Bitkeeper in Linuxdevelopment :(

Joerg Schilling schilling at fokus.gmd.de
Thu Feb 7 16:52:31 UTC 2002


>From jeroen at dekkers.cx Thu Feb  7 16:46:40 2002

>On Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 01:05:38PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
>> The result is that there is only CVS which cannot be called free.

>Am I missing something? AFAIK CVS is completely free.

Yup, you are missing the difference between free beer and freedom.

While the CVD program is free, it does not give me the needed freedom.

Please note: in the 1980s CVS has been free only for universities.

		The CVS authors did create a script that converts SCCS
		history fiules into RCS history files but not vice
		versa. 

If I would have beeen interested to test CVS and later would find that I 
don't like it, I would not have the freedom to convert back to SCCS.

This was the most important reason for me not to convert to CVS in
the 1980s.

Bitkeeper SCCS has other limitations in freedom of use but I see no reason
why CVS should be any better.

Bitkeeper comes with source, you may use it for free if you send all delta logs
to openlog.org ??. You are allowed to modify it if the result passes the
regression test and if openlog.org is down for more then 3 months ??
then it becomes GPL'd.



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