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Re: Looking to hire Software Engineers to Help Develop Subversion

From: David Weintraub <qazwart_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:25:08 -0500

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Pablo Beltran <pablo_at_svnflash.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have no doubt about those all features will be good for the future of
> Subversion, from a technical point of view.
>
> On the other hand, the underlaying message scares me. The message is clear:
> Apache can't drive the development process by itself and only Wandisco can
> do it in the right way and in timing.
>
> And I think that this exceeds Subversion project and undermines Apache's
> authority.
>
> Today is Wandisco and Subversion. Tomorrow could be Oracle or Microsoft
> doing the same with other project. I would not like see Apache become in a
> silly Software Factory.
>
> But of course, I have not enough knowledge about how Apache internally works
> and perhaps I'm saying a very great stupidness. So, my apologizes for that
> if that is the case.
>

I am going to look at this a bit differently: Has IBM taken over
Linux? A majority of the changes in Linux are done by IBM paid
employees. IBM has its own goals and its own ideas about what they
want to do with Linux.

However, I believe most people feel that Linux isn't an IBM project
despite the massive amount of work done by a single company.
Basically, IBM benefits from Linux, so they do a lot of code work,
sometimes working on areas that have been previously neglected. The
better Linux is, the more IBM can sell Linux solutions.

Subversion has had a lot of problems since version 1.5 has come out.
Basically, the merge/branch tracking isn't that great. In fact, many
people prefer the 1.4 version which doesn't make any pretensions about
tracking branching and merging.

Meanwhile, many people feel Subversion is past its prime. Many open
source projects are moving from Subversion to Git. Actually, this
makes sense for open source projects, but it is beginning to affect
commercial applications. People are starting to push Git as a
commercial SCM package.

I recently pointed out on another list that I might recommend a piece
of software I don't think is as good as another piece of software
simply because the "inferior" product plays better with the other
software the company uses and because users are more familiar with it.

I might not like Git as a commercial version control system, but if
most developers are more familiar with Git than Subversion, and 3rd
party products start integrating with Git in better ways than they
integrate with Subversion, guess what I'm going to start to recommend.

So far, Subversion isn't being forked, and a fork would not be good
for WANdisco. They are heavily dependent upon people selecting
Subverson as a version control system. What they want to do is fix
some of the underlying issues Subversion has had for the last three
years and get the Subversion project to accept them. I can't see any
reason why the Subversion project would reject them. After all,
Subversion was once run by CollabNet which had commercial interests in
Subversion. Yet, no one complained about CollabNet "dominating" the
project.

I hope that WANdisco is able to fix many of the issues that have been
plaguing Subversion for years. I don't believe that those who are
leading Subversion have "failed", but that a private company
committing resources to an open source project can be a good thing.

-- 
David Weintraub
qazwart_at_gmail.com
Received on 2010-12-21 21:25:45 CET

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