Advertising in Your Boot Sequence?

negaPLuCK writes: "i just mounted my first reiserfs partition. When the reiserfs.o module loaded into the kernel what popped out but ads for SuSE, MP3.com and Ecila.com." I've attached the exact text in the read more: it's more like sponsorship than ads, which on one hand is a cool way to finance development, but where is this gonna end?

May 3 00:59:34 nega-0 kernel: Checking ReiserFS transaction log (device 16:02) ...
May 3 00:59:54 nega-0 kernel: Replayed 0 transactions in 20 seconds
May 3 00:59:54 nega-0 kernel: ReiserFS core development sponsored by SuSE Labs (suse.com)
May 3 00:59:54 nega-0 kernel: Journaling sponsored by MP3.com
May 3 00:59:54 nega-0 kernel: Item handlers sponsored by Ecila.com
May 3 00:59:54 nega-0 kernel: ReiserFS version 3.5.18

Comments

It's open source

[szo]

So, if those messages bother you, remove them...

Szo

Re:It's open source

[ishpeck]

Yeah! And if not having them bothers you, you can add them! :)

• I love to sit and write code
• 
  When I get in a programming mode
  Compile and run
  It is so much fun

Re:It's open source

[ibpooks]

Don't delete the sponsorship messages! Yes, it's open source which gives you the ability to remove the tags just like you have the ability to run "rm -f CREDITS" on every tarball you extract. Aside from the ability to modify the source, the beauty of open source lies in the fact that ALL CONTRIBUTORS GET CREDIT! If a project had corporate backing, then the corporation should get credit for the part they helped do. I know I'd be pissed off if someone used my code without giving me credit, or if there was a renegade patch running around that REMOVED my line in the credits.

Re:It's open source

[Oarboat_7]

It strikes me as contradictory that the "noxious advertising clause" in the BSD license (now no longer mandatory) was criticized so stridently, but that now, with Linux, it's viewed as "a good thing."

Re:It's open source

[bero-rh]

I agree with the basics of this, but we'd soon end up with a kernel that doesn't display any useful information...


Ok, booting the kernel...
Linux 3.0.0
Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Kernel development sponsored by Red Hat
Kernel development sponsored by MandrakeSoft
Kernel development sponsored by VA Linux Systems
Kernel development sponsored by Linuxcare
Kernel development sponsored by SuSE
Kernel development sponsored by Caldera
Kernel patches contributed by Debian
Individual contributors:
Alan Cox
[add 1000 more lines]
Bringing up network
Module 3c509.o loaded.
Parts developed by Donald Becker.
Parts developed by Alan Cox
This kernel module contains code from Red Hat.
This kernel module contains code from SuSE.
Trivial typo corrected by Bero
[Add 1000 more lines]


Everything can be taken too far...
Yes, everyone should get credited - but at bootup? Not that sure...

Re:It's open source

[hansreiser]

I just want to make clear that it is just fine with us for anyone who wants to remove them to remove them. Don't have any moral qualms about it, if it irritates, cut it out and accept our apology.

In a later version we make them less annoying by having them appear only once, and not at every mount. The messages aren't in our 2.3 version, we want to make sure that people don't hate them first. Thanks to those who express their opinions here. Your opinions matter to and influence me on this issue.

Since many of you are worried about it going from sponsored by X to "Buy Y, it is $50, click here!", let me say that I share your concern. Keeping it the way PBS used to be is very important to me personally. It is especially important to me to never allow an annoying ad even on our web page. I understand the temptation of the networks. When a big sponsor says that they want something that looks a certain way, it is really hard to say no and offend them. I will say no. You will never get an energizer bunny running across a Namesys product.

Putting the credits there was my idea, not the sponsors. I thought they deserved the credit. They never asked for it. I'm not sure they care much for it though, which is another reason it is not in the 2.3 version. It is strange, but being on our web page is really valuable to sponsors, but mount time credit just isn't as valued. This year.

Re:It's open source

[SurfsUp]

Actually I'm torn on whether I like them or not. These particular messages are certainly unobtrusive, modest, almost self-effacing. But still, it has nothing to do with how the computer boots. But still but still, I wouldn't mind having a generic place to put splash-type info, both for text mode and graphics, and some times I'd want to see it just out of interest. Especially the first time I boot a new distro.

To make sure this splash stuff stays informative and doesn't get irritating we need a generic way to turn it all off, and that method has to act early in the boot sequence. That means it has to be some kind of kernel flag, and everybody who wants to put in non-functional information (e.g. credits) has to use it. This would require a fairly broad concensus...
--

Sponsored by, not ads

[jezzball]

They're sponsored by. I don't see what's wrong with that. There are tons of mentions of other companies/places in my boot up sequence (NET4, etc).

I kind of like it, it shows that reiserfs is getting commercial help.
ls: .sig: File not found.

Re:Sponsored by, not ads

[mosch]

And besides, we have the source, were somebody to get obnoxious with it, and start displaying ads, I think we can all be sure that there'd be a common patch that'd get distributed, to remove all ads.

These aren't ads though, these are about as obtrusive as the mention of swansea university that many of us see on boot.
----------------------------

Not that odd

[djweis]

It's similar to copyright messages printed by the driver. I'm willing to look at them as long as the software is getting written.

I don't see anything wrong

[mind21_98]

I don't see anything wrong with the sponsorship information above. The sponsors who sponsored ReiserFS are just saying in bootup messages that they actually sponsored development of it. Now if they came up with big 468x60 banner ads while using framebuffer mode, then I would be concerned.

Since new sponsorship information isn't retrieved from the Internet, this shouldn't be a problem.

Windows Sponsorship

[spazimodo]

New BSOD message:

This Blue Screen of Death has been brought to you by Colt Handguns. Colt, because you'll never be getting those PowerPoint presentations back!

-Spazimodo

Fsck the millennium, we want it now.

Re:Windows Sponsorship

[Ominous the Forebodi]

Wow! That gives quite a new meaning to "point and click", don't you think?

Re:Windows Sponsorship

[phil reed]

Wasn't that a Segfault article?


...phil

Re:kinda cool

[djweis]

Considering how many times you see the boot screen in NT, that's a big missed opportunity!

It bothers you?

[bjb]

This is in the /boot sequence/ .. those words which you can happily ignore while they zip past your screen while loading the system. It's not like a banner ad which gets in the way, and quite frankly, if someone made a driver and put "© 2000 Driversoft" in it, is that so bad?

Now if it opened up a splash screen, that's a story. This is whining.

--

Re:It bothers you?

[Ed Avis]

Yeah, but it gets in the way of other more useful and informative messages.

Also, if more and more bits of kernel start displaying sponsorship messages, you'll get the problem that the messages displayed early on are scrolled off the screen within a few milliseconds. Already, even on a fairly slow machine, there are plenty of kernel messages which you never get the chance to read, because they scroll away so quickly.

It could become like MS-DOS, where every TSR or program run from autoexec.bat felt it necessary to display some sort of message. Then to make your message stand out from the rest, you had to put several blank lines above and below (Microsoft does this). Or display it in eye-catching colours, a big blue rectangle perhaps (eg Logitech's mouse driver). Finally it got to the stage where programs would clear the screen just to make sure that their useless copyright messages got noticed.

Unix was designed on the basis of not printing spurious chatty messages, so it's easy to tell when something really does require your attention. Let's keep it that way.

Re:It bothers you?

[pe1rxq]

Also, if more and more bits of kernel start displaying sponsorship messages, you'll get the problem that the messages displayed early on are scrolled off the screen within a few milliseconds. Already, even on a fairly slow machine, there are plenty of kernel messages which you never get the chance to read, because they scroll away so quickly.

Try this: dmesg

Jeroen

Re:It bothers you?

[Psiren]

Indeed... or you can generally just use Shift-PgUp on the console to scroll back. This won't work after X has been loaded, but that's a minor problem.

Now weary traveller, rest your head. For just like me, you're utterly dead.

Re:It bothers you?

[Psiren]

Yeah, well, RedHat like to put pretty colours and such like on their bootup messages. Hide the scary stuff from the dimwits... they can't take it. No thanks, I'll stick to Slackware.

Now weary traveller, rest your head. For just like me, you're utterly dead.

Re:It bothers you?

[Ed Avis]

So the kernel should display loads of messages at boot time, but if you want to have any chance of reading them, you have to run dmesg?

If so, why bother printing the messages at all? Why not just log them quietly and let the user run dmesg later?

The reason why the kernel prints messages at boot time is to help diagnose hardware problems and other serious things like failing to mount root. That's one of the reasons why booting is much more chatty than any other part of Linux - you need to see the messages immediately since you may not get the chance to run dmesg. So it's best to make sure the important messages get printed (as well as logged), and remain on screen. The less important stuff can, of course, be stored away somewhere to be inspected later.

Don't tell Metallica!

[kmcardle]

May 3 00:59:54 nega-0 kernel: Journaling sponsored by MP3.com
Don't tell Metallica! We don't want them to publish a list of Linux users! :)

--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way

ReiserFS

[Signal 11]

Well, I'm not nearly as upset about sponsorship/copyright notes like this as I am about certain BIOS manufacturers embedding advertisement during the *real* bootup/POST sequence.

If slashdot should be reporting anything, it's these people. For example, some (many?) of the Gigabyte boards pop up advertisements when you start your system. How quaint - no way to remove them unless you're a BIOS developer.

Re:ReiserFS

[madstork2000]

I thought the BIOS "ads" were generally open so manufacturers or common blokes (with enough tinkering) could change them, with a custom "splash" logo. at boot up. The bioses I had that did this had provisions in the update to facilate a small graphic (gif i think). Unfortunately that was a looooong time aga, and I haven't bother to play with it since then so I could be totally mistaken.

-MS

Fine by me

[hatless]

Seems okay by me (1) as long as they don't pollute the license of the code by requiring that they be left intact permanently, and (2) as long as they don't add instability by changing video mode, using sound, etc.

mount;yes;yes;gasp;umount

[hoss10]

mount;yes;yes;gasp;umount

brought to you by www.pr0n.com

------------------------------------------------ -
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -

Re:mount;yes;yes;gasp;umount

[ruud]

What about sleep? :-)
--

Re:mount;yes;yes;gasp;umount

[GoRK]

how about:

login; look; touch; make > out; touch; grep; unzip; finger; mount; fsck; fsck; yes; gasp; yes; unouunt; wait; mount; fsck; fsck; gasp; gasp; unmount; sleep; logout

you could throw 'tee' in there and another process to really spice things up!!!

why should it end?

[kevin lyda]

they wrote it, or paid to get it written. why not?

you're welcome to edit the source to remove it, just like you can do with all the other stuff that gets spewed. no one forces you to have them there, you're within your rights to change them.

Hmm...perhaps a little disturbing...

[SgtPepper]

But not totally suprising. How else is "Free Software" going to have any financing? It /is/ a little...disturbing, but as someone else pointing out has long as it's not 800x600 32bit colour frambuffer ads, it's all good, besides you can always stdout > /dev/null. Or simply ignore it. This is just a continuing trend towards "comercialism" that sould have been expected. It happens to every technology has it hits maturity.

Don't sweat it.

As long as I don't see "ext2 brought to you by McDonald's, get your free tux with your happy meal today!" every time I boot up ;)

Re:Hmm...perhaps a little disturbing...

[BorgDrone]

As long as I don't see "ext2 brought to you by McDonald's, get your free tux with your happy meal today!" every time I boot up ;)

Why not ? I would love a free tux with my happy meal! ;-)
---

When I install Windows...

[tak amalak]

All I see is the name 'Microsoft' all over the place. WTF? Same thing with MacOS and Apple... something fishy is going on here.
--

Advertising?

[jmccay]

This is just the beginning. Before you know it MS will find a way to advertise MS products in the boot up sequence. Think about it. Stuff like this usually starts simple like mentioning sponcers. Gradually over a period of time it sponcership increases, and eventually it'll awitch to "buy this ...". I guess that's a bad side about going mainstream.

I wonder how much we could charge MS to advertise in the Linux boot up sequence only to have us comment it out later. Not a bad way to waste their money.

Is the source avaible so it could be commented out? If you comment it out the sponcers name still stays in the code, but it is not displayed on boot. Then you can say you didn't remove the code. You just stopped it from displaying.

We shall see what happens with this. I really hope this doesn't become a common practice! Another good reaosn to compile your the stuff yourself. ;)

sponsorship vs. ads

[bfields]

it's more like sponsorship than ads, which on one hand is a cool way to finance development, but where is this gonna end?

Um, could someone explain the difference between the two?

Also, let's do a thought experiment: let's say every company and individual that made a significant contribution to the kernel code inserted a "sponsored by" message into the boot sequence. How useful would those boot messages continue to be? This just isn't the place for advertisements (oh, excuse me, announcements of sponsorship).

Subliminal Advertising

[the_other_one]

Most boot messages fly past so fast Coke that nobody notices them. Would embeded messages You need Caffine be as effective as Coke subliminal advertising was?

Re:Subliminal Advertising

[arcade]

That was a strange experience.

I didn't even notice, until after I'd done it. I read your message, took my bottle of pepsi, and quenched my thirst.

Then, I reread your message.. and suddenly it striked me that I had read your message and done (nearly) what it told me (Drink something with caffeeine!:)

yikes!


--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet

Polluting the output stream

[handorf]

My biggest problem with this is that it pollutes the stream I try to parse as it goes buy.

Somebody said that they ignore all those messages as they scroll by, but I don't. I almost ALWAYS wind up checking dmesg or the logs to be sure everything started OK. I make a LOT of changes to my system and I want to know when I break something.

"Oops, sound drivers didn't load, what did I just change?" instead of "CRAP! My MP3s won't play! What have I changed this week?"

Admittedly, it's a minor annoyance, but dmesg has a relatively small buffer. I'd hate for the whole boot sequence not to fit because everyone feels the need to thank their sponsors.

Good for both parties

[spiralx]

Given the licensing terms of the GPL, the money required for commerical Linux ventures has to come from somewhere. The first way that was found was through support deals a la Red Hat, SuSe et al, and now these people have found a new way, through sponsership. It's a valid option, and one long tried and tested within all kinds of markets.

In today's world having a recognisable "name" is of paramount importance to any corporation which wants to make money. A product branded with a well-recognised name will outsell a superior or cheaper one lacking a name, as a trip into any supermarket will show you. And in the rocky world of dot-coms, having the leading name in their field is probably the only way they'll make any money in the near future.

So IMHO you can expect to see more of this kind of sponsership in the future, since it makes sense for all concerned - the project gains some money to pay developers and so on and the sponser gains recognition and "mindshare" (ugh) for a relatively small outlay. And considering some of the budgets the dot-coms have for advertising, this is extremely small change.

This is new?!

[drix]

Name-dropping like this has been in the kernel for years and no one saw fit to complain. Mebbe because it's high up on the dmesg and not being loaded as a module (with user interaction), but does this little line look familiar?

Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux NET4.0.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0

I've been using Linux since 1.2 and IIRC it's been there since at least then. There's also ads for some Apple stuff in one of the appletalk modules I think but I don't have that one compiled ATM.


--

I'm sick of...

[Haven]

I'm really getting sick of that Nasa guy spamming me with his e-mail address every time I bring up my 3c509 3com NIC card. Where will we draw the line?

where will it stop

[jbarnett]

Really though this isn't to bad, they help fund the development of an Open Source/Free Software project and they should get some menation, either in the README file or when it comes into play (which just happens to be at boot time). I have D. Becker (the Ethernet guy) in my kernel message, and I see nothing wrong with that, he wrote a lot of drivers (and some I use at boot time) and should get credit for that. If a company gives a crap load of money to pay programmers to develop OpenSource/Free software, then they should get some menation from it.

This right now isn't that bad. But my question is HOW far can this been taken? If overdone this could be a bad thing. Having everyone from Kool-Aid to Hot Grits, Inc. posting into your kernel message can be a bad thing. (Not that I am against Kool-Aid or Hot Grits or anything, actucally that Kool-Aid bowl of punch makes me uncomfortable)

"Oh oh, did you see it, what was that error"

"Not sure dude, lets check dmesg here in a minute, OH dam do you ever get that no so fresh feeling?"

"Uh what dude, want to get some Pizza from Hot Grits, Inc. they serve the best pizza in town"

"What the hell are you talking about"

And it is techinally possiable to do a huge ass Frame Buffer Ad, but is this what we really want?

The thing I like about Free (as in speech software) is that the only things included are for techinal reasons. Everything that is built into vim is there for a techinal reason, and I like that. What I hate is no-techinal stuff in programs, like if one day I load up vim and it asks me for a serial number, screw that, that is no reason to have a serial number there (even if it was commerical software) because it serves no techinal purpose. Also if I loaded up vim to edit a system file and it poped an svga full color ad in my face that I had to watch for 30 seconds before it let me admin my machine, I would be seriously pissed.

If a company supports free software develop, they do deverse credit, props and a shout out from their homeboys. As long as they do it someone reasonable, it is cool. When they start doing Full screen ads though, that could cause some problems.

Re:Where do you draw the line?

[Tet]

I write a really cool filesystem driver [...] They stipulate that I have to advertise that they supported it by inserting a "sponsored by Microsoft" message in the write() system call [...] the kernel spinlocks for 15 seconds.

The chances of that ever getting past Linus and into a mainstream kernel are somewhere around zero. If it's distributed as a separate module (as source), it'll be a day (two at the outside) before someone releases a patch to remove the advertising. If it's not distributed as source, I (and many others) won't be using it anyway, so I don't care how much advertising you put in...

Re:Linus allowed this?

[ruud]

I can't believe Linus allowed "sponsored by MP3.com" to be applied to the master source tree.

He didn't. ReiserFS is not part of the official kernel.

--

This is a slippery slope; look at PBS...

[Deven]

Sure, it starts out as simple "sponsorship" messages. Right now it's only a minor nuisance. Later (as another poster mentioned), the output could start getting more and more gaudy and intrusive as in the world of DOS TSR's.

Eventually, it could degenerate as much as PBS has. PBS claims to be "commercial-free" public television, yet more and more of their programs have a professionally-produced 10-20 second piece from the sponsoring company, indistinguishable from any other commercial on television, except in that it's more likely to be a soft sell. What happened to simply announcing a list of names of companies and individuals? When did it become necessary to show company logos and finally full-motion professional video clips?

I'm not as concerned with the current messages so much as what this could become...

Re:Linus allowed this?

[Spiv]

I can't believe Linus allowed "sponsored by MP3.com" to be applied to the master source tree.

Uh, no, he didn't. Reiserfs isn't in the master source tree -- it's looking like it will eventually be included, possibly sometime during 2.4.x and almost definitely in 2.5, but it's certainly not in there yet. The code still needs a bit of work, I believe.

-Spiv.

Not Too Worrisome Now, But...

[GeekLife.com]

Are you sure it's not just that the current sponsoring companies are generally "cool"? Because if this sort of thing is accepted, it be more difficult to remove (once the precedent is set)?

How would this go over if, say, Microsoft joined in?

(It also makes me think of the PBS Ads...er...sponsorships that have slowly evolved more and more into the exact same ads we're seeing on the standard networks.)
-----

Re:Not Too Worrisome Now, But...

[Oarboat_7]

To drift slightly off topic (but really to amplify what the previous commenter said) the 'creeping commercialism' on the PBS network is a threat to look out for.

I can remember in the old days of the "Prairie Home Companion Show" that Garrision Kellior would mention Cargill as a sponsor of the program. He always worked in a little humor, implying that what Cargill produced was ambiguous (shoehorns? canned beets? ...). These days he just reads whatever their marketing people tell him to read off the card. It seems chillingly humorless to anybody who remembers the old jokes.

So yes, it's one of those 'slippery slope' things.

Not too bad...

[Uruk]

Nah, it's not too bad. If you have PPP compression modules, and some of the TCP/IP modules they talk about how the software was developed and sponsored by Berkely at boot time.

There's nothing wrong with giving credit where credit is due. If ReiserFS wouldn't have existed without SuSE and MP3.com, I'm ok with watching their names scroll by. (quickly)

What's going to piss me off is if you have a message that says something like:
(etc. etc.) Sponsored by MP3.com - visit mp3.com today for the latest in digital music - come see how the MP3 revolution allows garage bands to suck all over the world!

or some such advertising blurb.

But then another part of me doesn't even care. I'm not sure about the specific license on reiserfs, but for the vast majority of things that provide source code, if it bugs me I'll hack it out. I bet it's a 5 minute hack to get rid of that stuff. (remove a few kprintf's I believe - but maybe it's done some other way)

rm -f CREDITS

[Rozzin]

"Don't delete the sponsorship messages! Yes, it's open source which gives you the ability to remove the tags just like you have the ability to run `rm -f CREDITS' on every tarball you extract."

And what's wrong with me removing CREDITS files from my own system?

"I know I'd be pissed off if someone used my code without giving me credit, or if there was a renegade patch running around that REMOVED my line in the credits."

There's a difference between removing the CREDITS file from my disk and distributing something with a modified credits-list.

Personally, I really dislike having to look at a credits-list or a splash-screen or other such things every time I load a piece of software, which is why I don't inflict such things upon my own users.

Having an accurate list of credits that people can view is different than having a list of credits that people must view.

Hm. I suppose that the CREDITS file and a list of credits in the software's init routine aren't the same, after all.
Hm. Why not put a list of all of the sponsors in a `SPONSORS' file?

Re:rm -f CREDITS

[Rozzin]

"C'mon, the only payment the author/sponsor is asking for is two lines of text on boot up"

Counting the 12 names on the credits-page of the reiserfs web site, at 2 lines per contributor, that's 24 lines. This reminds me of the FSF's note on why the BSD advertising clause became a Bad Thing.

But, regarless of the degree of severity of annoyance-features, speaking as a free-software-developer: why does someone intentionally add inconvenience for their users? Actually, hell--I'll ask that just as a software-developer. To say something like, `you can only use my software if you keep this CREDITS-file on-disk at all times, and read it before every invokation of the software', is mean and wrong. And, no, it doesn't matter how much inconvenience or annoyance my users are willing to tolerate, I'm writing software for them to help make their world better.

A friend of mine recently bought a used computer with Windows 95 on it, and he wanted to reinstall the system to try to fix some broken aspects of the system. He had a perfectly legal Windows-95 installation-disc. When the installation-routine asked for the registration number, we typed it in, and it was rejected. We tried other numbers, and they were all rejected until we reformatted the drive and had a fresh go at it.

A while back, I discovered that Microsoft Word refused to open multiple file with the same name simultaneously, even if they were in different directories.

The amount of intentional difficulty that had been built into these systems is just mind-boggling.... That is not the right thing to do.

Re:rm -f CREDITS

[AME]

I think that's a legitimate price to pay for FREE software.

How much is the maximum legitimate price for free software?

The problem is that you have to draw a line someplace. How much is too much? 3 lines? 5 lines? 10 lines? 100?... After all, it's free software, so what's the harm in popping up a nag screen when the user starts his mail client to remind him of important free software projects? The user's not paying for it, after all.

As far as I'm concerned, bootup progs should get one line, unless they have legitimate (as in, "important for debugging purposes") information which requires more to convey.

When I go to dmesg, it's because I want to figure out why something or another is happening. In short, I'm looking for information about my system, not ads. If every boot prog had a single line of useful information and an additional three lines of sponsorship ads, then the usefulness of dmesg would be diminished considerably, as I would be forced to wade through all the crap just to find the debugging info.

--

Re:rm -f CREDITS

[Zach978]

..I think it would be a nice gesture to recognize that someone is actually helping..

Yes, I actually patch the source to have the credits stay on longer, then I just read all the names, everytime, over and over again, recognizing them....I'm I'm sure that those authors really appreciate it..

Re:rm -f CREDITS

[AME]

I'm hardly a `freedom fighter'. As far as I'm concerned, they could write whatever they like into their software. I don't even really mind if it's closed source (although it wouldn't be my first preference) as long as it works and I'm reasonably certain that nothing fishy is going on.

I'm all for credit where credit is due, as long as it's in the appropriate place, but I have second thoughts about my syslogs being the appropriate place. On principle, I think log files should have a very high signal to noise ratio.

The bottom line is that I question the wisdom of beginning down this road. It begins with silly things like this, but it's all just a matter of degree. Soon companies start contributing to projects with the expectation of ad space in the boot sequence. (Or worse, contributing on the condition of such representation.) Some would choose which projects to contribute to based on whether they will get space.

It doesn't take much before the log file is useless. Take a look at USENET for an example of what happens when people stop using a medium for it's intended purpose. Try to find some useful information or discussion among the spams in some newsgroups.

I could just comment out the offending block of source, but if this became commonplace then I would get pretty sick of having to touch the source of every driver on my system every time I upgrade a kernel. Thank you, but I have better things to do with my time, which is why I use a distro instead of compiling my entire system from source.

--

Re:rm -f CREDITS

[RaZ0r]

who needs documentation? :)


- Stop praying for someone to save you, and save yourself.-
KMFDM

Re:rm -f CREDITS

[RaZ0r]

Yea, i'm so right:)


- Stop praying for someone to save you, and save yourself.-
KMFDM

"Advertising Clause"

[tsprad]

We were all so pleased when the University of California agreed to drop the "advertising clause" from their license... Yet another reason to prefer BSD? ;-)

They're not the only ones!

[pjrc]

As long as we're making a big deal out of nothing...

CPU: Intel Celeron (Mendocino) stepping 00

Intel gets special consideration

POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX

Here's a plug for unifix, and maybe even IEEE

mtrr: v1.35a (19990819) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)

Shameless self promotion on Richard's part

Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039

Swansea, what right have they...

<Sound Blaster 16 (4.16)> at 0x220 irq 5 dma 1,5

Creative Labs gets their registered trademark displayed

(scsi0) <Adaptec AIC-7890/1 Ultra2 SCSI host adapter> found at PCI 6/0 Vendor: SEAGATE Model: ST39102LW Rev: 0005 Vendor: TOSHIBA Model: CD-ROM XM-6201TA Rev: 1030

Hey, three more nasty for-profit entities... how dare they

3c59x.c:v0.99H 11/17/98 Donald Becker http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.h tml

And who hasn't seen Donald, who wrote drivers for nearly every card in existance at the time

Most authors of free software / open source authors display their names. If a company pays a few people to contriubute full time to a project, why shouldn't they get the same (rather minimal) mention that individuals get?

/* comments are your friend! */

[dlc]

if this bothers you, there is this construct in C called a comment...

/* Hide what you don't want to see. */

darren

Cthulhu for President!

Reminiscent of NPR...

[sterno]

It's kind of like the advertising you here on NPR or PBS. As opposed to full blown ads, they just say, "this program brought to you by...".

Just hope to god your filesystem doesn't try to launch a pledge drive!

---

Same with NPR, here's why:

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

NPR is getting the same way. About 6-9 months ago I heard a story on NPR about this very problem. The reason they had to do this was that the gov't cut spending for public broadcasting drastically (like, 50%, although I don't remember the actual numbers). What's really dumb is that it was only a few million dollars--less than the DoD spends on facial tissue.

However, there are two mitigating factors:

1) Ads on public broadcasting (TV or radio) still can't promote a product, just an entity (like the company, corporation, foundation, etc). So you might see ads like "WalMart--Promoting Consumerism Through Shoddy Products" but you won't see "WalMart--We've Put TeleTubby Action Figures On Sale". They have other guidelines about content, format, etc. That's why you got the "soft sell" impression.

2) The fact that I heard a story on NPR critical of NPR and its advertisers says that the public broadcasting system, whatever its faults, works way better than the private sector.
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?

Re:Advertising

[PigleT]

OK, my $0.02's worth...

The kernel is open-source. You can edit the adverts out, can't you?

Next thing you know .. how's about a version of junkbuster for the kernel? ;)

~Tim
--
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,

Where are the screams of outrage?

[mr]

RMS is morally opposed to advertising...that is why he railed against the BSD "advertising clause".

Where are the outraged voices now that some code associated with the Linux kernel-space has "advertising"?

If I made the rules. . .

[JohnZed]

I'd let each module provide one line of valid sponsorship information. No pure "ads" (you couldn't, say, advertise for a product or make an offer to sell something), but mention of sponsoring companies/individuals seems completely fair. If we keep it down to one or two lines, it won't get out of hand (how often do you load/unload modules anyways?).

Public television and radio, for instance, both pride themselves on being ad-free. But you always hear the names of their sponsors mentioned in a reasonably dignified tagline. As long as we don't end up with periods where our software stops working for an hour to encourage us to phone in our pledges. . .

Actually, that may be a valid analogy. Does free software have something to learn from public television? Since federal support for PBS has dwindled in recent years, the organization has come to rely more on corporate donations (which they always had) and merchandising (remember, these folks invented Sesame Street). I think this is different from, but possibly compatible with, the common open source model in which a company hires developers to work on a piece of free software as full time employees (such as Red Hat does with many projects or IBM does with Apache). Besides ReiserFS, I know that the Linux Scalability project has a real sponsorship model, but I'm wondering if anybody else does.
--JRZ

New Reiserfs messages

[lar3ry]

May 03 00:59:34 testsys kernel: Checking ReiserFS transaction log (device 16:02)
May 03 00:59:34 testsys kernel: COKE - It's the Real Thing! (tm)
May 03 00:59:34 testsys kernel: MAKE MONEY FAST! Surf on over to http://ima.realdumbschmuck.com for details!
May 03 00:59:34 testsys kernel: Dow Chemical -- Without chemicals, life itself would be uninteresting. http://www.dow.com
May 03 00:59:34 testsys kernel: Pepsi -- The choice of the GNU generation. Ignore that COKE message a few lines back.
May 03 00:59:34 testsys kernel: Hiya, Sailor! Looking for a good time? Try: http://real-teens-nude-and-lewd.com
May 03 00:59:34 testsys kernel: Is it painful sitting around looking at console messages? Try Preporation H -- Best for hemmorhoid sufferers.
May 03 00:59:35 testsys kernel: Resierfs -- internal buffer overflow. Deleting code but retaining advertisements.
May 03 00:59:35 testsys kernel: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? http://www.abc.com
May 03 00:59:35 testsys kernel: Who Wants To Be A Billionaire? http://www.oracle.com/~ellison
May 03 00:59:35 testsys kernel: Allocating 200 Mb virtual space for more adverts; loading special VGA driver
May 03 00:59:36 testsys kernel: Jolt -- The REAL Choice of a GNU Generation. Ignore that Pepsi ad (and the COKE one while you are at it).

--

unix designed NOT to print spurious messages?

[Wakko Warner]

Ever run BIND?

- A.P.
--

"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

that's not really an ad as much as it is credit

[josepha48]

Trust me. From someone who now works on putting banner ads on web sites that is not an ad. An ad would be if it said buy suse. The interesting thing about this will be when Redhat and other vendors get a hold of this code. Will they take these comments out in there custom kernels so that Redhat users don't see the suse credit?

I think that it is abnoxious, but then again that is SuSE. SuSE did not open source there YaST tool. Yes you have the source for it but it is not GPL, and you cannot use ot to create your own distribution. That is SuSE. RedHat open sources all its tools (AFAIK) which is why I went with Redhat. They also push for GPL stuff, remeber Redhat and debian would not distribute kde till troll tech opened up its qt tool kit. But enought of that that is just why I like Redhat.

The truth here is that the reiser fs is not really open source it is one of those open sourceish licenses that if you keep up with kernel traffic then you'd know that it caused a lot of stir up there too. Oh well I'll wait for 2.4 and see what is in it. I'd be more incliened to use ext2 or sgi journaling fs anyway.

send flames > /dev/null

Heh, Microsoft sponsors ads in Linux too!

[torpor]

"This stack dump brought to you by Microsoft Corporation. Where do you want to go now?"

Heh heh... I can totally see that happening.

Re:look at dvd's

[WNight]

Five previews, as I counted.

The Sixth Sense and The Mummy both do that.

That's the main reason I want open source DVD players, so I can get one without that lame feature. Either that, or a crack for one of the existing soft players.

You're lucky you can speed through, *all* the buttons other than stop are ignored on mine.

And you're right, movies are now showing third party advertising, what's to stop them from shoving it onto a DVD? And then forcing people to watch it.

I'll just install a DVD player that automatically skips any section of the disk that has the "can't fast forward" flag set. And never go back to using this lame standalone player again.

No news is good news.

[SurfsUp]

...which is another reason it is not in the 2.3 version

I thought about it some more, and I realized that the principal that must apply, classically, "no news is good news". You are right to remove these messages. They shouldn't appear during package installation either. And there should be no code in the kernel module devoted to providing an option. That just takes up memory.

All the same, reading the credits gives me a warm and fuzzy. I just don't want it mixed in any way with the machinery of the OS. One excellent place to give credit/blow one's own horn in the package info of an RPM, as long as it's not too obtrusive and doesn't get in the way of the functional information. Another good place is in the usual CREDITS file that's often included in a package distribution. Do we need any more advertising that this? I really don't think so. As you said (more or less) being able to take credit on *one* web site that you own is worth many 1,000,000's of little boot nags.
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