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Story: BitKeeper: No holds barred open source infighting

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I struggle to find an accurate description of the extent to which this article misrepresents the facts in this situation. I will therefore fall back to a phrase local to my part of the world -

damn lies.

Tridge did not try to clone bitkeeper. He tried to come up with a way to access data stored inside of bitkeeper without having to buy bitkeeper (with actual cash or by submitting to unreasonable license agreements). The data in question is the programming code for the Linux kernel, which is SUPPOSED to be open to the community. All Tridge was trying to do was to restore access to software code that was supposed to be open in the first place.

Furthermore, even if Tridge were trying to clone bitkeeper, he was never bound by its license. Ergo, he was never part of any deal for which he would need to keep up his end. He could have taken packet traces of its operation and set off to reverse engineer a complete working clone, and there would be nothing unreasonable or unethical about it. Every single large software company in existence has done the exact same thing.

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