Is Linus Torvalds really honest?
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#24 Is Linus Torvalds really honest?
Linus seems to be very happy about GIt and he sells it very well to the audience. But he does not say how the idea of GIT came out.In deed I read that Linus was against those revison control systems until 2002. He was the principal opponent of the idea of revision control until the day he needed it for the development of Linux. At first, he used Bitkeeper which was not a free software and people started thinking that was against the principles of Open Source Community. When in 2005 Bitkeeper decided to distribute only the paying version, Linus had to develop its own version. So we can see that the idea of GIT is not from him, he was forced to develop it and now he wants to be the concurrent of Bitkeeper. I think that is the reason why he is a little uncomfortable when he speaks about Bitkeeper at the beginning.
Don't you think it is a little unfair to make us believe that he had a revolutionnary idea of its own, when we can read that he was, at first, against those systems and then decided to copy an existing system when he needed it?
I don't think that your question is a real issue. What do he has to be honest on ? OK at first Linus was against the idea of revision control then he changed is mind. But don't we says that "only morons do not change their mind" ?
Linus deosn't really say that he has a revolutionnary idea. His point is that he has a reveolutionnary way of writting code. Furthermore we can't say that he has copied another soft (he would be in infrigment with Bitkeeper 's Intellectual Property Rights. What he has done is to make a concurrent version of the idea that he released in open source code. During the credit accorded to Bitkeeper, Linus said that he was allowed to use some of Bitkeeper's code to develop its own soft. Maybe that is why he wasn't very confurtable when talking about it. Imagine Linus is torned over between to ideas. The propriatory code of Bitkeeper and the fact that they allowed him to use their code. It is paradoxal.
Maybe I am not aware enough about how Open Source Community works, I am just surprised with the fact that Linus would have probably continued to use Bitkeeper if it had remained free. This means that the existing system is already efficient and even if GIT brings improvements, I don't know if the audience feels here the innovation, the originality and the feeling of freedom that Open Source is supposed to inspire.