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by pjmlp 13 days ago
Which would have failed had it been developed by someone else, without being a requirement for Linux kernel development.
2 comments
zorked 13 days ago
The Linux kernel adopted Bitkeeper before git and it never spread out from there. It's not that many people working on the kernel.

git growth was very symbiotic with GitHub growth. I don't remember why GitHub became popular in the first place. I think it was the Ruby community? GitHub was one of their own during an explosion of Ruby on Rails and successful startups using it.

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pjmlp 13 days ago
Sure, if we ignore Bit keeper was commercial, always a hot topic, and not developed by Linus.
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cataphract 13 days ago
Yeah, for a while it was not clear that git would win over mercurial. GitHub was decisive.
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rtpg 13 days ago
Maybe? But this is an argument you can make about most technology adoption (silly recent example: USB-C adoption obviously buffetted by Apple showing up and saying "it's all this now" and having a bunch of people willing to swap everything out for it)
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pjmlp 13 days ago
The same Apple that was forced by EU regulators to actually adopt it across their devices?
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ChrisMarshallNY 13 days ago
Yup. That doesn’t change the effect, though.

That kind of thing has happened before. When HP adopted IEE-488, it became the standard test equipment interface for a couple of decades.

USBC has arrived.

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pjmlp 13 days ago
Yes it does, otherwise people in Europe would still not use USB C on their Apple gear for the most part.
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ChrisMarshallNY 13 days ago
Agreed.

The thing about an SCM, though, is that it needs to be rock-solid reliable and trustworthy. No "YOLO, Bro!" or "Move Fast and Break Things."

Git is that. I believe that this is exactly because of who wrote it.

Torvalds has plenty of detractors (and they aren't necessarily wrong), but he is one hell of a C programmer.

I'd trust stuff he wrote, over about 95% of what modern devs, do, these days.

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