Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261948AbVBJVRL (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:17:11 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261952AbVBJVRL (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:17:11 -0500 Received: from ipcop.bitmover.com ([192.132.92.15]:17301 "EHLO mail.bitmover.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261948AbVBJVRF (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:17:05 -0500 Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 13:17:00 -0800 To: Alexandre Oliva Cc: Stelian Pop , Francois Romieu , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [RFC] Linux Kernel Subversion Howto Message-ID: <20050210211700.GA26361@bitmover.com> Mail-Followup-To: lm@bitmover.com, Alexandre Oliva , Stelian Pop , Francois Romieu , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20050204201157.GN27707@bitmover.com> <20050204214015.GF5028@deep-space-9.dsnet> <20050204233153.GA28731@electric-eye.fr.zoreil.com> <20050205193848.GH5028@deep-space-9.dsnet> <20050205233841.GA20875@bitmover.com> <20050208154343.GH3537@crusoe.alcove-fr> <20050208155845.GB14505@bitmover.com> <20050209155113.GA10659@bitmover.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i From: lm@bitmover.com (Larry McVoy) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3002 Lines: 57 Hi Alexandre, It seems like you've made up your mind that we are operating out of pure self interest and have no desire to help you or anyone else unless we get something out of it. In other words, we're making our decisions based on the net positive/negative effect on our business. Is that a fair assessment of your position? It's clear that the path we took has generated illwill amongst some of you, the web is full of BK license is awful pages, etc. It's a matter of the public record that we had at least some idea that this was going to happen, we didn't expect that you'd all be happy with this arrangement. So if we knew that doing this would hurt our business, which according you is the only thing we care about, then why would we do it? The usual response is the marketing value we get out of it. Yes, we certainly do get some positive marketing out of this. We also get a ton of negative marketing, you are aware of that, right? Is it your opinion that the postive marketing we get outweighs the negative? That's possible, I don't think it's true, but lets suppose it is. That's only part of the picture. The other part is that we are taking a huge risk by giving away the product to very group that is most motivated to copy it, and if a good enough copy existed it is unlikely our business would success. If you are willing to believe that we have good good enough management here that we were aware of this, and we added up the illwill and the IP risk and did it anyway. Why? Why would any business do something that was obviously a poor business decision? Please don't take the cheap shot and say we are idiots, the founder of your company has advised us from day one as have others. We knew what we were doing. Can you offer any plausible explanation other than a good faith desire to help the open source community, albeit in a non-traditional way? This is perhaps a hard concept to grasp but we are basically saying we're willing to help everyone except the people who want to take our business away. I would guess that over 99.999% of the open source in the world has nothing to do with SCM. That's a lot of source that we can help. You are saying we are an evil money grubbing corporation because we don't want to give our technology to our competitors. Fair enough, that's true, we don't. What you aren't admitting is that we have done a lot of good for your community, we continue to provide the tools, the support, the infrastructure, and we do it in spite of it not being a very good business decision. If we get no credit in your mind for all of that then I don't think we have any basis for further discussion. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.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/