[GTALUG] Bitkeeper again open source...

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 01:37:43PM -0400, Christopher Browne wrote:
> https://www.bitkeeper.org/
> 
> Git now a mistake???
> 
> There's a gigantic dose of "nothing mentioned about why it got taken
> private way back when"...

Well bitkeeper was never open source.  Bit keeper used to allow free
use of bitkeeper by open source projects, but some people did not like
the idea of their code revision history being stuck in some proprietary
vendor's product so they reverse engineered the data format and published
tools to access it, and bitkeeper had a hissyfit and took away free
use entirely.

I suppose with the popularity of git these days, they have a lot less
business left, so going open source and relying on selling support
services might be the only way to stay relevant.  It does have some
features git doesn't have (and vice versa of course).

So going open source is totally new for them.  The past was about use
of the closed source code for free by open source projects.  Not the
same thing.

-- 
Len Sorensen