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RE: Looking to hire Software Engineers to Help Develop Subversion

From: Bob Archer <Bob.Archer_at_amsi.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:43:25 -0500

> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:25 PM, David Weintraub
> <qazwart_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

> Absolutely correct!
>
> Your analysis / explanation is much better than my own. Thank you.
>
> - David

I also think this is good news and look forward to seeing the WANDisco contributions to the project. And if I had any more knowledge of the svn internals I might be applying for one of those positions.

BOb

Received on 2010-12-21 21:44:07 CET

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