[conspire] VCS / SCMs list

[Rick Moen]

A note about the origin and glory days(?) of my page, 
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Apps/vcs.html , about version control systems
/ source code management systems for Linux:  It was yet another in my 
successful exercises in non-rhetoric rhetoric.

In a way, I wrote it to piss off Larry McVoy.

Cast your mind back to 2001.  After it became obvious that the Linux
kernel project badly needed one, Larry McVoy furnished a proprietary,
distributed SCM, one that was gratis, with conditions good enough to
satisfy most of the LKML crowd -- BitKeeper ("BK").  The proprietary
aspects, and the long-term "roach motel" potential, were a bit
complicated to grasp and describe correctly, and also gradually
changing, as Larry applied something of a frog-boiling type of
tightening of the screws.

And I kept observing an antipattern, happening repeatedly:  A critic,
attempting to voice objection from a classic open source / free software
perspective, would sum up the problems but get some aspects wrong in
his/her critique, leading to easy dismissal of the critic as both
factually erroneous and an unreasoning ideologue.  In one famous case,
that of critic Jack Moffitt (no relation AFAIK), McVoy also threatened
tort litigation over the author's published critique of BK's licensing,
leading to it going largely unread.

I thought:  I'm the right guy to fix this.  One, I'm sly enough to
criticize through concise recitation of fact only.  Two, my legal
training would help avoid being a lawsuit target.  

So, in late 2003, I wrote the page's first version, hiding the focus on
BK by showing _no_ focus.  http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Apps/vcs.html#bk
was just an entry in an alphabetical bestiary, that quickly covered
_every_ SCM.  As intended, my strictly factual, minimally worded,
zero-editorial recounting of BK's (and related company BitMover's)
history of ratcheting-up restrictions and actions hostile to users spoke
loudly, and was widely noted _because_ there was nothing of rant about
it.

As I also expected, it was quickly noted by Larry McVoy, who contacted
me (IIRC, IRC then e-mail).  It went a little like this (paraphrased):

L:  I'm upset about what you wrote about BitKeeper on your Web page.

R:  Oh dear!  Did I make mistakes?  I certainly wouldn't want that. 
You wrote a winning product, and I certainly hope you clobber Clearcase
right out of the market.  Way better code, much better license pricing.

L:  But your page makes us seem manipulative and like control freaks.

R:  I make every effort to make the BK entry strictly factual, and
documented as appropriate.  I'd be very distressed if I was somehow
unfair by misstating the history.  Please tell me any and all things I
erred on, and I'll immediately amend the text _and_ express public
thanks for the correction. 

L:  [points out about three small details of phrasing I'd picked up from
critics on debian-devel ]

R:  Oh, thank you!  Refresh the page.  I've just fixed those and written
at the bottom "This document's entry for BitKeeper initially had several
mis-statements of fact, unflattering to the company, that I'd picked up
by repeating uncritically some Linux developers' on-line assertions.  I
regret those errors, and caution people to be skeptical of such claims."

L:  The page still makes us look awful, pretty much the same as before.

R:  Oh no!  Are you saying there are more errors?

L:  No, but....

R:  Larry, you may be confusing me with the BitMover, Inc. marketing
department.  Sorry, no, just not my job, man.  I'm giving readers the
facts, and they then get to decide for themselves what they like.  I
don't work for you.  I work for me.


And that was the end of that.  The furnishing of BK to the kernel
community imploded quickly after that, owing to his pusing the
control-freakery too far.  I might have had some role in hastening the
crisis, and in Spring 2005 McVoy backstabbed the LKML community by
remotely disabling all of their BK functionality.  (He said "Andrew
Tridgell made me do it!"  Which, no.)

Gee, almost like a cautionary tale about proprietary-software
frog-boiling.


Upon experiencing the backstab, Linus Torvalds famously wrote a solid
prototype of "git", making it self-hosting by day 4, able to do merges
by day 15, be faster than BK by day 26, could host the Linux kernel
within a couple of weeks, and was fully able to handle all of the Linux
kernel's development and version history by day 106.

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/git-origin-story
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2211030/linus-torvalds-bitkeeper-blunder.html
https://www.linux.com/news/bitkeeper-and-linux-end-road/