The LKML has been discussing the use of proprietary BitKeeper distributed source management software. In this post, Linus Torvalds chimes in with his position on the issue.Guys, calm down.

A few points:
,p>
– I certainly don’t require BK use of anybody. It makes my life
simpler with some people (mainly the ones that tend to be
maintainers
of subsystems and send me lots of patches), but there are many
developers who do NOT use BK, and it doesn’t slow them down at all.

For example, see the FS patches from Al Viro: the only thing that
BK
has resulted in as far as Al is concerned is that the changelogs
are
a lot better and include his email comments.

And I also export my tree as regular patches, the way I always have
(well, the actual format changed subtly, but that’s purely
syntactic)

– If Larry turns to the dark side (or, as some would say, the “even
darker side” 😉 we’re _still_ ok. The data isn’t going anywhere, he
can’t close that down. We’d just have to export it into a new
format.

If worst comes to worst, and nobody has fixed
CVS/subversion/whatever
by then, I can even just go back to how I used to work. Nothing
lost.

– If people in the open-source SCM community wake up and notice that
the current open-source SCM systems aren’t cutting it, that’s
_good_.
But it’s absolutely NOT an excuse to use them today. Sorry. I use
CVS at work, and I could never use it for Linux. I took a look at
subversion, and it doesn’t even come close to what I wanted.

And I personally refuse to use inferior tools because of ideology.
In
fact, I will go as far as saying that making excuses for bad tools
due to ideology is _stupid_, and people who do that think with
their
gonads, not their brains.

In short: nobody requires BK of anybody else. A lot of people really
like using it, though, and it does make some things easier. Some
people
aren’t convinced – David Miller is trying it out, and I haven’t heard
all happy sounds from him about it. Others have taken to BK like fish
to
water, and you’ll pry it out of their dead cold hands.

The most productive thing people could do might be to just do a
BK->CVS
gateway, if you really feel like it. Or just go on and ignore the
fact
that some people are using BK – you don’t actually have to ever even
know.

Linus

Here’s the thread: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=101552968003594&w=2

Commentary from The Register:

“At this point I can only conclude there are two Jack Valentis. One of them is the president of the MPAA and rightly proud of the commercial accomplishments of the industry he represents, and the other is an evil doppelganger who lies to Congress on a monthly schedule, serving up great lashings of fear and seeking to enact laws that will make a criminal of anyone who threatens to impede the monopoly that his industry, unique among all, must be permitted to maintain.”

SF Clusters Foundry writes: “Then, he took down all the older versions of Mosix and all the RPM versions and some of the documenation. Then, and this is the big news: he removed the GPL from the user-space utilities.”

Read the interview on Foundries.sf.net.

hlucar writes: “The Peruvian Congress is preparing to discuss the Free Software
Law Proposal, presented by Congressman Edgar Villanueva. It would
give free software preference in government and state agencies.This initiative, the first in Peru (see text of
proposal) has mobilized a great part of the free software
community in Peru, including local LUGs ,organizations such as gnu.pe, and
IT enterprises, in activities such as distributing fliers (see flier) to
gather support for the approval of the law.

There is a small
summary of activities here at Peru’s GNU
page.

Today (6 March 2002), a very important meeting in favorof
free software will take place. Members of Congress will analyze this
topic with the general public in a forum called “Free software – Why does
the state need a Free Software Law?”

The forum will try to explain
the importance of the use of free software. Topics such as independence,
adoption of standards, freedom of information and economic savings will be
discussed.”

NetworkWorldFusion: “Linux clustering vendor Mission Critical Linux last week laid off up to 90% of its workforce after attempts to find a buyer failed.”

– By Josep L. Guallar-Esteve –

My mom and dad run Linux. No, she is no nuclear physicist. She is a mom who works as a government employee, a regular job. At her job, she uses
some kind of Windows. She knows it is Windows, but she doesn’t know the
version, why should she care? She just uses Word and Excel. She
started using computers at her work about four years ago.

My dad, on the other hand, is trained as an electrical engineer. He started back
where there were no computers available for most users. He now works as the manager of a motorcycle shop. At work, he has been using computers for several years.
He has been using a text-based data entry and queries. No, not Windows
or DOS, but something called “Theos,” an old multi-user thing.

They are both over 50 years old. How is this possible that they use Linux at home? Isn’t Linux just for the initiated, the gurus, the 37337, the hackers?

Well, last Christmas when I was visiting, I installed Mandrake
Linux 8.1. I configured KDE 2 with colors and icons just
like Windows.

Why did I install Linux? They have a computer, but it’s kind of slow. It was running Windows. They were able to receive email — when the computer wasn’t crashed, wasn’t infected with viruses, or … you get the picture. But they were unable to send email.

The ISP where they had an email account offered poor service. But this
email address is the one they had been passing around. Their old ISP was so bad that
they signed up with another ISP, one that was fast to connect to. But this second
email system just plain sucked. And when my parents were connected with the second ISP, the first ISP didn’t let them use its smtp server to send email, even
with the proper username and password.

So I installed Linux, connecting through the second ISP to Internet,
getting email from the first ISP and sending email with Postfix on the
local machine. I configured Internet access (Kppp), a mail program (Kmail) and a Web
browser (Konqueror) with the most common plugins: JRE, Flash, and
RealPlayer.

I setup two accounts: for “Mom,” and “Dad.” They do not know about root, nor they need to know. They are users, not administrators.

I showed them how to log in, that the “Internet” icon is how the PC
connects to Internet, that the “email” icon starts the email program
(and what button they have to click to download and send email), that
the “browser” icon is the way to surf the web, and that the “home” icon
will put them in their “own” directory.

My parents live in a town near Barcelona, Spain, and I live in North Carolina, so I need them to have a working, non-crashing computer so we can email each other and exchange digital pictures. Their computer is configured to use their language, Catalan. Because Catalan is only spoken by 10 million people, Microsoft makes little effort to
translate its products. See my Linux in Catalan here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/sinner/dibus/kde22-01.jpg.

Microsoft gets money from the local Catalan Autonomous Government
(something similar to the government of a state in the United States) to
translate Windows. So far, Microsoft has a history of taking the
money, taking its time to release a few programs in Catalan and then
releasing a new Windows version in English, not in Catalan.
As far as I know, Office has never been translated into Catalan. So, in real life,
it’s hard to find Microsoft products in Catalan.

But Linux is being translated in Catalan. Check out the kde-i18n-ca package.
KDE is very advanced in its translation.

The next thing I’ll set up for my parents will be Gnomemeeting. They still have a Windows partition with MS-Netmeeting to use the webcam, so we can have video conferencing. But sometimes Windows refuses to work right. Soon Gnomemeeting will work better with their camera, and Windows will disappear from their computer. There will be no need for it.

Because their computer has 96MB of RAM and a small hard drive, I
decided to not install StarOffice. But I know from my computer that
OpenOffice can handle all Microsoft Office documents. It has opened all of them
so far.

Now my parents’ computer doesn’t crash — it used to crash a lot when
it was running Windows. They get no viruses now. They do not need to update their antivirus program every month. I get no phone calls asking me to fix the computer, which isn’t easy for me to do now that I’m living in the United States.

They have their connection to the Internet. They can send and receive
email. It works. They only need to know about clicking around on their desktop.

Linux can work for everyone, as long as it is installed
properly.

Nathalie Bellamy writes: “Linux Motor, a Open Source company, offers new support services (English/French/German) for SAP/Db. These support services include single incidents, 10 incidents or 1 year contract and remote-call duty with guaranteed response times. With these support SAP/Db now provides all advantages: not only investment safety and low TCO, but also professional and mandatory support.

Linux Motor proposes contracts of technical support on the various information technologies used in SME companies up to the multinational ones. We know that your information systems are critical for your company and Linux Motor implemented a quality process to enable you to have an external center of competence on the questions of technical support. Our priority is your satisfaction and to guarantee the availability of your infrastructures to you.

Advantages of the Linux Motor Support

From PlayStation: “What is Linux for PS/2?; Availability, when, where, pricing; What is in the kit?”

Alexandre Dulaunoy writes: “In the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg (Europe), a 3 days (25-26-27 March) event regarding Free Software concept and advocacy. Visit libre.nu for more information.”

LPH writes: “Linux advocacy sites should be careful about the stories they link to on their websites. Here’s my opinion published on TuxReports. What do you think? Have you been had a time or two too?”