For people who don't know the history -- McVoy offered free bitkeeper licenses to various open source projects, and the Linux kernel switched to it.
After Andrew Tridgell (SAMBA, among other projects) reverse-engineered the bitkeeper protocol [1] in order to create his own client, the license was rescinded for everyone.
After Andrew Tridgell (SAMBA, among other projects) reverse-engineered the bitkeeper protocol [1] in order to create his own client, the license was rescinded for everyone.
As a result, Linus wrote git.
[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/132938/