Stay away from BitKeeper

[ciphergoth]

Linus sold Linux's soul to the devil, and now the devil is coming to collect.

Unrelated note: I am of course going to the pub tonight!

Kernel Traffic: BitKeeper Licensing Discussion

Larry, a simple question: does the BK license allow the Rational kernel developers to use BK (to eg. check out Linus' tree) when working on kernel support for ClearCase?

ie. is all kernel development activity against your license as long as the activity is a competitor of yours?

Larry avoided the question, saying the license answered it already. Ingo asked again, "so BK cannot be used to access the kernel tree in that case, correct? I'm just wondering where the boundary line is. Eg. if i started working on a versioned filesystem today, i'd not be allowed to use BK. I just have to keep stuff like that in mind when using BK." Larry again avoided the question. Rob Landley pointed out that Larry was avoiding the question, and tried a third time to get an answer. Larry replied, "What is with you anyway? Do you have nothing better to do than try and yank my chain and cause trouble?" Rob said, "Actually, I was just hoping to prod you into answering Ingo's question..." Larry did not reply.

Comments

[cybermuppet.livejournal.com]

Oh dear.. Clearly they didn't think about that one. A Large chumk of Clearcase (MVFS to be precise) is indeed kernel-level.
Incidentally, Clearcase is worth the money any day.

[babysimon]

I'll believe you about "worth the money" but why on earth does it need to be kernel-level?

[cybermuppet.livejournal.com]

Put simply, Clearcase's dynamic views (effectively the developer's sandbox) are implemented with a virtual filing system called MVFS. Files and directories appearing in MVFS are in fact objects from the repository database selected according to a set of rules (the config-spec) - for instance labeled versions, named branches etc.

Dynamic views give rise to another powerful tool: Build auditing. Clearcase associates with each target of a build a complete 'bill-of-materials' used in it's creation. If you're smart, you put the build tools under clearcase too and guarantee to get the exact same versions when you go and revisit a build (for instance when you need to bugfix).