Re: Warning to Debian Developers regarding BitKeeper
Michael Cardenas <michaelc@lindows.com> writes:
> On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 01:29:45AM +0200, Russell Coker wrote:
> > Hmm, maybe as an act of protest we should all try and find some
> > way to help coding on Arch or Subversion. If every Debian
> > developer averaged a week's coding on one of those two projects
> > we'll have something that will kick butt all over BK!
>
> How about if all debian developers who work on the kernel stop working
> on it until bitkeeper is ditched. That would be a real protest.
>
> Since every debian developer has agreed to act in accordance with the
> debian social contract, and the social contract clrealy states that
> "we will never make the system depend on an item of non-free
> software", then we obviously can't support development of the
> kernel. The kernel depends on being developed, and non-free software
> is needed to develop for it. It all depends how you interpret the
> phrase "depend on".
As several people on the kernel mailing list have pointed out, at the
moment development is _not_ dependent on BK. Linus accepts patches in
unified diff format, BK uses SCCS format internally, so patches can be
obtained directly without using BK at all. Also several kernel
developers offered their help setting up lists and such where people
not using BK can stay up to date with Linus' tree. (E.g., Rik van Riel
is doing something in that direction.) Surely at the moment developers
using BK have a slight advantage, but it seems that even the other
developers profit by having easier access to Linus' tree than
before. I like Russell's idea much better, proving Larry McVoy wrong
in his claim that "something like BK could not be developed as free
software". Linus and several other core kernel developers are
pragmatists who will not be convinced by political protests but rather
by technical excellence. E.g., Rik expressed his interest in seeing an
arch repository of the kernel source, but the people who announced it
have not set it up, it seems.
Also, if the linux kernel was developed with non-free development
tools, it would not become non-free software itself. It is still GPL
and anybody interested can take it, modify it, fork it or whatever is
allowed under terms of the GPL. Debian developers do not have to
commit not developing non-free software outside of Debian, so I do not
see a big problem for Debian here. I would certainly like the kernel
revision control system to be free, but realistically we will only get
this if we offer Linus something which can compete with BK in
functionality. I have not yet used arch, but if it is as good as its
advocates say, why not set up a kernel repository?
Lukas
P.S.: The problem with Larry McVoy running around, intimidating and
suing people is of course a different story, and this may be relevant
to Debian developers who use BK, so I think Branden's posting to this
list was appropriate.
--
People disagree with me. I just ignore them.
-- Linus Torvalds, regarding the use of C++ for the Linux kernel
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