In the '90s, Sun was one of the most desirable companies for programmers.
It has the best CPU, the best operating system, and the best programming language of its time.
But a young man in his early thirties saw the crisis, saying: If we don't open source the operating system, the market will be dominated by Linux in the future.
As it turned out, he was right, and the free Linux, paired with cheap x86 CPUs, quickly overwhelmed Sun's high-end servers.
That man is Larry McVoy.
But what no one expected was that just five years later, this open source champion would go to the opposite side of open source, and even break with the world's largest open source community ten years later.
Open source pioneer
In 1994, Larry left Sun to embrace Linux, where he developed the famous profiling tool LMbench, a benchmark suite favored by Linus and other kernel hackers.
From then on, he became a close ally of Linus.
At that time, Linus still relied on mailing lists and file diffs to maintain the Linux kernel, and at first it was fine, but by 1998, the heavy work had exhausted him.
There are SCMs (Source Code Management) such as CVS and Subvision on the market, but Linus doesn't like it and thinks it's garbage because they can't match the globally distributed development model and process of Linux.
As it happens, Larry has developed a software called Teamware at Sun, which is a distributed source code management system that not only stores the source code trees of Solaris and Java internally at Sun, but also uses it externally by many customers.
One night, Larry invites Linus, Dave Miller, and other kernel gods over to dinner to discuss what the new SCM should look like.
Larry spent three or four hours drawing on the whiteboard and told them his thoughts on distributed SCM.
Linus was impressed: "Well, that's cool, if you can get it out, I'll definitely use it." ”
Larry said: "No problem, I've done it before, and I guess it's about the same in six months." ”
Larry was clearly overly optimistic, and it took two years for the new SCM to be developed, which is the famous BitKeeper.
Break with open source
The software was developed, but Larry's philosophy changed significantly: "Open source as an isolated business model is almost unsustainable!"
According to Larry, it's fun for open source projects to start with, and programmers are willing to spend time on it. As time goes on, it's less fun, the hard work becomes more and more, and without income as a motivation, no one wants to maintain it, and the project can die.
If you charge a fee, it will be possible to keep the project going, fix bugs, and develop new features.
So, Larry decided: BitKeeper is not open source and charges.
Will the Linux community use a software that is not open source?
The answer is: Yes.
In 2002, Linus made the shocking decision to choose BitKeeper for kernel development.
One important reason is that BitKeeper, a distributed SCM, can easily support forks and merges, so that most of the work that was previously entirely on Linus' shoulders can be assigned to his trusted deputies.
BitKeeper has created a community version for everyone to use, with two major limitations:
1. Programmers using the Community Edition cannot participate in the development of other competing tools, whether open source or private.
2. BitKeeper will control certain metadata associated with kernel items in order to detect any misuse of licenses
This caused an uproar in the Linux community and strained the relationship between Linus and other developers.
People in the Linux community are also not convinced: can't we develop an open source one?
For Linus, he doesn't bother with using commercial software, so the alternative has to be a major improvement over BitKeeper.
Three years have passed, and those open source gurus have tossed countless SCMs, none of which can meet Linus's requirements.
By 2005, Samba's creator, Andrew Tridgell, had reverse-engineered the BitKeeper network protocol when he tried an alternative.
This annoyed Larry, who announced that he would stop making the BitKeeper version available to the community for free.
Is Linus going back to the days of mailing lists and file diffs?
For the first time since 1991, Linus paused Linux development and rolled up its sleeves to develop an SCM on its own.
In June 2005, within days of the start of the project, Linus' Git was self-hosted.
Within a few weeks, it was ready to host the Linux kernel.
Within a few months, Git was fully functional.
Linus handed over the maintenance of the project to Junio Hamano, his most passionate contributor, and once again devoted himself full-time to Linux development.
A great god is a great god.
Embark on a "dead end"
After losing Linux, the biggest "live advertisement", BitKeeper embarked on a "sheep intestine path" of steady development.
BitKeeper has about 20 employees and earns millions of dollars a year.
Truth be told, living a good life.
But people are more popular than people, and BitKeeper's biggest competitor is Rational's ClearCase, which has a whopping $350 million in annual revenue.
Fast forward to 2016, Git has ruled the world, BitKeeper has finally announced open source, but it is too late.
In 2020, BitKeeper, which couldn't survive, stopped developing.
In 2015, on the occasion of Git's 10th anniversary, Larry was asked, "Do you regret that you didn't open source BitKeeper back then?"
Larry said, "Regret? Of course, if I could have figured out what open source does, I wouldn't hesitate to do it......"
Now retired and well-off, Larry's favorite thing to do is to sail his beloved boat and go fishing.