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Comment by ttctciyf | Hacker News Reader

Arguably, he's referring to (what would become) git in this earlier message in the same thread: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0504.0/1826.html

> So I'm writing some scripts to try to track things a whole lot faster. Initial indications are that I should be able to do it almost as quickly as I can just apply the patch, but quite frankly, I'm at most half done, and if I hit a snag maybe that's not true at all. Anyway, the reason I can do it quickly is that my scripts will _not_ be an SCM, they'll be a very specific "log Linus' state" kind of thing. That will make the linear patch merge a lot more time-efficient, and thus possible.

The whole story of how git was cockled together to ameliorate the awkwardness of dealing with BitKeeper licensing (right?) issues, and marched from there to greatness is a pretty inspiring one, to my mind.

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Oh, good catch. It's a very vague allusion to git, though. The one I linked was the first one where I could find the string "git" in it.

> The whole story of how git was cockled together to ameliorate the awkwardness of dealing with BitKeeper licensing (right?) issues, and marched from there to greatness is a pretty inspiring one, to my mind.

Let's not over-romanticise the subject. Github obviously had a lot to do with it, along with luck and admiration for Linus. Also, git is hardly alone: Mercurial was almost the same idea in the beginning. Let us not forget how early git only had branching by cloning, like the Bitkeeper that both git and hg were emulating.

Also, it wasn't just that bitkeeper had an awkward license. It's that Tridgell reverse-engineered the Bitkeeper protocol, and thus Larry McVoy took away Linux's permissions to use Bitkeeper.

> It's that Tridgell reverse-engineered the Bitkeeper protocol

I always thought it was weird how telnetting into a port and typing "help" was considered "reverse engineering".

Hm, it was more than that. It involved inspecting network packets.

What I found weird is how Linus blamed Tridgell for the reverse engineering:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/14/torvalds_attacks_tri...

I also find that weird.

Could someone elaborate more on this?

> Let's not over-romanticise the subject.

It was an era of romance and derring do! :)

I'm not sure about github - I take your point, but you might also argue that if git didn't have the particular design, features, and mindset that went into creating it, github couldn't possibly have become the thing it is today.

Without getting into BK morality tales, though, it is one of those great stories along the lines "well in that case I'll jolly well write it myself" which shows that just sometimes doing that can (in some small way) change everything. Not unlike the linux kernel itself, or GNU/emacs, of course.

> (right?)

BitKeeper originally offered free licences to Linux developers, with one of the conditions being that they don't reverse engineer it.

One of them did, and BitKeeper revoked that licence. That's what prompted Linus to write Git, and also why it is named "Git" (an mild insult aimed at the person who reverse engineered it).

I believe Linus has said that "git" was referring to himself rather than the guy who reverse engineered BitKeeper, but I don't believe him.

Funnily enough, Mercurial itself is named after Larry, in the sense of "fickle".

Actually, I could much rather believe that 'git' referred to Larry McVoy, Mr. Bitkeeper himself. I've never met the man, but the fact that the license was onerous and he basically took his ball and went home speaks volumes. Also, and again hearsay, but I've heard stories about him.

That being said, I'll take BitKeeper over Perforce any day of the week.

Unlikely. Linus praises Larry several times and said that he had absolutely no problem with Larry making Bitkeeper non-free:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/11/torvalds_attack/

On the other hand, he was quite angry with Tridgell:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/14/torvalds_attacks_tri...

In the end, it might be fair to say that everyone involved (Linus, Larry and Tridgell) was a git.

> McVoy was adamant: "sorry, we're not in the business of helping you develop a competing product," he replied.

This business model is precisely what lead to a killer competing product being developed. Good job.

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