter than that, I've
read your code.

> This is an unfortunate fact and not a complaint BTW, but 
> Larry has not much use for facts anyway, when I try to summarize the facts 
> around the publicly available information as best as I can, Larry doesn't 
> even try to prove me wrong and instead continues to attack me personally. 
> I don't really care about the latter, but that he gets the support to do 
> so is the personally very disappointing part. :-(

Roman, I'm not attacking you.  I think your view on things leaves
something to be desired but I think that if BK wasn't in the picture
we would agree on 90% of the problems we faced together.  If you think
I'm attacking you then you are not listening.  I've been trying to tell
you that we are trying to help and you keep not listening.  Whatever.
But suggesting that I'm attacking you is just nonsense.  I don't care
about you enough to bother attacking you, that's one thing, and I
abhor the concept of attacking a person regardless of their beliefs,
that's the other thing.  If someone attacked you, Roman, as a person,
I'd defend you.  That's an awful thing to do and it is unacceptable.

On the other hand, I am attacking your position on this one issue.
I think you don't understand how hard it has been to build the technology
to help you and I think you have no idea what it takes to create a
business model which supports that effort.  That's an attack, I admit
it, on your thoughts on this issue.  I respect you as a person and as
a contributor to the Linux kernel but I do not agree with your views on
this one issue.  Anyone who has been to graduate school or has learned
this lesson elsewhere knows the difference between an attack on what
you said and an attack on you as a person.  There's a big difference.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy                lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitkeeper.com