BitKeeper
| BitKeeper
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| Basic data
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| developer | BitMover Inc. |
| Publishing year | May 4, 2000 |
| Current version | 7.3.3 (December 29, 2018) |
| operating system | AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Mac OS X, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Windows |
| programming language | C. |
| category | Version management |
| License | Apache 2.0 |
| German speaking | No |
| BitKeeper Homepage | |
BitKeeper is a software tool for the version management of software source code . It competes with other professional systems like Rational ClearCase . BitKeeper is manufactured by BitMover Inc. based in San Francisco . The company is owned by its CEO, Larry McVoy , who previously designed Sun WorkShop TeamWare . Many of the TeamWare concepts are used by BitKeeper.
BitKeeper is sold or rented to medium and large companies . The exact cost depends on the number and type of licenses , but is well below $ 2,000 per license , according to BitKeeper .
BitMover allowed free use for certain open source or free software projects. The best known and most controversially discussed example was the source code of the Linux kernel . The license for the community version of BitKeeper allowed developers to use BitKeeper free of charge for open source or free software projects, provided that they had been away from the development of competing products (such as CVS , GNU arch , Subversion or ClearCase). It is controversial whether this clause is even enforceable. BitMover invokes copyright law, although the restriction is very far removed from the legal interests protected therein. Despite a few known cases in which the clause was ignored (for example by developers of the version control system Mercurial ), there were no legal disputes.
The community version of BitKeeper saved certain project meta information on BitMover servers so that it was not possible to manage projects without knowledge of BitMover. BitMover stopped supporting the community version on July 1, 2005.
With version 7.2-oss, which appeared on May 9, 2016, BitKeeper is under the Apache license 2.0 and is therefore open source software.
BitKeeper and Linux
The decision to use BitKeeper for Linux development was made in 2002 because BitKeeper was the only system that allowed an automated retroactive changeover to a version management system for Linux, which had been developed without version management since 1991. Some critics, especially GNU founder Richard Stallman , expressed their concerns about the use of proprietary programs for free flagship projects. While project leader Linus Torvalds and other key developers have accepted BitKeeper, other key developers (including Linux veteran Alan Cox ) have refused. They cited the BitMover license and voiced concerns about the project giving up control to non-free software developers. To alleviate these concerns, BitMover has created the possibility that, to a certain extent, developers using CVS and Subversion can work with the BitKeeper servers on which the Linux source code is managed. Despite these additions, flamewars occasionally broke out on the Linux mailing lists , often with the participation of BitMover boss Larry McVoy, who is himself a Linux developer.
In April 2005, the manufacturing company BitMover withdrew the free license because Andrew Tridgell had started to develop the BitKeeper-compatible open source program SourcePuller . Andrew Tridgell asserted that he had never used BitKeeper himself and that he only used information that was publicly available on the Internet and the help text displayed by public BitKeeper servers on request. Larry McVoy still saw the development as immoral and called it reverse engineering . Since the commercial version was not an option for kernel developers, the program could no longer be used for the development of Linux. In response, Linus Torvalds began developing the version control system Git .
Individual evidence
- ↑ BitKeeper version 7.3.3 released Dec 29 2018
- ↑ BitKeeper Sales Page. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 28, 2014 ; accessed on October 27, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Bk-7.2ce released 2016-05-09. Retrieved May 11, 2016 .
- ↑ Alexander Neumann: Version control system: BitKeeper becomes open source. In: heise open. May 11, 2016, Retrieved May 11, 2016 .
