At the time Linus was the sole author/contributor of git, and he needed a replacement for BitKeeper in a hurry. BitKeeper had been made unavailable for Linux k

At the time Linus was the sole author/contributor of git, and he needed a replacement for BitKeeper in a hurry. BitKeeper had been made unavailable for Linux kernel development because the proprietor of BitKeeper was really unhappy that Tridge had reverse engineered the protocol and created an open-source client[1] which could talk to the Bitkeeper server. Linus created the first version of git sufficient to do a kernel commit in ten days[2]. [1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcepuller/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcepuller/ [2] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/10-years-of-git-an-interview-with-git-creator-linus-torvalds/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/10-years-of-git-an-inte... (As Tridge tells the story[3], he telnet'ed to the bk port and typed "help" so it wasn't that much of a reverse engineering effort. :-) [3] https://lwn.net/Articles/132938/ https://lwn.net/Articles/132938/