On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Pablo Beltran <pa...@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 qazw...@gmail.com
