What do to about BitKeeper and the Linux Kernel (was: BitKeeper licence critic)

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 08:41:01PM +0100, Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 02:17:49AM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > Is there anything we can practically do to change the bk decision? 
> 
> Create awareness, spread the word.
> LWN reports about a small pedition:
> 	http://lwn.net/2002/0307/a/bitkeeper-petition.php3
> There is a summary on the kernel page: http://lwn.net/2002/0307/kernel.php3

Linus wrote an email about the subject.
http://lwn.net/daily/lt-bitkeeper.php3

| In short: nobody requires BK of anybody else.

I tend to disagree strongly on the following point.

| And I personally refuse to use inferior tools because of ideology.

For me using Free Software is not about ideology, but long term pragmatism.
Thus Linus weights freedom of software less important then I do.

The interesting part of the mail is that he gives pointers 
on what we could do to improve the situation if we want to hack on software:

| The most productive thing people could do might be to just do a
| BK->CVS gateway, if you really feel like it.  

This might be a good idea if it will help the transistion to CVS
or other Free Software tools. It is not a good idea if it helps
people to continue using BK.

He also writes:
| I took a look at
|   subversion, and it doesn't even come close to what I wanted.

Implying that he did not look at Aegis yet.
If Aegis is worth a look, we could check it regarding Linus' needs
and make it easy for him to try it.

	Bernhard


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