[Savannah-hackers] Re: Fighting BitKeeper: There is no such thing as a Free Lunch

[Shlomi Fish]

On 19 Nov 2002, Mathieu Roy wrote:

> Shlomi Fish <address@hidden> said:
>
> > On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Jaime E. Villate wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 01:35:11PM +0200, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > > > At the moment the situation in the free software world is that two
> > > > alternatives with public hosting exist:
> > > >
> > > > 1. CVS - old, reliable but a pain to work with. Fully Free.
> > > >
> > > > 2. BitKeeper - very good, and a joy to work with. Distributed under a 
> > > > very
> > > > restrictive license.
> > > BitKeeper is not free software, therefore it is not an alternative.
> > >
> >
> > I think you erroneously believed that "use only free software" idealism is
> > shared by all free software developers out there. That is far from being
> > the case. It is not the case for me and it is not the case for most of the
> > FS developers I personally know. I know a few free software bigots but at
> > least one is also using BitKeeper.
>
> I do not think I can collaborate with someone that consider people at
> GNU as "bigots". But this is not the first time I read this from you.
> At http://www.advogato.org/person/shlomif/diary.html?start=93 you said
> being "afraid to make use of the GNU Savannah Hosting [...] because of
> their fanatism"
>

I do not think people who strictly use only free software are irrational.
However, I do think that people who try to enforce this policy upon their
surrounding hackers are. If I don't eat pork - that's perfectly fine. If I
force anyone in Israel not to eat pork - that's using force.


> At http://www.advogato.org/person/shlomif/diary.html?start=33
> you also give your point of view on Savannah - really
> interesting. I'll will not comment this; I already done this.
>

I did not use Savannah because it forced all contents of my repository to
be free software (similarly to what Larry McVoy said with BitKeeper now)
and because I needed something better than that.

> You're free to think that taking free software as a political stand is
> bigotism, fanatism (I personally do not think you really understand
> the meanings of those words) but as good "Human Engineer" (an
> expression you seem to appreciate - personally, I do not consider
> humans as engines) you'll probably understand the fact that any
> discussion here are related to political matters too, and why it's
> possible to say here that "BitKeeper [...] is not an alternative" for us.
>

BK is not an alternative to you, maybe, but it is an alternative to the
many free software developers out there, who want to get their work done.
You can download it, it will work out of the box, you can use the
bkbits.net service to host it, and you can get support from the
bitkeeper-users mailing list. By rejecting a hosting of Subversion you are
simply leaving people no choice but to choose it, despite its
restrictions.

BitMover now has a monopoly on hosting of usable alternatives to CVS with
hosting. As such, they can very much abuse their customers.

>
> > Some Savannah users are just looking for hosting for thier projects
> > and don't care too much about ideals. And some (like me) will
> > greatly appreciate something better than CVS.
>
> "don't care [...] about ideals" -> "something better than CVS".
>
> How do you link this two phrases?
> This confusion seems particulary significative.
>

What is the problem? I don't care too much whether I exclusively use free
software or not, _and_ would like to use something better than CVS to VC
my projects. I liked BitKeeper when I used it and I like Subversion now. I
can live with CVS, but I don't like it half as much as I like Subversion
and very much less than BK.

Regards,

        Shlomi Fish

>
>
>



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        address@hidden
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/

He who re-invents the wheel, understands much better how a wheel works.