Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Inertia on lkml?

[Zack Brown]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2003 at 12:23:06PM +0100, Adam Spiers wrote:
>     From: Linus Torvalds
>     To: Andrea Arcangeli
>     Subject: Re: log-buf-len dynamic
>     Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 14:53:32 -0700 (PDT)
> 
>     On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
>     > if Marcelo would be using open source code to exports the
>     > patchsets in his tree, we could fix it to add the email address
>     > along the name in the checkin logs metadata, to avoid this sort
>     > of mistakes.
> 
>     Andrea - please just shut up. 
> 
>     Until you can point to anything even _remotely_ as good as
>     BitKeeper, there's no point in just continually trying to start a
>     flame-war.
> 
> How is it that such brilliantly clever guys such as Linus and Andrea
> seem *so* slow on the uptake when it comes to arch?  What am I
> missing?  It's not as if arch hasn't been mentioned many many times on
> lkml already ...

Linus is often a slow decision-maker. Once he makes up his mind to do
something, like include devfs or khttpd in the kernel, he can take a
long time to change his mind again, even after it becomes very clear to
everyone that an alternative is better.

When he made the decision to use BitKeeper, I believe he intended to
take BK as far is he could. Any alternative, like tla, will have to not
only be "remotely as good as BitKeeper", but there will have to be some
kind of compelling reason for him to switch.

A reason might be:

1) Larry changes the BK license to something Linus can't live with

2) Larry yanks BK altogether

3) most or all of Linus' lieutenants switch to tla, and stick with it.

Essentially: we shouldn't hold our breath waiting for Linus to switch,
or even to *consider* to switch.  No matter how good tla gets, he's made a
committment to BitKeeper, and he won't back down from that unless there's
a clear benefit beyond tla being free software. tla must be *better*
than BK in a way that makes Linus' life measuably easier.

Be well,
Zack

> 
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-- 
Zack Brown