What Larry McVoy (bitkeeper) got wrong ....

[Pedro Giffuni]

Hello;

I was in the process of preparing a port of bitkeeper and I found this:

https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper

"The BitKeeper history needs to be written up but the short version is
that it happened because Larry wanted to help Linux not turn into a
bunch of splintered factions like 386BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
DragonFlyBSD, etc. He saw that the problem was one of tooling. ..."


This actually made me laugh. Wrong problem and wrong tool to "fix"
it.

While CVS could have been seen as the wrong tool for just about
anything, FreeBSD could have used perforce for "free" and still we
would have a similar situation. The underlying issues IMHO was that
of community affinity and developer interests, not of tooling.

Back in the early days, the "splintering" of the BSDs might have been
seen as an issue but as I see it now, it has been a blessing. I for
one have no interest in adopting the OpenBSD approach towards security,
to name just something some developers see as interesting, but I do see
the idea of different teams trying new things critical, and I do take a
lot of code from the other BSDs.

Version control, and in particular *distributed* version control,
actually makes forking easier, but curiously some of the BSDs have found
it very difficult to get away from CVS.

I guess we should be thankful about the new tooling but if the idea was
to prevent linux to become like the BSDs (for good or bad), I think the
linux community is to credit for that.

Just my $0.02,

Pedro.
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[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

Pedro Giffuni <p...@FreeBSD.org> writes:
> I was in the process of preparing a port of bitkeeper and I found this:
>
> https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper
>
> "The BitKeeper history needs to be written up but the short version is
> that it happened because Larry wanted to help Linux not turn into a
> bunch of splintered factions like 386BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
> DragonFlyBSD, etc. He saw that the problem was one of tooling. ..."

This may be poorly written, but what they're trying to say is that there
was a serious risk of someone forking Linux solely because they were
tired of the Linus bottleneck, and a DVCS would help avoid that. That's
not particularly shocking. BitKeeper was the first semi-free DVCS and
possibly the second DVCS ever (the first being Sun TeamWare, also by
Larry McVoy).

Here's a real gem, though: "They stayed in it for three more years
before moving to Git because BitKeeper wasn't open source." Because
clearly, McVoy throwing a hissy fit and revoking their license had
nothing to do with it.

DES
--
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - d...@des.no

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Saturday, 23 July 2016 at 19:31:13 +0200, Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote:
> Pedro Giffuni <p...@FreeBSD.org> writes:
>> I was in the process of preparing a port of bitkeeper and I found this:
>>
>> https://github.com/bitkeeper-scm/bitkeeper
>>
>> "The BitKeeper history needs to be written up but the short version is
>> that it happened because Larry wanted to help Linux not turn into a
>> bunch of splintered factions like 386BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
>> DragonFlyBSD, etc. He saw that the problem was one of tooling. ..."
>
> This may be poorly written, but what they're trying to say is that there
> was a serious risk of someone forking Linux solely because they were
> tired of the Linus bottleneck, and a DVCS would help avoid that. That's
> not particularly shocking.

I'm left wondering about the accuracy of the statement, though. I
didn't think that this was the reason lm wrote Bitkeeper. I contacted
him, but he wasn't much help.

> Here's a real gem, though: "They stayed in it for three more years
> before moving to Git because BitKeeper wasn't open source." Because
> clearly, McVoy throwing a hissy fit and revoking their license had
> nothing to do with it.

I think this is a nice way of glossing over the ugly facts. I don't
see that it's wrong.

Greg
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[Jason C. Wells]

I'm just excited to see a little traffic on -chat. Where'd everybody go?

Regards,
Jason C. Wells

[twilight]

To IRC, maybe? Chatting over e-mail is, kinda, funny. Lags are too big.

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[Andrew Perry]

funny, I actually unsubscribed from chat (and others) because I was getting too much traffic. At the time I couldn't deal with it (long story, divorce and messy real life stuff). I was surprised when I recently resubscribed and didn't get any messages. I thought I'd stuffed up.

the freebsd irc channel on freenode gets a little action, but it's not the same.

too many people expect an instant response on irc, but it can be just as laggy as email

I wonder if there's somewhere else people are hanging out and chatting :-)
________________________________________
From: owner-fre...@freebsd.org [owner-fre...@freebsd.org] on behalf of twilight [pipfs...@openmailbox.org]
Sent: Sunday, 24 July 2016 4:55 PM
To: Jason C. Wells; freebs...@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: What Larry McVoy (bitkeeper) got wrong ....

This message may contain both confidential and privileged information intended only for the addressee named above.
If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately then destroy the original message.

[Allen]

On Sun, 24 Jul 2016 07:22:18 +0000
Andrew Perry <per...@shoalhaven.nsw.gov.au> wrote:

> funny, I actually unsubscribed from chat (and others) because I was
> getting too much traffic. At the time I couldn't deal with it (long
> story, divorce and messy real life stuff). I was surprised when I
> recently resubscribed and didn't get any messages. I thought I'd
> stuffed up.

Personally I prefer the FreeBSD-Chat Mailing List over IRC, but that's
just simply my own personal preference. I'v been using this list on
and off for a very long time, but eventually my situation would after a
while change to where I had no time for Mailing Lists, but I'm glad I'm
back on here.

It does help that I'm finally using FreeBSD as my main Desktop now
though. ;)

I've been using FreeBSD on and off since 4.0-RELEASE. I actually still
remember wayyyyy back then; I had only owned a Computer for like a year
or so at the time, and I was lucky enough to have some friends that
were Hackers.

I thought that was amazing and I liked the idea that I could do things
with a Computer that could eventually lead to a career, and the fact
that I enjoyed doing it helped a lot too lol.

I was talking with my at the time best friend, and he had been using
Computers for years, and I was just starting out, and didn't know much
of anything.

I had a crappy PC with Windows 95 on it, and one night, I was kinda
drunk, and I accidentally destroyed it lol. I was working at the time,
so I did have a pay check coming in even though I still lived with my
Mom, and my main outgoing expense at that time, was my Horror Movie
Collection, and my CD Collection lol. So I went the very next day to
Best Buy, and picked out a new Computer.

It was early 2,000 and it was the first time I had ever purchased a
Computer for myself, and I ended up buying an HP Pavilion Computer, and
it came with Windows 98 SE, 128 MBs of RAM, and a very odd 42.9 GB HD.

It was only 42.9 GBs on Windows though; On Linux it was 43 GBs. I still
don't think I've ever seen another HD that was THAT size lol.

But anyway, I was starting to learn that you could run an Operating
System on your Computer that wasn't Windows. Remember I'm just starting
out at this point and knew nothing.

Anyway, I asked some friends of mine online what they used, and a
friend of mine said he ran Linux. I knew nothing about Linux, so I
looked it up, and starting reading.

That was when I first heard about Unix, and BSD, and so on. My at the
time best friend was better with Computers than I was at the time, and
he LOVED Unix.

Between my buddy saying he ran Linux and my friend saying that Unix was
a good OS for Hacking (He said it didn't get in the way, and that for
Programming, there was nothing better) so I took those as fairly strong
recommendations.

So anyway, my friend would come over, and we would discuss Computer
stuff all day and all night long, and one day, I saw a book at the book
store I went to sometimes, called "Teach yourself Linux in 24 Hours".

It came with a CD-ROM as well, and it had Caldera Open Linux 2.2 on it.
I bought the book, and started reading.

Not too long after that, I still hadn't actually installed Linux on
anything yet, and my friend wanted to point out to me that Linux was
good, but it wasn't actually Unix. He made sure I knew the difference
between "Unix Like" and "Unix". Lol.

Anyway, I was at Best Buy with my Mom, and as we're walking through the
store, I see the Computer Section coming up where the Software was. As
we're walking up, I see this thing called the "BSD Powerpak" and I'd
never seen it before.

I had heard of FreeBSD before from my online reading, and I knew a
little about it, and I'd just never seen it before in a store. I was
actually kind of surprised. I grabbed it off the shelf and took a look
at the box, and I ended up buying it.

It came with the book "The Complete FreeBSD, 3rd Edition" and it came
with 10 CD-ROMs; 4 FreeBSD Installation CDs, and 6 FreeBSD Tool Kit
CD-ROMs.

When I got home, I opened it up and started reading about FreeBSD. As I
said before, I did know what FreeBSD, sort of, and I had heard of it
from reading online about Linux and Unix, and I was just really Happy
that I could find this boxed set I'd found.

Of course, none of that could prepare me for what I was going to
experience either lol. Can you guys imagine? Someone who'd owned a
Computer for less than one year, knows almost nothing about Computers
let alone Unix, and has yet to actually install Linux, or any other OS
for that matter, and now trying to get FreeBSD up and running?

My friend that came over all the time and talked Computers with me,
started checking out the box it came in, and he seemed pretty impressed
with it too.

It took me a while before I managed to get FreeBSD installed; Not
because the installer was particularly hard to use or anything, I just
simply didn't have the skills.

I'd never even installed Windows or DOS before. So I knew literally
nothing.

After a while, with lots of practice, and lots of re-installs of
Windows 98 SE on that Computer, I started to get the hang of how to
install an OS.

My Computer came with Re-Installation CDs instead of Windows
Installation CDs. The Tower / Case my Computer had, had a little CD-ROM
holding area on the very top of it so that you could put those CDs in
there, and then, if you ever needed them, you would just pop the first
one in, reboot, and it would allow you to wipe the Drive, and install
Windows, and everything else the Computer came with (Such as Drivers,
Programs, and things like that).

Eventually I got really good with installing OSs, and I also had
another breakthrough; I finally got a High Speed Internet Connection!

Before this, I had Dial Up, and nothing else, and not only that, but
the Modem my Computer came with, was a POS WinModem, and it wouldn't
even work with the copy of Windows 2,000 Professional that I'd bought.

When I got a little better at Computers, and a little better at
Hardware, I eventually took it out, and was surprised to see that my
little WinModem, was also my Sound Card!

I'd never seen Hardware like this before, but it was for sure weird. I
eventually had bought a new Sound Card, after installing SuSE Linux 8.1
Professional.

I'd bought SuSE 8.1 Professional at that same Best Buy that I had
bought the FreeBSD Powerpak at, and I could never get online with Linux.

I'd by this time bought more versions of Linux to play with, but no
matter what, for some reason, there were two things that always
prevented me from sticking with Linux; Sound Card issues, because of
the Sound Card / WinModem combo that I just mentioned, and of course,
getting online.

I bought a Sound Blaster! Sound Card at Best Buy, and given my limited
know how at the time, I paid for them to install it for me as well.
Once I had a REAL Sound Card, I could finally get sound in an OS that
wasn't Windows 98 SE, which meant now, all I had to do, was get online
with High Speed, and I could finally use a NIC, and use another OS.

After a while, and saving up money, I managed to finally afford to get
a Cable Internet Connection. The day Comcast came to finally install
it, I wasn't home because I was at work, and the girl they sent to do
it, was a moron.

When I got home, the phone call I had gotten at work, was making more
sense... My Mom called me at work, and said the girl was "Trying to
delete System Files so that the OS would re-install them"...

I knew that didn't sound right, and sure enough, it didn't work. I got
home that night from work, and had to re-install Windows. Again.

Finally, Comcast sent two other techs to the house to install our
connection.

I told the guys that showed up what happened, and they were in shock.
The main guy that was there, sent his co-worker out to their van to
grab me a NIC since the girl who showed up to install before, had
thrown mine in the Trash, because "She couldn't get it working". He
said that the girl they sent, only kept her job because she was pretty,
and that she didn't really know anything about anything.

He got a new NIC installed in my Computer, and set up the Cable Modem,
and got it working finally, and after that. I no longer had any real
reason not to use another OS.

So I installed Partition Magic, set up some Partitions, and I got SuSE
Linux 8.1 Professional installed, and got it online, and I got sound
working.

I had finally installed Linux and got it working on my Computer. I also
installed Windows 2,000 Professional on it, that way I could Dual Boot
between Windows and Linux. I kept Windows for games, and used Linux for
more and more.

The first time I tried installing FreeBSD though, I still didn't
understand enough. so I stuck with Linux and Windows 2,000 Professional
for a while. One day, I wanted to get FreeBSD up and running, so I
started the installation.

The Power Went out while I was installing. Like 40 times. Lol, it seems
like I'm full of it there, but I'm serious; It started out with my Mom,
who was using a Hair Dryer, and kept tripping the Breaker, and
eventually I got her to stop that, and then, there were multiple
outtages after that from the weather.

Eventually, I got FreeBSD installed, and I knew nothing about it
really. I'd read the book, but I didn't know much about using it. When
I look back and think about all the time I spent like that, and doing
what I did, I can't help but laugh; I mean, I was dumb, and I've
learned a lot over these last however many years it's been, and I still
have the box for my FreeBSD Powerpak, and the book, and the CDs too.

I'm now running FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE, and I've already gotten my
FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE DVD in the mail from the FreeBSD Mall. I've got so
many books now I can't even count. I also buy BSD Magazine.

I'm glad I stuck with FreeBSD though; I Love it. It's probably my
favorite OS that I still use.

Anyway, sorry about the length of this, but I felt that it would make
more sense if you guys had some context to go on, and some history.

-Allen

[Kai Windle]

Hello,

I have seen people hanging around on IRC. Myself, I've been on both IRC
and the mailing lists just because while I've got FreeBSD installed
on my home computer I still don't know enough so I'm mainly around
just to learn more than anything else.

Since I don't have many questions or much to contribute to just yet
I've not 'done' much in the way of chat (in fact this is my first
'chat').
I've no doubt that as time progresses I'll have many questions.
But for now I'm happy to read the mailing lists when I can. I do
enjoy stories like Andrew Perry wrote just makes me smile about the
whole Windows 98 thing (so many memories of 28 day reinstall cycles)

Since I'm at work right now I don't have the time to add my 'story'
so hopefully one day I'll get the time and add my own to this thread.

One thing I do find useful but sometimes confusing is BSDNow Podcast
while I don't fully understand everything they talk about I do find it
sometimes a good source of information for things I didn't know.

Anyway enough from me.

--


Kind Regards


Kai
Sent via Mutt Email Client / FreeBSD

[Kai Windle]

So it is apologies. I don't know why I thought it was your's Andrew.

On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 11:15:21AM +0000, Andrew Perry wrote:
> Kai Windle wrote:
> > I've no doubt that as time progresses I'll have many questions.
> > But for now I'm happy to read the mailing lists when I can. I do
> > enjoy stories like Andrew Perry wrote just makes me smile about the
> > whole Windows 98 thing (so many memories of 28 day reinstall cycles)
>

> ahhh that was Allen's story, mine is much longer and very boring ;-)

>
>
>
> This message may contain both confidential and privileged information intended only for the addressee named above.
> If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender immediately then destroy the original message.
>

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Kind Regards


Kai
Sent via Mutt Email Client / Gentoo

[Allen]

On Mon, 25 Jul 2016 12:18:38 +0100
Kai Windle <kaiw...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So it is apologies. I don't know why I thought it was your's Andrew.
>
> On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 11:15:21AM +0000, Andrew Perry wrote:
> > Kai Windle wrote:
> > > I've no doubt that as time progresses I'll have many questions.
> > > But for now I'm happy to read the mailing lists when I can. I do
> > > enjoy stories like Andrew Perry wrote just makes me smile about
> > > the whole Windows 98 thing (so many memories of 28 day reinstall
> > > cycles)
> >
> > ahhh that was Allen's story, mine is much longer and very boring ;-)

That might be my fault. When I typed out that half my life story, I'd
been drinking and I didn't remember if I'd quoted it properly or
anything, so sorry about that guys :)

-Allen

[twilight]

Wow, that's an amazing story.

I've got much shorter (so as my life is) story:

I've started out as a Windows user, as many of us. My first operating
system was Windows 2000, the next system I used for a long time was
Windows XP.

When I was at the sixth grade I've found a book for computer newbies in
my school library. It was very poorly written, it had lots of
instructions like: "to start the volume control, pull the mouse cursor
over the Start button in the bottom left corner. Then press the left
button. Pull the cursor over the "All Programs" item and wait. Then...".
But there was one good chapter. About hackers.

About *real* hackers. It was the first time I've found out that such
people exist, the book said that hackers "literally are the people upon
whom internet is built". I was like "wow, I want to be the same". The
book recommended to start with studying PHP, Perl, C and Lisp. I've
searched in my home library and found a book about C (M. White, S.
Prata, D. Marting C for beginners). It had funny illustrations and
simple-given materials. After reading it I thought about myself as of a
mega-hacker who knows more then anybody else.

So, I started to write a Rubics cube assembler in C that was using
exhaustive search. And, as I was amused with the beautiful recursion, no
functions were returning, everything was called recursively. Literally.
In the switch input-analyzer, in the "pick a move, test and check if
assembled" cycle. Well, the program managed to solve problems made by up
to 4 moves from the completed position. On the 5-move depth it always
failed with SEGFAULT. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know about
asm and stack overflow at that moment. So, I didn't manage to complete it.

I've thought about *nix as superior system since I've read that book,
but I didn't get any chance to install anything due to my weak system
and the lack of knowledge. My first systems were P-III, 512 MiB, 18 GiB,
TNT Riva; then an old Toshiba laptop (Intel Celeron 1.8 GhZ, 512 MiB, 40
GiB); then an 2004 Acer laptop (Amd Turion x64, 512 MiB, 80 GiB).

On the last one I've attempted to install Ubuntu (when it still used
Gnome 2), but I've struggled with lots of lags, and, as, I didn't have
any hacker friends who could tell me that there are much more
lightweight distributions and help to get the basics, I've moved back to
Windows XP (but I was 100% sure, that I'll install Linux as soon as I
could get more powerful computer to work with it).

So, about 5 years ago I've purchased a MSi laptop with Nvidia 530m,
Intel Core i3-3110m, 4096 MiB, 500 Gb and the first thing I've installed
there (well, not the first, I've played a little with some popular
games, but only for about 2 weeks to find out how shitty they are) was
Ubuntu Linux. I didn't know anything about terminal, but I knew that
working in the term was a superior way to use my computer. So, I've
tried to program in vim(1) and compile in term with gcc.

I've struggled a lot :D. Not because vim was beeping and corrupting
everything, just, unusual interface, lack of any knowledge (I even
didn't knew about man(1) pages, lol). Well, I've made my way through
setting the wallpaper with cli commands, then reading about core utils,
learning to ask questions, searching the web and reading man pages.

That boosted my programming studying a lot. I've got used to vim and
fell in love with it's editing paradigm, key combinations,
hands-on-keyboard editing style. I wanted to know about everything
(although I knew that it was impossible). I tried graphics (SDL, OpenGL,
shaders a little bit), networking (programming), protocols, scripting,
system calls, asm programming, GUI, system administration (simple), web
(html, js, css), python as backend, C, of course. I tried to understand
how processor works, how that bunch of electrons help me to run DooM.
Also I tried to learn C++, well, OOP is not hard (as far as i know it),
but C++ is really ugly. The overbloated standard, multiple ways to do
the same, sucking in the standard every nice features pushed me away
from C++ back to the only and holy C.

After getting a little bit comfortable with Ubuntu, I've started
distrohopping: I've tried Fedora, openSUSE, Mint, flavors of Ubuntu...

Then I've read about Arch Linux. I've looked at it and thought "wow,
that's cool". I've struggled with the first installation, as I've needed
to do everything by hands. But, after few reinstallations, reading the
arch wiki I've finally got to fell myself comfortable in the terminal.

All the time I were using Linux I knew about *BSD, but I always thought
"ha ha lol the are doing the second Linux, who would ever need that?",
and with a bunch of bad people I was always waiting the time when *BSD
will finally be buried for ever.

But about 1 year ago I changed my mind and thought "why not try it?".
I can't tell for sure what helped me to do that, maybe the fun and
positive OpenBSD release songs and artwork or the articles about the
"true UNIX, unlike Linux", but, anyway, I've attempted to install
FreeBSD. At that moment I've had a Dell Inspiron 3135 as my personal
laptop and Lenovo G510 as a server. Well, the installation amused me
with it's simplicity, but then I've had to build for 8 hours from ports
(the X and some utils I use). And guess what? The AMD 8xxx series were
not supported at that moment (well, they aren't supported till now, that
makes me sad, a little, not to good for a system I'd like to see much
more wide spreaded). So on Inspiron 3135 FreeBSD failed to launch in a X
session. But Lenovo was handled normally, so I were able to try out
FreeBSD and I liked it.

After about 8 months of my first attempt I've accidentally spilled some
water over the keyboard, so I changed my laptop to a used ThinkPad X200.
FreeBSD ran like a charm on it. Well, here are still some problems I
want to look deeper in, but, at least, I'm able to do all the usual
tasks as the graphics and sound are working (of course, I mostly use my
laptop for programming and studying, but, without music and ability to
view multimedia that is a little bit sad, so, it was important).

The only sad thing is that *BSD is actually dying. Linux is getting
literally everywhere, spoiling standards with linuxisms and accepting
blobs (that are still Linux-specific, so no hardware support even with
blobs and no open specs also). So, losing contributors, that are going
to more popular projects, lacking the hardware support and better to not
talk about the dead FreeBSD media-advertising will eventually lead to a,
at first, marginal haiku-like community and death of a bunch of little
flavors (DragonFly BSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD), and, then, to the end of life
of the system. So sad, that the money and legacy, not the efficiency and
power make the modern IT world.

> -Allen
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[Yuri]

On 07/25/2016 12:00, twilight wrote:
> The only sad thing is that *BSD is actually dying. Linux is getting
> literally everywhere, spoiling standards with linuxisms and accepting
> blobs (that are still Linux-specific, so no hardware support even with
> blobs and no open specs also). So, losing contributors, that are going
> to more popular projects, lacking the hardware support and better to not
> talk about the dead FreeBSD media-advertising will eventually lead to a,
> at first, marginal haiku-like community and death of a bunch of little
> flavors (DragonFly BSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD), and, then, to the end of life
> of the system. So sad, that the money and legacy, not the efficiency and
> power make the modern IT world.

I don't think BSD isn't going to die though. BSD is very appealing to
those who is able to really appreciate technology. This is sadly a very
small fraction of even those in the computer field. But still, FreeBSD
has been active for decades now, and there is a pretty active community
not showing any signs of dying. There will always be people who will be
able to recognize greatness when they see it. I hope it will stay this way.


Yuri