Bzr development stopped

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Ingamells writes:
 > On 03/09/12 13:56, Ben Finney wrote:

[sic]

Ben didn't deserve that.

 > > I don't think you will, though. Bazaar, while it is the preferred VCS
 > > >of some highly skilled hackers, is basically a product aimed at people
 > > >who either can't or won't put thought into their VCS. They'd rather
 > > >switch than hack
 > As a [long term] user of bzr I resent your suggestion that I'm either 
 > lazy or stupid.

Well, that wasn't the suggestion, especially not in context (which you
cut).  The suggestion was that people who chose Bazaar because it
already does what they want without them or their colleagues spending
time thinking about it have made a deliberate, informed choice, based
on its vaunted adaptation to their workflow and deliberate
discouragement of "dangerous" operations like "rebase" -- ie, reduced
need to think about the tool.  This implies that "fixing" the
contributor agreement is unlikely to unlock vast amounts of time and
effort from them.

Many of those who chose git also made a deliberate, informed choice,
knowing that use of git requires both an investment in learning about
the tool and, often, day-to-day thought about workflow.  My suggestion
is that such people are on average more likely to contribute to git
than the average bzr user is to contribute to Bazaar.  Canonical's
self-serving contributor agreement is mostly irrelevant.  (Aside from
Ben, I've received only one reply to my request for testimony about
the inhibiting effect of the Canonical contributor agreement.  I guess
that I may as well summarize now. ;-)

 > I, like many others, I guess, would love to have the time and
 > freedom to contribute to all those projects, but I have a wife and
 > kids to house and feed.

That's just your preferred way of phrasing what I wrote.  In fact,
even Linus has a wife and kids.  But he spent a huge amount of time
think about and contributing to his VCS, no?  He could have just used
Subversion (or Arch!)

Steve