Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 18 Jan 2003 05:10:12 +0000 | From | Jamie Lokier <> | Subject | Re: Is the BitKeeper network protocol documented? |
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David Schwartz wrote: > I'm starting to think that one cannot legally use BitKeeper as the > preferred means of developing a GPLed program. The problem is, the > GPL defines the source as the preferred base to modify the software > from and requires you to be able to distribute the source without any > additional licensing requirements.
It doesn't require that you distribute the tools for editing the source, though. For example I believe it is fine to distribute a program for Microsoft Visual Studio, in the form of the files you would actually use with Visual Studio, even though the format of some of those files is not documented.
> Providing the source in BK form without BK is as useless as > providing it encrypted. Providing it in any other form does not > satisfy the GPL (assuming that BK form is in fact the preferred way > of modifying it).
I disagree, because the BK file format is actually quite well documented - it is SCCS with some annotations that do not seem essential if you are using a different tool.
The data is easily extracted using an SCCS-compatible tool. It is certainly not encrypted, and I had no difficulty writing a Perl script to extract any version of the source, although I have yet to look if changesets are so easy as individual files.
Credit to Larry, for choosing an easily read file format.
(Although not perfectly - see the CSSC documentation for some things that they are not sure how to decode in an SCCS file - and yes, those do appear in BK-generated SCCS files from time to time).
> If BitKeeper is the version management tool, then BitKeeper is part > of the source by this definition.
Linus and other people have said repeatedly that BitKeeper is _not_ essential to working with them on the kernel.
That said, it does seem that if you can't read bkbits.net, then you are at a disadvantage sometimes.
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