Linus, Transmeta, Proprietary Code and Metcalfe

smeng58 writes "InfoWorld's Bob Metcalfe asks why, if Linus Torvalds is truly a believer in Open Source, Transmeta Corp. has seen fit to make Crusoe, or at least its VLIW "code morphing", proprietary. The column goes on to say that, since the processor will run Windows code, there must be some thing wrong with Linux. Sad when a computer pundit appears not understand what x86 code is. "

Comments

What happened to Bob Metcalfe?

[Bruce Perens]

Bob Metcalfe used to be a good guy. When I first started doing business with 3com back in the VAX 780 days, Bob was returning my calls to their customer service phone line. Bob's made Billions on 3com and the Ethernet and should not have reason to feel bitter. But he keeps putting out this bitter, hurtful, and poorly informed stuff. There's little to criticize on a technical level in this piece because it is so obviously sour grapes, and for Mr. Billionare to pick on little Linus Torvalds with his old car and rented home just doesn't seem right. For Bob to pose as a "journalist" is sort of silly if he's never going to take the trouble to learn much of journalism, and instead settle for being just another crumudgeon.

What we want from Transmeta is a microinstruction set description. Period. We don't ask hardware manufacturers for their chip masks - what we ask them for is full documentation of how to use the hardware from our operating system. Frankly, we can do our own "code morphing" given an instruction set description and a patent license that goes with the chip. And it's not even clear that we'd need to do code morphing from something like the x86 - I think we'd be much more interested in designing our own instruction sets to work optimally for Linux.

Thanks

Bruce

Metcalfe has a beef, and a point

[Hobbex]

I think it is more or less clear by now that Metcalf has a beef with the whole open source concept and ideals. It seems strange for someone who is, or at least was, a brilliant inventor, but when you consider his personal history it does make some sort of sense. Metcalfe made a brilliant invention, started a company around it, was forced out of the company by the resident corporate baffoons, and has since been marginalized to a nothing collumist in some god forsaken magazine where he can only get attention by trolling away.

Given that, one can understand why he carries a grudge against the open source ideals of giving away you inventions rather than trying to capitalize on them, and people like Linus in particular. Linus (and the likes of Tim Bereners Lee) is a living reminder that he could have chosen another route for his invention, one where he would not have been forced out by a bunch of idiot beaurocrats, and could still be a respected senior hacker rather than a senile Anonymous Coward wannabee.

That said, I do think he has a point about this. He seems to forget that Torvalds works at Transmeta but doesn't own it (just like the rest of the press, really), and his statement that Transmeta shouldn't hype Windows performance is ludicrous. They have to sell the damn chip, and they obviously prefer Linux to Windows or they would have worked with MS to get CE on Crusoe portals (oops, I mean make them Windows Powered). But, I would still like to hear Linus' opinion on the fact that Transmeta, cool product or not, obviously don't endorse openness at all. They are keeping the code to their chip completely closed, and they have even patented the software.

Personally, I would think long and hard before working for a company like that if I could pick and choose like Linus can. The fact that it doesn't seem to bother Linus at all _is_ a thorn in the side of the honesty and clarity of his motives, as much as I hate to say it. I would never raise myself to the level of judging Linus, there are few people alive today for whom I have as much respect, but I have to admit that I can't help but wonder what makes the two legged house dwellers at Transmeta different from those and Sun and Microsoft.

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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

Bob Metcalfe joins the tabloid press

[JamesSharman]

I really have to admit I was expecting an article along these lines to come out sooner or later. For those who haven't read the article it likens Linus going along with a closed source windows targeting system to the pigs in the Orwell's 'Animal Farm' slowly becoming what the revolution supposedly toppled.

Linus (like most of us) is a true supporter of open source and everything it stands for, he (also like most of us) is a realist who realizes the world isn't what we would like it to be. Linus makes very little out of linux and contrary to what the article states does not really 'control' it. The article makes stupid statements like the following:

"So just to keep Torvalds honest, I'm thinking that Crusoe chips, which are mostly software, should be open source and basically free."

Now lets be facing it, Bob Metcalfe is not a stupid man. He knows as well as you and I that Linus does not own or control Transmeta, the very suggestion that a commercial company should give away it's prized possession for free goes against every principle of the free market. It's also completely silly to suggest that should be done just because one Linus Torvalds is currently employed there.

If I had any choice in the matter, every thing I write would be free and open source, my mortgage would magically pay itself and the world would be free of hunger and poverty. However since reality requires me to get a job I chose to get a job that interested me. For the last 5 years I've been working as a 3D programmer in the games industry, now would Bob suggest that SCI (my previous employer) should open source Carmageddon2 just because an employee (me) who is an open source advocate played a small role in it's development. I expect Linus took a job with Transmeta for the same reasons, because it looked like a fun and interesting thing to do. Transmeta employed linus because he is a damned good programmer, of course the fact he is the man behind linux was never going to hurt.

The article goes to the depths of saying

"But with Torvalds saying some animals are more equal than others, why is the sanctimonious open-source press still cheering him on? Are the likes of Slashdot.org, just gobbled by VA Linux, also porking out in Orwell's farmhouse?"

This man is just trying to start an argument. Linus has done a vast amount of good for the open source community, should we really be attacking him for being involved in a closed source project for his current employer?

All in all this is Bob Metcalfe doing the 'tabloid thang' and trying to attack the open source community in the lowest possible way