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Subjectbitkeeper

Larry McVoy writes:

>> Will bitkeeper be a problem for companies like Red Hat? The proposed
>> licensing terms seem to suffer from the same problem Red Hat sees with
>> Qt, which they give as their reason for not including KDE. I'm not sure
>> it would be a good idea for a tool to become an essential part of kernel
>> development if the current number one Linux distribution will not include
>> it.
>
> I'll try and work seomthing out with RedHat. They've already indicated
> that they would happily include it on their commercial CD which comes
> with their regular CD. Furthermore, it will always be free to people
> doing free software as well as small shops (places with less than $1M
> US annual gross revenues).

No serious problem as long as:

1. Bitmover does not become a requirement for Linux app development.
(this is the Qt trap, and many of us would hate you for it)

2. Someone paid to hack Linux counts as "doing free software".
That means SCSI drivers, the Merced port, etc.

3. You allow distribution of bug-fix patches against Bitmover itself.
You could prohibit features, but bug fixes are critical.

4. You own at least 51% of the company. To buy out competition,
Microsoft has a slush fund of a few hundred million $.

Preferably you'd also allow paid development of public LGPL source.
(you can consider X, BSD, and MPL licenses as commercial)

> The fanaticism that surrounds free software is a problem, in my opinion.
> It is the next big problem that faces the community. It forces people to
> choose between completely free or completely non-free. As with almost
> everything, the end point is not the right place to be, the midpoint
> is a better answer.

Outside of the core system, yes. We've been biten before though.

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