Bitkeeper in Linuxdevelopment :(

[Werner Koch]

On Thu, 7 Feb 2002 17:52:31 +0100 (CET), Joerg Schilling said:

> Yup, you are missing the difference between free beer and freedom.

> While the CVD program is free, it does not give me the needed freedom.

Come on Jörg, get real: You have all the freedom to change CVS as you
like.  Actually CVS has been heavily changed over the years and even
the maintainer group changed from time to time [1].

> Please note: in the 1980s CVS has been free only for universities.

*BSD used to be non free for a long time - so what.

> If I would have beeen interested to test CVS and later would find that I 
> don't like it, I would not have the freedom to convert back to SCCS.

It seems that not so many folks like the idea of going back to SCCS so
it is unlikely that you will find someone doing this in his spare
time.  Just in case you have a need for it, a lot of Free Software
companies would take the job of course.

> Bitkeeper SCCS has other limitations in freedom of use but I see no reason
> why CVS should be any better.

Bitkeeper is proprietary - CVS is Free.  Please don't throw your own
interpretation of "freedom" in.  Although there are some terms with
the exact meaning under debate, the meaning of "freedom" is only
re-interpreted in Orwellian regimes.

> Bitkeeper comes with source, you may use it for free if you send all
> delta logs

Yes, for free, like free beer.

> to openlog.org ??. You are allowed to modify it if the result passes the
> regression test and if openlog.org is down for more then 3 months ??

Actually this 180 day period is a fair rule but it still does not make
Bitkeeper Free Software.  If they would instead use the Ghostscript
strategy it would be okay (after a year).

Ciao,

  Werner


[1] If you don't like the gratis version of CVS my company would be
glad to offer you a customized version with full support - it would be
quite an expensive beer, though.

-- 
Werner Koch                  Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit,   
FSF Europe                   dum habetur et non datur, nondum habetur,
Vice-Chancellor Germany      quomodo habenda est.        -- Augustinus