Distributed Version Control for ports(7) ( was: Re: autoconf update )

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 03:50:37AM -0500, Adam Vande More wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 3:27 AM, <perryh at pluto.rain.com> wrote:
> 
> > As I understand it, what is being suggested is the adoption of a
> > new code base for a significant piece of infrastructure.  I think
> > the proposal is at less risk of being summarily rejected if it can
> > viably be based on BSD-licensed code rather than on GPL'd code.
> >
> 
> This  dvcs is BSD licensed:
> 
> http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki
> 
> I believe it was originally GPL'd, and the author converted it BSD based
> license on request.  The requests came from multiple people who didn't want
> to to incorporate GPL into their project(s).
> 
> There is an interview about it here:
> 
> http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2010/07/bsdtalk194-fossil-scm-with-d-richard.html
> 
> Anyways, IMO license is quite a large deal when you're making this sort of
> decision.  OS code infrastructure has a way of expanding around what's
> used(eg csup in base) and you'd want to ensure any potential development
> paths are not hindered by LICENSE.

Given the amount of GPL'd software in the base system, why are we
already fighting over licensing?  What is it with the open-source world
and obsessing with licensing?  It should be up for discussion after
alternatives have been determined as viable candidates (see below).

The reality of the situation is this: you're going to need to find
something that 1) developers and users already have some familiarity
with, 2) has good/easy-to-read documentation in multiple languages, 3)
can be included into the base system, 4) provides significantly more
advantages than disadvantages when compared to CVS, and 5) provides an
acceptably low learning curve (e.g. Handbook docs will need to be
written to say "This is what you did in CVS, and this is what you now do
in XYZ"; meaning, easy to use and migrate to).

Simply put, that means:remaining with CVS, moving to SVN, moving to
Perforce, or moving to git.  Something tells me if there was a change,
it would probably be to SVN, simply because it's used by src.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |