Larry McVoy on BitKeeper, Linus, and Perens

[ Thanks to Joe
Barr for this link. ]

“Not long after the second part of the most recent Perens
interview went online, we got email from Larry McVoy. He said there
were some factual errors in the Perens piece and asked what our
policy was on corrections. We assured him that we always tried to
make corrections when they were needed and asked what the errors
had been. He pointed out two: Perens’ claims that BitMover (McVoy’s
company, which produces BitKeeper,) had trouble making payroll and
that McVoy was constantly threatening to sue him.

“Thinking that a story on BitKeeper–the controversial
proprietary source management tool currently in use by Linus and
others for Linux kernel development–that also carried McVoy’s
corrections would be more interesting to our readers than simply
fanning the flames of an expectorating contest (to mix a metaphor),
we took advantage of the opportunity to talk to McVoy and learn
what we could of the BitKeeper saga. It’s a fascinating story of
the tensions between some closed and open source developers.

“First, a little background on McVoy. If you’ve been a regular
reader of the Linux-Kernel Mailing List (LKML) the past few years
you probably know a lot of this anyway, but if you’re like me and
feel that daily reading of the LKML is like trying to swim against
a constantly increasing volume of water flowing down a hill, sit
back, grab a drink, and enjoy this Cliff Note’s version…”

Complete
Story

Related Story:

KernelTrap.org: BitKeeper Author Larry McVoy Interviewed(May
28, 2002)