Mailing the story:

A vocal group has long protested Linus' use of BitKeeper, considering Linux the free and open source flagship product. GNU Project founder Richard Stallman is among the protestors, harshly criticizing Linus' decision to use a non-free (as in freedom) tool. However, most acknowledge that no free tool currently exists that is as powerful as BitKeeper, offering the ability to perform truly distributed development. Attempts to reverse engineer some of BitKeeper's features have lead to repeated cautions by BitMover. Most recently two such reverse engineering attempts have contributed to BitMover's decision to end the development and availability of the free BitKeeper product.