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.

Comments

Edison

[Jeremy Erwin]

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.

Re:Wrong way to look at it

[BJH]

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.

Leonardo

[clifyt]

The strength of open source is not the source, but the intellectual property that goes with it - exactly the part that Mundie seems to hate so much. The fact that when you get involved in open source, you get equal rights to be involved. You can be another Leonardo da Vinci, you aren't relegated to just paying for viewing his works.

The sad fact of this is that Bill Gates OWNS all the rights to most of Leonardo's works today including the Cotex. This was bought through his digital media / stock photography group last year.

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

Re:Leonardo

[Gihadrah]

The Betteman Archives was a collection of Photographs (and drawings?) that was availible online for free. Way back when... I used to grab free pic's of famous people off of thier site. A perfect example was Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Teran. A rather famous photograph.

Corbis now owns the rights and these pics can only be had for a price. Corbis is owned by Bill Gates.

THIS is probably the #1 reason I dislike the man.

Alan Cox

[divec]

I thought it would be Stallman to respond first [...] But I'm glad Linus beat him to the punch. [...] Linus' writings are always so relaxed, eloquent, and poingent, even when he's basically calling someone an idiot.

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.

Re:Be fair...

[fanatic]

Scorecard:

Open Intellectual Property ("open source", "free software", whatever)

• The Internet
• The World Wide Web, including HTML
• Linux

Microsoft:

• A paperclip with nasty eyeballs

Wow, I'm so impressed with MS's contribution.

--

Re:OS hatred wars

[molog]

Why can't Linux users just let Windows users use Windows, and Windows users just let Linux users use Linux?

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?

Giants

[heikkile]

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,

Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nlvp]

I agree wholeheartedly with Linus when he says that Newton, Einstein and countless others have done more for mankind and todays level of scientific achievement than any modern company - theirs are the shoulders that modern scientists stand on.

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.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Chiasmus_]

If the pharmaceuticals weren't over-exploiting this system quite so ruthlessly, they would be a good example, as things stand, I'd be on pretty shaky ground defending their recent actions. But if you took away all protection for any of their discoveries, their business model would fold overnight as people (like myself) bailed out of their shares as fast as the markets would allow us.

Bingo. You've hit it exactly.

If IP reigns supreme, companies will ignore what's best for humanity in favor of the bottom line. If freedom of information reigns supreme, companies will simply not develop products.

What I believe the world discovered during the cold war was that neither pure capitalism or pure communism was a viable system. In retrospect, that seems pretty obvious. The only viable system is to take away between 25% and 75% of every person's income and redistribute it. The U.S., right now, is going with a figure of something like 45%, I believe. Yet we still call ourselves "capitalist". Ha.

What the information age will teach us, I believe is that neither IP nor OSS are viable systems, alone. One leads to the stifling of information and technological progess; the other damages incentive and introduces a fair deal of entropy.

If I believed for a minute that Mundy was serious about adopting a "shared source" vision for Microsoft, I would hop out of my chair and cheer. A system where Windows, like Debian, was reviewed and updated constantly, where feedback from the community was instantaneous, and yet where applications tended to be mature, user-friendly, and compatble with each other (as they're developed by a large team of well-compensated designers) sounds almost too good to be true. Eventually, I believe, we will discover the beauty of the "middle ground". It's my prediction that, at some point in the not-too-distant future, we will finally start seeing a business model that practices what Mundy preaches: incorporating the benefits of open source (review, speed, innovation) with those of IP (incentive, compatibility, coherence).

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[dachshund]

But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

Well, not to point out the obvious... But the open source movement seems to be doing exactly that. I think the problem with your argument is simply that it's not generally possible to design aircraft or cars for the joy of it. It's just too specialized, and when you've completed the design, you don't have access to the specialized tools necessary to make it real. It's a situation we've lived with so long that we simply take it for granted that only a corporation could ever produce a useful product.

I would even go so far as to state that open source has a sort of darwinian marketing advantage over corporate products; only products that the market needs will ever survive. Think how many corporate products have, after millions in R&D and thousands of hours of market research, tanked miserably. Companies can't afford to suffer too many failures like that, so consequently they limit their experimentation. Open source has no such restrictions.

But where discoveries require significant investment to bring them to a consumer-ready stage

You have to be careful how you define the 'significant investment' required to get something from concept to market. Certainly it took millions of man-hours to produce something like Linux. If you accept what MS would have you believe, that's multi-millions of development and marketing dollars that only a large software company could ever afford to spend. In reality, it's nothing of the sort-- open source is just a more efficient way to aggregate programmers' spare cycles. The same might be true of a lot of industries, if manufacturing and distribution were ever to become simple and inexpensive.

Something that interests me is these new 3D printers, that overlay sheets of plastic to build things. If technology like that were ever to become cheap and ubiqutous, and were also capable of printing circuitry and LCD displays, then I bet you'd see something similar to open source, with a lot of consumer electronics companies complaining about unfair competition.

personal attack? bzzzt! wrong

[G Neric]

I can see the cause of your angst, but this wasn't a personal attack. rather, you seem ignorant of the fact that "stinks up the room" is a common idiom meaning "performed badly and disappointed the audience."

"How did do?"
"Jerry, you really stunk up the room," said Kramer.

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.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[SubtleNuance]

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.

If Einstein was r&d'ing under a business model...

[glebite]

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.

Re:Does Linus do bar mitzvah's?

[Zero Sum]

It can't be Libel. It's true. Anybody who has been dead for 300 years is going to be well past the smelly stage. Mundie, however, is still alive and will therefore smell more. Case closed.

Be fair...

[Kragg]

To be honest, Microsoft have contributed massively to the modern world.

I mean, where would we all be without minesweeper. lost...
"God is dead." - Nietszche

standing on the shoulders of giants

[47PHA60]

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.