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Linus Responds To Mundie
Thanks to Dan Gillmor for pointing out Linus' reply to the comments that Mundie from Microsoft made this week. The response is vintage Linus - but the points he raises regarding openness vis a vis science & learning and open source is very cogent.
Linus brings up an interesting problem with society, although he doesn't go into length about it. That problem is the reliance of capitalism in our society for intellectual advancement.
Attempting to equate success with having capital (and hence property) has created some obvious paradoxes. Take the example of designed obsolescence. Because corporations only live if they can sustain an income, products are created that will fail to function in a timely manner. This creates a revenue stream and keeps the corporation "alive". However, the products that are created are not the best possible products.
Competition is supposed to push better products to the fore. If that worked, we'd have light bulbs that laster for 30 years, cars you bought for a lifetime, and software for life. Ask yourself this question: How much better is Word 2000 from Word 5.1? We upgrade because it is forced upon us by file protocals, not because there's any innovation in word processing.
Until we can divorce the pursuit of capital from advances in science, we are doomed to have any advance kepted restained by the barriers of the a accumulation of that wealth. If at any point, an advancement is deemed to be a money killer, it will be abandoned. [Napster being a slightly trollish example]
I don't have the answers to these problems, but from what I've read on Slashdot, I'm not the only one thinking about them.
Torvalds certainly has a very readable writing style. Stallman tends to be more thoughtful, and that may make his writing less accessible to the casual reader, but he never sounds like a "total loon". The fact that you think so says more about you than about RMS.
Many, if not most, people here on Slashdot seem to prefer ESR-style 'Open Source' over RMS-style 'Free Software'. That's fine, I like to think we can "agree to disagree" about the details.
But please, show each other some respect. Calling RMS a 'total loon' (or, like ESR, making vicious remarks about his personal hygiene) is way out of line, IMHO.
At the risk of being a bit trollish myself, let me just say from deep personal experience that anyone who thinks Win9X is usable by unassisted non-technical people has never given their parents a computer.
On the other hand, it's important to note that when Linus points out the great discoveries made by the men that he listed, he's making a list of individuals whose work was done primarily with public institutions...schools, foundations or institutions. Even men like da Vinci, who did work privately, worked with the goal of simply publishing his (scientific) work.
Fast forward a few hundred years...
If a private company dumps a load of money into research and development, they deserve the opportunity to get something back for it. Patents are a way for them to recover their expenses, try to make some money (because in a capitalist society, they have that right) and give us the opportunity to use their ideas.
In fact, I would submit that good old fashioned science is still being done for the public good in those very places that science has always been done: colleges and universities and in national laboratories. The IP patents that we complain so bitterly about are really only incremental improvements in existing technology, rarely breakthrough developments.
It is good for the economy to charge, not only for intellectual property, but for any property. Trade is how the economy grows. The Microsoft comment is flawed in that it assumes that if charging for IP is good then not charging for it is bad. I'd say it's pretty clear that that is an unsupportable position. But the other extreme, that everything should be free isn't much more supportable either.
-h-
Perhaps there would be less people using the web, but you ignore Apple, Amiga, and all the other companies that would have been here had MS not. You assume that MS exists in a vacumm. Computers would be no less than two years behind where they are now. Commodity hardware is nice, but Apple had allowed clones before, stopping only when they were losing money. If their apps sold to more people they'd probably have gotten out of the hardware market, controlling it only through 'Apple Approved' programs, like MS through their 'Made for Windows' program.
Similarly, Apple was the leader in usability and had they had more of a market share, they would doubtlessly have kept improving. If not, some other company could have done it.
How great would the web be if only geeks were on it? That's not just theoretical. Many of us here remember how great it was. No banners, no 'free registration', no spam bots, free information easily arranged to be shared with other academics. I doubt begrude anyone the right to be on the net, but the crass commercialization of it sucks. Mainly thanks to big companies like MS making sure that any idiot could connect. (Though I realize that had MS and AOL not done this, others would have.)
Finally, for your idea that MS should be forgiven all their illegal acts, putting other companies out of business, and forming a monopoly to the detriment of the consumer. What? Are you mad? Should we start forgiving crimes simply because it's been a while and the victim isn't around to complain anymore?
MS and their upgrade-itis (the refusal to patch products, only release a new version) have cost the public *much* more than it has helped them.
I'm all for not bashing big companies just because they're big but MS really is a scum lord, they really did compete only through illegal actions.
Linus doesn't have anything against intellectual property. If you paid more attention to him you'd know that. He respects people's work and respects copyright. But he also believes that collaboration and sharing knowledge is the best way to promote progress, but that doesn't mean that he thinks patents and such are never appropriate.
Please get a clue before you go calling someone a hypocrite.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Linus never ceases to amaze.
Perfect quote from Isaac Newton to counter all that Microsoft has been saying.
Great reply
Except...
This quote is often used to illustrate the humility of Newton. In these cases, it's a misquote.
Newton claimed to have discovered that white light was made up of mixed colours. Robert Hooke claimed that Newton had stolen the idea from his own Micrographia. Hooke is generally described as 'crooked and low of stature' and Newton and Hooke were long-standing rivals for primacy at The Royal Society (we're talking big money prizes here). The quote is from Newton's rebuttal of this accusation.
So basically the standard Newton quote was a typically nasty, snide put-down to Hooke, saying "even if I did steal these ideas, I certainly didn't steal them from a dwarf like you"
Maybe Linus is saying if he wants commercial ideas he'd rather get them from Bell Labs than from M$?
The man was a genius, certainly. But an angel he was not.
Newton was also an alchemist, who learned his stuff from one Thomas Vaughan (alias 'Eugenius Philalethes')
TomV
If all intellectual properties were taken away from a company so that anyone could use the product that was previously protected, then the company will go out of business and no one will sell that product. Right? No not really... Someone is still going to create the product that was previously protected. Just because a company can not monopolize the product does not mean they will not make any money off of it. Just look at cars. No one has a monopoly on car engines or bodies or airbags. You can get most features in any car in any other car. Yet when you look at the road, there are 100's of different types of cars from so many different manufactures.
If IP rights were taken away from all companies, I don't see it as the Doom of the information age, I see companies having to compete for quality products. IP rights only cover an idea, companies then have to implement that idea into a product. Companies can then compete on the quality of their product, not just the one little idea the product holds. And for companies that fear people stealing their code if they open source it, you can't cut and paste quality out of a product.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Mundie shot himself in the foot numerous times in that speech. It can be torn apart. An example:
The OSS development model leads to a strong possibility of unhealthy "forking" of a code base, resulting in the development of multiple incompatible versions of programs, weakened interoperability, product instability, and hindering businesses' ability to strategically plan for the future. Furthermore, it has inherent security risks and can force intellectual property into the public domain.
In a word. kerberos. MS took instead of PUBLIC standard, 'forked' it (so to speak, but modifying it and making the change any but part of the original open standard). This lead to 'incompatible versions of programs', 'product instability' of other products, and 'hindering businesses' ability to strategically plan for the future'...all but their own of course, the public/and therefore the customers/be damned. Did it also not come out that in the trial that there were times code was changed to intentionally 'break' competitor software (applications)? Again, see above. If anything, I feel this actually supports the breakup of MS. They use the proprietary standards to thwart competition in the app area. It's good from the OS/app vertical market, of which they are the monopoly. And that's just one paragraph. What they've done is NOT good for the software market (EXCEPT for MS itself) in the applications area, which is 99.99 percent of the software companies. Hell, and that's only one paragraph. Of course he mentioned the bad business model of 'free expecting to be paid later' hmm...Explorer comes to mind. What his speech does day, if one reads between the lines, is that MS must thing Linux is ready for prime time. That's quite an endorsement. It's a little like announcing vaporware a year before you have a product because someone announces a product you think is a good idea. You keep the competitor at bay while you write it or buy it (never having thought about it in the first place).
My feeling of the positive aspect of the open source model is it means applications will compete on MERIT, not be shoved down your throat. If an app vendor enahnces/corrects an OS under GPL, then every vendor, once that's included, will have the same benefit for their application products. (And applications can remain proprietary, if they like. But they'll have to be good. no BSOD every other keystroke and service/support, knowing a customer DOES have the option of going elsewhere.) It's all about control... MS wants it 100%. OSS give the control back to the customer/consumer/business client... the place it belongs. Even those that are strictly the profit driven software houses, it's sill a BIG plus for them IF they have a product that people want to purchase and IF someone doesn't invent a better mousetrap and put it under GPL, at which point they probably failed on that innovation, research, or service that MS seems to speak of so frequently.
Steve Wozniak - Apple 1 and ][
// It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis
Its sad actually that this quote is frequently produced to show what a nice guy Newton was. Newton was actually refering to another quote when he made this, which was "we are but dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants". The "dwarfs" bit is the relevant point, because he was actually being extremely rude to Robert Boyle (him of the gas law), who actually rather on the short side.
Newton was actually a very nasty piece of work. He was massively anti-semitic. Although he hated catholics ever more. He only took a seat in parliament because someone came up with the nasty idea of admitting catholics to the Cambridge college that Newton was a member of.
His only recorded contribution to debate in parliament was on a motion to open the window. It is believed that his speech was "Mr Speaker, it is rather hot in here."
The thing with the apples was good though.
Phil
But I'm glad Linus beat him to the punch. I'm very grateful for Stallman's contribution to the software field, but in speaking and writing he often sounds like a total loon. Linus' writings are always so relaxed, eloquent, and poingent, even when he's basically calling someone an idiot.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
[As a quick note, this is not a troll or flamebait, though it will likely be modded as such.]
Please, set aside for a moment the fact that Linus is god and M$ is the devil. Linus makes some very astute observations in his message, but for a reader who is not already sold on the gospel of Lin, it comes off as childish, snotty, and rude. A few examples:
- Gee, what a surprise.
- I wonder if Mundie has ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton?
- I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less.
Valid points, yes, but this kind of attitude is not what OSS needs to get respect in the business world. And, yes, ultimately what OSS needs to succeed is respect by the general, non-Slashdot population.Damn he's good. That last line about stinking up the room is one of the harshest direct responses I've seen in a couple of years. I just hope M$ doesn't sick the lawyers on him for libel against Mundie. Illegal we do immediately. Unconstitutional takes a little longer.
"Secrecy is the Beginning of Tyranny" "No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law" -Robert Heinlein
Interesting that you mention Thomas Eedison. Although Edison was a prolific inventer, he (or his companies) was rather ruthless iun defending his patents.
As I recall, he attempted to leverage his invention, patent, and resulting monopoly on the movie projector into a monopoly on film production.
Many (if not all) of his projectors were licensed, not sold, with the stipulation that they only be used to project films distributed by Edison controlled companies.
Not necessarily. Look at it this way - if companies weren't able to abuse the patent system, I think they'd put even more money into R&D, because they would have no artificial means of suppressing competitors.
For example, there's a brand of vacuum cleaner available in the UK that has a TV commercial trumpeting the fact that their latest model has 136 patents on various parts of it, so "If you want a Dyson, it's going to have to be a Dyson." This is unbelievable - they're actually proud of the fact that consumers can't obtain a similar cleaner from any other source, because they've got it locked up so tight with patents that no other company could reasonably produce a similar model.
Once upon a time, patents were given on entire devices, not little bits of such devices. If Dyson had only one patent, their IP would be protected, while other companies could make improvements on that design. But no, Dyson have 136 patents, so any improvement is likely to be obstructed by at least one of them. And then they have the gall to say that you can't get one from anywhere else, because they've got it stitched up tight.
Now, consider the case of software patents - in many cases, the patent is on an algorithm that can't be implemented any other way, because it's based on fundamental mathematical calculations that can't be done any other way (such as multiplication and division). What does that do for R&D at other companies? Kills it dead, that's what.
If someone has more info on this please post it...I just remember seeing the announcement in one of the Adobe Photodisc type thingies and don't have much else.
clif
Actually, Alan Cox responded before either of them. I think he does a better job of refuting Mundie in general; Linus focuses on a specific part of what Mundie said and is [IMHO] more inflammatory.
Shame the PHBs won't've heard of Alan Cox cos I think he often has things to say which are worth listening to.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Open Intellectual Property ("open source", "free software", whatever)
- The Internet
- The World Wide Web, including HTML
- Linux
Microsoft:Wow, I'm so impressed with MS's contribution.
--
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Why can't Microsoft let Linux users use Linux, and stop trying to impose restrictions on what they can build in the OS? Why can't I buy a pre-made computer without the Windows tax?
People have the right to choose their OS!
You are right, people have the right to choose their OS but we have Microsoft here trying to take that right away. With MS coming out and saying that they need to educate (buy off) legislators to the dangers of open source that means they want to pass a law making it illegal. I have no problem with people using Windows and I think most people on /. don't mind that either as most of them use it. I think most people don't like being told what to do which is what MS is trying to do.
All of this hatred and "I'm not wrong, you're wrong" type stuff does nothing for either side.
I don't think this is what we are seeing here though. This is not Linus saying that Windows users suck. He is replying to allegations that open source is bad thing.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
If Microsoft has not got further, it must be beacuse of all the giants standing on its shoulders: DoJ, Linux, IBM, Gnu, Netscape, Word Perfect, Lotus, Borlans, Apple, Corel,
In Murphy We Turst
But there are very few examples of scientists creating consumer goods for the love of discovery. One or two perhaps - I'm not sure what the intention behind invention of the lightbulb was.
But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.
I think that whilst the great discoveries of our time and times gone by will more often be found by scientists and visionaries of the academic kind, it takes a profit incentive to push discovery into the final phases of development, manufacture, distribution and sale.
So I think that governments should be extremely careful when they give patents away, and the more general the patent, the more value it ties up by preventing the development of those ideas by third parties.
But where discoveries require significant investment to bring them to a consumer-ready stage, compensation must be guaranteed for that investment, otherwise there is no incentive other than charity to undertake the work, and the most intelligent minds may not have the funds to obtain the necessary equipment and assistance to leverage their genius - they will need to leverage a future asset to borrow those funds in the present.
Salocin.com
Linus was using the phrase in a to make a rather mild joke. How it is that Linus, a foreigner, has a better command of English idiom than you, well... it's just one example so there is no conclusion to be drawn.
This is a rather personal attack...but the last remark was at best childish. Stick with the issues. I don't believe Mundie/Microsoft made any such direct remarks about Linus...
I completely disagree. Humanity has cloaked itself in a thick layer of Bullshit and PR speak. This is cased by the palm-pusher corporate types who seek to maintain a fine 'artificially constructed' reality that is suitable to their Marketing Plan(TM).
I say fuck it all - if Mundie is a jackass - I say we openly SAY IT! This is reality - not a fucking Game Show.
Mundie is really just a talking head - paid for his white teeth and quick wit - why should some dishonest puppet be given respect? Because of his Job Title? I would assert that Mr. Mundie has done nothing to earn our respect (in spite of his impressive jobtitle - which i say is irrelevant). Mr. Mundie is a blatant liar and a despicable person, his very character is soiled by this display of shallowness and greed.
The people cited in Linus' email are people deserving of respect - they have made contributions to humanity, and by most accounts did so with passion and vigour. Mr. Mundie is a lap-dog, deserving of only ire and loathing.
This is not flaimbait. I am suggesting that people start re-evaluating who is regarded well in public - lets re-asses how we choose our 'leaders' - and most certainly; lets call a spade a spade.
Doing my best Bob Newhart, I imagine that a conversation over the phone between Einstein and PhysicsX Inc product managers:
Ah, good morning Albert - how are the wife, the kids? Did you catch the game last night?
Oh - you don't watch football - well, that's just swell there. Say, we here in Product Management want to talk to you about that project you've been working on.
Uhuh - yeah - that whole grand unification project and all that. Yeah, we need to know if we can patent any of this stuff?
Oh - it's really prior art then eh? Okay - listen, we've put a lot of money your way and Susan from Marketing would like to know what would people get from moving near the speed of light...
More mass, length shortened? Wow - listen Al, we've got idea down - we'd just like you to downplay the more mass thing. We're kind of looking towards changing some of the text such as shortened length to "slimming".
I can see how you're upset about this one Al, I'd be too, but heck, they're just words, and we are trying to sell this stuff...
Okay I'll talk to Susan about that. Listen, packaging is wondering how we could fit this whole Theory of Relativity thing for home use...
Ah - yes Al, I did get that memo about impossibility of approaching the speed of light. Listen, I've got Frank from Advertising here - he's concerned that your paper has too much math - could you trim it back?
Al? Al? Funny - I seemed to have been disconnected.
Just off the top of my head, I agree - the business model of running r&d has proven itself to be a pain and a dinosaur. What we need to do is present an environment where more people would express what they know and come up with new discoveries. And these discoveries don't really have to come from scientists or researchers.
Have you ever had one of those neighbours who could fix anything? Go spend some time with them and see their workshop - inspiration beyond belief! No corporate sponsership, a true love of whatever it is they are working on.
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
I mean, where would we all be without minesweeper. lost...
"God is dead." - Nietszche
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Newton gave particular credit to Kepler, another "open science" advocate. In Max Caspar's bio of Kepler, when told that Galileo was in Italy presenting Kepler's discoveries as his own, Kepler basically said that this was OK, since the truth spread by anyone was still the truth, and that the world would be richer for it. How could he possibly give up his 'property' like that? Becuase he did not think of knowledge as his.
Galileo, on the other hand, was persecuted by the Catholic Church (an intellectual property monopoly), and lost his right to even present his findings in public.
Many of the scientific conclusions Kepler and Galileo reached are incorrect, but science is nearly as much about seeing thought processes at work as it is about finding the truth. According to Mundie's speech, this process has no value to Microsoft, unless it is paid for by the governement and then given to them to use as their own.
I like to think of OS and GPL in terms of the US legal system; when a lawyer does 'pro bono' work, it does not mean "for free," it means "for the public good." Refusing payment is one characteristic of pro bono work, but the term also means that you put yourself on the line for something you believe in, something that will otherwise be ignored or left undone. Can you imagine the trial system if a lawyer says "Your honor, I bring to your attention Brown vs. the Board of Education" and a lawyer in the audience says, "Wait! Part of that decision is my intellectual property! You must pay me before you can use that in your client's defense!" So how does anyone make money if legal work is in the public domain? Lawyers pay for their law books, and they pay for Lexis-Nexis access to legal research. And so, lawyers charge a high hourly or contingency fee for most of their work, and if they do good research and make good arguments, they deserve it.
In the same way, I am permitted under the GPL to sell my improvements in the form of binaries on CD-ROM, but I need to make the source available as well. I can charge $100 to access my online archive of source. If it is a great archive that is kept up-to-date, people, companies, and universities may pay, and there is nothing in the GPL that prevents this. I cannot stop you from redistributing it, though, just as Lexis-Nexis cannot stop a law researcher from teaching his students the public info found in their database. In fact, my reading of the GPL says that I can refuse to release my changes without payment. If anyone wants to pay me, they can. In fact, a lot of my consulting work is based on this, and I get paid well because I do a good job.
Computing began as a government/university venture, including Bill Gates' first major programming project, an implementation of BASIC on a Harvard-owned, government funded machine. The field has been taken over by rich private interests. The GPL is one attempt to restore some balance in favor of research, and based on the progress the Linux kernel has made in just 8 years, it's succeeding.