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Date:      Sat, 23 Jul 2016 19:31:13 +0200
From:      =?utf-8?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=C3=B8rgrav?= <des@des.no>
To:        Pedro Giffuni <pfg@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        chat@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: What Larry McVoy (bitkeeper) got wrong ....
Message-ID:  <868twsqn1a.fsf@desk.des.no>
In-Reply-To: <44e4450e-8dbb-f401-bd5c-df503f7a4ef8@FreeBSD.org> (Pedro Giffuni's message of "Thu, 21 Jul 2016 11:48:27 -0500")
References:  <44e4450e-8dbb-f401-bd5c-df503f7a4ef8@FreeBSD.org>

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Pedro Giffuni <pfg@FreeBSD.org> writes:
> I was in the process of preparing a port of bitkeeper and I found this:
>
> https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper
>
> "The BitKeeper history needs to be written up but the short version is
> that it happened because Larry wanted to help Linux not turn into a
> bunch of splintered factions like 386BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
> DragonFlyBSD, etc. He saw that the problem was one of tooling. ..."

This may be poorly written, but what they're trying to say is that there
was a serious risk of someone forking Linux solely because they were
tired of the Linus bottleneck, and a DVCS would help avoid that.  That's
not particularly shocking.  BitKeeper was the first semi-free DVCS and
possibly the second DVCS ever (the first being Sun TeamWare, also by
Larry McVoy).

Here's a real gem, though: "They stayed in it for three more years
before moving to Git because BitKeeper wasn't open source."  Because
clearly, McVoy throwing a hissy fit and revoking their license had
nothing to do with it.

DES
--=20
Dag-Erling Sm=C3=B8rgrav - des@des.no



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