Here's the best assurance that I can give the free software crowd.
Listen closely, because this is as good as it gets. With BitKeeper,
I provide a rcs2sccs script that preserves all the information in the
RCS file. I'll also write, *before* I ask you to consider BitKeeper,
an sccs2rcs script that goes backwards. At that point, I've given you,
for free (and I ought to bloody well charge you dearly, but I'm not),
an escape route. If you don't like my stuff then either don't use it or
run away from it - I'll even help you run away from it. What other
source mgmt system is so confident that the first thing it says is
"if you don't like, here's how you back out to something you know
without mucking up your revision history".
[In response to the various "I won't use it people", not to the person
quoted above, no offense intended to him/her]
I'm sort of pissed off at the people saying "we'll just fix CVS" - my
answer to them is why the heck haven't you already if you think you can?
You've had almost 10 years to fix CVS. It still sucks and people know it.
Whining about licenses when you have no interest and no intent to fix
the problem yourself is not productive and doesn't help your cause.
I'm also pissed off because I've been someone that has fought hard for
the free software cause at the corporate level. And come to the aid of
people who needed it. Ask Miller who got him his job. Ask Becker who
got him the only money he's ever gotten for any Linux work. Ask Linus
what lmbench has done for Linux. I've done plenty for the free software
community, never gotten a dime for it, taken a ton of corporate shit
for it, taken another ton of shit from the *BSD crowd for it, and
I'm currently spending my own money to try and help out more. And I
just turned down a job a great startup, extremely likely to make me
rich enough, because Linus is about to lose it and I think I can help
prevent that. And if I had taken the startup job I would not have had
time to finish BitKeeper.
Don't get me wrong - it's not like I'm suffering by working on BitKeeper,
I love it, I know I'm good at it and that it will help people. So I
don't regret giving up other stuff to work on this. But I draw the line
at this whiney "If it's not GPLed I won't use it". That's just immature
and naive. All it does is try and derail me from producing something
which could be very helpful to the Linux cause.
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