%% Brendan Cully <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> What is BitKeeper? Is it DFSG? What are the benefits of it over CVS >> for "more complex organisations"?
bc> It's Larry McVoy's source management system, which he has been pushing bc> on linux-kernel for quite some time, and which does sound nice. I'm bc> not too up on either its license or DFSG, but I don't think it bc> makes the cut (it reminded me of the original Qt license when last I bc> looked at it, actually more restrictive than that). Um, I think BitKeeper's license is not that bad. Not DFSG (they freely admit that), but not too bad. With BitKeeper you get the source, you can modify the source, and you can freely distribute the modifications--with two caveats. The first is that all modified source you distribute must still pass their regression tests. The second caveat is the interesting one. BitKeeper has a "logging" function that logs all source changes (that is, the change comments, # of lines changed, filename, etc. Not the diffs themselves, as I understand it). The free copy of BitKeeper sends these logs to an "open logging server", which is maintained by the BitKeeper folks. They are free to publish these logs (and they are doing so). The other thing you cannot do is modify or interfere in any way with this logging capability. Basically, you can use BitKeeper as a "mostly" open source product, but all your changelogs, etc. are public. If you want to not make those public (presumably you're doing some kind of proprietary development) you need to purchase the alternatively-licensed version. One interesting thing: the BitKeeper license says it reverts to being GPL if the open logging servers are ever down for more than 180 consecutive days (presumably the company goes out of business and shuts down...) bc> It's nicest feature as I recall is that it makes hierarchies of bc> repositories possible. You don't have to have commit access on the bc> main tree to be able to make your own branches on your tree, bc> import other people's changes and merge changes to the master tree bc> into your own. I always thought having only one master CVS bc> repository was a real pain for distributed (no, I won't say bc> "bazaar"... argh, I said it!) development... BitKeeper has a lot of other advantages over CVS: for one thing, it supports reasonable directory versioning, which IMO is an absolute prerequisite for any SCM tool for "more complex organizations". -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul D. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> HASMAT--HA Software Methods & Tools "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.
