Re: [ OFFTOPIC ] Re: The Linux Kernel Project Management System (INITIAL PROPOSAL)

Nat Lanza (magus@cs.cmu.edu)
28 Sep 1999 01:50:25 -0400


Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com> writes:

> Perhaps you should start a crusade to get it removed, it's obviously
> not useful according to, in your world nothing ever goes wrong.

You don't listen, do you? No matter how much I say "application-level
checking is good but you still need other measures", all you hear is
"application-level checking is bad". Look, I give up. Believe whatever
you want, okay? Don't let what I actually said get in the way or
anything.

> In 10 or more messages you've failed to get the point. Doing backups of
> bad data is not very useful. How the hell do you know that you need to
> restore from tape if the system never tells you that anything is wrong?
> RCS / CVS store the latest version in clear text - every earlier version
> could be completely corrupted and you'll cluelessly (through no fault of
> your own) be backing up, mirroring, raiding, and CDROM burning COMPLETE
> AND UTTER GARBAGE. Which you won't find out until you need to get an
> _OLD_ version to fix a bug.

Yeah, it's possible. But now we've moved from "totally screwed" to
"way inconvenienced because I have to play hunt-for-the-tape for a
long time". No, it's not optimal. I'm not claiming it is. I'm simply
claiming that it's possible to avoid being screwed without having your
version control system do lots of fancy error checking.

If I've failed to get your point, then maybe you've also failed to get
mine.

> > RCS shouldn't have to do this. If I need my data uncorrupted, I'd
> > better use mirrored disks with parity.
>
> You are at a good university; perhaps they have a copy of an old but
> famous paper by Dave Clark on end-to-end error checking. Read it.
> If you can't find it, I'll fax you a copy. Then think about how much
> use those mirrored disks are going to be if the page cache is busted and
> puts the wrong page in the file, or you have an undetected memory error,
> or the bus corrupts, or any of the many other errors occur. Once again,
> you're mirroring GARBAGE. And the source system, which could have warned
> you about this, didn't.

Question: Does BitKeeper prevent me from having garbage in my
repository? Completely? Or does it just make it less likely? I believe
it just makes it less likely, which is why I claim that backups and
disk arrays are still more important.

> Sheesh. If I had read this first, I wouldn't have bothered replying.
> So you whine and whine and whine and then when I say that your recourse
> is exactly what you have been holding up as the perfect answer, you
> whine some more.

You miss the point. Totally.

You claimed that Aegis was worse than BK because of support. You
claimed that since Peter didn't have commercial support in place,
users might have to maintain the code themselves if they wanted
support, and that your solution was better.

I pointed out that, in fact, your solution could be a lot worse, since
instead of losing support people can also have ended up throwing away
a lot of money for support that is no longer there.

In response, you whined and got insulting. Hardly a stellar example of
why I or anyone else should trust you for good support.

> Jeeze, I'm sorry Nat. I didn't realize your importance. Let me get
> Cindy Crawford on plane in the morning with 10,000 copies of BitKeeper
> plus a check for $50,000,000 made out to you personally. Because I want
> you to be happy. Really.

I'm glad you want me to be happy. I'd like you to be happy too.

If you'd really like me to be happy, maybe you should try keeping the
women and free product and cash and just start listening to people
without all your damn arrogance for once. I'm sick of it.

It's become clear to me over the past few messages that you really
don't care about what anyone who disagrees with you has to
say. They're all either fools or amateurs or deluded or in some way or
another idiots who should not be listened to. Only you have the
answer, and it is BitKeeper. You made it so the Linux kernel could use
it and love it, and by God we'd better all be grateful. You deserve
more than the insolence of dissenting opinions, you deserve
applause. So:

<clap> ... <clap> ... <clap>. huzzah!

Look, Larry, let's make a deal. I'll stop trying to discuss this issue
and you'll stop belittling me and telling me why anything I think is
inferior to what you think. I'll stop questioning your product, and
you'll stop hyping it, because by now I'm pretty sure I don't want
it. If you can be this arrogant and insulting to me for simply
disagreeing with you on a mailing list, I don't ever want to see what
happens if I've used your product and end up having a real problem
with it. I've tried to restrain myself, be reasonable, and keep the
discussion focussed on the issues at hand. Maybe I failed and went too
far to the side of insult, but I'd like to believe that at least I
tried to be nice about it. I don't believe you've made any such
effort, and I don't think you have any intention of doing so. As such,
I don't think I have anything more to say to you about this.

--nat

-- 
nat lanza --------------------- research programmer, parallel data lab, cmu scs
magus@cs.cmu.edu -------------------------------- http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~magus/
there are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths -- alfred north whitehead

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