Re: [RFC] Linux Kernel Subversion Howto

[lm@bitmover.com (Larry McVoy)]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 03:22:34PM -0200, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Feb 11, 2005, Jon Smirl <jonsmirl@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > It's not Larry choosing not to have you do the work, you are self
> > selecting not to do it because you won't sign the contracts.
> 
> No.  We don't want access to the BK software.  We want access to the
> data that is stored in the repository, that's all.

No, you want access to the metadata that BK uses to store the data.

It would be nice if you were to stop pretending that access to that data
wouldn't teach you anything, we all know that not to be true.  All the
claims you make that it is your data are as wrong as saying you own the
file system metadata when you store a file or the database metadata when
you store a record.  You don't.  You just want it.  It's not a smart
move for us to give it to you since you have stated that the only good
use of a commercial product is to create an open source copy of it.
It's pretty clear what you want to do and you keep asking for us to help
you and the answer now, and forever, is no, we aren't going to help you
create a copy of our product.

You or Roman or whoever will say "we aren't trying to create a copy of
your product" and that's nonsense.  You want a product that stores the
data in exactly the same way as BK, that's why you keep asking for the
metadata.  If you wanted to create your own system you wouldn't care,
you already have the CVS tree, it has 96% of the deltas that the BK
tree has.  96%.  So you are trying to tell us all that you need the
last 4% of the deltas so you can create a *different* system than BK?
Come on, gimme a break already, you aren't fooling anyone.
-- 
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Larry McVoy                lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitkeeper.com