OfB.biz: The BitKeeper Example: A Bad Development Model

“To say one could see a train wreck coming from hundreds of
miles away when the Linux kernel development process switched to
using BitKeeper to manage development is to make an understatement
of the largest kind. The idea that the best known Free Software
kernel would be developed with the aid of a non-Free development
tool just seemed peculiar at best and dangerous at worst…

“Now, there is nothing worse than someone coming out after
something bad happens and yelling, ‘see, I told you so.’ But, at
the same time, the community ought to deeply consider what has
happened here so that it can be avoided in the future. Like many
observers, I suspected that BitMover would eventually end its
support of the free version of BitMover, or, at the very least,
change its licensing so that it would become less tolerable for
users…”

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