Slashdot Mirror

A fun fact:
http://electoral-vote.com/ is run by Andrew Tanenbaum of MINIX fame (among other things).

I've been one of Andy's students at the Vrij Universiteit and one of best things from his hand that I've read must be How to Prepare Your Input (PDF), a cook book only available electronically. His FAQ is a really nice read too!

I've been one of Andy's students at the Vrij Universiteit and one of best things from his hand that I've read must be How to Prepare Your Input (PDF), a cook book only available electronically. His FAQ is a really nice read too!

I've been one of Andy's students at the Vrij Universiteit and one of best things from his hand that I've read must be How to Prepare Your Input (PDF), a cook book only available electronically. His FAQ is a really nice read too!

That's Tanenbaum. No "nn".

Yankee Group (Laura Didio)

AdTI (Kevin Brown)

Mindcraft

(Rob) Enderle Group

Forbes (Daniel Lyons)

Maybe they didn't "get away with it", maybe that did. Depends on how you define it.

http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/

Well, now you can download it for free.

Minix

If you don't like the licensing terms, then choose Linux. Since that was like kinda of the whole point.

Linux is a lot of code. But, LOC isn't the most valuable measure of complexity. Although, it can be overwhelming at first. A lot of Linux code won't be of much interest since it will deal with archaic devices and such. But, Linux as an overall system is well-organized. Which will mean as a hobbiest, after you find the parts of system you want to play around with, it should be easy to modify.

The only real part that will screw you is the fact that as a monolithic kernel, if what you modify has a bug, it can potentially affect every part of the system (but usually it isn't so bad). And, this is usually no worse than any C-type coding unless you are playing around with the file-system.

More on-topic, I don't see any reason why you'd want to rewrite Minix. There is always this type of bully-ing going on. It doesn't mean that 3rd parties should run off like a bunch of chicken littles. Plus there are other projects like xBSD's or Linux that are not necessarily easy to contribute to, but nevertheless you will affect a lot more people and gain their accolades if successful. Meh, I guess it is their time to waste and there are certainly other less productive things they could be doing.

I forgot a few line breaks in there.

Grr, I do a quick google and find out that you can download it free here.

But then whats the point if Minix is free anyway?

Years later, I was teaching a course on operating systems and using John Lions' book on UNIX Version 6. When AT&T decided to forbid the teaching of the UNIX internals, I decided to write my own version of UNIX, free of all AT&T code and restrictions, so I could teach from it.

Mike

I recently read a PhD dissertation discussing (among others) a java-based grid environment. At first the entire idea sounded odd to me because of an expected performance drop. However, cases where java can be as fast as and sometimes even faster than optimized C have been shown before.

In the dissertation, two papers are mentioned that compare java to C and apparently show positive results for java. I haven't actually read these papers, by the way. However, their titles suggest that they might be on-topic here.

The first is "Benchmarking Java against C and Fortran for Scientific Applications" by J. M. Bull, L. A. Smith, L. Pottage and R. Freeman

Second, and judging from its title perhaps less on-topic is "High-Performance Java Codes for Computational Fluid Dynamics" by Christopher Riley, Siddhartha Chatterjee and Rupak Biswas

finally, the dissertation can be found on Rob van Nieuwpoort's publication list and is titled "Efficient Java-Centric Grid-Computing"

As citeseer is always crawling, even without a link on slashdot, I was afraid to post this... but then I remembered that noone here actually reads the FM :) Jokes aside, it is a great resource and I hope that they get some mirrors soon.

As I soon learned, Brown is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I was already suspicious.

(emphasis added)

Sarcasm aside, Mr. Brown is not "admitting" anything. He is merely showing a sense of humor in response to Prof. Tanenbaum's insult.

I'd love to... but I still don't understand why everybody is raving about *BSD being dead.

After having learned that Windows XP is a VMS clone and that Linux is a Minix clone which is a UNIX clone which is a MULTICS clone which is a CTSS clone which is a FMS clone which I have never heard about and which is probably dead, dead, dead I'd think that everything - even BeOS and QNX (and this FreeBSD clone MacOS X) are UNIX-influenced (if not based) and therefore dead, dead, dead. 8-)
I used to prefer FreeBSD over GNU/Linux because of the straightforward install without bells and whistles and the easy way to compile parts of the system. The only disappointing thing is the lack of drivers for my exotic hardware, at least I was so far not able to find working drivers for my external CD-writer, my laptop's USB and a single of my three USB webcams.

Well... then I discovered Gentoo and everything was fine again... 8-)

Code comparison

and that this comparison found no evidence for any Minix code in Linux, a fact which Brown simply ignored.

When Tanenbaum isn't writing books about how to create operating systems and computer networks, he's writing books about how to create food. (Yes, he really did write a book titled How To Prepare Your Input.)

From the article:
"Ironically, the main character in these wonderful books by Sheila McCullagh was Roger Red-hat. Conspiracy theorists should go wild with this new information."

Not quite, the picture shows a drawing with a white dog going by. Shouldn't it be a yellow dog?

If you read the arguments of Ken Brown, then read what Tanenbaum has to say, it's immediately clear to someone of average intelligence that Brown does have a consistent argument--with a condition, if you take the time away. In other words, he's trying hard to argue with anachronism.

Unfortunately, most things in the world change in time, so you must be careful what you argue about. For example, according to Tanenbaum, it used to be legal to use Lions' book to teach Unix internals, until AT&T decided to forbid it. Brown would assert that Lions' notes have always been an illegal distribution, and therefore an infringement on Intellectual Property. In fact, he uses this argument to show how Tanenbaum is unaware of IP issues. But this is not true. If you can't tell how events unfold themselves in time, you'll buy his argument.

Furthermore, even if there was Minix code at the beginning for testing purposes, it would be gone by now. It's meaningless trying to argue if there is a possibility that some reminiscent of Minix is still preset in Linux. The only way to find out if that is the case is by analyzing the code line by line. The person making the claim (Ken Brown) is supposed to do that. But he didn't.

Ken Brown is free to say whatever he wants, but this just hurts his own credibility.

To bad his consultant didn't demand a clause in their contract requiring his results to be included, unedited, in an appendix of KB's book.

To bad his consultant didn't demand a clause in their contract requiring his results to be included, unedited, in an appendix of KB's book.

...is that his own consultant says he's full of it.

everyone here is going to snicker and roll their eyes about how this guy is obviously an idiot since he questions linus, the gpl, linux, etc.

That's not the point. Questioning is good: did Linus really write Linux is a perfectly acceptable question. Is the GPL good and (seperate question) enforcable is a good question. It only becomes foolish when, having gone to your sources and gotten your answers, you still cling to your asinine premise.

For those of you just tuning into this soap opera, here is a brief summary of the plot so far. Ken Brown, president of a Washington think tank called the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution has written a book claiming open source using GPL is a bad idea and that Linus Torvalds stole Linux from MINIX, which I wrote. Linus, the alleged stealer, responded. As the alleged stealee I also felt the need to respond. Now Ken Brown has reacted to my responses. I very much doubt that when he came to visit me, he was expecting me to (1) defend Linus in our interview and then (2) do it fairly publicly later.

I was planning to spend my Sunday afternoon doing something useful, but since Brown has directly challenged me in his posting cited above, I feel I should respond. I will do this in the form of commenting on his posting. His comments are set off typographically like this:

"Samizdat is a series of excerpts from an upcoming book on open source and operating systems that will be published later this year. AdTI did not publish Samizdat with the expectation that rabidly pro-Linux developers would embrace it."

I have to give credit where credit is due. Brown got that one completely right.

"The United States is the home of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an internationally respected agency which contributes to the worldwide effort to protect and govern intellectual property."

***EVERY*** country has a patent office. The United States is not unique in this respect. Furthermore, many people think that patenting software is a terrible idea. The subject of software patents is a very controversial issue in Europe right now.

"The Samizdat report recommends that the U.S. government should invest $5 billion in research and development efforts that produce true open source products, such as BSD and MIT license-based open source. Government investment in open source development will accelerate innovation."

I can live with this. Professors are always on the lookout for new sources of research funding.

"The disturbing reality is that the hybrid source model depends heavily upon sponging talent from U.S. corporations and/or U.S. proprietary software. Much of this questionable borrowing is a) not in the best interest U.S. corporations ..."

Excuse me? A Finnish student writes some software (in Finland) that a lot of people like and he is accused on sponging off U.S. corporations? And last time I checked, quite a few U.S. Corporations, such as IBM, seemed quite happy with Linux. And a very large number of U.S. corporations seem to be using the (open source) Apache web server. And even if open source weren't in the best interest of U.S. corporations, where is it written that all activities everywhere in the world must be done with the interests of U.S. corporations as their primary goal?

"Linux is a leprosy; ..."

This statement is not grammatically, politically, or factually correct. Does he mean "Linus has Hansen's disease"? I hope not. But if he does, fortunately, it is highly treatable these days. If he means Linux is wasting away, the facts speak otherwise. If he means "Linux is very contagious" this is true, but a better wording could have been chosen.

"... and is having a deleterious effect on the U.S. IT industry because it is steadily depreciating the value of the software industry sector. Software is also embedded in hardware, chips, printers and even consumer electronics

Speaking of which; Tanenbaum rebutal

Ken Brown asserts that Tanenbaum had the Lions notes (illegal Unix copy), so the fact that he wasn't a Unix licensee should be irrelevant. Given that, how would you now respond to Brown's statement?

... it's like comparing one project's code base with a totally different one written by someone else. That's what Alexey Toptygin did with MINIX and Linux. His results are here . His commentary on the results are illuminating since he made the comparison specifically for Ken Brown's pamphlet only to find that his conclusion wasn't appreciated.

... it's like comparing one project's code base with a totally different one written by someone else. That's what Alexey Toptygin did with MINIX and Linux. His results are here . His commentary on the results are illuminating since he made the comparison specifically for Ken Brown's pamphlet only to find that his conclusion wasn't appreciated.

Have a look at Tanenbaum's web site, where he discusses this. He believes that the ideas came from MINIX (which is almost certainly true), but is quite convinced that none of the code was stolen (which is the issue at hand).

Cheers,

Mouser

A. Tanenbaum has recently posted an email he received. Interesting stuff, in which you'll discover the way K. Brown does his analysis.
stuff here

Now that I've said that, it occurs to me that there is something MS could do to put a significant chink in Linux's armor: submit code that gets distributed in the kernel that was deliberately copied from somewhere else and hope Linus, et al takes the fall for it. Hopefully Linus' new tracking process will mitigate that risk.

mirror please, anyone?

8086- it's basically only an 8-bit processor

It's 16-bit

no good for multi-tasking.

Not true.

meaning that it was runing at a whole 8 Mhz

"Turbo" was relevant up to when 386's hit ~33MHz, and referred to 8088s, 8086s, 80286s & 80386s.

opposed to the 4.77Mhz of the orginal IBM PC-XT

The original was the IBM PC. The XT was released 2 years later.

The abbreviation for hertz is Hz, not hz.

Well, at least you were correct when you said "4.77".

Yes, that's a joke, damnit.

Does anyone else find it amusing that most of the book covers on that page feature all sorts of cutesy, cartoonish characters? Why is that? Do editors think that all computer-related books are so boring that they need a little eye-candy to get them to sell?

Seems to be American, judging by the flag on his photo.

Your name is German, you live in The Netherlands, but you write almost as well as a native English speaker. What's the scoop?

My paternal grandfather was born in Chorostkow, currently in Ukraine, historically in Poland, at the time under Austro-Hungarian management. He came to the U.S. in 1914. I was born in New York and grew up in White Plains, NY. I went to Amsterdam as a postdoc and have sort hung around ever since.

He's also had fifteen years to do other cool stuff that many people aren't aware of, but would be fascinated with if they were.

I keep wondering why nobody ever mentions Ameoba around Slashdot. It's a pretty neat piece of work.

Seems to be American, judging by the flag on his photo.

Ken Brown's Motivation, Release 1.2

Background

On 20 May 2004, I posted a statement refuting the claim of Ken Brown, President of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, that Linus Torvalds didn't write Linux. My statement was mentioned on Slashdot, Groklaw, and many other Internet news sites. This attention resulted in over 150,000 requests to our server in less than a day, which is still standing despite yesterday being a national holiday with no one there to stand next to it saying "You can do it. You can do it." Kudos to Sun Microsystems and the folks who built Apache. My statement was mirrored all over the Internet, so the number of true hits to it is probably a substantial multiple of that. There were also quite a few comments at Slashdot, Groklaw, and other sites, many of them about me. I had never engaged in remote multishrink psychoanalysis on this scale before, so it was a fascinating experience.

The Brown Book

I got an advance copy of Ken Brown's book. I think it is still under embargo, so I won't comment on it. Although I am not an investigative reporter, even I know it is unethical to discuss publications still under embargo. Some of us take ethics more seriously than others. So I won't even reveal the title. Let's call it The Brown Book. There is some precedent for nicknaming books after colors: The International Standard for the CD-ROM (IS 10149) is usually called The Red Book.

Suffice it to say, there is a great deal to criticize in the book. I am sure that will happen when it is published. I may even help out.

Brown's Motivation

What prompted me to write this note today is an email I got yesterday. Actually, I got quite a few :-) , most of them thanking me for the historical material. One of yesterday's emails was from Linus, in response to an email from me apologizing for not letting him see my statement in advance. As a matter of courtesy, I did try but I was using his old transmeta.com address and didn't know his new one until I got a very kind email from Linus' father, a Finnish journalist.

In his email, Linus said that Brown never contacted him. No email, no phone call, no personal interview. Nothing. Considering the fact that Brown was writing an explosive book in which he accused Linus of not being the author of Linux, you would think a serious author would at least confront the subject with the accusation and give him a chance to respond. What kind of a reporter talks to people on the periphery of the subject but fails to talk to the main player?

Why did Brown fly all the way to Europe to interview me and (and according to an email I got from his seat-mate on the plane) one other person in Scandinavia, at considerable expense, and not at least call Linus? Even if he made a really bad choice of phone company, how much could that cost? Maybe a dollar? I call the U.S. all the time from Amsterdam. It is less than 5 cents a minute. How much could it cost to call California from D.C.?

From reading all the comments posted yesterday, I am now beginning to get the picture. Apparently a lot of people (still) think that I 'hate' Linus for stealing all my glory (see below for more on this). I didn't realize this view was so widespread. I now suspect that Brown believed this, too, and thought that I would be happy to dump all over Linus to get 'revenge.' By flying to Amsterdam he thought he could dig up dirt on Linus and get me to speak evil of him. He thought I would back up his crazy claim that Linus stole Linux from me. Brown was wrong on two counts. First, I bear no 'grudge' against Linus at all. He wrote Linux himself and deserves the credit. Second, I am really not a mean person. Even if I were still angry with him aft

Whenever you look at an old fossil of a computer, remember this: at some point, that was considered so much power that we would never be able to find a use for it all. We can't even blame MS - Linux gear is just as bloated.

You could always just run Minix.

...somewhere

Well Mad Professor! You certainly seem emotional about this. read this

Andrew.S.Tanenbuam's Book "Computer Networks" deals this topic in a very elementary and a very good way. Any person,who is wondered by the Search Engine,should read that book. In the Chaper dealing with Application Layer,ast describes the basic data structures which constitute a web-search engine. You could better look at the presentation here.

Gerta Keller's conclusions are being strongly refuted by Jan Smits, one of the researchers that got funding for the core samples used in the study. He said in this NPR clip that he is really upset that Keller's research passed peer review without catching the obvious mistakes.

Minix was designed to be small and easy to understand and there is a book called Operating Systems Design and Implementation which explains the inner workings in practical terms. NOTE I have the first edition of this book not the second. You can get the code for it and have a book which explains what the code is doing should be easy to play with and help you understand what is going on.

A beowulf cluster of IPXs would be cool.

But really, one of the coolest things to run on a bunch of old Sparc boxes would be Amoeba. It's ported to Sparc, ya know.

Tannenbaum rulez, after all.

He's probably a bin MINIX fan and didn't want to leave it out!

Otherwise, why would anyone go to the trouble of writing a semi-complex regex in place of text? It couldn't possibly be for geek points...

Still? I thought that 2.0.x was pretty up to date...

Ooops, forgot to mention, the above was taken from errno.h, Linux 0.0.1. Sorry, that was kind of critical info, wasn't it.

Also, here's the main page for Minix

Except that Minix is only licensed for free educational use, so Linux could/better not have taken any copyrighted material from Minix.

I don't any of this is particularly relevant to the SCO case, but FWIW, the above statement is no longer correct. Minix is now license under a very liberal license similar to a BSD type license.

For more on the Minix license see:
here and here

Except that Minix is only licensed for free educational use, so Linux could/better not have taken any copyrighted material from Minix.

I don't any of this is particularly relevant to the SCO case, but FWIW, the above statement is no longer correct. Minix is now license under a very liberal license similar to a BSD type license.

For more on the Minix license see:
here and here

Linux was/is a derivative of Minix. There is no real Minix code left in Linux, but back in the 0.9x days, Linux was still evolving. You can still download Minix from here.

Now, here's the key point: although the NAMES of the various system calls, IOCTLs, error numbers and signals are part of the POSIX standard, their numeric assignments are not. The implementor is left to define them. Not all implementations define these the same way - take a look at the Linux/FreeBSD/SYSV emulation code in NetBSD to see the kinds of translations that need to be done to provide cross-platform compatibility.

Now compare the Minix include files with those of Linux and FreeBSD. You will notice very much the same error code and signal numbers. The Linux code dates from 1991 and is pre-ATT/BSDI settlement. It's likely that Tannenbaum is also in violation of AT&T's IP, and Linux has just inherited it. Of course, there's no money in SCO suing Tannenbaum.

Does this damage SCO? Not really. Is it worth US$699/seat? Definitely not. Can SCO collect damages? Probably, knowing the U.S. legal system.