fossil is also a really interesting choice for an "easy setup" version control system, and it's definitely worth considering if you're looking at sccs/cssc: I've used it to log configuration changes for an application, the "push" functionality to centralise changes from tenants, and then I can store issues/tickets (and other metadata) on the configuration changes centrally.
As you surely know, Eric S Raymond has a long well documented track record of wildly inaccurate claims and outright racism and misogyny, and he regularly inflates and exaggerates his technical competency and achievements.
Thomas Ptacek actually raised $100,000 to stop himself from tweeting vile ESR quotes: he actually raised money to cancel HIMSELF! I bet that's a lot more than ESR has raised on his SRC fundraising page that you linked to and endorsed.
https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/966859542792458240
Some choice quotes (you can pay me to stop, too!):
https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833
ESR> Unfortunately, this doesn't cover the BLM crowd, which would have an average IQ of about 85 if it's statistically representative of Americans blacks as a whole. I've never tried to train anyone that dim and wouldn't want to.
https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/657333910846742528
https://www.dropbox.com/s/55ut8psqeb20tnj/Screenshot%202015-...
> I asked some friends, who tend to be quite nerdy but are mostly not programmers. The only response so far is Ada Lovelace.
ESR> Figures. She doesn't deserve that reputation; "the first programmer" is pure hype created by political animals desperate to conjure up female role models.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147038
ESR> I’m wondering about this because my wife Cathy asked me a simple question last night, and I realized I didn’t have an answer to it. “Are you” she asked “the most famous programmer in the world?” This was a question which I had, believe it or not, never thought about before. But it’s a reasonable one to ask, given recent evidence – notably, the unexpected success of my Patreon page. This is relevant because Patreon is mainly an arts-funding site – it’s clearly not designed for or by techies.
I try to recommend some useful software, and you go on an unrelated rant about its author, in an obvious attempt to have him cancelled and all his works expunged.
I’m sure all your claims can be either explained as inconsequential or disproven as false, but this is not the time and place for it. Take your ESR-bashing somewhere else.
In terms of "cancelling" him, isn't that up to individuals who decide they do not want to use his software?
I’m not discussing ESR here. I’m discussing you, and your transparent attempt to trap me and try and have me cancelled as well.
No, I am not.
> You're the one who brought him up in the first place,
No, I never mentioned him until you did.
> and linked to his fund raising page.
No, I did not. I only linked to one page, the page of the SRC project, which is what I wanted to suggest that people might want to evaluate as an alternative to RCS.
> How did I "trap" you into suddenly trying to change the subject? Who did I ask to "cancel" you? That's "physically impossible", as you would say. ;)
[…]
> Is asking you that a "trap" that will "cancel" you if you answer?
Yes. As is obvious to any but the most casual observer.
> > America, conservatives will tell you, is under siege by “cancel culture.” What they won’t tell you is that they couldn’t be happier about it, since it gives them a handy comeback to any criticism, and helps feed their supporters’ sense of victimization.
Which one of us is trying to cancel anyone right now? Me or you? It’s quite obviously you who’s first trying to cancel ESR for some things unrelated to the software which I suggested, and you are then also trying to get me to argue about ESR, which would make me an easy target for suggesting that I would then somehow be on ESR’s side, responsible for ESR’s opinions and thereby making me eligble for cancellation as well.
EDIT:
> You're on record as having submitted two of his other ridiculously arrogant articles to Hacker News […] you're obviously a fan of his. […] Were you seriously suggesting that ESR would be a good person to collaborate with on developing a source code control system, despite all the evidence? Please explain why. Do you still endorse contributing to his fundraising campaign that you linked to?
Apparently having submitted articles by ESR three years ago is enough to get me smeared as supporting whatever ESR is being accused of. I’m feeling seriously stalked here.
(You neglect to mention that I have also submitted to HN your story about Sun Microsystems PizzaTool. Does this mean that I also endorse your opinions?)
People are complex and opinions change all the time, appreciating the code someone writes has very little to do with anything else.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1999/04/msg00623.html
The irony of Eric S Raymond threatening someone else for behaving "like that kind of disruptive asshole in public" is rich -- very rich.
Bruce Perens Dead:
https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/10
https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/7
https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/terrorismistic
I've known ESR for at least 35 years, and he hasn't changed from being a smarmy jerk, he's just gotten much worse, especially after 9/11, when his racism and islamophobia and violent death threats really started erupting. But he's always been deeply sexist, for as long as I've known him.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond
>"And for any agents or proxy of the regime interested in asking me questions face to face, I’ve got some bullets slathered in pork fat to make you feel extra special welcome." -Eric S Raymond
>"A clash of civilizations driven by the failure of Islamic/Arab culture (though I would stress the problem of the Islamic commandment to jihad more than he does). I think he [Steven den Beste] is also right to say that our long-term objective must be to break, crush and eventually destroy this culture, because we can't live on the same planet with people who both carry those memes and have access to weapons of mass destruction. They will hate us and seek to destroy us not for what we've done but for what we are." -Eric S Raymond
>"In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color." -Eric S Raymond
>"When I hear the words "social responsibility", I want to reach for my gun." -Eric S Raymond
And in all that time he's never written any impressive code, nor performed any noteworthy hacks, he just talks and talks and talks. He has made his entire career out of trying to tear down RMS and the Free Software Foundation, not doing anything constructive.
One good example of the problem with his "technical" works and his lack of actual experience with the things he likes to talk about so much, is that he makes and promotes outrageously incorrect claims like Linus's Law, which ESR confabulated himself, but misleadingly attributed "in honor of" Linus Torvalds, who never said that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus's_Law
"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."
When in fact:
Given ANY number of eye, "all" bugs are NOT shallow.
Some bugs are NEVER "shallow".
And only a FEW eyes are qualified to see some bugs, while MANY eyes are totally unqualified, including his own:
His mouth is certainly not qualified to make sweeping generalizations about "all" bugs, given his lack of experience as a programmer, and his spectacular public failure at auditing code in his pathetic attempt to discredit the now-exonerated scientists whose code predicted global warming (described below).
Neither "enough eyeballs" nor "the right eyeballs" are a GIVEN, even for open source software.
"Not enough eyeballs" (or "ZERO eyeballs" as he loves to claim) are NOT a GIVEN for proprietary software, because you can license much proprietary source code, and some proprietary source code is available for you to read and audit for free, under licenses like Microsoft's "Shared Source" license.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_source
And qualified eye balls are NOT FREE, and usually very busy being well paid to look at much more interesting things than poorly written buggy code like OpenSSL. I doubt that Eric Raymond has contributed any of the profits from his books or VA Linux stocks to Theo De Raadt or anyone else who actually takes the long time and tedious effort to actually audit code.
To quote Theo De Raadt: “My favorite part of the “many eyes” argument is how few bugs were found by the two eyes of Eric (the originator of the statement). All the many eyes are apparently attached to a lot of hands that type lots of words about many eyes, and never actually audit code.”
The little experience Raymond DOES have auditing code has been a total fiasco and embarrassing failure, since his understanding of the code was incompetent and deeply tainted by his preconceived political ideology and conspiracy theories about global warming, which was his only motivation for auditing the code in the first place. His sole quest was to discredit the scientists who warned about global warming. The code he found and highlighted was actually COMMENTED OUT, and he never addressed the fact that the scientists were vindicated.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond
>During the Climategate fiasco, Raymond's ability to read other peoples' source code (or at least his honesty about it) was called into question when he was caught quote-mining analysis software written by the CRU researchers, presenting a commented-out section of source code used for analyzing counterfactuals as evidence of deliberate data manipulation. When confronted with the fact that scientists as a general rule are scrupulously honest, Raymond claimed it was a case of an "error cascade," a concept that makes sense in computer science and other places where all data goes through a single potential failure point, but in areas where outside data and multiple lines of evidence are used for verification, doesn't entirely make sense. (He was curiously silent when all the researchers involved were exonerated of scientific misconduct.)
But you're not making any sense here.
The ego based mind set you're perpetuating isn't helping create a future that any of us wants to live in.
I am not the enemy here, neither is ESR, or even Trump.