On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Mark C. Chu-Carroll wrote:
> I've mentioned Stellation several times, so I won't go into great detail.
> But we're a friendly competitor to SubVersion, written in Java. Instead
> of trying to focus on being a CVS replacement, we're trying to be
> a complete, usable SCM system that is built on a highly configurable,
> and extensible base platform.
I'm not as nice as Karl is when it comes to new announcements, so
apologies in advance. Whenevr I hear someone compare their product
against someone elses and claim it's more "configurable" or "extensible"
than the other, especially when both are available in source code form, it
just feels like someone pissing in your beer. The words "complete" and
"usable" don't help much, either. SVN is aiming to be all those things,
and I think by design and by implementation achieves it. Being a CVS
replacement was only the goal for 1.0.
I usually don't make a fuss about duplication of effort in open source
projects - I see it as very similar to the bifurcation of species in a
Darwinian ecology, bringing greater survivability against threats and
allowing for valuable specialization. E.g., some people think that BSD is
disorganized because there's NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD, but I see that
trio as an incredibly positive thing - and as teams much more closely
coordinated than the 400 different Linux distributions. :)
The only time duplicate efforts are a shame is when there is no real
difference in functionality between the two, especially when that
difference couldn't have been built as one team extending/enhancing the
efforts of the other.
I don't know that we really need to discuss merging of efforts in depth
right now or anything; at the end of the day it may or may not be the
right thing to do, I have no idea. My personal craw about duplication of
effort comes from being an executive and board member of the company
funding four full-time engineers to write software to give away entirely
for free (in nearly the most generous form available, under a BSD
license). We are not rich as a company - we do not do this out of
charity. One of the reasons we do this is the presumption that 4
developers working in the public can seed a much larger community who can
build far more than those 4 working behind closed doors could. So far,
this has been true on Subversion, and I've been extremely happy about it.
Still, that theory sees equivalent efforts out there that divide the total
talent pool who are motivated and capable of working on an SCM tool (as
well as the user community) as a problem, especially when those efforts
are put out under less generous licenses like the GPL or IBM license. It
makes it harder for me to convince my peers at the executive or board
level that this investment is wise.
Sorry if this essay (eek!) seems melodramatic. I wish both Stellation and
OpenCM well, as one would wish any volunteer effort well. I just wish I
knew why there was a reluctance to combine efforts, especially if it's due
to constraints we imposed that aren't necessary.
> This makes Stellation an excellent platform for trying out new ideas in
> SCM. We also provide integration with the Eclipse IDE.
Does Eclipse have support for the DeltaV extensions to WebDAV?
Brian
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Received on Mon Jul 8 04:32:52 2002