*sigh* something is wrong with bkcvs again

At the *root* of a fresh checkout:

$ head -2 Makefile 
#
# Copyright (c) 2000-2003 Silicon Graphics, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

It's the XFS makefile...

This is your message recast in the context of the kernel, or at least this is what it sounded like to me:

*Sigh*. The kernel oops *again*. How dare you give me this kernel for free and then break it. Fix it, right now, and I'd like an apology along with the fix. Hurry up.

Maybe you didn't intend it to sound like that and you'd like to rephrase it.

---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com          http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Larry,

just because the subject contains the magic letters "bk" does not mean
it's neccesarily an attack on your product. Without trying to check out the latest 2.6 kernel to confirm this, it looks like somebody is playing with copyrights. And where are you reading an oops into it ?

Ken

 Peace, love, linux

Let's put this into context. I got up this morning to find Aaron's posting and I started looking into the problem. It turned into a mess and rather than spend Saturday with my wife and kids I sent them out of the house so I could focus on this and fix it. It took several hours to track down the bug and the tree has been rebuilding since about 1pm.

I gave up half my weekend to fix this stuff. I made my family get out of the house for your benefit, my wife is pissed at me, my kids are pissed at me, and people here are rude to me for giving them something for free that they should have built themselves. Hey, wrong answer and I'm the idiot for putting up with it. So I pointed out to the list that I don't like it and I tried to make it clear by pointing out that you wouldn't put it with that sort of bug report from me about the kernel.

Apparently I wasn't clear enough so here is try #2:

- We don't owe you this service
- You could have built this service
- People are routinely rude about it when there are problems
- Keep it up and the service goes away

We didn't get a nice message saying "please look at bk2cvs, it seems broken", we got an annoyed message from some guy with an ax to grind. Here's a quote from him talking about Pavel's oh-so-great BitKeeper clone:

"It would be better if you stored it in BitKeeper just to piss Larry off."

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=104653836702419&w=2

The bk2cvs gateway is a free service, it costs us money to provide it. People seem to think we are obligated to provide it and support it, and they think it's OK to be rude. Here's a feedback loop for you: every time I get a rude mail about this service the gateway gets shut down. First time is 1 day and it doubles every time after that. That means that you all as a community need to pass the word that it's not healthy to be rude. I'm sick of it, I've had it with that, I have absolutely zero tolerance for it and no sense of humor about it.

Some people have gotten the message, Ben Collins is a great example. He's been polite and pleasant to deal with and as a result we host the BK2SVN gateway next to the BK2CVS gateway. If you're nice I'll bend over backwards to help you but I've had it with rude people. It doesn't take any substantial effort to be polite and you as a community need to require that politeness or give up the gateway. It's that simple. --
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm

Just around nobody in the list is able to judge if _having_ a bk2cvs gateway (software) is a commercial win for your product or not. Therefore nobody can argue with you about the statement. This is fine for you, but bad for listeners. Effectively they leave the place with a feeling of being only grumblers and spongers.
And since quite a lot of people are doing positive things regarding linux that are never ever rewarded - not even by a one-liner in some credits-file - you have to accept that they don't want and need that feeling and therefore simply dislike you - completely unrelated to your former, current or future _work_.

Regards,
Stephan

Hi Larry,

The disrespect wasn't directed towards you, but at the problem. BKcvs is a great resource, but it's got some recurring bugs, and they're quite frustrating. While I realize you're the author, everyone makes mistakes. Your work on the CVS gateway is appreciated, even though it isn't flawless yet.