How Tridge reverse engineered BitKeeper

Posted Apr 21, 2005 7:35 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647)
Parent article: How Tridge reverse engineered BitKeeper

Why was the "help" command there, indeed. Could it be from an earlier era
when Larry wasn't so paranoid? Perhaps it too is to be removed from
upcoming versions (especially now, eh?), now that the unfreedomware but
still zerocostware version is being removed.

As others have observed, the continuously more enslaved era of BK did
allow the kernel to advance faster, over a shorter period, than it would
have otherwise, particularly with Linus headed for burnout. However, as
they say, all good things come to an end, and regardless of how it ended,
the "good" of this relationship was already ending, with an ever more
draconian license to the ever more slaveware that BK was becoming.
Whatever his reasons, I'm glad Tridge's actions in combination with
Larry's reactions forced the issue now. There's never a good time for
such a forced change, and now, with 2.6 fairly stable and development set
to continue on at a brisk but steady pace, this little detour is less
disruptive than it would have been since mid 2.5, and likely less
disruptive now than it would have been had the current development model
been allowed to continue to get more dependent on BK than it already was.

While it may not have looked like it in the first few hours/days, and
despite Linus' ravings as someone obviously too close to the action to
have a sane perspective (much as it hurts me to say this due to his famed
ability to step back and view the action from a neutral perspective in
other cases), I expect a year from now Linux will be the stronger for it.
BK may be as well, but as it's a proprietary product, that's nothing I'm
concerned with. It can go its own way, and I believe we should let it do
just that, breaking the increasingly unhealthy if symbiotic dependence we
had on it.

Still, very interesting to see just what sort of "reverse engineering"
Larry was attacking, here. Interesting indeed!

Duncan

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