Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University]

Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

We, the undersigned members and officers of the Open Source Club at
the Ohio State University, are unhappy with the advocacy of the
proprietary[1] BitKeeper software for use in maintaining the Linux
kernel.  The Linux kernel is an important symbol of Open Source and
Free Software for many people, and a project in which many thousands
have participated in active development.  It is fine if some kernel
developers choose to use BitKeeper on their own machines, but
officially endorsing proprietary software as the means of working on
the kernel is a large step backwards for Linux, and for the Open
Source and Free Software communities.

If the core Linux maintainers begin to advocate using BitKeeper, then
there will be strong pressure on these peripheral developers to use
BitKeeper too, since it would likely be easier than browsing the
web-exported changelogs or fetching the latest diff from kernel.org.

Using a closed-source, proprietary source control system for the
kernel is even worse than using other forms of proprietary software
such as source code analysis systems, because the revision control
metadata (version numbers, branches, changelog comments, etc.), would
be stored in a format defined by the proprietary software.  This
metadata is really a part of Linux, because people will want to use it
when talking about the kernel.  Those who can't[2] or don't want to
use BitKeeper are left out in the cold.  One of the most important
parts of Open Source and Free Software is that we, the community, are
in control.  But by using and advocating BitKeeper, we would lose part
of that control.

In summary, please do not advocate BitKeeper for use by the general
community.  The Linux development process seems to have worked up till
now, and we can wait a little longer until Arch[3] or Subversion[4]
are completed.  Moreover, full-featured, completely functional free 
versioning sytems are currently available, such as PRCS[5] and CVS[6].
We respect the kernel maintainer's freedom to use proprietary software 
for their own purposes.  And we ask the kernel maintainers to respect 
the community's freedom from entrapment by proprietary software.

-- The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University
Signed by:
Michael Benedict <zosima@zosima.org>
Colin Walters <walters@debian.org>
Matt Curtin <cmcurtin@interhack.net>
Martin Jansche <jansche@ling.ohio-state.edu>
Balbir Thomas <thomas.1037@osu.edu>
Nicholas Hurley <hurley@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Ryan McCormack <mccormac@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Shaun Rowland <rowland@cis.ohio-state.edu>

[1] http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/user/x/i/xiphmont/Public/critique.html
[2] Perhaps they aren't connected to the internet regularly enough,
    for instance.
[3] http://www.regexps.com/#arch
[4] http://subversion.tigris.org
[5] http://prcs.sourceforge.net
[6] http://www.cvshome.org

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Andrew Morton]

The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University wrote:
> 
> [ succinctness ]
>

fwiw, I prefer to not use bitkeeper, for the reasons which
you outline.

That's my choice.  Others have made a different one.   I ask that
they ensure that their choice not inhibit my ability to contribute
to Linux.

-

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Troy Benjegerdes]

> In summary, please do not advocate BitKeeper for use by the general
> community.  The Linux development process seems to have worked up till
> now, and we can wait a little longer until Arch[3] or Subversion[4]
> are completed.  Moreover, full-featured, completely functional free 
> versioning sytems are currently available, such as PRCS[5] and CVS[6].
> We respect the kernel maintainer's freedom to use proprietary software 
> for their own purposes.  And we ask the kernel maintainers to respect 
> the community's freedom from entrapment by proprietary software.


First, CVS is COMPLETELY inadequate for the kind of distributed, 
non-centralized development that goes on for the kernel.

Bitkeeper solves some rather difficult problems that *NOTHING ELSE SOLVES* 
right now. This is why I've continued to use it for the last 2 years, even 
though I occasionally get annoyed that it's not free software.

Your efforts on this petition would be FAR better spent (and appreciated) 
by attempting to mirror several BK kernel trees with Arch or Subversion. 
You will soon find out the limitations of both, and maybe even improve 
both projects to the point that they will be useable instead of bitkeeper.

Instead of whining about developers using BK, go out and give us an
alternative. Maybe then we will listen.

-- 
Troy Benjegerdes | master of mispeeling | 'da hozer' |  hozer@drgw.net
-----"If this message isn't misspelled, I didn't write it" -- Me -----
"Why do musicians compose symphonies and poets write poems? They do it
because life wouldn't have any meaning for them if they didn't. That's 
why I draw cartoons. It's my life." -- Charles Schulz

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 04:38:09PM -0600, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> First, CVS is COMPLETELY inadequate for the kind of distributed, 
> non-centralized development that goes on for the kernel.
> 
> Bitkeeper solves some rather difficult problems that *NOTHING ELSE SOLVES* 
> right now. This is why I've continued to use it for the last 2 years, even 
> though I occasionally get annoyed that it's not free software.
> 
> Your efforts on this petition would be FAR better spent (and appreciated) 
> by attempting to mirror several BK kernel trees with Arch or Subversion. 
> You will soon find out the limitations of both, and maybe even improve 
> both projects to the point that they will be useable instead of bitkeeper.
> 
> Instead of whining about developers using BK, go out and give us an
> alternative. Maybe then we will listen.

This is great, I was about to type in what Troy said.  I had the same
reaction, if CVS/Subversion/Arch were good enough, BitKeeper wouldn't
exist.  The BitKeeper team is about 75% kernel hackers, not SCM people.
If CVS had been good enough, we would all be doing Linux clusters of
some sort, something we hope to get back some day in the distant future.

Troy is right, instead of writing petitions, spend your time by providing
people with options.  Do what he said, mirror the tree into CVS/etc
and you will very quickly learn why CVS/etc have serious problems.
By learning about those problems, you'll either develop some insight
which will aid you in making CVS/etc better, and you'll develop a healthy
respect for what BitKeeper can do.

As for the replacements mentioned, Subversion in particular, the SVN team
admitted before they started that SVN would certainly not be able to do
what BK can do anytime soon, in fact, they admitted it was unlikely to
ever do so.  The reason for that is that they started with a centralized
design and when you try and distribute that, you learn about the zillions
of places where you needed to make a different choice.  It's virtually
impossible to take a centralized SCM system and make it truly distributed
(a TCP connection back to the one CVS server is *not* distributed).

While you are thinking about replacements, it might help to know the
magnitude of what you are discussing.  BitKeeper is a non-trivial project,
it has:
	* close to 200 commands, with about 800 different options.
	* 25,000 lines of regressions, running the full suite wraps
	  16 bit process ids almost twice.
	* more source code written by the BitMover team than all of
	  Version 7 Unix, kernel and userland combined.
	* a dedicated team of full time professional programmers.

More than a year ago, we had some research done to see what it would cost
to reproduce BitKeeper from scratch.  At that point, it was estimated
to be about $12,000,000 and at least 3.5 years from the time a good
team started.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to try and build a better SCM system, just
don't be naive about what it is you are trying to do.  It's a constant
source of frustration and amusement that people think this space is easy.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Kent Borg]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 04:51:23PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> BitKeeper is a non-trivial project, it has:
> 	* close to 200 commands, with about 800 different options.

When I was recently doing some PPC work I used Bitkeeper (because PPC
folks do) and I didn't like it.  It was so complicated to use, hell,
seemed like there were 200 commands with 800 options.  And when I
couldn't get it to correctly export a tree I couldn't tell if I was
doing it wrong or it was a bug.

I can appreciate that the problem BK tries to solve is a big one with
subtleties that have to get done right, and, as I type this on my
notebook sitting in front of my work computer, I wish CVS were
distributed.  But I am not convinced BK is as elegant in its design as
it could be, I *know* it is not as elegant in its user interface as it
could be.

I also dislike the irony of BK being proprietary.  Sure, they might
have an enlightened and generous attitude not, but PGP used to be
free, then it became kinda free and then it became orphaned.  Luckily
GPG came along, luckily PGP didn't have a monoploy on our history.


-kb

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 09:54:34AM -0500, Kent Borg wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 04:51:23PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > BitKeeper is a non-trivial project, it has:
> > 	* close to 200 commands, with about 800 different options.
> 
> When I was recently doing some PPC work I used Bitkeeper (because PPC
> folks do) and I didn't like it.  It was so complicated to use, hell,
> seemed like there were 200 commands with 800 options.  And when I
> couldn't get it to correctly export a tree I couldn't tell if I was
> doing it wrong or it was a bug.

And apparently you didn't file a bug because I just looked in the bug
database.  Was typing "bk sendbug" too difficult?

> I can appreciate that the problem BK tries to solve is a big one with
> subtleties that have to get done right, and, as I type this on my
> notebook sitting in front of my work computer, I wish CVS were
> distributed.  But I am not convinced BK is as elegant in its design as
> it could be, I *know* it is not as elegant in its user interface as it
> could be.

There are *lots* of things in BK that aren't as good as they could be.
If you want them better, you need to complain about them.

> I also dislike the irony of BK being proprietary.  Sure, they might
> have an enlightened and generous attitude not, but PGP used to be
> free, then it became kinda free and then it became orphaned.  Luckily
> GPG came along, luckily PGP didn't have a monoploy on our history.

PGP didn't have a business model, we do, and part of our business model
is to give it away to some of the world.  It's a good business model,
BK is dramatically better because the PPC team used it and Cort went
through all sorts of stuff as BK improved.  BK would easily be a year
back in terms of usefulness if it weren't for Cort and there is no way
he would have been using it if we charged for it.  We get something by
letting people use it for free.  It's part of our business model and
it works.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> > I also dislike the irony of BK being proprietary.  Sure, they might
> > have an enlightened and generous attitude not, but PGP used to be
> > free, then it became kinda free and then it became orphaned.  Luckily
> > GPG came along, luckily PGP didn't have a monoploy on our history.
> 
> PGP didn't have a business model, we do, and part of our business model
> is to give it away to some of the world.  It's a good business model,
> BK is dramatically better because the PPC team used it and Cort went
> through all sorts of stuff as BK improved.  BK would easily be a
> year

So you basically give bk for free because it is good for you. What if
it will stop being good for you ten years from now?

Also it would be nice to apt-get install bk, but your license probably
means we'll not see it in debian any time soon. (Should check, but do
other vendors distribute bk?)
									Pavel
-- 
(about SSSCA) "I don't say this lightly.  However, I really think that the U.S.
no longer is classifiable as a democracy, but rather as a plutocracy." --hpa

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Troy Benjegerdes]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 11:13:05PM +0100, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > > I also dislike the irony of BK being proprietary.  Sure, they might
> > > have an enlightened and generous attitude not, but PGP used to be
> > > free, then it became kinda free and then it became orphaned.  Luckily
> > > GPG came along, luckily PGP didn't have a monoploy on our history.
> > 
> > PGP didn't have a business model, we do, and part of our business model
> > is to give it away to some of the world.  It's a good business model,
> > BK is dramatically better because the PPC team used it and Cort went
> > through all sorts of stuff as BK improved.  BK would easily be a
> > year
> 
> So you basically give bk for free because it is good for you. What if
> it will stop being good for you ten years from now?

Then we move on to another system. This is why I think we need some kind
of gateway to another SCM. If BK goes away, we could export everything to
tarballs and patches or whatever, but it would be a large PITA, and stop
lots of people's development for awhile. (I've done bk->cvs this way once
before, it was really ugly, and I never want to do it again given the
choice).

I'd really like everyone that's bitching about BK to shut the hell up and
go work on some scripts to allow a maintainer to easily manage a
BK<->$OTHER_SCM gateway. Either give me a working alternative to BK or go
run for political office. Until I see an alternative, I'm going to
continue advocating for real developers to use BK, and complainers to show
me an alternative.

-- 
Troy Benjegerdes | master of mispeeling | 'da hozer' |  hozer@drgw.net
-----"If this message isn't misspelled, I didn't write it" -- Me -----
"Why do musicians compose symphonies and poets write poems? They do it
because life wouldn't have any meaning for them if they didn't. That's 
why I draw cartoons. It's my life." -- Charles Schulz

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Andrew Morton]

Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> 
> I'd really like everyone that's bitching about BK to shut the hell up and
> go work on some scripts to allow a maintainer to easily manage a
> BK<->$OTHER_SCM gateway.

ie: "We broke it.  You fix it".

It's not reasonable to expect people who shall not be using bitkeeper
to go off and perform enhancements to bitkeeper so that they can
continue to be effective kernel developers.

If bitkeeper proves to be significantly disadvantageous to non-bitkeeper
developers then it simply is not appropriate that bitkeeper be used
for kernel development at all.

If additional development around bitkeeper is needed then the onus
is upon the bitkeeper side to do that work.  (And yes, there are
sides now).

That being said, I don't see any need for additional development, 
unless people actually want increased functionality over that
which we've traditionally had.  Things generally will appear to
be unchanged for non-bitkeeper users because Linus will continue
to push out the regular prepatches.  This *has* to be done anyway,
so the testers can get at the tree promptly.

Also. The things being discussed here *matter* to some people.  Some
of the comments made by Larry, David, Cort, Rik and others have
coarsely sought to deligitimise the very reasons why a significant number
of kernel contributors and users are here at all.  Those comments
are monumentally insulting.

-

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 11:54:43AM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> That being said, I don't see any need for additional development, 
> unless people actually want increased functionality over that
> which we've traditionally had.  Things generally will appear to
> be unchanged for non-bitkeeper users because Linus will continue
> to push out the regular prepatches.  This *has* to be done anyway,
> so the testers can get at the tree promptly.
> 
> Also. The things being discussed here *matter* to some people.  Some
> of the comments made by Larry, David, Cort, Rik and others have
> coarsely sought to deligitimise the very reasons why a significant number
> of kernel contributors and users are here at all.  Those comments
> are monumentally insulting.

It's also "monumentally insulting" to be asking for BitKeeper to be able
to do what it already can do, exactly for the reasons you outlined.
We have done piles and piles of work to make sure that we can export
and import patches, so that if you want, your work habits do not change
one iota.  We did all that work.  It's done.  It's in the system.
Linus uses both import and export.  And we continue to fix things as it
becomes apparent that they need to be fixed.  We're busting our asses to
keep you happy and we get flamed.  And the flamers seem to think that
we are getting some great financial benefit by having the kernel crowd
use BK.  It's certainly true that BK is improving because the kernel
crowd demands enhancements.  It's not true that that has turned into
any financial benefit to us, we haven't made a single sale as a result
of Linus using BK.  That's OK, that's not why we did it.  But don't use
that as a justification to beat us up, it's simply not true.

The thing that seems to escape you is that BK came into existence because
I was scared to death of Linus burning out.  I still am.  I see no Linus
replacement on the horizon.  BK exists because I hope it will make him
able to last longer as the leader here, I do not foresee good things
happening if he goes away.  Our goal is to get him more relaxed.  Try and
remember that we are trying to help.  You can hate the fact that BK isn't
open source, I don't blame you one bit.  If I had stayed at Cobalt and
cashed out my millions, BitKeeper would be open source.  But I didn't.
So it isn't.  Get over it.  It can help now, we're trying to help now,
we make it easy to get out of BK, so if/when a better open source answer
arrives, you can get out.  What more can you possibly ask for?  I'm giving
you an answer which helps, with no lock in, and the most extensive set of
tools designed to make it so you can get out with all of your data intact.
And you say you are insulted.  I'm not sure it is you who should be insulted.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[yodaiken]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 12:15:09PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> Our goal is to get him more relaxed.  Try and

This is not a problem that bitkeeper can address. Torvalds' guilt
for having stiffed me on the $5 bet he lost probably preys on his mind.
Just pay, Torvalds. I'll donate the money to charity. 



---------------------------------------------------------
Victor Yodaiken 
Finite State Machine Labs: The RTLinux Company.
 www.fsmlabs.com  www.rtlinux.com

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[michael bernstein]

On Thursday, March 7, 2002, at 03:15 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:

>   If I had stayed at Cobalt and
> cashed out my millions, BitKeeper would be open source.  But I didn't.
> So it isn't.  Get over it.  It can help now, we're trying to help now,
> we make it easy to get out of BK, so if/when a better open source answer
> arrives, you can get out.  What more can you possibly ask for?  I'm 
> giving
> you an answer which helps, with no lock in, and the most extensive set 
> of
> tools designed to make it so you can get out with all of your data 
> intact.
> And you say you are insulted.  I'm not sure it is you who should be 
> insulted.
>

Last time I checked, it didn't matter if a person had "cashed out their 
millions" for a program to go opensource.  So fucking what.  I'm a poor 
college student, as many are, and yet, I still see a lot of useful 
programs coming out.  The Gimp, for one, was written by students at 
Berkeley.  Last time I checked, no one was making money off of 
enlightenment, and they are all still poor.  Stop fucking whining about 
it and stop compromising your ideals for money.  Also, before you can 
say it, yes you've stated your ideals by saying that it WOULD have been 
opensource if you had money.  Well that means you believe in opensource 
somewhat at least.  Get over the money issue though.  There are a lot of 
people who could benefit from bitkeeper being opensourced, so why not go 
and do it?

Serve others, not yourself.

Michael Bernstein
bernstein.46@osu.edu

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

> I'm a poor college student

And I have two kids on their way to college.  Grow up.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Richard Gooch]

Larry McVoy writes:
> > I'm a poor college student
> 
> And I have two kids on their way to college.  Grow up.

And if you want to do Open Source development using BK, Larry's not
even asking for your money.

And now for my flame: CAN WE SHUT THE FUCK UP about this STUPID
thread?!?!? No developer is being forced to use BK. You can keep doing
it the old way. And if you want people to use an Open Source tool, go
write one. But shut up until you've got something "good enough" for
Linus.

I weep for all those poor electrons, their lives wasted on this
thread.

				Regards,

					Richard....
Permanent: rgooch@atnf.csiro.au
Current:   rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Florian Weimer]

Richard Gooch <rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca> writes:

> Larry McVoy writes:
>> > I'm a poor college student
>> 
>> And I have two kids on their way to college.  Grow up.
>
> And if you want to do Open Source development using BK, Larry's not
> even asking for your money.

Using BitKeeper might break the way security issues are currently
handled by distributors of the GNU/Linux system, due to the open
logging feature.

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  Weimer@CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE
University of Stuttgart           http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/
RUS-CERT                          +49-711-685-5973/fax +49-711-685-5898

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of

[Alan Cox]

> Using BitKeeper might break the way security issues are currently
> handled by distributors of the GNU/Linux system, due to the open
> logging feature.

It simply means security updates have to be kept seperate from the bitkeeper
maintained tree. We can handle that ok. It might mean the first Linus and
Marcelo push into their tree is when the vendor updates go out but thats
not a big problem to arrange

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of

[Florian Weimer]

Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> writes:

>> Using BitKeeper might break the way security issues are currently
>> handled by distributors of the GNU/Linux system, due to the open
>> logging feature.
>
> It simply means security updates have to be kept seperate from the bitkeeper
> maintained tree. We can handle that ok. It might mean the first Linus and
> Marcelo push into their tree is when the vendor updates go out but thats
> not a big problem to arrange

Keeping changes outside the CMS seems completely unnatural to me. ;-)

But maybe security-related changes are so much an exception that this
isn't a problem.

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  Weimer@CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE
University of Stuttgart           http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/
RUS-CERT                          +49-711-685-5973/fax +49-711-685-5898

Open Source should stand on its own two legs.

[Mark Mielke]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 01:07:51PM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > I'm a poor college student
> And I have two kids on their way to college.  Grow up.

Anybody who limits their ideology to (solely) how much (or little)
something costs, has missed the point entirely.

As such, poor college students shouldn't assume that their new world
religion regarding software should apply to everyone to the extreme
that they feel it should apply to. The benefits of Open Source are
*NOT* about money. The fact that Open Source projects tend to be free
is one of the effects of the theoretically optimal path that Open
Source ideology suggests is possible. It is not a *requirement*.

If Open Source, the Open Source being stouted, is so wonderful, how
about letting it prove *itself*. If anybody needs to boycott superior
products in order to allow Open Source products to compete, all that
it being shown is that the Open Source movement may *not* be the
answer. After all, if Open Source projects cannot compete with
non-Open Source projects -- how can it be claimed that Open Source
is a valid and practical ideology?

Open Source fanatics: Let your ideology stand up for itself. Don't
cheat.

mark

-- 
mark@mielke.cc/markm@ncf.ca/markm@nortelnetworks.com __________________________
.  .  _  ._  . .   .__    .  . ._. .__ .   . . .__  | Neighbourhood Coder
|\/| |_| |_| |/    |_     |\/|  |  |_  |   |/  |_   | 
|  | | | | \ | \   |__ .  |  | .|. |__ |__ | \ |__  | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

  One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all
                       and in the darkness bind them...

                           http://mark.mielke.cc/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[yodaiken]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 04:05:33PM -0500, michael bernstein wrote:
> Serve others, not yourself.

Spending a lot of time working at the homeless shelter, eh? 



---------------------------------------------------------
Victor Yodaiken 
Finite State Machine Labs: The RTLinux Company.
 www.fsmlabs.com  www.rtlinux.com

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[John Jasen]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, michael bernstein wrote:

> Get over the money issue though.  There are a lot of
> people who could benefit from bitkeeper being opensourced, so why not go
> and do it?

rent. food. clothing. basic necessities and whatnot.

Just a thought.

> Serve others, not yourself.

I begin to smell the exuberance of youthful ideology.

Does anyone have a can of Lysol I can borrow?

BK belongs to bitmover. They can do whatever they want with it. Deal.

--
-- John E. Jasen (jjasen1@umbc.edu)
-- In theory, theory and practise are the same. In practise, they aren't.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, michael bernstein wrote:

> Last time I checked, it didn't matter if a person had "cashed out
> their millions" for a program to go opensource.  So fucking what.

> Serve others, not yourself.

Larry is doing us all a service by getting bitkeeper the
funding it needs to improve at the rate it has.

If the program had to survive as an open source program
without several people working on it full-time, I bet
many of the boring but necessary tasks still wouldn't
have been done ...

Source control just isn't one of those sexy things that
everybody wants to work on and on top of that it's deep
magic most people (especially me) can't figure out. ;)

regards,

Rik
-- 
<insert bitkeeper endorsement here>

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Alan Cox]

> programs coming out.  The Gimp, for one, was written by students at 
> Berkeley.  Last time I checked, no one was making money off of 
> enlightenment, and they are all still poor.  Stop fucking whining about 

Thats their planning. Some of them made poor business decisions, some of
them joined the wrong companies. If you think that being poor and suffering
are good for the soul there are a wide collection of religious orders to
choose from most of whom are full of people doing a lot more useful things
that whining on a mailing list

> it and stop compromising your ideals for money.  Also, before you can 

I have a better idea - its called keeping your ideals and making some
money 8) I've done that in the open source world both before and as part
of Red Hat. 

I've also had long talks with Larry and I agree with him about the BK stuff.
There are certain places where open source does not work well for business
models - Bitkeeper is IMHO -not-  commodity [Yet...]

Alan

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Petro]

(Yes, I'm behind on my email. This is what comes from compromising your
ideals and actually being good at something)

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 11:21:14PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > programs coming out.  The Gimp, for one, was written by students at 
> > Berkeley.  Last time I checked, no one was making money off of 
> > enlightenment, and they are all still poor.  Stop fucking whining about 
> 
> Thats their planning. Some of them made poor business decisions, some of
> them joined the wrong companies. If you think that being poor and suffering
> are good for the soul there are a wide collection of religious orders to
> choose from most of whom are full of people doing a lot more useful things
> that whining on a mailing list

    Actually, most of those religious orders are *not* full at this
    point in time, and are *very* eager for new members. 

-- 
Share and Enjoy. 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rusty Russell]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002 16:05:33 -0500
michael bernstein <bernstein.46@osu.edu> wrote:
> Last time I checked, it didn't matter if a person had "cashed out their 
> millions" for a program to go opensource.  So fucking what.  I'm a poor 
> college student, as many are, and yet, I still see a lot of useful 
> programs coming out.

Wow, a poor college student who has a decade of experience implementing
revision control systems?  Great!

> Last time I checked, no one was making money off of 
> enlightenment, and they are all still poor.

Wow! *Where* do you live?  In Australia, poor people don't live in
apartments in Bondi Junction with an ocean view, or drive a Nissan GTS
Skyline.

Sorry to deflate your fantasy...
Rusty.
-- 
  Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell.

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Troy Benjegerdes]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 11:54:43AM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> > 
> > I'd really like everyone that's bitching about BK to shut the hell up and
> > go work on some scripts to allow a maintainer to easily manage a
> > BK<->$OTHER_SCM gateway.
> 
> ie: "We broke it.  You fix it".
> 
> It's not reasonable to expect people who shall not be using bitkeeper
> to go off and perform enhancements to bitkeeper so that they can
> continue to be effective kernel developers.

No. Try:
"You're whining, here's how fix it, because I don't have time or
motivation"

Larry went to a lot of trouble to listen to what kernel developers 
wanted, and a lot of work to implement some of it. I expect same courtesy 
of everyone who is complaining.

I am not expecting any 'enhancements to bitkeeper'.. that is Larry's job. 

> If additional development around bitkeeper is needed then the onus
> is upon the bitkeeper side to do that work.  (And yes, there are
> sides now).

If Larry can make good on his 'threat' to write a read-only cvs pserver 
interface to BK, I think he's done his part. (BK -> $OTHER_SCM)

Then I'd really like to see scripts to make it easy to go from
$YOUR_FAVORITE_SCM -> patch -> BK, while keeping important metadata, like,
oh, say, comments. The patch->BK part is already done. It's up to the
other 'side' now to get changes from $YOUR_FAVORITE_SCM into BK without
either losing lots of information, or taking lots of time.

Various people have probably already done all of this. Now can someone 
bother to spend some time to find the best methods for this and integrate
it into a nice 'packaged' setup? (along with a 'HOWTO')

-- 
Troy Benjegerdes | master of mispeeling | 'da hozer' |  hozer@drgw.net
-----"If this message isn't misspelled, I didn't write it" -- Me -----
"Why do musicians compose symphonies and poets write poems? They do it
because life wouldn't have any meaning for them if they didn't. That's 
why I draw cartoons. It's my life." -- Charles Schulz

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

> Then I'd really like to see scripts to make it easy to go from
> $YOUR_FAVORITE_SCM -> patch -> BK, while keeping important metadata, like,
> oh, say, comments. 

We already have an interface for this, Linus asked for it.  It will be in
the next release and it is in the download/test release.  You import your
patch and then stomp on the default comments with a comments file in the
format below.  If this isn't what you had in mind, let me know.

--lm

bk comments(1)       BitKeeper User's Manual       bk comments(1)

NAME
       bk comments - change checkin comments

SYNOPSIS
       bk   comments   [-p]   [-C<csetrev>]  [-r<rev>]  [-y<cmt>]
       [-Y<file>] [file ...] [-]

DESCRIPTION
       The comments command changes the  stored  comments  for  a
       revision  controlled  file.  The comments may be specified
       on the command line, or if  they  are  not,  you  will  be
       placed in your editor to type in the comments.

       If  given - for a file argument, then comments will read a
       list of files and comments to be  edited  in  batch.   The
       format is like:

           ### Comments for file.c|1.23
           this is a sample comment
           ### Comments for file2.h|1.2.3.4
           these are
           other comments

Etc.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Andrew Morton]

Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 11:54:43AM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> > >
> > > I'd really like everyone that's bitching about BK to shut the hell up and
> > > go work on some scripts to allow a maintainer to easily manage a
> > > BK<->$OTHER_SCM gateway.
> >
> > ie: "We broke it.  You fix it".
> >
> > It's not reasonable to expect people who shall not be using bitkeeper
> > to go off and perform enhancements to bitkeeper so that they can
> > continue to be effective kernel developers.
> 
> No. Try:
> "You're whining, here's how fix it, because I don't have time or
> motivation"

Let's be clearer:

- If bitkeeper makes non-bitkeeper developers less effective than
  they traditionally have been then Larry gets to fix that.

- If non-bitkeeper users want *additional* functionality over what
  has traditionally been available then they get to implement it.

And Linus will keep pushing prepatches in the time-honoured
manner, so there's no loss in non-bk users effectiveness.

> Larry went to a lot of trouble to listen to what kernel developers
> wanted, and a lot of work to implement some of it. I expect same courtesy
> of everyone who is complaining.

I don't think anyone has been criticising bk featureset or reliability.
A few performance mumblings, maybe. It seems to be a fantastic piece
of software.

But that's not the point!   Nobody, repeat nobody is happy with the
licensing thing.  For some people, the day-to-day benefits outweigh
the philosophical concerns.  For others they do not.  That is what is
being discussed here.

I see two things being discussed here:

1: I don't want bitkeeper use to *decrease* my ability to do Linux
   work.  Linus will continue to push patches at the same rate, so
   I have no problem.  I'm OK with others using bitkeeper.  EOT.

2: Kernel has a leading role in free software development. Other
   people do not want kernel's use of bitkeeper to weaken that
   movement.

   Me, I don't think the "movement" is weak enough for damage to
   come about.  And SCM is a space where the free tools are weak.  
   It's a once-off special-case and it's hard to see how anything
   bad will come about from it.

> If Larry can make good on his 'threat' to write a read-only cvs pserver
> interface to BK, I think he's done his part. (BK -> $OTHER_SCM)

Well that would be icing on the cake.  But I don't believe it's
reasonable to expect bitmover to provide non-bitkeeper users
with *more* stuff than they have traditionally had.

That being said, the adoption of bitkeeper does reduce the
chances of non-bitkeeper users from ever getting more features,
but realistically, that would never have happened anyway.

And the non-bitkeeper users *do* have more than they used to
have - the web logs and changelogs.  That's nice.  It'd be
nicer if the web interface was more up-to-date, but I am told
that's a person thing, not a tool thing.

-

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Andrew Morton wrote:

> - If bitkeeper makes non-bitkeeper developers less effective than
>   they traditionally have been then Larry gets to fix that.

Since bitkeeper makes it easier for Linus to merge code
and the speed at which Linus is merging code seems to
have gone up, I'd say that bitkeeper has made life easier
even for those developers that aren't using it.

> - If non-bitkeeper users want *additional* functionality over what
>   has traditionally been available then they get to implement it.
>
> And Linus will keep pushing prepatches in the time-honoured
> manner, so there's no loss in non-bk users effectiveness.

Indeed.


> That being said, the adoption of bitkeeper does reduce the
> chances of non-bitkeeper users from ever getting more features,
> but realistically, that would never have happened anyway.

Actually, I like to think bitkeeper has given all of the
free software version control people a nice challenge.

Raising the bar by providing better software quality is
never a bad thing, IMHO.

regards,

Rik
-- 
<insert bitkeeper endorsement here>

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Anton Altaparmakov]

At 21:23 07/03/02, Andrew Morton wrote:
>It'd be nicer if the web interface was more up-to-date, but I am told
>that's a person thing, not a tool thing.

Perhaps it could be made a tool thing though. If a cron job could be setup 
on  Linus' master bk repository to do periodic pushes to the web interface 
or the other way round, if Larry would be given access to Linus' master 
repository so he can setup periodic pulls to bkbits.net web repository it 
would become a tool thing, no?

Anton - only starting to use bitkeeper but already signed onto the bk fan 
club (-:


-- 
   "I've not lost my mind. It's backed up on tape somewhere." - Unknown
-- 
Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @)
Linux NTFS Maintainer / WWW: http://linux-ntfs.sf.net/
ICQ: 8561279 / WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Cort Dougan]

We're here to discuss kernel development, right?  Not debate software
ideologies.

I move the PPC tree over to BitKeeper and it was worthwhile.  I made
rsync updates and plain old 'diff' patches against Linus' tree available
nightly.  It was easy and very quick to do that, I had it running for
nearly 2 years very well.  In fact, you can still grab the patches from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/cort/.  What is your problem with BK
apart from the license religion?  Linus has made it clear he'll provide
patches in the same old style.  I don't see what you think you lose here.
The gain for people who ship him patches is well worth it.  Before I handed
the PPC tree over to Paul I would have killed to get Linus to use BK so
shipping him patches would be easier for everyone involved.  If I were
still a maintainer my response would be a lot less mild to those people
that fight against BK on something so intangible as "feelings" about the
license.  I put in a lot of hours shipping patches that were for nothing,
BK is helping avoid that for the current crew.

Seriously, what is your problem with BK?  What do you feel that you lose?

} Also. The things being discussed here *matter* to some people.  Some
} of the comments made by Larry, David, Cort, Rik and others have
} coarsely sought to deligitimise the very reasons why a significant number
} of kernel contributors and users are here at all.  Those comments
} are monumentally insulting.
} 
} -
} -
} To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
} the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
} More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
} Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Cort Dougan wrote:

> We're here to discuss kernel development, right?  Not debate software
> ideologies.
>
> I move the PPC tree over to BitKeeper and it was worthwhile.

The development speed and code quality of -rmap have also gone
up as a consequence of moving over to bitkeeper.

Merging patches up to a new version of the kernel has gone from
tiring (with patch and vi) to almost relaxing (with bitkeeper's
automatic and graphical 2-way merge tools)...

This in turn has allowed me to spend my time and energy on
improving the code, without having to fear large patches and
the maintenance those require.

regards,

Rik
-- 
<insert bitkeeper endorsement here>

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Cort Dougan]

I'm a big fan of doing a given merge ONLY ONE TIME rather than every time
there's a contextual diff.  Man, that is definitely something worth being
grateful for.  Especially with the number of changes that come down in the
linux tree.

Rik, care to form the "useful tools that don't screw me over every time I
try to use them" fan club?  I'll chuck in a pair of vice-grips and bk as
the first nominees.

} The development speed and code quality of -rmap have also gone
} up as a consequence of moving over to bitkeeper.
} 
} Merging patches up to a new version of the kernel has gone from
} tiring (with patch and vi) to almost relaxing (with bitkeeper's
} automatic and graphical 2-way merge tools)...
} 
} This in turn has allowed me to spend my time and energy on
} improving the code, without having to fear large patches and
} the maintenance those require.

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by LinuxMaintainers

[Andrew Morton]

Rik van Riel wrote:
> 
> The development speed and code quality of -rmap have also gone
> up as a consequence of moving over to bitkeeper.

heh.  Now learn kgdb.  You ain't seen nothing yet.

Ever tried to use a computer with the monitor turned off?
Kernel development without kgdb is like that.

http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/kgdb.patch,v.gz contains
kgdb patches against every kernel since 2.4.0-test-mumble.


-

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by LinuxMaintainers

[Cort Dougan]

This is great.  We can just throw in some VI vs. emacs discussion and we'll
really have something good going!

} heh.  Now learn kgdb.  You ain't seen nothing yet.
} 
} Ever tried to use a computer with the monitor turned off?
} Kernel development without kgdb is like that.

Are there working patches against non-x86 in there, too?

} http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/kgdb.patch,v.gz contains
} kgdb patches against every kernel since 2.4.0-test-mumble.

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by LinuxMaintainers

[Andrew Morton]

Cort Dougan wrote:
> 
> This is great.  We can just throw in some VI vs. emacs discussion and we'll
> really have something good going!

They both suck.  Be a man: write your own.

> } heh.  Now learn kgdb.  You ain't seen nothing yet.
> }
> } Ever tried to use a computer with the monitor turned off?
> } Kernel development without kgdb is like that.
> 
> Are there working patches against non-x86 in there, too?

Nope, sorry.   All the world's a VAX.

-

kgdb for 2.4 and 2.5, now in BK

[Jeff Garzik]

Andrew Morton wrote:

>Rik van Riel wrote:
>
>>The development speed and code quality of -rmap have also gone
>>up as a consequence of moving over to bitkeeper.
>>
>heh.  Now learn kgdb.  You ain't seen nothing yet.
>
>Ever tried to use a computer with the monitor turned off?
>Kernel development without kgdb is like that.
>
>http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/kgdb.patch,v.gz contains
>kgdb patches against every kernel since 2.4.0-test-mumble.
>

Groovy.  I imported them into BK for 2.4 and 2.5 trees, and fixed up the 
merge conflicts (several patch rejections in 2.4.19-pre3), and fixed up 
the arch/i386/config.in.  BK users should pull from

    bk pull http://gkernel.bkbits.net/kgdb-2.4
or
    bk pull http://gkernel.bkbits.net/kgdb-2.5

If non-BK users are interested in my changes, feel free to grab them as 
GNU patches from
    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jgarzik/patches/2.4.19/
    ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jgarzik/patches/2.5.7/


Are there any other arches that have kgdb stubs I could merge?

    Jeff

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Andrew Morton]

Cort Dougan wrote:
> 
> We're here to discuss kernel development, right?  Not debate software
> ideologies.

Not entirely, no.  This discussion is touching on the reasons for
people (ie: manpower) being here.  Also on toolchain suitability
and release practices, etc.  Also upon how bk and non-bk developers
interwork.  That's not a bad thing.

> I move the PPC tree over to BitKeeper and it was worthwhile.  I made
> rsync updates and plain old 'diff' patches against Linus' tree available
> nightly.  It was easy and very quick to do that, I had it running for
> nearly 2 years very well.  In fact, you can still grab the patches from
> ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/cort/.  What is your problem with BK
> apart from the license religion?  Linus has made it clear he'll provide
> patches in the same old style.  I don't see what you think you lose here.
> The gain for people who ship him patches is well worth it.  Before I handed
> the PPC tree over to Paul I would have killed to get Linus to use BK so
> shipping him patches would be easier for everyone involved.  If I were
> still a maintainer my response would be a lot less mild to those people
> that fight against BK on something so intangible as "feelings" about the
> license.  I put in a lot of hours shipping patches that were for nothing,
> BK is helping avoid that for the current crew.

Oh I'm sure bitkeeper is excellent.

When you use the term "license religion", you are in fact saying "If
someone has philosophical objections then those people are irrational
zealots and their objections and philosophical beliefs are baseless".
That's not very respectful...

> Seriously, what is your problem with BK?  What do you feel that you lose?

I've said about, uh, three times now that I'm not losing anything.

Problem?  Well partly I just can't be assed to use the thing because
I'm comfortable with my own scripts and all revision control systems
just get in your face and suck.  But also because I'm here to improve
the body of public software, and at the end of the day, any support
which I put into bitkeeper won't help there.  (using == supporting).


So.  Summary: keep the prepatches rolling.  And lighten up on the
perjoratives - they are unbecoming.

-

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Cort Dougan]

Be respectful on l-k?  I wouldn't dare to step outside of the norm :)
No, I'm not respectful of software ideology because it takes valuable time
that we can spend arguing about meaningless and off-topic technical
subjects instead.

} When you use the term "license religion", you are in fact saying "If
} someone has philosophical objections then those people are irrational
} zealots and their objections and philosophical beliefs are baseless".
} That's not very respectful...

Then you have no problem, right?  You'll still be able to use your
patches and others will be able to use BK.  Your compaint seems to be about
what others choose to use when working on the kernel.  Some ideology is
well placed when discussing matters of the kernel but what tools people use
to work on it is going way too far.

} Problem?  Well partly I just can't be assed to use the thing because
} I'm comfortable with my own scripts and all revision control systems
} just get in your face and suck.  But also because I'm here to improve
} the body of public software, and at the end of the day, any support
} which I put into bitkeeper won't help there.  (using == supporting).

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Andrew Morton wrote:

> Problem?  Well partly I just can't be assed to use the thing because
> I'm comfortable with my own scripts and all revision control systems
> just get in your face and suck.

That's what I thought too, but bitkeeper has convinced
me to get over that prejudice ;)

> But also because I'm here to improve the body of public software,
> and at the end of the day, any support which I put into bitkeeper
> won't help there.  (using == supporting).

That's a tradeoff everybody has to make for himself.
Personally the time bitkeeper saves me helps improving
Linux a lot, so using bitkeeper does help increase my
contribution to the body of public software.

Of course, this is everybody's personal choice and
you're just as right (or wrong) as I am ;)

regards,

Rik
-- 
<insert bitkeeper endorsement here>

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff Garzik]

Andrew Morton wrote:
> I've said about, uh, three times now that I'm not losing anything.
> 
> Problem?  Well partly I just can't be assed to use the thing because
> I'm comfortable with my own scripts and all revision control systems
> just get in your face and suck.  But also because I'm here to improve
> the body of public software, and at the end of the day, any support
> which I put into bitkeeper won't help there.  (using == supporting).

FWIW, I've "gotten" your problem with BitKeeper for a while now...

..And I'm glad you're speaking out and holding the torch here.  We need
dissenters to keep us BK users honest :)

[i.e. the same reason that, while I might not agree with RMS, I think
the Linux community and free software in general need him to be around. 
We need activists willing to hold the hard line.]

-- 
Jeff Garzik      | Usenet Rule #2 (John Gilmore): "The Net interprets
Building 1024    | censorship as damage and routes around it."
MandrakeSoft     |

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Florian Weimer]

Cort Dougan <cort@fsmlabs.com> writes:

> We're here to discuss kernel development, right?  Not debate software
> ideologies.

It's sometimes hard to separate the two.

Look at the digital rights management code for kernel modules.

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  Weimer@CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE
University of Stuttgart           http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/
RUS-CERT                          +49-711-685-5973/fax +49-711-685-5898

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Florian Weimer]

Troy Benjegerdes <hozer@drgw.net> writes:

> I'd really like everyone that's bitching about BK to shut the hell up and
> go work on some scripts to allow a maintainer to easily manage a
> BK<->$OTHER_SCM gateway.

How do you know that BitMover isn't trying to patent aspects of
BitKeeper which prevents you from writing such gateways?

They're already aiming at a patent for some of there merging
algorithms, IIRC.

-- 
Florian Weimer 	                  Weimer@CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE
University of Stuttgart           http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/
RUS-CERT                          +49-711-685-5973/fax +49-711-685-5898

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Linus Torvalds]

In article <20020306221305.GA370@elf.ucw.cz>,
Pavel Machek  <pavel@ucw.cz> wrote:
>
>So you basically give bk for free because it is good for you. What if
>it will stop being good for you ten years from now?

Guys, calm down.

A few points:

 - I certainly don't require BK use of anybody.  It makes my life
   simpler with some people (mainly the ones that tend to be maintainers
   of subsystems and send me lots of patches), but there are many
   developers who do NOT use BK, and it doesn't slow them down at all. 

   For example, see the FS patches from Al Viro: the only thing that BK
   has resulted in as far as Al is concerned is that the changelogs are
   a lot better and include his email comments. 

   And I also export my tree as regular patches, the way I always have
   (well, the actual format changed subtly, but that's purely syntactic)

 - If Larry turns to the dark side (or, as some would say, the "even
   darker side" ;) we're _still_ ok. The data isn't going anywhere, he
   can't close that down. We'd just have to export it into a new format.

   If worst comes to worst, and nobody has fixed CVS/subversion/whatever
   by then, I can even just go back to how I used to work. Nothing lost.

 - If people in the open-source SCM community wake up and notice that
   the current open-source SCM systems aren't cutting it, that's _good_. 
   But it's absolutely NOT an excuse to use them today.  Sorry.  I use
   CVS at work, and I could never use it for Linux.  I took a look at
   subversion, and it doesn't even come close to what I wanted. 

   And I personally refuse to use inferior tools because of ideology. In
   fact, I will go as far as saying that making excuses for bad tools
   due to ideology is _stupid_, and people who do that think with their
   gonads, not their brains. 

In short: nobody requires BK of anybody else.  A lot of people really
like using it, though, and it does make some things easier.  Some people
aren't convinced - David Miller is trying it out, and I haven't heard
all happy sounds from him about it. Others have taken to BK like fish to
water, and you'll pry it out of their dead cold hands.

The most productive thing people could do might be to just do a BK->CVS
gateway, if you really feel like it.  Or just go on and ignore the fact
that some people are using BK - you don't actually have to ever even
know. 

		Linus

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

> The most productive thing people could do might be to just do a BK->CVS
> gateway, if you really feel like it.  Or just go on and ignore the fact
> that some people are using BK - you don't actually have to ever even
> know. 

We've thought of making a readonly CVS pserver interface to BK which would
at least make it easy to get the source in some form that the GPL folks
like.  Somebody else should be able to do that with a perl script.  You
could attempt a read/write interface as well, that's a lot harder, the
impedance mismatch between BK and CVS becomes much more apparent in
the read/write case.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[george anzinger]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> In article <20020306221305.GA370@elf.ucw.cz>,
> Pavel Machek  <pavel@ucw.cz> wrote:
> >
> >So you basically give bk for free because it is good for you. What if
> >it will stop being good for you ten years from now?
> 
> Guys, calm down.
> 
> A few points:
> 
>  - I certainly don't require BK use of anybody.  It makes my life
>    simpler with some people (mainly the ones that tend to be maintainers
>    of subsystems and send me lots of patches), but there are many
>    developers who do NOT use BK, and it doesn't slow them down at all.
> 
>    For example, see the FS patches from Al Viro: the only thing that BK
>    has resulted in as far as Al is concerned is that the changelogs are
>    a lot better and include his email comments.
> 
>    And I also export my tree as regular patches, the way I always have
>    (well, the actual format changed subtly, but that's purely syntactic)
> 
>  - If Larry turns to the dark side (or, as some would say, the "even
>    darker side" ;) we're _still_ ok. The data isn't going anywhere, he
>    can't close that down. We'd just have to export it into a new format.
> 
>    If worst comes to worst, and nobody has fixed CVS/subversion/whatever
>    by then, I can even just go back to how I used to work. Nothing lost.
> 
>  - If people in the open-source SCM community wake up and notice that
>    the current open-source SCM systems aren't cutting it, that's _good_.
>    But it's absolutely NOT an excuse to use them today.  Sorry.  I use
>    CVS at work, and I could never use it for Linux.  I took a look at
>    subversion, and it doesn't even come close to what I wanted.
> 
>    And I personally refuse to use inferior tools because of ideology. In
>    fact, I will go as far as saying that making excuses for bad tools
>    due to ideology is _stupid_, and people who do that think with their
>    gonads, not their brains.

Does this mean you will admit kgdb into the tree?  

(Sorry, I couldn't help myself :-)

-g

> 
> In short: nobody requires BK of anybody else.  A lot of people really
> like using it, though, and it does make some things easier.  Some people
> aren't convinced - David Miller is trying it out, and I haven't heard
> all happy sounds from him about it. Others have taken to BK like fish to
> water, and you'll pry it out of their dead cold hands.
> 
> The most productive thing people could do might be to just do a BK->CVS
> gateway, if you really feel like it.  Or just go on and ignore the fact
> that some people are using BK - you don't actually have to ever even
> know.
> 
>                 Linus
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
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-- 
George           george@mvista.com
High-res-timers: http://sourceforge.net/projects/high-res-timers/
Real time sched: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rtsched/

kernel debuggers (was Bitkeeper Bashing)

[Jeff V. Merkey]

> 
>    And I personally refuse to use inferior tools because of ideology. In
>    fact, I will go as far as saying that making excuses for bad tools
>    due to ideology is _stupid_, and people who do that think with their
>    gonads, not their brains. 


Linus,

A reasonable explanation.  However, this begs the question as to 
**WHY** you are so opposed to kernel debuggers in Linux.   Code 
reviews don't catch hardware bugs or other types of performance 
issues related to bus architecture, etc.

Opposition to a kernel debugger in Linux, at least from the 
view of some folks, is a case of someone using inferior methods
because of ideaology.  

Not meant as a recrimination, but you've just made the case for
kernel debuggers in Linux.

:-)

Jeff

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff V. Merkey]

All hail the non-profit nazis from Ohio State.  It's none of your 
f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel 
debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware 
analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.  

It's pretty clear that the alumni of Ohio State University have the
finest sinsemilla weed around, and have been smoking it.  I guess
you guys will decide who we get to sleep with next, marry, and 
which type of cereal we get to eat. 

The motto behind open source was "freedom of choice".  So much for
progress.  Let's bring back slavery while we are at at.  I'll move 
back to the Indian reservation in New Mexico where I grew up since 
freedom is going away.

How about sending me some of the killer weed you guys have been smoking.
You can pass the crack pipe around while you're at it.

:-)

Jeff


On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 04:52:34PM -0500, The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University wrote:
> Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers
> 
> We, the undersigned members and officers of the Open Source Club at
> the Ohio State University, are unhappy with the advocacy of the
> proprietary[1] BitKeeper software for use in maintaining the Linux
> kernel.  The Linux kernel is an important symbol of Open Source and
> Free Software for many people, and a project in which many thousands
> have participated in active development.  It is fine if some kernel
> developers choose to use BitKeeper on their own machines, but
> officially endorsing proprietary software as the means of working on
> the kernel is a large step backwards for Linux, and for the Open
> Source and Free Software communities.
> 
> If the core Linux maintainers begin to advocate using BitKeeper, then
> there will be strong pressure on these peripheral developers to use
> BitKeeper too, since it would likely be easier than browsing the
> web-exported changelogs or fetching the latest diff from kernel.org.
> 
> Using a closed-source, proprietary source control system for the
> kernel is even worse than using other forms of proprietary software
> such as source code analysis systems, because the revision control
> metadata (version numbers, branches, changelog comments, etc.), would
> be stored in a format defined by the proprietary software.  This
> metadata is really a part of Linux, because people will want to use it
> when talking about the kernel.  Those who can't[2] or don't want to
> use BitKeeper are left out in the cold.  One of the most important
> parts of Open Source and Free Software is that we, the community, are
> in control.  But by using and advocating BitKeeper, we would lose part
> of that control.
> 
> In summary, please do not advocate BitKeeper for use by the general
> community.  The Linux development process seems to have worked up till
> now, and we can wait a little longer until Arch[3] or Subversion[4]
> are completed.  Moreover, full-featured, completely functional free 
> versioning sytems are currently available, such as PRCS[5] and CVS[6].
> We respect the kernel maintainer's freedom to use proprietary software 
> for their own purposes.  And we ask the kernel maintainers to respect 
> the community's freedom from entrapment by proprietary software.
> 
> -- The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University
> Signed by:
> Michael Benedict <zosima@zosima.org>
> Colin Walters <walters@debian.org>
> Matt Curtin <cmcurtin@interhack.net>
> Martin Jansche <jansche@ling.ohio-state.edu>
> Balbir Thomas <thomas.1037@osu.edu>
> Nicholas Hurley <hurley@cis.ohio-state.edu>
> Ryan McCormack <mccormac@cis.ohio-state.edu>
> Shaun Rowland <rowland@cis.ohio-state.edu>
> 
> [1] http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/user/x/i/xiphmont/Public/critique.html
> [2] Perhaps they aren't connected to the internet regularly enough,
>     for instance.
> [3] http://www.regexps.com/#arch
> [4] http://subversion.tigris.org
> [5] http://prcs.sourceforge.net
> [6] http://www.cvshome.org
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Colin Walters]

On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:41, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> 
> All hail the non-profit nazis from Ohio State.  

The petition came from a group of people in the OSU Open Source club,
not from the whole school (obviously) or even the whole club.

> It's none of your 
> f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
> American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel 
> debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware 
> analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.  

You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
*use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
software by the kernel maintainers.

> It's pretty clear that the alumni of Ohio State University 

The petition has nothing to do with the alumni of the Ohio State
University.

The rest of your message isn't worth responding to, so I won't.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement ofBitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff Garzik]

Colin Walters wrote:
> You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> software by the kernel maintainers.

How do they have any business telling me what to advocate?

That doesn't sound like free speech nor free thought to me.

	Jeff



-- 
Jeff Garzik      |
Building 1024    |
MandrakeSoft     | Choose life.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement ofBitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Colin Walters]

On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:54, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Colin Walters wrote:
> > You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> > *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> > that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> > petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> > software by the kernel maintainers.
> 
> How do they have any business telling me what to advocate?
> 
> That doesn't sound like free speech nor free thought to me.

The nature of a petition is that it's a request.  We (obviously) can't
force the kernel maintainers not to use BitKeeper, and I personally
wouldn't if I could.

So, the kernel maintainers can ignore the petition if they want to.  The
whole point of the petition is to let them know that there are people
who aren't happy with their choices.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement ofBitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[William Lee Irwin III]

Colin Walters wrote:
>> You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
>> *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
>> that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
>> petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
>> software by the kernel maintainers.

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 05:54:12PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> How do they have any business telling me what to advocate?
> That doesn't sound like free speech nor free thought to me.


This doesn't sound like kernel hacking to me.
May we now resume our reguarly scheduled kernel programming?

...my .procmailrc overfloweth, as does /dev/null...

Bill

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement ofBitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Jeff Garzik wrote:


SCORE:

Jeff Garzik                  100 points

Ohio State Nazis       -10 points

Zig Heil !

Jeff


> Colin Walters wrote:
> > You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> > *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> > that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> > petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> > software by the kernel maintainers.
>
> How do they have any business telling me what to advocate?
>
> That doesn't sound like free speech nor free thought to me.
>
>         Jeff
>
> --
> Jeff Garzik      |
> Building 1024    |
> MandrakeSoft     | Choose life.

RE: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement ofBitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Karl]

>How do they have any business telling me what to advocate?

>That doesn't sound like free speech nor free thought to me.

>	Jeff


   A petition is a statement from a group of people who feel affected by
what you do, they are then requesting that you do something different. That
IS freedom of speech. Your decision to follow it or ignore it IS your
freedom. To try and crush out their desire to make petitions is IMHO
CENSORSHIP... I doubt many share my opinion (and yes it is just that) but I
throw it out as food for thought.

Karl

PS though it may sound sarcastic, it isn't actually meant to.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement ofBitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[michael bernstein]

I totally and utterly agree with you.  They have every right to ignore 
the petition, but those we signed it were acting out their right of 
freedom of speech.  I know all the people who signed it, and none of 
them likely would force ANYTHING on anyone.  Rather then looking at this 
as an ultimatum, look at it as a request.  Negative responses only lead 
to more negatives responses back, and nothing EVER comes out of flame 
wars, ever.  Except worthless air being wasted by the likes of some.

cheers,

Michael Bernstein
bernstein.46@osu.edu



On Tuesday, March 5, 2002, at 09:23 PM, Karl wrote:

>    A petition is a statement from a group of people who feel affected by
> what you do, they are then requesting that you do something different. 
> That
> IS freedom of speech. Your decision to follow it or ignore it IS your
> freedom. To try and crush out their desire to make petitions is IMHO
> CENSORSHIP... I doubt many share my opinion (and yes it is just that) 
> but I
> throw it out as food for thought.
>
> Karl
>
> PS though it may sound sarcastic, it isn't actually meant to.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Opensource mailing list
> Opensource@mail.cis.ohio-state.edu
> http://mail.cis.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/opensource
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement ofBitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[David Schwartz]

On Tue, 05 Mar 2002 17:54:12 -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:

>Colin Walters wrote:

>>You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
>>*use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
>>that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
>>petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
>>software by the kernel maintainers.

>How do they have any business telling me what to advocate?

	There is no difference between advocating something and advocating 
advocating something. So if you ask how they have any business telling you 
what to advocate, you ask how they have any business engaging in any advocacy 
at all.

	So what's your position? Do you believe that only you have the right to 
advocate?

>That doesn't sound like free speech nor free thought to me.

	So when someone says something you don't agree with, that's not free speech? 
If someone expresses a thought you don't agree with, that's not free thought? 
Nobody is trying to compel you to do anything, they're just advocating what 
they believe in and explaining the reasons why.

	DS

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Mike Fedyk]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 05:40:59PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:41, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> > It's none of your 
> > f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
> > American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel 
> > debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware 
> > analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.  
> 
> You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> software by the kernel maintainers.
> 

Use is another way of advocacy.  When you start using something, you get
used to it, and when you talk to others, you end up advocating it because
it's what you're used to, and probably other options aren't as good (to you).

IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...

Mike

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[H. Peter Anvin]

Followup to:  <20020305230143.GB5538@matchmail.com>
By author:    Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> 
> IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...
> 

A free license is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for
something to be Open Source.

	-hpa
-- 
<hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
"Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt	<amsp@zytor.com>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[David Lang]

change 'bitkeeper, is open source' to 'bitkeeper, has the source code
available, including provisions to allow you to modify it (as long as the
openlogging isn't removed'

David Lang

 On 5 Mar 2002, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> Date: 5 Mar 2002 15:14:19 -0800
> From: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
> To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of
>     BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers
>
> Followup to:  <20020305230143.GB5538@matchmail.com>
> By author:    Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>
> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> >
> > IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> > could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...
> >
>
> A free license is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for
> something to be Open Source.
>
> 	-hpa
> --
> <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private!
> "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot."
> http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt	<amsp@zytor.com>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Mark Mielke]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 03:14:19PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Followup to:  <20020305230143.GB5538@matchmail.com>
> By author:    Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>
> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> > IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> > could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...
> A free license is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for
> something to be Open Source.

CVS is a very limited configuration management tool. Subversion is still
under development.

The original post was petition with only something like 8 names. Fine,
everybody read it, many put their two cents in (including myself, here).

If BK meets all the requirements, and no other product does, then don't
give it a second thought, or a second post. I don't know what BK offers,
but I do know that products such as ClearCase are *significantly* more
useful, and usable than CVS. I am looking to subversion with my fingers
crossed, by not relying on their product to end up being the next
generation of configuration management for the future.

People are free to naively believe that other people are less for
using technically superior products, merely because the technically
superior products are distributed in a means that violates their
personal preference for how products should be distributed.

mark

-- 
mark@mielke.cc/markm@ncf.ca/markm@nortelnetworks.com __________________________
.  .  _  ._  . .   .__    .  . ._. .__ .   . . .__  | Neighbourhood Coder
|\/| |_| |_| |/    |_     |\/|  |  |_  |   |/  |_   | 
|  | | | | \ | \   |__ .  |  | .|. |__ |__ | \ |__  | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

  One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all
                       and in the darkness bind them...

                           http://mark.mielke.cc/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Chris Friesen]

Mark Mielke wrote:

> If BK meets all the requirements, and no other product does, then don't
> give it a second thought, or a second post. I don't know what BK offers,
> but I do know that products such as ClearCase are *significantly* more
> useful, and usable than CVS.

Just wanted to throw in my two cents.  I dislike clearcase.  It's dog slow,
doesn't support atomic updates of multiple files, and is generally a pain in the
butt to use.

Unfortunately, its the official versioning system at work and all new projects
are strongly encouraged to use it.

-- 
Chris Friesen                    | MailStop: 043/33/F10  
Nortel Networks                  | work: (613) 765-0557
3500 Carling Avenue              | fax:  (613) 765-2986
Nepean, ON K2H 8E9 Canada        | email: cfriesen@nortelnetworks.com

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Petro]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 03:46:04PM -0500, Mark Mielke wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 03:14:19PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > Followup to:  <20020305230143.GB5538@matchmail.com>
> If BK meets all the requirements, and no other product does, then don't
> give it a second thought, or a second post. I don't know what BK offers,

    We used to use it here, and it rocked. We just couldn't afford to
    use it any more, and that sucked. 

    CVS is a piss poor alternative. 

    I miss bitkeeper, and I didn't even use it all that heavily. 

-- 
Share and Enjoy. 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[David Lang]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Mike Fedyk wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 05:40:59PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote:
> > On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:41, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> > > It's none of your
> > > f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
> > > American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel
> > > debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware
> > > analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.
> >
> > You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> > *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> > that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> > petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> > software by the kernel maintainers.
> >
>
> Use is another way of advocacy.  When you start using something, you get
> used to it, and when you talk to others, you end up advocating it because
> it's what you're used to, and probably other options aren't as good (to you).
>
> IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...

In addition the metadata is in the SCCS format for compatability (there
may be extra data but it's just in text format and has no equivalent on
the other source control systems)

David Lang

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Colin Walters]

On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 18:01, Mike Fedyk wrote:
> Use is another way of advocacy.  When you start using something, you get
> used to it, 

Sure. 

> and when you talk to others, you end up advocating it because
> it's what you're used to, and probably other options aren't as good (to you).

There is a difference between advocating something personally, and
advocating it in one's official capacity as the maintainer of a
project.  It is the latter "official" sense which the petition is
against.

> IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...

You are wrong.

http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/user/x/i/xiphmont/Public/critique.html

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Michael Bernstein]

You are basically missing the whole point of the petition.  I didn't sign it
because I hadn't read my opensource mail in awhile, but if I had the chance
to I would sign it now.  As a forced user of proprietary software, I can
understand the individual needs of people for certain packages (Pro Tools
and other audio programs in my case).  However, when a whole movement based
on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
there is some hypocrisy going on.  Rather then griping about the
shortcomings of CVS or various other solutions, wouldn't it be better to
create a non-proprietary solution to the problem?  Are we forgetting why
Linux is around and where it came from?  In general, I don't agree with
Colin Walters on too many things, but on this subject, I am in total
agreement.  Also, it's amazing to see what kinds of levels people will sink
to when a real issue is brought forth.  The whole osu nazi thing, touching.
Maybe if my family wasn't gassed to death by the Nazis I'd find it a bit
funnier to compare us to them, but alas, I have midterms tomorrow and I
guess my humor isn't up to what everyone else's is.

I would really examine the path you are choosing and the message you let out
by FORCING people to utilize bitkeeper.  I've already lost most of my faith
in opensource, and in general, the whole bitkeeper issue is starting to
squash any faith I have left.

Michael Bernstein
bernstein.46@osu.edu


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Fedyk" <mfedyk@matchmail.com>
To: "Colin Walters" <walters@debian.org>
Cc: "Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@vger.timpanogas.org>;
<linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>; <opensource@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of
BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers


> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 05:40:59PM -0500, Colin Walters wrote:
> > On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:41, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> > > It's none of your
> > > f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
> > > American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel
> > > debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware
> > > analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.
> >
> > You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> > *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> > that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> > petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> > software by the kernel maintainers.
> >
>
> Use is another way of advocacy.  When you start using something, you get
> used to it, and when you talk to others, you end up advocating it because
> it's what you're used to, and probably other options aren't as good (to
you).
>
> IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I
> could be wrong(I haven't checked).  If I am, someone will say so...
>
> Mike
> _______________________________________________
> Opensource mailing list
> Opensource@mail.cis.ohio-state.edu
> http://mail.cis.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/opensource
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff Garzik]

Michael Bernstein wrote:
> I would really examine the path you are choosing and the message you let out
> by FORCING people to utilize bitkeeper.  I've already lost most of my faith
> in opensource, and in general, the whole bitkeeper issue is starting to
> squash any faith I have left.

Lets stop the fud RIGHT NOW.

Nobody is forcing anybody to use BitKeeper.

Linus still accepts GNU patches via e-mail from primary kernel
maintainers a.k.a. lieutenants, as well as "regular" kernel developers. 
The pre-patches, patches, and full tarballs continue to be posted
uninterrupted, just like pre-BitKeeper.

	Jeff



-- 
Jeff Garzik      | Usenet Rule #2 (John Gilmore): "The Net interprets
Building 1024    | censorship as damage and routes around it."
MandrakeSoft     |

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[That Linux Guy]

Remember folks - DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!
> Michael Bernstein wrote:
> > I would really examine the path you are choosing and the message you let
out
> > by FORCING people to utilize bitkeeper.  I've already lost most of my
faith
> > in opensource, and in general, the whole bitkeeper issue is starting to
> > squash any faith I have left.
> Lets stop the fud RIGHT NOW.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Kenneth Johansson]

On Wed, 2002-03-06 at 00:36, Michael Bernstein wrote:

> However, when a whole movement based
> on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
> proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
> there is some hypocrisy going on.  Rather then griping about the
> shortcomings of CVS or various other solutions, wouldn't it be better to
> create a non-proprietary solution to the problem?  

This movement you speak of is doing another kernel and I would agree
with this petition in that context but linux has never been about
anything else than doing cool things and sharing it with others.

> Are we forgetting why
> Linux is around and where it came from? 

Apparently!

> agreement.  Also, it's amazing to see what kinds of levels people will sink
> to when a real issue is brought forth.  The whole osu nazi thing, touching.

You are new to this list I see :) 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Alexander Viro]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Michael Bernstein wrote:

> You are basically missing the whole point of the petition.  I didn't sign it
> because I hadn't read my opensource mail in awhile, but if I had the chance
> to I would sign it now.  As a forced user of proprietary software, I can
> understand the individual needs of people for certain packages (Pro Tools
> and other audio programs in my case).  However, when a whole movement based
> on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
> proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
> there is some hypocrisy going on.  Rather then griping about the

I don't know about "the movement", but some of us are interested in creation
of _WORKING_ software.  Free is preferable; GPL is usually tolerable; but
all that isn't worth anything is the design and code are crap.

Hypocrisy (or lunacy - take your pick) is coming from those who insist that
politically correct tools should be prefered even when they clearly suck.

If you feel that the worst problem is that non-free software exists - that's
your right.  And your problem.  IMNSHO the fact that majority of both free
and non-free software is choke-full of crap is slightly more troubling.
YMMV.

> shortcomings of CVS or various other solutions, wouldn't it be better to
> create a non-proprietary solution to the problem?

So why don't you and Colin go and do that?

BTW, bitkeeper doesn't solve the problems I have.  Ditto for CVS.  So I use
neither.  FWIW, BK is closer to what I need.  If it will ever get the things
I need right - I'll use it and damned if I'll hide that.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Dave Jones]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 08:05:05PM -0500, Alexander Viro wrote:

 > BTW, bitkeeper doesn't solve the problems I have.  Ditto for CVS.  So I use
 > neither.  FWIW, BK is closer to what I need.  If it will ever get the things
 > I need right - I'll use it and damned if I'll hide that.

 Preach on brother Viro.  Faced with the mammoth task of somehow
 syncing a 6MB diff with Linus, I decided it was time to devote
 an afternoon (which then turned into an evening) to seeing if
 bk can make this easier.

 There's nothing in bk that makes my life any more difficult, and
 potential for it to make it a *lot* easier. And Larry seems
 open to suggestions, dispelling the "its closed commercial blah" myth.

 Splitting bits up could become even easier soon if Larry and I figure
 out a way to implement some of my perverse ideas for bending csets
 into something more flexable than what they currently are.

 Syncing from Linus to my tree isn't difficult, its the splitting bits
 up to push his way that takes time. bk is halfway towards almost
 automating this for me.  CVS and friends don't even get to the
 start line here.

 Hours of diff/grepdiff/filterdiff/vim, vs a few clicky clicky bits
 in bk citool.

 If you don't like the license, fine. Don't use it, but at least
 give everyone else the option of making up their own mind before
 you try to force _your_ opinion on others.

-- 
| Dave Jones.        http://www.codemonkey.org.uk
| SuSE Labs

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Shawn Starr]

The only problem I have with BK is it's slow on a Pentium 200Mhz, vs
CVS. ;/ Wish that would be fixed.

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Dave Jones wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 08:05:05PM -0500, Alexander Viro wrote:
>
>  > BTW, bitkeeper doesn't solve the problems I have.  Ditto for CVS.  So I use
>  > neither.  FWIW, BK is closer to what I need.  If it will ever get the things
>  > I need right - I'll use it and damned if I'll hide that.
>
>  Preach on brother Viro.  Faced with the mammoth task of somehow
>  syncing a 6MB diff with Linus, I decided it was time to devote
>  an afternoon (which then turned into an evening) to seeing if
>  bk can make this easier.
>
>  There's nothing in bk that makes my life any more difficult, and
>  potential for it to make it a *lot* easier. And Larry seems
>  open to suggestions, dispelling the "its closed commercial blah" myth.
>
>  Splitting bits up could become even easier soon if Larry and I figure
>  out a way to implement some of my perverse ideas for bending csets
>  into something more flexable than what they currently are.
>
>  Syncing from Linus to my tree isn't difficult, its the splitting bits
>  up to push his way that takes time. bk is halfway towards almost
>  automating this for me.  CVS and friends don't even get to the
>  start line here.
>
>  Hours of diff/grepdiff/filterdiff/vim, vs a few clicky clicky bits
>  in bk citool.
>
>  If you don't like the license, fine. Don't use it, but at least
>  give everyone else the option of making up their own mind before
>  you try to force _your_ opinion on others.
>
> --
> | Dave Jones.        http://www.codemonkey.org.uk
> | SuSE Labs
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Mike Fedyk]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 08:46:27PM -0500, Shawn Starr wrote:
> 
> The only problem I have with BK is it's slow on a Pentium 200Mhz, vs
> CVS. ;/ Wish that would be fixed.
> 

How much (wall clock) time will it take to produce a patch with bk
compared to cvs?

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 05:50:49PM -0800, Mike Fedyk wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 08:46:27PM -0500, Shawn Starr wrote:
> > 
> > The only problem I have with BK is it's slow on a Pentium 200Mhz, vs
> > CVS. ;/ Wish that would be fixed.
> > 
> 
> How much (wall clock) time will it take to produce a patch with bk
> compared to cvs?

On a 1Ghz Athlon (love those CPUs, AMD rocks my world),

[/tmp/linux-2.5] time bk export -tpatch -r+ > /tmp/P

real    0m2.410s
user    0m1.170s
sys     0m0.050s

That's a hot cache number, it's slower if we have to go to disk.

Bk could be faster, it's on our list.  The main thing for performance is
memory.  BK uses the file system as a cache, it mmaps the files and wants
them in the cache, life sucks if you don't have enough memory to fit the 
entire tree in memory.  "Sucks" is defined as "it takes too long".  Our
holy grail in terms of performance is to have all operations take less than
250 milliseconds, i.e., you hit return and you get your prompt back.

We have a long way to go to achieve that, bummer, but true.  For some
things, we are really fast.  We pull changes from a remote site
amazingly fast.  The downside is that we are paranoid about data and
we run the equiv of a fsck on the repository every time you update it.
So if you have a repository with 20,000 files and you pull on a one line,
one file, bugfix, we still open up and check every single file's checksum.
Which sucks from a performance point of view.

On the other hand, it finds bad disks, bad memory, etc.  Right away, before
it corrupts all your data.  It found some bad juju at one of our commercial
customers today, in fact.

We're working on nested repositories (think CVS modules) and those will limit
the check to the update "module", that will help a lot.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Shawn Starr]

well let's see, it takes forever to do a bk clone its the verfication that
slows things down hugely.

Shawn.


On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Mike Fedyk wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 08:46:27PM -0500, Shawn Starr wrote:
> >
> > The only problem I have with BK is it's slow on a Pentium 200Mhz, vs
> > CVS. ;/ Wish that would be fixed.
> >
>
> How much (wall clock) time will it take to produce a patch with bk
> compared to cvs?
>
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Michael Bernstein wrote:

> Rather then griping about the shortcomings of CVS or various other
> solutions, wouldn't it be better to create a non-proprietary solution to
> the problem?

Come back when you've done that.

Until then, there is no good alternative to bitkeeper
and you're just making yourself look rediculous.

regards,

Rik
-- 
"Linux holds advantages over the single-vendor commercial OS"
    -- Microsoft's "Competing with Linux" document

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[David Schwartz]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002 18:36:08 -0500, Michael Bernstein wrote:

>However, when a whole movement based
>on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
>proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
>there is some hypocrisy going on.

	What?! It's really this simple, you use the best tool for the job. Why can't 
we advocate the tools that really do work best. Why do we have to be a 
movement based upon an inflexible ideology? (Or are you just mocking the free 
software movement by spitting your stereotype at it?)

	There would be no hypocrisy whatsoever in using BitKeeper if it was honestly 
believed to be the best tool for the job taking the licensing restrictions 
into account. There would also be no hypocrisy in not using it if it was felt 
that the licensing restrictions were too onerous.

	DS

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, David Schwartz wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Mar 2002 18:36:08 -0500, Michael Bernstein wrote:
>
> >However, when a whole movement based
> >on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
> >proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
> >there is some hypocrisy going on.
>
> 	What?! It's really this simple, you use the best tool for the job.
> Why can't we advocate the tools that really do work best.

I'm in it for quality software, not specifically for the ideology
of free software.

> Why do we have to be a movement based upon an inflexible ideology?

Not to mention, why should we have to conform to the ideology of
the "free software" crowd ?

cheers,

Rik
-- 
<insert bitkeeper endorsement here>

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Petro]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 10:34:46PM -0300, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, David Schwartz wrote:
> > On Tue, 5 Mar 2002 18:36:08 -0500, Michael Bernstein wrote:
> > >However, when a whole movement based
> > >on the idea of creating non-proprietary software decides to utilize
> > >proprietary software in order to better create free software, I feel that
> > >there is some hypocrisy going on.
> > 	What?! It's really this simple, you use the best tool for the job.
> > Why can't we advocate the tools that really do work best.
> I'm in it for quality software, not specifically for the ideology
> of free software.
> > Why do we have to be a movement based upon an inflexible ideology?
> Not to mention, why should we have to conform to the ideology of
> the "free software" crowd ?

    'Cause you can't be a rebel if you don't wear the right boots. 

-- 
Share and Enjoy. 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rob Turk]

"Petro" <petro@auctionwatch.com> wrote in message
news:cistron.20020307023302.GG32504@auctionwatch.com...
> > Not to mention, why should we have to conform to the ideology of
> > the "free software" crowd ?
>
>     'Cause you can't be a rebel if you don't wear the right boots.
>

That's the whole difference between 'Software must be free (as in beer)' and
'Software must be good'. Embracing free software for the sake of rebelling
against commercial software means you cut your options to choose for the best
tool for the job. There's lots of good free tools out there. There's also a lot
of good commercial software out there that in some cases does a better job than
the free variants. Choose whatever gets you the best results.

Rob

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeepe

[Kai Henningsen]

mfedyk@matchmail.com (Mike Fedyk)  wrote on 05.03.02 in <20020305230143.GB5538@matchmail.com>:

> IIRC, bitkeeper, is open source.  It just doesn't have a free license.  I

There is no such thing as open source without a free licence.


MfG Kai

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On 5 Mar 2002, Colin Walters wrote:
> On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 17:41, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> > It's none of your f_cking business what we use to develop software.
>
> You apparently missed the fact that the the petition was not against the
> *use* of proprietary software at all.  In fact, we explicitly mentioned
> that everyone is free to make that choice individually.  What the
> petition is against is the *advocacy* of the proprietary BitKeeper
> software by the kernel maintainers.

I strongly object to the fact that you're trying to stop
me from advocating the best piece of source control
software that I know.

<endorsement>
I use bitkeeper because it saves me lots of time and makes
my life easier. If you don't like it, you can use something
else instead and do all the work by hand, but I prefer to
have bitkeeper do the version tracking for me.

I don't know of any product that comes close to bitkeeper,
or even of anything remotely approaching the functionality
of bitkeeper, for me there is no real alternative.
</endorsement>

Now, are you about censoring my free speech in the name of
"protecting freedom and free software" or are you going to
write free version control software with the functionality
of bitkeeper so there is a free alternative ?

regards,

Rik
-- 
"Linux holds advantages over the single-vendor commercial OS"
    -- Microsoft's "Competing with Linux" document

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Colin Walters]

On Wed, 2002-03-06 at 11:04, Rik van Riel wrote:
> I strongly object to the fact that you're trying to stop
> me from advocating the best piece of source control
> software that I know.
> 
> <endorsement>

That's fine; you are free to ignore the petition, as was stated earlier.

> Now, are you about censoring my free speech in the name of
> "protecting freedom and free software" 

We don't have the power (or will) to censor you; only you and perhaps
your government have that power.

> or are you going to
> write free version control software with the functionality
> of bitkeeper so there is a free alternative ?

Since this seems to be a good representative of the "Why don't you write
your own" argument, I'll just respond to this one.  

The petition is in no way exclusive of writing our own versioning
control software.  Some of us might go on from here to hack on one, like
arch.  But if we had been associated with a particular competitior to
BitKeeper, then it would have been unethical to send the petition, since
it would be just a form of advertising for us.

I admit I have done a completely trivial amount of work on the Debian
package of arch, but besides that, I don't think any signer of the
petition was associated with a BitKeeper competitior.  We are just Linux
users who are concerned about the direction the kernel maintainers are
taking, because of the various problems associated with BitKeeper.

That being said, I personally will probably start getting more involved
with arch.  Hacking on a verison control system looks like fun.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Davide Libenzi]

On 6 Mar 2002, Colin Walters wrote:

> That being said, I personally will probably start getting more involved
> with arch.  Hacking on a verison control system looks like fun.

It is fun. I would not be surprised if after all this noise a XCVS project
would start. I understand what the goal of your petition was guys, but
you've to understand that there're a lot of developers for which Linux
kernel hacking turned to be from fun to work ( and fun, or better payed
fun ). And you cannot blame someone that uses the better tool ( for them )
to accomplish the job. If CVS would have done the job i think it would
have been employed a long time ago as long as i think that if an XCVS will
be available in a next future it will be probably used in this context.




- Davide

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Davide Libenzi wrote:
> On 6 Mar 2002, Colin Walters wrote:
>
> > That being said, I personally will probably start getting more involved
> > with arch.  Hacking on a verison control system looks like fun.
>
> It is fun. I would not be surprised if after all this noise a XCVS project
> would start. I understand what the goal of your petition was guys, but

> [snip] ... you cannot blame someone that uses the better tool

Bitkeeper has raised the bar, I hope the free version control
folks will do their best trying to jump to the new level  ;)

regards,

Rik
-- 
"Linux holds advantages over the single-vendor commercial OS"
    -- Microsoft's "Competing with Linux" document

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[David S. Miller]

Probably the most amusing consequence of this "petition" is that it
has given BitKeeper a lot of extra free publicity. :-)

In fact more than I've ever given it publicly, and that is the most
ironic and hilarious part.  ROFL.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Larry McVoy]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 12:57:33PM -0800, David S. Miller wrote:
> Probably the most amusing consequence of this "petition" is that it
> has given BitKeeper a lot of extra free publicity. :-)

Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't find out, but I made up the whole thing,
there is no "Open Source Club" at Ohio state.  :)

I suppose this means you see through me when I post as Aunt Tillie,
saying that BitKeeper is the devil's work and wanting to know where
I can get Microsoft menuconfig.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Cort Dougan]

No!  Penelope doesn't exist either, then?  Please, tell me the it's true that
you made up Eric Raymond too!

} Yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't find out, but I made up the whole thing,
} there is no "Open Source Club" at Ohio state.  :)
} 
} I suppose this means you see through me when I post as Aunt Tillie,
} saying that BitKeeper is the devil's work and wanting to know where
} I can get Microsoft menuconfig.
} -- 
} ---
} Larry McVoy            	 lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitmover.com/lm 
} -
} To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
} the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
} More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
} Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Evan Powers]

On March 6, 2002 03:57 pm, David S. Miller <davem@redhat.com> wrote:
> Probably the most amusing consequence of this "petition" is that it
> has given BitKeeper a lot of extra free publicity. :-)
>
> In fact more than I've ever given it publicly, and that is the most
> ironic and hilarious part.  ROFL.

I'm loosely a member of OSU's Opensource Club, but I didn't sign the petition.

Believe me, the irony isn't lost on many of us. ;-)

-- 
Evan Powers
powers.161@osu.edu (find my PGP key at www.keyserver.net, key ID 0x3445B541) 

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Kilobug]

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> All hail the non-profit nazis from Ohio State.

Congratulations ! You've won

+-----------------+
|       One       |
|      Godwin     |
|       Point     |
+-----------------+

You can cut it with an axe and add it to your collection.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/

-- 
** Gael Le Mignot "Kilobug", Ing3 EPITA - http://kilobug.free.fr **
Home Mail   : kilobug@freesurf.fr          Work Mail : le-mig_g@epita.fr
GSM         : 06.71.47.18.22 (in France)   ICQ UIN   : 7299959
Fingerprint : 1F2C 9804 7505 79DF 95E6 7323 B66B F67B 7103 C5DA

"Software is like sex it's better when it's free.", Linus Torvalds

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Stephen Samuel]

I think you missed the point of the petition.  They're not asking
people to stop using bitkeeper. They're asking that it not be
advocated as an OFFICIAL kernel development/maintenance process.

As you said.. What you do in the privacy of your own home/office
is your business. On the other hand, what you advocate that the
Open Source community do in theirs is the business of the whole
community.


Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
 > On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 04:52:34PM -0500, The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University wrote:
 >
 >>have participated in active development.  It is fine if some kernel
 >>developers choose to use BitKeeper on their own machines, but
 >>officially endorsing proprietary software as the means of working on
 >>the kernel is a large step backwards for Linux, and for the Open
 >>Source and Free Software communities.

> All hail the non-profit nazis from Ohio State.  It's none of your 
> f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware

Yep.  and they acknowledged that at the start of their petition

> American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel 
> debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware 
> analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.  
....
> How about sending me some of the killer weed you guys have been smoking.
> You can pass the crack pipe around while you're at it.

...

>>metadata is really a part of Linux, because people will want to use it
>>when talking about the kernel.  Those who can't[2] or don't want to
>>use BitKeeper are left out in the cold.  One of the most important
.....

>>We respect the kernel maintainer's freedom to use proprietary software 
>>for their own purposes.  And we ask the kernel maintainers to respect 
>>the community's freedom from entrapment by proprietary software.


-- 
Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426                samuel@bcgreen.com
		   http://www.bcgreen.com/~samuel/
Powerful committed communication, reaching through fear, uncertainty and
doubt to touch the jewel within each person and bring it to life.

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Stephen Samuel]

Matthew D. Pitts wrote:
> Stephen, et al...
> 
> As has already been said, if you don't want BitKeeper to be used by kernel
> developers, write something that is just as good and release it under the
> GPL... That way, we have a choice of equals, not apples and oranges...

That could be considered ONE solution -- or simply one ASPECT of
a different solution.

I'm not going to suggest that the current OS solutions are currently
better than what BitKeeper currently has to offer -- but if we always
constrained ourselves to simply using whatever's the best solution
(without any allowance for whether or not it was open source), the
GNU project would never have started, and projects like ABI word,
and K-Office would never have gotten to where they are today.

I think that the people petitioning Linus (and really, the whole
Linux Kernel community) to not hav BitKeeper be part of the
official linux kernel development architecture recognize that
the *current* version of the Open Source solutions are not
clearly superior to some of the current proprietary solutions --
but then again, that was the situation with the Linux Kernel
for many years too.

Some people worked on and put up with and cleaned up the Linux
environent in it's early days -- when it was clearly NOT as easy
to do as working on Solaris -- or, in some cases, even Window
(especially if you go back far enough). Many of these people did
that work because they believed in the PRINCIPLE of building an
Open Source/Free solution that was, ultimately, going to be
far better that what was (and was going to be) available in
the proprietary world.

Working today on almost entirely free or open source products,
I am standing on top of the blood, sweat, tears and lost data
of those pioneers.  Many of those pioneers are still working on
the linux kernel. For them the idea that, after up to a decade of
building free source solutions, they should need to buy a proprietary
solution to continue to 'be in the loop' is galling.

Some of these people have eschewed high paying jobs to be able to
continue to work on parts of Linux, so -- for them -- having to fork
out extra money for a proprietary code control solution is also
prohibitive.  (this may not be too obvious to someone who routinely
makes in the 6-digits range working for a large company)


For many of these people, the answer is 2-prong:

1 - - and as you suggested - - produce an Open Source tool that is
   better for the task than the proprietary stuff, and

2 - - in the mean time bite the bullet, continue to use the
   open source solution, and take the (hopefully short-term)
   cost that goes along with that.


besides what I mentioned above, one of the advantages of doing
number 2  is that it actually provides an ongoing incentive to
have a workable Open Source solution in place sooner, rather
than later.  Once that happens, then not only will the heart of
this dispute go away, but the open source community will be free
to develop and tweak the solution to their own needs, rather than
bowing to the economic needs and plans of a pseudo-anonymous
company.



note: this solution DOES NOT PRECLUDE YOU (or anybody else) FROM
USING BITKEEPER (or any other proprietary solution) in the privacy of
your office and/or home -- even if you want to do Linux development
with it.  It's simply about what occurs in the OFFICIAL Linux kernel
code tree, which probably has a reasonably high proportion of people
who are both politically and financially sensitive to the idea of
being almost required to use an closed source product to work on
their open source 'baby'.

-- 
Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426                samuel@bcgreen.com
		   http://www.bcgreen.com/~samuel/
Powerful committed communication, reaching through fear, uncertainty and
doubt to touch the jewel within each person and bring it to life.

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Alexander Viro]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Stephen Samuel wrote:
 
> note: this solution DOES NOT PRECLUDE YOU (or anybody else) FROM
> USING BITKEEPER (or any other proprietary solution) in the privacy of
> your office and/or home -- even if you want to do Linux development
> with it.

Do you realize how incredibly offensive it is?  A bunch of self-appointed PR
flacks with a gall to tell people who do real work that they must conform
to party line whenever they are in public.  Thank you so much for leaving
us "the privacy of office and/or home"...   Sheesh...

-- 
Politruki wyiskalis', mat' washu...

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[yodaiken]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 05:39:21PM -0800, Stephen Samuel wrote:
> note: this solution DOES NOT PRECLUDE YOU (or anybody else) FROM
> USING BITKEEPER (or any other proprietary solution) in the privacy of
> your office and/or home -- even if you want to do Linux development
> with it.  It's simply about what occurs in the OFFICIAL Linux kernel
> code tree, which probably has a reasonably high proportion of people
> who are both politically and financially sensitive to the idea of
> being almost required to use an closed source product to work on
> their open source 'baby'.

Sometimes it gets too hard to believe.



> 
> -- 
> Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426                samuel@bcgreen.com
> 		   http://www.bcgreen.com/~samuel/
> Powerful committed communication, reaching through fear, uncertainty and
> doubt to touch the jewel within each person and bring it to life.
> 
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
Victor Yodaiken 
Finite State Machine Labs: The RTLinux Company.
 www.fsmlabs.com  www.rtlinux.com

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Andreas Dilger]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 05:39:21PM -0800, Stephen Samuel wrote:
> note: this solution DOES NOT PRECLUDE YOU (or anybody else) FROM
> USING BITKEEPER (or any other proprietary solution) in the privacy of
> your office and/or home -- even if you want to do Linux development
> with it.  It's simply about what occurs in the OFFICIAL Linux kernel
> code tree, which probably has a reasonably high proportion of people
> who are both politically and financially sensitive to the idea of
> being almost required to use an closed source product to work on
> their open source 'baby'.

Do you even know what you are talking about?  It is clear you don't.

1) You do NOT need to buy BK to use it on any open-source project,
   as long as you are willing to have the changelogs posted on the
   BK website.  Since most open-source projects host their entire
   CVS repository on a public website, this isn't any additional
   restriction.

2) Nobody is forcing anyone to use BK to contribute to the kernel.  The
   kernel is still available as a tarball and incremental patches.  Linus
   is still accepting patches in email just like he always did (or didn't,
   as the case may be).

Cheers, Andreas
--
Andreas Dilger  \ "If a man ate a pound of pasta and a pound of antipasto,
                 \  would they cancel out, leaving him still hungry?"
http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/               -- Dogbert

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Sean Hunter]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 977 bytes --]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 05:39:21PM -0800, Stephen Samuel wrote:
> 
> note: this solution DOES NOT PRECLUDE YOU (or anybody else) FROM
> USING BITKEEPER (or any other proprietary solution) in the privacy of
> your office and/or home -- even if you want to do Linux development
> with it.  It's simply about what occurs in the OFFICIAL Linux kernel
> code tree, which probably has a reasonably high proportion of people
> who are both politically and financially sensitive to the idea of
> being almost required to use an closed source product to work on
> their open source 'baby'.
> 

You left off:

  We support your right to have babies, even though you can't have 
     babies, which is nobodies fault, not even Larry McVoy's.

Thanks for giving everyone your permission to use bitkeeper in the privacy of
their own home.  Its nice to know you think anyone gives a fuck about your
opinion. Now kindly sod off and stop wasting everybodies time.

Sean


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RE: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Karl]

>All hail the non-profit nazis from Ohio State.  It's none of your
>f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
>American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel
>debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware
>analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.


   I don't want to speak for our friends in Ohio, but I don't think they
asked to inhibit you in any way shape or form. Their point was about
official endorsement not personal choice. I think they went as far as to
state that explicitly.

   Karl

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff V. Merkey]

On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 09:23:16PM -0500, Karl wrote:
> >All hail the non-profit nazis from Ohio State.  It's none of your
> >f_cking business what we use to develop software.  I use a hardware
> >American Arium logic analyzer and a proprietary Linux kernel
> >debugger.  Should people be boycotted when they use hardware
> >analyzers to debug hardware and software with Linux.
> 
> 
>    I don't want to speak for our friends in Ohio, but I don't think they
> asked to inhibit you in any way shape or form. Their point was about
> official endorsement not personal choice. I think they went as far as to
> state that explicitly.
> 
>    Karl


Yeah, I saw that part Karl, but the bottom line in their position 
was to limit our choices and choose for us their oppresive views.  It's
also tortorious to post such a petition as a mean to attack a for
profit endeavor, whether the profit is kudos or consideration.  Try
pulling this on Novell or Microsoft, and watch how fast you go to court.

These people are bullies.  

:-)

Jeff

> 

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[michael bernstein]

Do you have any clue as to what you can and cannot goto court for?  I 
have no idea where you or from or what kind of education you have, but 
in the "free" world, you can't take someone to court for picketing or 
protesting or petitioning.  It is built into the American system.  We 
are bullies?  I'd rather be a bully then someone who slanders others 
with references to those who chose to commit genocide.  If you are 
American and you don't realize how free speech works, then I strongly 
urge you to find out.  <FLAME>Then maybe you can speak about things in a 
more educated way, rather than coming off like a retarded 
gorilla.</FLAME>

cheers and much hope in your quest to find free speech,

Michael Bernstein
bernstein.46@osu.edu


On Tuesday, March 5, 2002, at 10:47 PM, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
> Yeah, I saw that part Karl, but the bottom line in their position
> was to limit our choices and choose for us their oppresive views.  It's
> also tortorious to post such a petition as a mean to attack a for
> profit endeavor, whether the profit is kudos or consideration.  Try
> pulling this on Novell or Microsoft, and watch how fast you go to court.
>
> These people are bullies.
>
> :-)
>
> Jeff
>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Opensource mailing list
> Opensource@mail.cis.ohio-state.edu
> http://mail.cis.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/opensource
>

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Jeff V. Merkey]

Please do not take off line postings to your private list and report to this
list.

Thanks

Jeff

michael bernstein wrote:

> Do you have any clue as to what you can and cannot goto court for?  I
> have no idea where you or from or what kind of education you have, but
> in the "free" world, you can't take someone to court for picketing or
> protesting or petitioning.  It is built into the American system.  We
> are bullies?  I'd rather be a bully then someone who slanders others
> with references to those who chose to commit genocide.  If you are
> American and you don't realize how free speech works, then I strongly
> urge you to find out.  <FLAME>Then maybe you can speak about things in a
> more educated way, rather than coming off like a retarded
> gorilla.</FLAME>
>
> cheers and much hope in your quest to find free speech,
>
> Michael Bernstein
> bernstein.46@osu.edu
>
> On Tuesday, March 5, 2002, at 10:47 PM, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> >
> > Yeah, I saw that part Karl, but the bottom line in their position
> > was to limit our choices and choose for us their oppresive views.  It's
> > also tortorious to post such a petition as a mean to attack a for
> > profit endeavor, whether the profit is kudos or consideration.  Try
> > pulling this on Novell or Microsoft, and watch how fast you go to court.
> >
> > These people are bullies.
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > Jeff
> >
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > Opensource mailing list
> > Opensource@mail.cis.ohio-state.edu
> > http://mail.cis.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/opensource
> >
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Alan Cox]

Right from the start Linus has always said he isn't going to force anyone
to use bitkeeper. End of story. If you think its free enough -  use it, if
you don't (or you just think its crap software, dont use it)

In fact if it offends you enough to start a petition take the list of
names you get at the end and between you go write a better one under a
licence you prefer between the signatures.

Aan

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Colin Walters]

On Tue, 2002-03-05 at 18:58, Alan Cox wrote:
> Right from the start Linus has always said he isn't going to force anyone
> to use bitkeeper. End of story. If you think its free enough -  use it, if
> you don't (or you just think its crap software, dont use it)

The petition never mentioned "force".  And even if Linus (and the other
core maintainers) wanted to, they couldn't *force* anyone to use
BitKeeper.  The issue at hand is the strong pressure the official
advocacy places on the perhipheral developers.  We (the signers of the
petition), and others are unhappy with this.  That's what the petition
says.

> In fact if it offends you enough to start a petition take the list of
> names you get at the end and between you go write a better one under a
> licence you prefer between the signatures.

There are already replacements under development.

Re: [opensource] Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Zwane Mwaikambo]

On 5 Mar 2002, Colin Walters wrote:

> > In fact if it offends you enough to start a petition take the list of
> > names you get at the end and between you go write a better one under a
> > licence you prefer between the signatures.
> 
> There are already replacements under development.

Already in development? Good stuff! Be sure to make an announcement when 
its ready for production use, till then be a sport and hop along.

Cheers,
	Zwane

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Eric W. Biederman]

The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University  <opensource-admin@cis.ohio-state.edu> writes:

> Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

Free software is an empowering agent.  Petitions as a technique are
only a good choice when you have no power to affect things.  And even
then they only affect when you get enough signatories.

Please use the power you have and do something productive.  Everyone
has exactly as much power as Linus to move the Linux kernel forward.  Not
everyone has as much trust, or as much ability but that is something
anyone can build.

Free software is not an entitlement, nor is it a right.  And it has no
official government support so it is not likely to become an entitlement.
Instead free software is the product of people working hard to make
certain free software is available.  And the classic motto
is show me the code.  Or the Texas version show me.

Please show that there is something good that does a better.  Or use
this as a call to arms to write it.  Or perhaps find a way to pay
Larry McVoy enough so that he will open source it.

Eric

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Rik van Riel]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, The Open Source Club at The Ohio State University wrote:

> Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers
>
> We, the undersigned members and officers of the Open Source Club at
> the Ohio State University, are unhappy with the advocacy of the
> proprietary[1] BitKeeper software for use in maintaining the Linux
> kernel.

Maybe I'll take you seriously after you've written something
better than bitkeeper that is free software.

Currently bitkeeper is saving kernel hackers many hours of
work and is benefitting kernel development a lot.

You won't get me to stop using a good tool that is speeding
up my development and saving me lots of frustration. OTOH,
if you have a free software alternative to bitkeeper that
comes close in functionality, I might be willing to look
into it.

Until then, the choice between a not-quite-free tool and no
useful tool at all is easy.

regards,

Rik
-- 
"Linux holds advantages over the single-vendor commercial OS"
    -- Microsoft's "Competing with Linux" document

http://www.surriel.com/		http://distro.conectiva.com/

Re: Petition Against Official Endorsement of BitKeeper by Linux Maintainers

[Pau Aliagas]

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Rik van Riel wrote:

> Until then, the choice between a not-quite-free tool and no
> useful tool at all is easy.

Give arch a try. It's in www.regexps.com.
It does a pretty decent job.
If you need an rpm spec just tell me.

Pau