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Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

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Re: Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

#151

Post by X86BSD »

j_s wrote: post #82
X86BSD wrote: post #73

How is this different from, my personal favorite, Fossil. http://fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki

Do you have a moment to explain what makes Fossil your favorite? As far as I know, the only unique aspect of Fossil is "Integrated Bug Tracking, Wiki, and Technotes".

Those are certainly very nice features to have. For me the syntax and ease of use is what I like. Although that is all subjective to each person of course. Plus the author is a great guy. No ego at all. Plus the license is more appealing to me.

Re: Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

#152

Post by chriswarbo »

fadzlan wrote: post #33
3825 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sources behind the claim that agpl is behind the lack of success for rethinkdb? I am very bullish about agpl. As far as I understand, the choice of agpl has no effect on your code which you put in a repository. Is that not the case?

Honest question, although on a bit different topic I guess. Does AGPL prevents some company creating Github like services for Pijul?

> Does AGPL prevents some company creating Github like services for Pijul?

Not at all, if their service is AGPL licensed.

Of course, many companies may not want to use AGPL, and there's a whole lot of discussion on this page regarding what might/might-not be allowed to work around the AGPL. However, I didn't see anyone mention the possibility of, you know, using the AGPL, which is the entire reason the authors chose it ;)

Re: Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

#153

Post by auvi »

lvh wrote: post #39
kibwen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when does anybody ever check the license of compiled binary applications?

If you buy a macOS machine today, it ships with bash3.2 by default. That's the last version that was GPLv2. It is a decade old by now. Some companies most definitely care.

could you please tell me why GPLv2 allows Apple to include bash3.2 with macOS but not the newer versions with GPLv3? I always had the idea that including GPL software requires the rest to be GPL too.

Re: Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

#154

Post by bachmeier »

pmontra wrote: post #129
zellyn wrote: post #10

Sadly, I'm afraid the AGPL license is going to make this untouchable to businesses… :-( [Edit] Interestingly, they cover that. I suppose if you're just running Pijul rather than integrating with its code, it might be safe to use in a corporate environment. Still, it's likely to be offputting.

First of all, from the FAQ: > But maybe we’ve missed something, and the AGPL actually prevents some use of Pijul that we’ve not thought of, and that does not aim at centralizing the internet. If this is the case, please discuss your idea with us on the mailing list. Second, I wonder how many companies really had to change the source code of git, subversion, mercurial etc. What somebody could do is build a web service…

> I wonder how many companies really had to change the source code of git, subversion, mercurial etc.

Even that overstates the matter. Companies could modify the code all they want as long as they don't distribute that code. That would impact Github competitors - maybe 10 or 20 companies in the entire US.

Re: Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

#155

Post by ben0x539 »

qznc wrote: post #117
kibwen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not prevent any company from creating a Pijulhub. However, if you make modifications to Pijul or link it as a library into other code, that code must be made open-source. (And note that GitHub doesn't even use the original git written by Linus, they wrote their own implementation, libgit2.)

Afaik libgit2 is a derivative of git. Anyways, for Pijul to be successful, there must be something like PijulHub. The bar is higher now. Thus, make it easy to build this hub!

It sounds like the authors' motivation is to create something that doesn't need a central hub to compete, to fight centralization.

I expect their idea of success is also very different from github's.

Re: Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

#156

Post by yellowapple »

auvi wrote: post #153
lvh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy a macOS machine today, it ships with bash3.2 by default. That's the last version that was GPLv2. It is a decade old by now. Some companies most definitely care.

could you please tell me why GPLv2 allows Apple to include bash3.2 with macOS but not the newer versions with GPLv3? I always had the idea that including GPL software requires the rest to be GPL too.

The usual issue is the "anti-tivoization" language (basically: the GPLv3 requires hardware that uses GPLv3-licensed software to allow users to install modified versions of that software on the hardware in question). There's also some language around patent licenses that might be unattractive to a company that deals in a lot of software patents (like Apple).

Re: Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

#157

Post by millstone »

chriswarbo wrote: post #148
zellyn wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. I'm not arguing based on some reasoning of my own that AGPL is bad. I'm arguing based on working at a previous big company where if you checked in AGPL code, Ninjas in hazmat suits broke through the skylights and parasailed down to exorcise the toxic intrusion. Enough mixed metaphors?

> if you checked in AGPL code This sounds like taking some of Pijul's source code and putting it inside another project. That would certainly have business implications, which justifies ninjas. It's possible to use AGPL as a business strategy (I worked at a company whose main product used CPAL[1] which has a similar network-use clause); but such decisions should not be made via VCS commit. Of course, if the choice of…

If a BigCorp is to use AGPL code, it needs to erect internal barriers (on code search, etc) to ensure that said code does not find its way into other projects. Those internal barriers usually incur a cost that outweighs whatever benefit the code provides, relative to unencumbered alternatives.

If you say "we don't plan to patch the code, just use the binaries as-is" then you're asserting that the software today your needs forever into the future. That's a terribly foolish bet.

A business founded on a principle of radical openness might be compatible with AGPL. But any business that wants to have some internal software (HR, etc) is well advised to stay the hell away from AGPL.

Re: Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

#158

Post by millstone »

st3v3r wrote: post #119
frant-hartm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> offer it as a sevice for money Yes, you can, but if you add something - like issue tracking, user/access management etc.. around that then you need to publish that under AGPL as well.. It means it will never be part of something like github, bitbucket or AWS CodeCommit. And then there are plugins to CIs (checkout from repository ...) - would those be affected?

You can't add proprietary bits to their system without contributing those bits back so everyone can have them. Boo hoo.

This is the big conceit of copyleft licenses: that "derivative works" are exclusively "modified and extended versions of the program" to use the FSF's terminology, and not a small piece of a much larger system.

It's easy to imagine wanting to add Pijul support to Tower, SourceTree, Gerrit, Phabricator, etc. - projects that all dwarf Pijul. But these projects will be unable or unwilling to risk doing so, because of the AGPL.

Re: Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

#159

Post by millstone »

bachmeier wrote: post #154
pmontra wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, from the FAQ: > But maybe we’ve missed something, and the AGPL actually prevents some use of Pijul that we’ve not thought of, and that does not aim at centralizing the internet. If this is the case, please discuss your idea with us on the mailing list. Second, I wonder how many companies really had to change the source code of git, subversion, mercurial etc. What somebody could do is build a web service…

> I wonder how many companies really had to change the source code of git, subversion, mercurial etc. Even that overstates the matter. Companies could modify the code all they want as long as they don't distribute that code. That would impact Github competitors - maybe 10 or 20 companies in the entire US.

Facebook uses derivatives of PHP and mySQL today, because those are the technology choices Zuckerberg made in 2004. You hope you should be so lucky!

Also, "distribute that code" can be interpreted very broadly. A contractor may access your internal HR system, and now you have to share it with them. A factory line worker may be entitled to the source controlling the robot fixture. A airline passenger may use the in-flight entertainment unit, and be entitled to its source. Etc.

Re: Pijul – A free and open source distributed version control system

#160

Post by pmeunier »

zellyn wrote: post #10

Sadly, I'm afraid the AGPL license is going to make this untouchable to businesses… :-( [Edit] Interestingly, they cover that. I suppose if you're just running Pijul rather than integrating with its code, it might be safe to use in a corporate environment. Still, it's likely to be offputting.

Hi! Author here. The situation is slightly more complex than what you describe. Pijul was announced on the darcs blog, not by its authors, way before it was ready (about a year before). We had not really chosen a license back then, so we made the most conservative and protective choice available, and agreed to think again whenever we would have time.

Now that we've started to use Pijul for the website (about two weeks ago), we want to change the license.

I'm slightly annoyed by all the political statements in GPL3, AGPL3 and several versions of LGPL, such as "you cannot use this on impure devices", or "you cannot use this on platforms with poor support for shared libraries such as windows or mac os" (by which I mean that these platforms don't have real package managers to handle dependencies, and the end user has to either (1) install DLLs manually or (2) install "unshared shared libraries", i.e. one full instance of the library per program using it, which OSX calls an "app").

I am not a lawyer, but GPL2 seems to be free of these. We're not likely to pick anything much more permissive for now. Also, the Pijul and Darcs teams agree that we don't particularly enjoy discussions about licenses, especially when they're not based on factual arguments. Here are answers we've already given:

- If you think that "a new anarchistic jurisdiction not recognizing any copyright law will soon emerge, hence Pijul should be in the public domain", we don't agree. The movie Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam, also known as Turkish Star Wars, is available full-length on youtube, to remind everyone that copyright laws may be broken, but not totally useless. Therefore, your dream country may not "emerge" that soon.

- Or maybe you think "I'd like to make a living from selling a small wiki based on Pijul, leveraging not only your research ideas, but also the database backend you spent 6 months full-time writing, as well as you SSH library. Why would you not allow me to do that?". The answer is: because if your wiki is useful, we want to use it too, without having to pay! What sense of fairness is this?

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