BitKeeper

BitKeeper is a software tool for managing versions of software source code. As a sophisticated system, it is in competition with other professional systems such as Rational ClearCase. BitKeeper is manufactured by BitMover Inc., based in San Francisco. The company is owned by its Chairman and CEO Larry McVoy, who had previously designed Teamware. Many of the Teamware concepts used by BitKeeper.

BitKeeper is sold or rented to medium and large businesses. The exact cost depends on the number of licenses, but it is estimated that the cost per developer than 1,000 U.S. dollars.

BitMover allowed the free use of certain open source or free software projects. The most famous and most controversial example was the source code of the Linux kernel. The license for the " community " version of BitKeeper has allowed developers to use BitKeeper free for open source or free software projects, provided that they are for a certain period of development of competing products (such as CVS, GNU arch, Subversion or ClearCase ) would keep away. It is disputed whether this clause is enforceable at all. BitMover refers to copyright, although the restriction is very far from the fact protected legal interests. Despite some of reported cases in which the clause was ignored ( for example, by the developer of the Mercurial version control system ), there were no judicial disputes.

The community version of BitKeeper secured certain project meta-information on servers of BitMover, so it was not possible to manage projects without knowledge of BitMover. BitMover has discontinued support of the " community " version on July 1, 2005.

BitKeeper and Linux

The decision to use BitKeeper for Linux development, fell in 2002 because BitKeeper was the only system that allowed an automated retroactive conversion to a version control system of fully developed without version control since 1991 Linux. Some critics, particularly the GNU founder Richard Stallman, expressed concern at the use of proprietary programs for free flagship projects. During the Project Linus Torvalds and other key developers BitKeeper had assumed other important developers (including the Linux veterans Alan Cox ) refused. This led to the BitMover license and spoke out against concerns that the project gives control to developers of non-free software. To alleviate these concerns, BitMover has created the possibility that within a certain framework developers using CVS and Subversion to work with the BitKeeper servers running the Linux source code are managed. Despite these extensions occasionally broke flame wars on the Linux mailing lists, often with the participation of BitMover CEO Larry McVoy, who himself is Linux developers.

In April 2005, the manufacturer withdrew the BitMover free license, as Andrew Tridgell had begun to develop the BitKeeper compatible open -source program SourcePuller. Andrew Tridgell claimed to have BitKeeper himself never used and have only to open accessible information on the Internet and resorted Helps the text displayed by public BitKeeper servers on request. Larry McVoy saw the development anyway as immoral and described it as reverse engineering. Since the commercial version was not an option for kernel developers, the program was no longer suitable for the development of Linux. In response, Linus Torvalds began the development of a version control system Git