BitKeeper, a popular version control system will no longer be free for Linux developers to use. The software, which was created by company BitMover, will no longer be subject to free support and upgrades. Anyone wishing to continue using the product will have to migrate to the commercial version. Being asked to pay for support does not go down well in the open-source world one bit. However, BitKeeper never employed open-source licensing rules; it was merely offered to the open-source community for free. Now, that has changed.
The move, which may have been prompted after developers in the open-source community began writing add-on tools to BitKeeper, seems pretty final.
"BitMover has replaced the free version of BitKeeper with the recently released open-source BitKeeper client," a company statement said. "Those developers who desire additional functionality may choose to migrate to the more powerful commercial version of BitKeeper."