Linus pissed off
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| richo123 Apr 16, 2005 6:17 AM EDT |
Sounds to me like Linus is having a really hard time at present and is just hitting out at who he thinks is responsible. Understandable but perhaps not wise in the long term. Better to ring up Tridge and abuse him in private....(He's an Ozzie he can take it ;-)) |
| Tsela Apr 16, 2005 8:23 AM EDT |
Not understandable at all. Tridge did *nothing* wrong. And if Linus really thinks he did something wrong, then he has to be consistent and get rid of all the Linux drivers that were written through reverse-engineering. There are plenty of those. But I don't see him doing that, so right now he's just a hypocrite who can't admit he's been wrong all this time. Linus is having a hard time. Well boo-hoo. He has been warned from the very beginning that choosing BitKeeper would end up like that, not only by people like RMS but also by a lot of kernel developers who are just as responsible as he is for the success of Linux as it is today. But he decided not to listen to them and to push his own agenda. The Linux process isn't a democracy, so he had all the rights to do that, but now is the time to cope with the consequences. Rights come with responsibilities, remember? There's one person responsible for the mess Linux is in today. It's not McVoy, who whatever we think of him ethically speaking has the right to do whatever he wants with his own software. It's not Tridgell, who did nothing legally or ethically wrong. It's Torvalds himself, who made a decision three years ago, that ended up being a wrong decision. And he needs to admit it and cope with the consequences, rather than trying to avoid his responsibilities by putting the blame on innocent people. Right now Linus is acting like a small child who doesn't want to admit he broke the lamp. Perens says "Cool it", I say "Grow up". |
| robT Apr 16, 2005 9:00 AM EDT |
Hmmmm Someone lets me use something in my process without cost under certain conditions. Something that everyone agrees offers superior performance to any existing tool. Something that increases my productivity greatly. Then someone who is a part of my process violates the certain conditions and the someone who was letting me use the something revokes the agreement. So, Tsela, you're saying it's MY fault, but definitely not the fault of the someone who violated the certain conditions. "Cool it"? "Grow up"? No, I say "Wise up", Tsela. |
| devnet Apr 16, 2005 9:23 AM EDT |
Who cares if he uses proprietary stuff such as a G5 with Opera for his browser? So now, we need to screen what software people are using to develop open source software too? What the hell is that about? People need to just F'ing drop this nonsense. I'm so sick of purists thinking that it's all or none. A mixture of both GPL and non-GPL is a realistic approach to the social and economic settings of the world today. Instead of complaining about it and stagnating progress with their whining, how bout they pull their head out and re-channel their energy into something more productive? Of course, then they wouldn't have the chance to show that they are just as smart or smarter than Linus right? It's all about how far you can pee. This is something I've found out in the past 11 years in the IT world...no matter where you go, everyone will compare brain-pans with you. They'll do it at the expense of anything and everything just so that they can seem more intelligent in the midst of their peers. Afterall, in open source...that's all we have...recognition. One has to wonder...without recognition, would people even bother in open source (the high players that is). The answer should be yes...but I can see it being a resounding NO most of the time. Idiots...all of them. Linus uses bitkeeper. Who cares. He gets his work done and does it efficiently. Move on, shut up, and support your open source software. |
| Tsela Apr 16, 2005 11:29 AM EDT |
robT: Tridge was *never* violated *any* condition. Sorry to announce this to you like that, but trying to create a compatible client to BitKeeper wasn't even forbidden by BitMover's license. Only creating a competing product to BitKeeper as a whole. Tridgell never ever worked on that. And many kernel developers still disagree on the purported superior performance. So "Wise up" indeed. devnet: as I said, Linus was *completely* in his right to use BitKeeper. I myself still prefer Opera as a webbrowser to Firefox. It has things that enhance my browsing experience that Firefox lacks. But if one day Opera brings down its ad-supported version and asks me to pay an abnormal amount of money to get the payed version, using as excuse that someone reverse engineered some small part of the program, I won't whine in the media that that guy stole my cookie. I'll just bite the bullet and use Firefox instead, despite feeling it's far behind in terms of usability, because I knew from the beginning that using a piece of close-source software made such a situation possible. I let go part of my freedom for comfort, and there is *always* a price in doing such a thing. In other words, please do use close-source software if you feel it's the right thing to do at the moment. Just remember that it *always* puts you at the mercy of the person or company who produces it. Sometimes the gain justifies the loss of freedom. But don't whine if it falls back on you after a few years, especially when you've been warned already that it could happen. Don't take me wrong, Linus is a great guy who normally shows a very mature way of thinking. But in this case he is way off, and whatever status he has doesn't justify his current behaviour. But you're right on one point devnet: it's time to move on. This is the last time I'll say anything on that subject. Rights come with responsibilities, it's time I take mine up :) . |
| tuxchick Apr 16, 2005 12:05 PM EDT |
I agree with Tsela. Tridgell did nothing wrong, and it's outrageous for McVoy to try to get him fired from OSDL. All them Linus groupies need to quit worshiping Linus and wake up to the facts. The only reason there is even a controversy is because Linus is in the wrong on this, and because it is Linus a large number of people don't want to admit it. Get real- if anyone else advocated using something with an ever-changing, ridiculous license like BitKeeper for a F/OSS project they would get run out of town. Only Linus could get away with it. Don't waste any time feeling sorry for Larry McVoy- he is very good at pissing people off and stirring things up. He got what he wanted, and now he's taking his toys and going home. Just think if something with the promise of Monotone had had the benefit of three years of intense testing and development by some of the best minds in F/OSS- BitKeeper wouldn't even be on the radar. |
| tuxchick Apr 16, 2005 12:26 PM EDT |
Oh yeah, and can anyone here rationally defend McVoy punishing Linus et al for what Tridgell did? This whole story is worthy of the National Lampoon or Monty Python. |
| devnet Apr 16, 2005 2:57 PM EDT |
tuxchick, Agreed on that one...ridiculous. |
| dinotrac Apr 16, 2005 5:38 PM EDT |
Well, tuxchick, you tend to make a lot of sense. Unusual to see you being so wrong. Tridgell is not some anonymous hacker out in the wilderness reverse-engineering BitKeeper. He is not even Tridgell, Samba Guru. He is, at the moment, Linux Kernel guy and fellow at OSDL. I am not privy to the specifics of any agreement between Torvalds and McCoy and I do not know what Tridgell's actual (as opposed to stated) intentions were or are. It would appear, however, that Tridgell really didn't give a damn about any obligations -- which is not the same thing as legal requirements -- that his willingly accepted position might place upon him. And Mr. Perens sounds a bit like a jealous whiner here. Linus one of 200 developers? Last I looked, Linus is the one who holds the trademark. There's a reason we call it Linux and not Brucix. |
| tuxchick Apr 16, 2005 8:05 PM EDT |
Dino, first of all Tridgell is not reverse-engineering the entire BitKeeper program, if this is being reported accurately. He is reverse-engineering the protocols so he can write a client. This is exactly the same kind of work that is done everyday in the F/OSS world. And, as many people point out, he is not a BitKeeper licensee, so he is not bound by it. Secondly, the person creating the trouble is McVoy. He's self-serving, as most humans are, and Linus was foolish to make a deal with him. McVoy is the one to be mad at, not Tridgell. Yanking everyone's license because of Tridgell's actions is absurd. McVoy already proved he could not be trusted by continually modifying the BitKeeper license and placing more and more restrictions on its use. If Tridgell is breaching a contract, then shame on him. But so far there is no indication of any such contract. And even if that is the case, McVoy still looks like a dork for "punishing" everyone but Tridgell. |
| dinotrac Apr 16, 2005 8:34 PM EDT |
It doesn't matter if he is breaching a contract or breaking a law. As a kernel developer, he has an obligation not to screw up whatever arrangement Linus has made. He was and is perfectly free to decide that his freedom to reverse engineer protocols is more important to him than being a kernel developer. That's legit. Deciding that none of it matters and doing as he damned well pleases sounds more like a petulant child than a responsible developer. |
| PaulFerris Apr 17, 2005 3:03 AM EDT |
The most disturbing things here for me is not the bitkeeper license thing, or what Tridge did. What disturbs me is you have Linus saying that Tridge did something wrong, in public -- Tridge not able to open his mouth, and Perens (who should know better, IMHO) calling linus "a real idiot" -- The Register is having a field day with sound bites like this. Then he goes on to tell the head of BK to "shut up". The damage is not technical at all. BTW, Linus, in his original post called Tridge a idiot or something similar. But, reading Linus's post, I can see something fundamental going on. He's pissed because he has to write source code management software that he didn't want to write. Not everyone can do that, by the way. I hope he decides to GPL it ;) my guess is he will. Second, I agree with his fundamental point. here's the link to his post -- read it carefully. I think it would have gone over a lot better had he kept his diplomacy hat in check: http://www.realworldtech.com/forums/index.cfm?action=detail&... I'm not going to call any of the parties in question an idiot by the way. Just wish that the amplitude of the words in response to this was in the dampening direction, instead of the wave-generating kind. --FeriCyde |
| peragrin Apr 17, 2005 3:56 AM EDT |
Is trigdell even a kerenel developer? Does he write patchs for the kernel on top of Samaba? I truely don't know but I don't think so, or maybe nothing more than a few speed enhancments for the networking stacks. Was trigdell a member bound by the bitkeeper license. no one is saying yes or no to that. If he wasn't then he can do what ever he wants. going on the assumption that tridgell was never a licensee of bitkeeper, it's absurd to think Bitmover would hav ethe authority to try and force trigdell's employer to fire him. Now the other direction, if trigdell was a bitkeeper licensee then he was breaking a contract. NO ONE is giving out specifics. |
| robT Apr 17, 2005 7:55 AM EDT |
How could Tridgell reverse engineer anything about bitkeeper without access to the application? If he got access to it, one might presume he did so through the kernel development process. Obviously there's a lot of speculation involved in this thread, but if the bitkeeper license contained a provision prohibiting reverse engineering, at least the owner thought that what Tridgell was doing violated that agreement. It would appear that at least Tridgell's lawyer thinks he might have violated the terms of the bitkeeper license. It is not particularly well settled in the law whether or not reverse engineering is automatically allowed under the fair use doctrine, nor is it settled whether the copyright fair use doctrein trumps license provisions specifically prohibiting reverse engineering. Either way, if I let you use my product without cost under the condition that you do not reverse engineer it, you accept my offer and then go ahead and reverse engineer it, how is that not unethical and/or wrong? Just because you think I should have given you "free" access in the Stallman sense? Or just because you believe you ought to be able to because of fair use? |
| TxtEdMacs Apr 17, 2005 8:00 AM EDT |
FeriCyde - my compliments, that was a very well reasoned post. [No sarcasm intended nor present!] |
| dinotrac Apr 17, 2005 9:25 AM EDT |
A couple of points: Paulie, you are right (as usual, though I hate to admit it). The wordstorm is inappropriate, and Mr. Perens's especially so, since it tended to exascerbate and amplify Linus's outburst. Blessed are the peacemakers and all that - Perens, for whatever reason, decided to vent rather than to heal. Linus made his points very well, BTW, but I will add one more note. OpenOffice and Samba are, as he points out, useful products in their own right, but they are more than that. They are, in effect, open-source implementations of de-facto computing standards. The interoperability they provide is vital to the growth of free software. The same cannot be said bout BitKeeper. If there is a de-facto standard in commercial source-code control, ClearCase is a much better candidate for reverse-engineering than BitKeeper. |
| TxtEdMacs Apr 17, 2005 11:57 AM EDT |
dinotrac: I really wonder if you ever used that amazing product, if you can say: "... ClearCase is a much better candidate for reverse-engineering ..." If that is the better product, free software should look elsewhere. [Caveat: I make no pretense I am or was an expert with ClearCase - though I once instructed an individual that made great claims about both the powers of and his extensive experience with ClearCase, yet copied my instructions verbatim.] |
| dinotrac Apr 17, 2005 1:09 PM EDT |
TxtEdMacs -- Sorry to have been unclear. I will tell you that most conversations I have involving ClearCase tend to replace Case with a different 4 letter word. I meant only that ClearCase is much closer to being a de-facto standard than BitKeeper is. I never meant to imply that ClearCase is better than, as good as, or, quite frankly, even in the same league as BitKeeper. |
| tuxchick Apr 18, 2005 12:15 PM EDT |
McVoy is still the bad guy. He is punishing everyone but Andrew Tridgell for whatever "transgression" he committed. That's lame and irrational. McVoy is who Linus should be mad at, not Tridgell. And it's far from clear what crime Tridgell committed. By some accounts he was doing what he always does- decoding the protocols as they came over the wire, and figuring out how to interoperate with a closed, restrictive, proprietary product. Linus can preach all day about how BitKeeper has advanced the state of the art (see Fericyde's link), but it hasn't- it has only advanced itself. McVoy has exerted tremendous effort to keep BitKeeper's advances locked away, even to the point of complaining about anyone who might try to copy the concepts and ideas behind it. That is not advancing anything but his own interests. This beautifully demonstrates why GPL software is needed, and how quickly a closed, proprietary product can turn around and bite back. And it also demonstrates what a self-serving hypocrite McVoy is. He received tremendous support and priceless PR from the kernel team, and he built on the work of others. And now he wants to keep it all to himself, and not even acknowledge that anyone else contributed to BitKeeper's success, like he invented it in a vacuum and every idea and line of code is completely original. That's the kind of baloney that the GPL aims to protect us from, and that's why Linus was wrong to make a deal with McVoy in the first place. Especially when he demonstrated how undependable he was by changing the terms of the BitKeeper license practically every day- what kind of crap is that? You don't do business with people you can't trust. Linus blew it. It's not the end of the world, but he should own up to making a bad deal, instead of blaming the wrong people for the deal blowing up in his face. |
| robT Apr 18, 2005 4:13 PM EDT |
I vote to rename this thread "tuxchick pissed off" ;-) |
| sbergman27 Apr 20, 2005 9:29 AM EDT |
Wow. Lot's of animosity here. Well, FWIW, here's my take on the matter. The whole bitkeeper thing was one of those rare examples of Linus making a real mistake, and then stubbornly refusing to see it. That's unusual. I usually find myself in agreement with him. (Not that I always feel qualified to have an opinion. The guy's is in a totally different league than me.) Linux seems to feel that Tridge ignored the 'inevitable' problems that his actions were sure to cause. I submit that the current situation became inevitable the day that Linux decided to use a proprietary SCM system for the kernel. Note that I am intentionally *NOT* arguing either way on whether using a proprietary tool for the kernel is morally right or wrong. I have my opinion on the matter, but it is totally irrelevant to the point that I am trying to make. Linus' famed sense of "pragmatism" failed him completely in this instance. You see, introducing a proprietary tool into Open Source's flagship, "poster boy" project was the single *LEAST* pragmatic thing that Linus could possibly have done. And from the day that he did so, the only real question was how long it would take before the whole thing blew up in his face. People told him this over and over. (Though perhaps not in those exact words.) Linus refused to listen. At any rate, that's all milk spilled over the dam, now. The good news is that: 1. It's starting to look like the recovery time from this mistake might not be that great. GIT is coming along nicely, and since it's not an SCM, but a filesystem suitable *for use by* and SCM, I predict a marriage between it and one or more of the existing SCM projects. (This seems a pretty safe bet since it is *already* happening. ;-) 2. If this situation had to happen (and it did) this was a good time for it to happen. Kernel development is *ahead* of where anyone would ever have predicted that it would be at this point. (And yes, in part that is due to Bitkeeper.) 3. The main benefits derived from bitkeeper by the kernel development process had less to do with Bitkeeper, per se, and more to do with what Linus and the other developers learned from using Bitkeeper. These are lessons that can be taken with them. They will continue to apply them regardless of what direction they go with kernel SCM. 4. This last point is either good, bad, or irrelevant, depending upon your point of view. But I'll let it slip that I don't much care for Larry's attitude. (Hi, Tuxchick! :-) Mark my words. (And keep in mind the marriage between GIT and Monotone, Arch, DARCS, whatever.) At some point in the future, with the benefit of hindsight, we will all look back on these recent events and say: "That, right there, was where McVoy made his mistake. In trying to avoid competition from the Open Source community, he inadvertently conjured up a monster out of his worst nightmares, and sowed the seeds of his own company's destruction. Isn't poetic justice cool? (OK. Perhaps a more likely outcome is that one day Bitover will have to embrace OSS in order to compete. But, hey, saying that would have been sooooooooo much less dramatic. ;-) |
| devnet Apr 20, 2005 11:54 AM EDT |
I don't think Linus failed at all...he chose something that was free and that worked great. Then the license changed. |
| sbergman27 Apr 20, 2005 12:23 PM EDT |
I did not say that Linus failed. I said that his famed sense of pragmatism failed him completely in this instance. Linus "making a mistake" is quite a different thing than Linus "failing", which is something that I never expect to say. It does demonstrate that he is human. You are correct. The license changed. Many times. But that was not the core of the problem. BK was proprietary at the beginning, and was still proprietary at the end. Now without passing judgement on that issue myself, there is no doubt in my mind that the situation could never have been contained. The BK issue has been a ticking time bomb since the day Linus made the decision to use it. I'm not complaining, though. I'm quite happy with where we are today. They kernel is in great shape. Things are getting worked out. OSS SCM systems are about to get a big boost. And I do like the fact that kernel development no longer depends upon proprietary tools. |
| devnet Apr 21, 2005 5:09 AM EDT |
Found a better article on this. Many new sites it seems were blasting things out of proportion...go figure. This one actually reports the NEWS and doesn't try to incite a flame war. Wow...what a concept.: http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0... |
| TxtEdMacs Apr 21, 2005 6:24 AM EDT |
devnet: The last line of the article was a gem. And I thought 'Git' was slang for 'Get Out of Here!', something spoken to horses in grade B cowboy movies ... |
| bstadil Apr 21, 2005 12:48 PM EDT |
GIT is among other UK slang for a worthless person. |
| Armand Apr 21, 2005 3:17 PM EDT |
We own Linus a great big thank you! THANK YOU LINUS!!! |
| AnonymousCoward Apr 23, 2005 3:47 AM EDT |
robT: this is how the reverse engineering proceeded: telnet hostname.of.bk.server 5000 help ...think... ^]q echo clone|nc bk.svr 5000 >file.sccs Complicated, huh? And immoral? Who was the help intended for? |
| robT Apr 23, 2005 7:37 AM EDT |
AnonymousCoward: Yeah, thanks for the post. You must have realized that I unable to read the other 1/2-dozen links on this. It is so nice of you to be so helpful. Complicated? No. Is this all that was going on? I'm not convinced, but I'm a cynic. Immoral? I can't answer that without a lot of speculation, but if this is all that was going on a lot of people need to consider self medication. Who was the help for? You probably have your own ideas for that. |
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