Arthur Barrett from the CVSNT team (a fork of CVS) asked on the openbsd-tech mailing list if the CVSNT/OpenCVS project effort can perhaps be consolidated.
His point was since the goals are similar (stay compatible to GNU CVS, be secure as possible, and provide a better access control) and CVSNT already had five years of stable releases, joining efforts would benefit both parties.
Apart from the argument of re-licensing (OpenCVS will be BSD licensed), Theo had some interesting information:
We were fully aware of there being other CVS projects, and we do not feel that their stuff can help us towards our goals at all. A lot of our goals are- as yet -not disclosed.
and continued to “explain” why they did not choose to use one of the various CVS implementations:
That said, we have no interest in furthering GPL codebases. Not just because of the licenses, but also because of the obvious bloat that always happens with these codebases designed to “work on every stupid variation of system even written in the past”.
Finally he ended the discussion in his way:
OK, let me be more clear. When people who know nothing about anything write software, in the GNU-style, they write bloated bloated bloated crap when it is not neccessary.
When it is done, OpenCVS will run fine on other systems.
Like OpenSSH.
Without the boatloats of bloat that is common in GNU-style projects.
Anyways, I think our conversation is over.
I personally agree with Theo and that’s why I really like the OpenBSD approach. That’s why I don’t like J2EE and love Ruby & Ruby on Rails.
You can find the whole thread on marc.
