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LinuxOne's "LinuxMac 0.9" Investigated
The following was written by Slashdot reader Peter C. Norton
Scott Ananian (cananian@mit.edu) and I have been working with the LinuxOne "LinuxMac 0.9" product here at LinuxWorld Expo to figure out what's going on with the product, what it is, and whether there is value in their product. Scott was particularly interested and well informed about Macintosh hardware, since he works on maintaining the part of the kernel that supports Linux on Mac 68030 hardware (the old mac se/30, some the mac ii's, etc.).
In a way, we're following up on the information at: this page.
You'll see an assertion from a representative of LinuxOne that the LinuxMac product is a result of proprietary technology developed in a prior business by a company owned by the founder of LinuxOne. I can conclusively assert that based on using the pre-release of this product that this is currently completely false. Also, the program claims to be version 1.0, though the floppy says 0.9.
First of all, the floppy that they are selling to users contains a single RPM package, whose contents are as follows:
/root/Desktop/LinuxMac.kdelnk
/usr/local/bin/CLFormatter
/usr/local/bin/CommonLink
/usr/local/bin/cl
/usr/local/bin/cm
/usr/local/bin/hformat
/usr/share/common-link/linuxone-logo.bmp
The main program is CommonLink. Notice the "hformat" command? That's the utility that comes with the HFS Utilities that LinuxOne's representative claimed isn't even on their development network. However:
[root@col /root]# /usr/local/bin/hformat --license
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
[root@col /root]#
There isn't any source code on the floppy, though, and I expect to be talking with LinuxOne about this.
Anyway, the CommonLink application itself is a KDE-based gui that talks launches a mounting application or a formatting application. Each one gives you the option to do these things with a "Windows 95" "Mac" or "Linux" option. The mounting application has no logic internally to mount any media. It calls the system-standard "mount" utility. Scott and I have confirmed this - there is no possibility that we're wrong about this. After mounting the floppy with the mount command, it invokes the KDE File Manager, KFM, to present the floppy to the end user. Conclusion: they wrote a very small gui in C++ to invoke standard utilities.
The second utility, the formatting program, calls the standard linux fdformat utility (a low level formatter to prepare a floppy for any use), and then it calls hformat to put a mac filesystem on it.
If a "quick erase" (ala the windows formatting stuff) is done, then it just runs:
hformat -l MacFloppy /dev/fd0H1440
Though if you put s space in the name after -l it breaks (a beginner's programming error).
Conclusion: This is just another simple gui which uses utilities which are not written, maintained, or contributed to by LinuxOne or its staff.
In short:
The LinuxMac product contains no proprietary technology. It relies on standard linux kernel modules for filesystems (confirmed through testing), and it relies on standard system utilities to access floppies (again, confirmed through testing).
In addition, the utilities are only useable by root. There is no way a user could use these utilities to format or mount a floppy without the root user making changes to the system.
Please let me know if you're interested in the details of the testing, or if you have any other questions.
I'm wondering if LinuxOne has paid the licensing fee for use of QT in a proprietary product. The QPL prohibits proprietary software, so they can't develop it under that.
What is the developer version license again? Is it a whopping $1,550 per developer or something like that? I'd be interested to find out if someone has informed the folks at troll tech. They are already selling this product on their web site.
CmdrChalupa (Who knows not how to change his sig =)
CmdrChalupa, who finally changed his sig (drop -FlogSpammersNow- for my real address)
Seven for the Debian-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Microsoft Men doomed to die,
LinuxOne for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mountain View, CA where the Shadows lie.
LinuxOne to ruin them all, LinuxOne to fail them,
LinuxOne to bring them all and in the darkness blind them....
In the Land of Mountain View where the Shadows and bad IPOs lie.
-- Seth Cohn
(Lifted from the LinuxOne flame archive.)
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I missed the lynching threat but no doubt it's there. I would not suggest you take it as a racist sentiment, but more as an expression of how offended we are. I myself have proposed that LinuxOne Inc. be "run out of town on a rail", I don't know if that has any racist connotations.
Yes, you screwed up and you now have a whole lot to learn. To start with, I can direct you to an attorney in Palo Alto who can design your GPL compliance program, if you wish. Just write to me at bruce@perens.com .
The sentiments expressed here are not those of VA or Andover.net, that's something else you need to learn. But if you can turn the company around, I'm sure that will get coverage.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
"You are invited to come out at our expense to review our technology plan going forward."
Ironic. You posted that at 11:34am. You're willing to pay for his expenses in getting to you, but unless he's in your local area, the chances of him actually making it there to the meeting you're holding are almost nil. Or would you be willing to delay said meeting until his arrival?
"That we've fucked up is not in dispute"
This is amusing. Care to post this on the LinuxOne webpage? While _you_ may admit your company has made some horrendous blunders, that's certainly hasn't stopped the marketing people from trying to convince everyone of the exact opposite. How about some good ole "Truth in Advertising"?
"That we had the balls to come to New York should also not be in dispute."
You're right. You were there. And I must admit, your company had to have some pretty giantic kahones to come to the premiere Linux trade show with a repackaged set of standard utilities that you claim is your new and innovative product. You also claim that you don't use these utilities at all, and that, in fact, you don't have a copy of them anywhere.
You seem intelligent enough to realize the horrible mistakes your company is making. Perhaps it's time that you (and your company) began correcting these mistakes, as opposed to committing further blatant blunders. And _if_, not when, your company begins to play by the rules, _then_ you may get the same level of coverage. But only if your efforts to make amends and repair the damage are as equally strong as the blunders you're making now.
I was fortunate enough to go to the expo on friday in new york, and I couldn't believe my eyes that Linux One actually showed up. I thought that they were strictly a screw-the-investor outfit, and that they wouldn't even bother trying to sell a profit seeing as how they are such pariahs in the linux community. I figured that they would just stick to screwing investors out of their money at the IPO.
But they were actually there! There was some guy who looked like he was in his late 50's (Caucasian male) who said that he was the VP of the company. I walked up to their booth, and I was just checking out what they had to offer, (mostly CD's and a few stickers and things, frankly they had one of the most boring booths there) and true to form, somebody walked up and said "This floppy that you gave me has program X on it" (I don't remember what program X was) "Program X is under the GPL, so I was wondering if I can get a source code floppy or CD for this program"
After much hemming and hawing, the VP of LinuxOne (if that's who he was) explained that he wasn't a technical guy, that he was just there to run the booth, and that he would talk to the more technical people. The guy at the booth gave him a hard time a while longer and eventually agreed to write down his email address for the LinuxOne guy to get in touch with him later. (Yeah, like that'll ever happen)
Doesn't it seem strange that Linux One would send somebody who didn't even know enough about linux software to realize that for a lot of packages, it's probably somewhat expected to have access to the source code? It's possible that this guy was playing dumb - but it sure didn't look like he was playing, if you get my drift. I can't believe that they would send somebody non-technical to the show, even if only to snowjob the show-goers.
When seeing people flame LinuxOne on slashdot, I read up on the company, and thought that they were a completely crappy, flighty company that seemed determined to crowbar the dollars out of hapless daytraders, but still, somewhere I had some drop of pity for them since it was possible that they were the victims of some gigantic misunderstanding.
They're not. I hate to say it, but short of whatever the Natalie Portman trolls have been saying, whatever negative thing that you've heard about Linux One is probably true. I certainly can't think of a single attack on them that I've ever heard that doesn't seem to be true.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
As the author of hfsutils, and someone who is actively investigating this matter, I can confirm that LinuxOne's LinuxMac product as currently distributed provides no real functionality except a GUI wrapper and the ability to create Macintosh HFS file systems by bundling hformat.
The fact that the GPL'd hformat is included without a conspicuous copyright notice, without a copy of the GPL, and without including or making an offer to obtain the source has understandably raised my concern. Since I own the copyright, I am in the process of pursuing a legal remedy.
If you've purchased a copy of LinuxMac, or if you have information or concerns about the way it is being distributed, I'd like to hear from you.
You have to have brains to pull off a successful swindle; That's why LinuxOne is tanking in so early. Look at some of the other big swindles!
Charles Ponzi, graduate of the University of Rome: Gave us the modern 'bubble scheme'. Made millions paying his early investors with the deposits of later ones.
William Gates III, college dropout, holder of several honorary degrees: Sold billions of dollars worth of an Operating System look-alike. Maintained his income through shady contracts and the media.
LinuxOne, questionable education: Simple compound stock swindle based on marketing-hype and optioning of Wall Street buzzwords. Uses the same structure as the failed 'gas-saver' swindles of the fifties and sixties; Offer stock based on UberUseful product coming to market, place stock in escrow with uninterested party, sell stock and run with cash to extradition-free island nation.
Shylocks, hucksters and con-artists of any ilk should be laughing outloud at LinuxOne. Why isn't the financial world??
.sig: Now legally binding!
People have been doing a great job of checking out every claim LinuxOne makes so far and documenting their every lie, exaggeration, omission, and plagiarism. It would be great if someone were to collect pointers to this stuff onto one page: sort of "Steaming Heap of Truth about LinuxOne." It would be a good resource to point news-types to (or anyone who might be inclined to take this troop of cheats at face value), especially since the source material is from many sources (Business Week, Motley Fool, and LinuxToday as well as /.).
Jenny
2. To Andover and Slashdot, as an African-American it is troubling to read threats of lynching on this board, but if that's how VA Linux Systems and Slashdot choose to handle its business competitors, so be it.
As an African in America it is troubling to see yet another black man hide behind so-called racism once they are caught in a bad situation.
As a programmer who one day hopes to contribute code that it will be GPLed it is troubling that a fellow black man may hide behind racism to justify the reasons his company refused to abide by my license.
By the way slashdot and VA Linux do not in any way control the content on this "board", so your comments on lynching should be directed at the posters of those comments and not Slashdot or VA Linux (I hope you don't think by playing the race card you will get them to censor those posts?)
That we've fucked up is not in dispute.
Glad you realize...we all mess up every once in a while but your company is taking this to the next level.
That we had the balls to come to New York should also not be in dispute.
It takes balls for a legitimate company to come to computer expo?
And, when we succed in our re-engineering and overhaul of our practices we'll expect the same level of coverage of that too. Beleive me when I say I'll be on your website every other day checking up on it and once there's any mention of a "successful engineering" slashdot will be flooded with submissions.
PS: I had a whole bunch of semi-technical questions regarding why you're sales staff don't know what RPM is (or that the R in it stands for Red Hat), or that VA Linux doesn't sell a linux distro or that your website runs Red Hat but I decided against it before I get accused of lynching you as well
Please contact me:
Richard Bottoms
Dir. Business Development
LinuxOne
rbottoms@linuxone.net
or call
650.948.6201
2. To Andover and Slashdot, as an African-American it is troubling to read threats of lynching on this board, but if that's how VA Linux Systems and Slashdot choose to handle its business competitors, so be it.
That we've fucked up is not in dispute. That we had the balls to come to New York should also not be in dispute. And, when we succed in our re-engineering and overhaul of our practices we'll expect the same level of coverage of that too.
r.b.