> Douglas Ridgway <ridgwayÉwinehq.com> writes: > > > 1. Bitkeeper is proprietary software from a company which > plans to earn > > revenue. There's nothing wrong with using proprietary > software to help > > build nonproprietary software; after all, even people with > purely free > > systems on the software side are still using proprietary > hardware (Intel > > chips, etc.) We should choose the tools that make the most > sense for us to > > use. > > There's nothing wrong with Bitmover wanting to make money; though we > should think twice before using a proprietary tool when a free one > exists, since doing so may prevent potential developers from joining > the project, if Bitkeeper is really better than CVS I wouldn't object > to paying for it. Well, I don't imagine having a _read_only_ CVS mirror of BitKeeper server that is automatically updated will be that difficult. Especially since we have the BitKeeper source and are allowed to change it. I imagine all open source projects that uses BitKeeper wants to have that, so we probably will not even have write it ourselves. Actually I can even see Larry McVoy doing it himself, just to get open source projects to use BitKeeper. It can't be that hard can it, perhaps he has even done so already. > My problem with their license is that I consider that privacy is a > right, not something that you should have to buy. Your property like for example your money is a right too, but it doesn't mean that it is wrong to exchange it for other things such as for example food. > A tool that is > designed to publish a trace of everything you do is IMO wrong from a > moral standpoint, and so I refuse to use it. It doesn't publish a trace of everything you do. It publishes the change commentaries (ChangeLog entries). >From the BitKeeper license: < Open Logging: The transmission of meta information, such as change commen- < taries about the data managed by the BitKeeper Software, to a function- < ing Open Logging server in the openlogging.org domain (or an alternative < domain as posted on www.bitkeeper.com/logging). See for your self what they publish at http://www.openlogging.org. > And I'll still refuse > even if Bitmover makes an exception for the Wine project. For me it's > a question of principle. >From the BitKeeper license: < 4.3. Logging Waivers < < Sites which do not wish to have their changes logged on an Open Logging < server, such as educational or research institutes, should apply for, and may < be granted, a written waiver from BitMover, Inc. Having an exception won't be unique. However I'm not sure that it is needed. >From the BitKeeper license: < BitKeeper Project: A set of files managed by the same BitKeeper ChangeSet < file. There may be multiple instances of the project; each instance is < called a repository. < < Single user BitKeeper project: A BitKeeper project wherein all changes to all < files are made by the same person. [snip] < 4.1. Single user projects < < For single user BitKeeper projects, Open Logging is optional. So if you have a local BitKeeper server for your personal private project that you intend to release to the world some day, as your example in a previous mail was, you may do so without logging. The only thing that is open to interpretation is whether it is allowed to have a private repositary that is "shared", for syncronisation with new Wine versions, in some ways with the main Wine repositary. The things it that it is probably, regardless of what the license is supposed to mean, possible to work around this by simply manually applying a patch generated from the main Wine server, this way all changes are made by the the same person. Of course this person are not the author of all the changes, but the BitKeeper license doesn't require that.
