Show HN: BitKeeper – Enterprise-ready version control, now open-source

Post by skew4 » Wed, May 11, 2016, 5:36 AM UTC

timv wrote: post #161

anarazel wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm a too long time user of git, but I really fail to see why git as of the last 5 years is any harder to explain than hg. Personally I think the branching in hg is pretty much broken; alone the fact that it's pretty much impossible to get rid of branches is horrible.

I think that the hate that gets lumped on mercurial's branches, though understandable, is a bit unfair Disclaimer, it's been years since I used hg as my primary DVCS. So some of my thoughts here might be out of date, or have a misrecollection. > branching in hg is pretty much broken* It really isn't. It's absolutely not suited for the task that many people want to use it for, but it's totally fitting with the intende…

Post by debaserab2 » Wed, May 11, 2016, 5:50 AM UTC

ryao wrote: post #170

luckydude wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that we've been around for 18 years and made payroll without fail that entire time. Supported a team of 10-15 people every year. That's something, many many companies in the valley, including many that open sourced everything, have not done as well. You may have done more by open sourcing whatever it is that you have done; if so congrats.

My remark was intended to cite how much farther bit keeper could have gone had it been open source from the start rather than belittle what bit keeper accomplished. At work, many of my newer colleagues have backgrounds in closed source software development. We are developing software that has no exact analog to existing software, and we hope that it will have a big impact. If it becomes as important as we think it co…

Post by ryao » Wed, May 11, 2016, 5:54 AM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #9

For people who don't know the history -- McVoy offered free bitkeeper licenses to various open source projects, and the Linux kernel switched to it. After Andrew Tridgell (SAMBA, among other projects) reverse-engineered the bitkeeper protocol [1] in order to create his own client, the license was rescinded for everyone. As a result, Linus wrote git. [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/132938/

Post by riffraff » Wed, May 11, 2016, 6:22 AM UTC

ryao wrote: post #179

luckydude wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this irony is not lost on me. But in both cases, the companies acted in self interest. Neither had the guts to walk away from their existing revenue stream. It's hard to say what would have happened. It's been an interesting ride and if nothing else, BK was the inspiration for Git and Hg, that's a contribution to the field. And maybe, just maybe, people will look at the SCCS weave and realize that Tichy pulled t…

> in both cases, the companies acted in self interest. Neither had the guts to walk away from their existing revenue stream. Why does bitmover have the guts now?

Post by riffraff » Wed, May 11, 2016, 6:26 AM UTC

jason_s wrote: post #155

canadiangeek2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My $0.02 canadian; Build something that kicks Gitlab and Github's ass. What an opportunity. Support both BK and GIT repos. Provide a distributed workflow that enterprises will love. Enterprises are obviously where the remaining dollars are. There are billions of dollars of inefficiencies in that sector. Many of these enterprises do NOT want to host their code on Github and are buying Gitlab. Be better than Gitlab.

^^ this. PLEASE. :-( Bitbucket has been rotting since Atlassian bought them, and now there's really no "killer app" for Mercurial hosting. There are Mercurial hosting services out there, but nothing anywhere close to Github/Gitlab.