CaptainPinko
04-15-2005, 07:28 PM
From what I've followed on /. and El Reg it seems to me that Tridgell is a giant ***. People can rant and rave all they want about GPL purity and whether it was perfectly legal and it still doesn't have anything to do with the price of potatoes.
AFAIK McVoy -the owner of BitKeeper- told the OSDL that they could freely use BitKeeper as long as they didn't try to compete with it and the OSDL accepted it.
Tridgell by joining the OSDL entered in the agreement not to compete with it; but thats exactly what he did.
It's not like this was a surprised; he had been warned and cautioned beforehand.
The fact that Tridgell is famous for reverse engineering is COMPLETELY irrelevant: he had no agreement with Microsoft and Microsoft didn't do him any favours. While what he did with SAMBA is admirable, what he did with BitKeeper is flat out betrayal. Frankly, if someone belts him one I won't feel terribly sorry for him.
Oh, and any arguement that tries to argue necessity is fundamentally flawed too since there is *NO* necessity in Linux. Frankly, Linux is Linus's baby and he can use whatever tools he likes: Microsoft SourceSafe should he choose. If you don't like it and don't want to use a proprietary product you can fork it, use a CVS/SVN tree, switch to a different kernel or reverse engineer one when not bound not to.
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Now, I realise this is somewhat toasty but thats since the issue has been bothering me lately. I don't consider this a troll since I actually want to discuss this and wouldn't call my arguement/position trivial. I actually read through the Wikipedia definition of troll and don't feel this falls under the category.
If you require background info on the issue search /. or El Reg (http://www.theregister.co.uk)
PS-- while we are at it "pointed out that the closed source tool was foisted on kernel developers despite the consensus that it was inappropriate for a GPL project" (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/15/perens_on_torvalds/) really bothers me. The kernel comes with a license not an ethic nor it is the embodiment of some transcendent truth; people work on it work on it for their own reasons and saying 'appropriate' is passing a morla judgement.
AFAIK McVoy -the owner of BitKeeper- told the OSDL that they could freely use BitKeeper as long as they didn't try to compete with it and the OSDL accepted it.
Tridgell by joining the OSDL entered in the agreement not to compete with it; but thats exactly what he did.
It's not like this was a surprised; he had been warned and cautioned beforehand.
The fact that Tridgell is famous for reverse engineering is COMPLETELY irrelevant: he had no agreement with Microsoft and Microsoft didn't do him any favours. While what he did with SAMBA is admirable, what he did with BitKeeper is flat out betrayal. Frankly, if someone belts him one I won't feel terribly sorry for him.
Oh, and any arguement that tries to argue necessity is fundamentally flawed too since there is *NO* necessity in Linux. Frankly, Linux is Linus's baby and he can use whatever tools he likes: Microsoft SourceSafe should he choose. If you don't like it and don't want to use a proprietary product you can fork it, use a CVS/SVN tree, switch to a different kernel or reverse engineer one when not bound not to.
---
Now, I realise this is somewhat toasty but thats since the issue has been bothering me lately. I don't consider this a troll since I actually want to discuss this and wouldn't call my arguement/position trivial. I actually read through the Wikipedia definition of troll and don't feel this falls under the category.
If you require background info on the issue search /. or El Reg (http://www.theregister.co.uk)
PS-- while we are at it "pointed out that the closed source tool was foisted on kernel developers despite the consensus that it was inappropriate for a GPL project" (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/15/perens_on_torvalds/) really bothers me. The kernel comes with a license not an ethic nor it is the embodiment of some transcendent truth; people work on it work on it for their own reasons and saying 'appropriate' is passing a morla judgement.