I was there, and I was told in private mail by the author of BitKeeper that I did not have permission to use it, because of my work on respository analysis software that looked like it would get too close for comfort.
That's without any reverse engineering. I never used BitKeeper, or connected to the server, or read the infamous "help" text.
It meant I couldn't participate in kernel development in the same way as most folks.
I wasn't the only one, and that's what I mean by practical problems, not just ideological.
I wanted to point out that it was not a very loose "pragmatic and/or ideological" argument back then, but there were very specific actions and respected actors involved.
You obviously, being directly involved, are aware of the specifics, but it might be easy for a casual reader to place it in a "Ah, the Free Software people were ruining a good free thing even back then" context, whereas pretty much the opposite happened.
[1] and you too, by implication, for which my apologies as well.
That's interesting. I read your comment as making out that it was _merely_ one person (Tridge) who had a problem with BitKeeper and BK didn't deserve the flak, but I read your later comment as making out that BK did deserve it.
He connected to a BK port and typed "help". BK helpfully output a bunch of protocol help. He used that to implement something minor (I think for archival?) and McVoy wasn't having it.
It wasn't even "wireshark", but simply a telnet session indeed.
But GitHub doesn't have this problem.
The very specific flash-point was Linus throwing an unjustified hissy-fit defending Larry McVoy of BitKeeper being difficult about Andrew Tridgel (Tridge of Samba fame) "reverse engineering" the data traffic of Bitkeeper for inter-operability (really just sniffing client packets with wireshark or something).
Whether the name "git" pertains to Tridge or Linus himself who in retrospect decided he acted like a spoiled brat is still not known :)