Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262845AbUJ1JVZ (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Oct 2004 05:21:25 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262846AbUJ1JVZ (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Oct 2004 05:21:25 -0400 Received: from smtp.andrew.cmu.edu ([128.2.10.82]:34510 "EHLO smtp.andrew.cmu.edu") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262845AbUJ1JUv (ORCPT ); Thu, 28 Oct 2004 05:20:51 -0400 Message-ID: <4180B9E9.3070801@andrew.cmu.edu> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 05:20:41 -0400 From: James Bruce User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (X11/20040918) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Linus Torvalds CC: Roman Zippel , Andrea Arcangeli , Larry McVoy , Linux Kernel Subject: Re: BK kernel workflow References: <20041023161253.GA17537@work.bitmover.com> <4d8e3fd304102403241e5a69a5@mail.gmail.com> <20041024144448.GA575@work.bitmover.com> <4d8e3fd304102409443c01c5da@mail.gmail.com> <20041024233214.GA9772@work.bitmover.com> <20041025114641.GU14325@dualathlon.random> <1098707342.7355.44.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20041025133951.GW14325@dualathlon.random> <20041025162022.GA27979@work.bitmover.com> <20041025164732.GE14325@dualathlon.random> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3881 Lines: 82 Linus Torvalds wrote: >On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Roman Zippel wrote: > > >>Linus, what disturbs me here is that I don't see that you don't even try >>to acknowledge that the bk license might be part of problem >> >> > >Why? > >What's the problem? You don't like it, you don't use it. It's literally >that simple. > >This is the same thing as with the GPL. I absolutely _detest_ people who >whine about the GPL - and there are more GPL haters out there than BK >haters. It's _their_ problem. > >EXACT SAME THING. Nobody has the right to whine about another persons >choice of license. You have a choice: use it or don't. Complaining about >the license to the author isn't part of it. > > Actually it's not that simple. With the free BK license it's not _your_ choice that affects validity; It's the choice of any person at your company deciding for everyone else. So if one OSDL employee uses the free BK licence, *nobody else* at OSDL can work on an SCM, even at home in their spare time. Technically, if any one of the other 10,000 people at my university work on an SCM, I can't use it either since they pay me. I try to bury my head in the sand and think that they aren't. In reality however, I can't vouch for what the other 9,999 people are doing. Here's the relevant sentence in the license: 3(d) Notwithstanding any other terms in this License, this License is not available to You if You and/or your employer develop, produce, sell, and/or resell a product which contains substantially similar capabilities of the BitKeeper Software, or, in the reasonable opinion of BitMover, competes with the BitKeeper Software. IOW: "Not available to You if your employer develops anything substantially similar." At least 90% of the whining/hate comes from this single clause in the license. We know from the past that Larry won't budge on it, and that is of course his right. However it is not true to say that this is like the GPL, or any MSFT license even. None of them go that far in regulating what *other* people can do, especially what they can do at home, away from work. My uni just opened a branch campus in Qatar; If a student earns $10 to add some feature to SVN, it affects whether I can use BK for free at home on an open source project. The alternative is paying a $2,600 per year seat license. Imagine if in 1991, DOS/Windows cost $2,600 a year, unless you promised that neither you nor your employer would work on an operating system. That would cause a lot of argument, with pragmatic people trying to use the system for ordinary development of non-OSes, and others screaming about the "corrupt principles" and pushing alternatives, even if they suck in a features comparison. Why is anyone surprised that this is happening now with BK? BK is by far the best SCM I have ever used, and the only one that supports distributed development both sanely and robustly. But frankly, it has a clause in its license that will generate arguments without end, ones which will *not* go away with time. Larry, if anything is wrong in my analysis of the meaning of clause 3c, I would love to stand corrected. Preferably that would take the form of an updated license. I believe the analysis to be consistent with the wording of the clause; Several of my colleagues also analyzed the license and came to the exact same conclusions. Jim Bruce (Sorry for being OT. Having said my only point on this topic, which I've held since the BK thing began, I will return to only reading these threads, after this one. I welcome off-list discussions and/or flames too.) - 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/