[TUHS] SCCS, TeamWare, BitKeeper, and Git

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2024-12-14T10:43:47-0700, Marc Rochkind wrote:
> As I mentioned in another post, I'm writing an invited paper for an
> upcoming issue of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering that will
> be a 50-year retrospective of my original 1975 SCCS paper (
> mrochkind.com/aup/talks/SCCS-Slideshow.pdf). Can some people here
> review a couple of paragraphs for accuracy?

I apologize for this not being quite responsive to your query, then.

1.  Tom Lord's Arch (ca. 2001) was at one timely recognized for
    popularizing, or perhaps _introducing_, the notion of decentralized
    version control to the dot-com era of hard-scrabble FLOSS developers
    who were building "Web 2.0" and whose startup employers, be they
    flush with cash or not, generally would not spring for a commercial
    VCS (which might not have been decentralized anyway).

    The most salient point here is that Linus Torvalds was not prescient
    or uniquely perceptive in recognizing the value of a DVCS.  Many
    people in the first half of the decade of the 2000s were chafing at
    the limitations of CVS in an increasingly networked environment, and
    Subversion was recognized as a conservative alternative even at the
    time.  This was conventional wisdom among engineers at my workplace.

    I urge us not to contribute to Torvalds's cult of celebrity as we
    did (and do) that of Bill Joy or Steve Jobs, suggesting that they
    had unique insights when they plainly didn't.  Sometimes a big name
    or reputation can lend some activation energy to an existing good
    idea (or persuade someone with a fat wallet to open it for financing
    of development), but it's important not to mistake what such
    celebrities should be credited with.  An example is how people
    mis-credit Bill Joy, solely, with developing curses.[1]

2.  "TeamWare and BitKeeper took advantage of the interleaved delta
    algorithm, also known as a weave, to implement an efficient way to
    represent merged deltas by reference, instead of reproducing code
    inside the repository. This is a lot more complicated to do with
    reverse deltas, introduced by RCS.*"

    I'd a like a second footnote directing me to where I can understand
    the mathematics supporting this claim.  Just out of nerd interest.

    Also, if one requires a shovel to bury Walter Tichy with, such a
    presentation would serve well...

Regards,
Branden

[1] See, e.g., the section "Relationship with vi":

    https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.faq.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20241214/327ee32f/attachment.sig>