On Tuesday 31 May 2005 15:54, joachim Gwoke wrote: > mr. ernest you are right when you say linus gets to > approve what goes into the linux kernel as a patch or > other. word has it that he and a core of kernel > developers have access to something called the cvs; > some open source development management utility they > use for their kernel work .
Speaking of which: ************** Developers of the open source Linux operating system are about to lose a crucial software tool that lets them keep track of version changes. The loss could delay Linux development and even make the operating system more vulnerable to security breaches. Since 2002, Linux creator, Linus Torvalds, and thousands of Linux programmers have enjoyed free use of a development tool called BitKeeper. But as of July, BitKeeper's creator, Larry McVoy, will stop providing free software and support to the Linux effort. McVoy says he offered to let Linux programmers keep using BitKeeper without paying license fees. All he wanted was to recover the $500,000 a year it was costing him to provide support. Instead, Torvalds and his army are dropping BitKeeper, even though the move will disrupt Linux development as thousands of programmers switch over to a new home-grown tool that isn't even finished yet. "Losing BK [BitKeeper] clearly has slowed down things a bit already, and we don't know how much it will affect us in the longer term," Torvalds says via e-mail. He confirmed that version 2.6.12 of the Linux kernel was delayed a month because of the BitKeeper setback, but it will be available in a few weeks. To replace BitKeeper, Torvalds is developing his own rudimentary development tool, called git. However, McVoy says it took him five years to create an industrial strength version of BitKeeper, and he thinks Torvalds will find it difficult to create a full-fledged replacement. And whatever time Torvalds spends working on git is time he can't spend working on Linux. BitKeeper is a "source code management" tool, which lets teams of coders share revisions, automatically updating files that contain thousands or even millions of lines of software code. McVoy says BitKeeper lets Linux programmers crank out new versions twice as fast as they could before. BitKeeper also has protected the integrity of Linux. In 2003, BitKeeper detected a "back door" that a hacker had tried to plant into the operating system. Without BitKeeper, Linux now may be more vulnerable to such breaches, McVoy says. The loss of BitKeeper could even cause some developers to abandon Linux because their work will be harder to do, McVoy says. "It is certainly possible that this change will make some people decide that it is too painful, and they will go do something else. There is definitely going to be fall-out," says McVoy, whose company, BitMover, is based in South San Francisco. "It will be a few more months before things get back to normal. For the engineers who report to Linus, their lives just got worse." Greg Kroah-Hartman, a top lieutenant to Torvalds, says losing BitKeeper caused a "hiccup" in development for a few weeks but doesn't expect any long-term fall out. "The disruption is already over. We have all converted over to git and are working away as always," he says. Adding to the bad news, the Open Source Development Labs, which employs Torvalds and other key Linux coders, said this week that it had laid off an unspecified number of Linux developers. The irony of the BitKeeper fiasco is that McVoy originally created BitKeeper specifically for Torvalds, whom he considers a friend. McVoy, 43, is an operating system expert who has worked at Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ), Silicon Graphics (nyse: SGI - news - people ) and Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ). Since 1993, he has been a member of Torvalds' inner circle. Though BitKeeper is not an "open source" program--that is, users are not able to view and modify its source code--McVoy let Linux developers (and other open source programmers) use BitKeeper for free, even while charging commercial customers like Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ) and IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) annual license fees of up to $2,000 per user. McVoy says the cost of offering free support to Linux developers has grown to more than $500,000 a year, and he can't afford to keep paying the tab himself. "It was just becoming prohibitively expensive," he says. McVoy also became concerned after learning that one of OSDL's developers, Andrew Tridgell, was trying to create an open source knockoff of BitKeeper. McVoy says such a knockoff could corrupt BitKeeper repositories where code is stored. That threat prompted him to change his policy to "paying customers only." Tridgell did not respond to an e-mail inquiry. Torvalds says he doesn't approve of what Tridgell was trying to do. But he says he also wasn't willing to pay to use BitKeeper, adding that some open source developers weren't happy using a non-open source product such as BitKeeper anyway. Indeed, McVoy says some Linux coders have been hassling him for years, because he would not publish the source code for BitKeeper. "Here we were, working 90 hours a week to build something to help Linux, working long hours, giving up a lot of money and time, and all the time we were doing that, at every step of the way, we had people abusing us, sending us nasty e-mail, telling us we're jerks. It's been constant. It gets tiresome. After five years of that you just say: It doesn't make business sense and it isn't that fun." The flames have grown even hotter since McVoy decided to stop letting open source programmers use BitKeeper for free. "My response is, 'Let me know when your rent and college tuition are free, when gas and groceries are free, and when your girlfriend decides that you having no money is a great idea. When all that is true I'll get on the bandwagon, too.' Some people don't understand that it costs salaries to develop stuff and support stuff." McVoy says he hates to do something that will hinder the progress of Linux. But McVoy also questions the viability of open source as a business model for pure software companies. ************** Mark.
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