Tridge posts Open BitKeeper compatible tool

Friday, April 22nd, 2005

Andrew Tridgell (of Samba fame), the guy who allegedly was the cause of the retraction of the BitKeeper license for the Linux kernel, has posted his creation named SourcePuller to freshmeat. From the README:

SourcePuller (also known as ‘sp’) is a free client for talking to BitKeeper(tm) source code management servers. It is written to offer
enough functionality to enable reasonable access to source code
repositories held in BitKeeper without attempting to actually replace
BitKeeper as a source code management system.
I guess Linus Torvalds was wrong when he said nothing good would come out of Tridgell’s tinkering with the BitKeeper protocol.

I’m not sure about the exact wording of the free BitKeeper license, but as far as I know it wasn’t allowed to reverse-engineer BitKeeper if you had a free license. Since Tridgell didn’t have a license and he didn’t reverse BitKeeper itself but only the protocol, I don’t see how they could have pulled the license like that. The protocol wasn’t even reverse-engineered, Tridgell just used the protocol’s help command.

Anyway, Tridgell makes some comments, dated April 2005, on this whole issue in the README in the project:

As you probably know, there has been quite a fuss lately about this
code and the fact that BitMover has now withdrawn the free version of
bk. First off, I would like to say that this result was not the
intention when I wrote this code. I had hoped that an alternative open
client would be able to coexist happily with the proprietary
BitKeeeper client, as has happened with so many other protocols. An
open client combined with the ability to accurately import into other
source code management tools would have been a big step forward, and
should have allowed BitMover to flourish in the commercial environment
while still being used by the free software community.

I would also like to say that BitMover is well within its rights to
license BitKeeper as it sees fit. I am of course disappointed at how
BitMover has portrayed some of my actions, but please understand that
they are under a lot of pressure. Under stress people sometimes say
things that perhaps they shouldn’t.

As I have stated previously, my code was written without using
bk. Some people expressed some skepticism over that, perhaps because
they haven’t noticed that bk servers have online protocol help (just
type ‘help’ into a telnet session). I don’t think it is unreasonable
to assume that this help was intended for people like myself who
wished to implement new clients.

I would like to thank all the people who have supported me in the
development of this tool by providing useful advice both before,
during and after the development of the code. I tried to consult with
a wide range of interested parties and the feedback I got was
certainly appreciated.

Finally, I would like to point out the obvious fact that Linus was
perfectly within his rights to choose bk for the kernel. I personally
would not have chosen it, but it was his choice to make, not anyone
elses. Linus is now in the unenviable position of changing source code
management systems, which is a painful task, particularly when moving
away from a system that worked as well as bk did. If you want to help,
then help with code not commentary. There have been enough flames over
this issue already.