BitKeeper licence critic // was ... license critic

[John Tapsell]

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> Is there anything we can practically do to change the bk decision? It looks
> like bk has raised more than enough technical problems of its own.  Maybe
> Aegis solves some of them?  Aegis also have problems marketing themselves.
> PDF manuals, really, in this day and age!  ;_)

IMHO, its pointless persuing this - linus knows the BK guys quite well (from 
what it seems).   And while I sympathise with people that say its isn't Free, 
its is free as in money, and the developers will implement any sensible ideas 
people suggest, and have stated several times that it is a very complex bit 
of software, far more complex than say the kernel.  This requires a full time 
staff to develop it, and they are being paid to develop it by companies that 
require such a software - the BK people are trying to give the best of both 
worlds, and I personally wish them the best of luck.

But on the otherhand I realise the danger (whatif BK 'goes bad' when we are 
all dependant etc)  but they have added clauses that it will go GPL if they 
go out of business, etc etc. and are trying to counter most of the usual bad 
points.

I think that there are a lot better fights to pick than this one - but then 
again I see the dangers - I'm not blind to history.

JohnFlux
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