Linux and BitKeeper
April 6th, 2005This is by no means a topic I am an expert on. I do not develop the kernel, am not even on the mailing list, nor do I know the full story. The only shred of credibility I have is that I stayed on Larry’s couch nearly a year ago. Even then, however, we only had one good bitkeeper discussion. Alas, everyone has an opinion…
BitKeeper is right on. From the discussion with Larry, allowing open source projects to use BK was something he was doing out of sheer kindness. The bonus for the project is that they get a good source code management. For BK there might be some marketing wins, a few write-offs, and get to help out the community. A nice win win. When people, or companies, do something stupid that takes from this common good it is only reasonable to end the situation.
Linus is fine with it. Greg is fine with it. Larry is obviously fine with it. Seems like the situation is a win win again.
Now I am super excited to see what source code management software comes out of the woodwork. Something is going to have to step up. Thank BK for forcing innovation and creating another win!
