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Dennis Ritchie Interviewed
An anonymous reader writes "Unix.se has published an interview with Dennis Ritchie (inventor of C, co-creator of Unix)." Not very technical, but Dennis shares his thoughts on GNU, kernel design, and more.
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Please support his OS - Plan 9. If you won't do it for the geeky sake, please..do it for Glenda!
,
faeryman
Interesting how modern day critics claim the gnu project to be too political, and try to rephrase free software rhetoric to be more palatable (sic) for business and those of a less "leftist" mindset, and he has the same beliefs, but for such a different reason: he existed before computing and software were touched by politics. He was co-developing UNIX before printer companies decided to have software contractors signing NDAs and closing off the specs, or vendor lock-ins.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
You know, just because it's slashdot doesn't mean every single article must somehow be related to linux.
Or were you trying the old "early linux post == karma" trick?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Dennis thinks that linux distros "suffer from much the same struggles and competition that the proprietary ones did".. True, all the distros offering nearly a single product with variations may end up cannibalizing each other.
There needs to be an unified effort, like the Freedom Software Alliance from OSS vendors to promote Linux. Sure, IBM does a good job. But more efforts are needed.
CowboyNeal: Wow an interview with a famous guy! Let's post it
CmdrTco: But the article is short and doesn't give any insights into anything
CowboyNeal: Whatever, let's post the story and get drunk
This isn't a troll, I really think this must have happened.
Back in the "good old days", operating systems weren't portable, so you were locked in from the start.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Not to nitpick, but there's just about one sentence on kernel design in the interview. Misleading storyline
For a minute there i thought it said "Denise Richards". Oh well, still an interesting read!
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
I annot wait till his opyright on the letter " " expires.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Put a little more effort into it please, troll.
Did anyone else initially read this as "Denise Richards Interviewed"?
----- Trogdor, The Burninator!
It appears that he is taking it easy. He seems very low-key about life in general: stay home, listen to the radio, read a pop-sci book. Oh and come to work late. I like that part best. It's great being the boss.
We will follow you anywhere.
Apparently the retard yankee can't figure out that's 7th February 2003 ... you know, today.
For all those lovely buffer overflows that C allows programmers to enjoy?
Ah well, it keeps M$ on their toes.
DD.MM.YYYY
You are welcome.
You got trolled, Eurotrash.
No shit, if anybody is a troll it's the fucker that wrote the article. Trying reading the interview before you morons moderate.
I would have expected an interview with him about how great he is, how great his invention C is, etc. However, I was really amazed. He seems rather low key and does not seem to have that superiority complex that plagues some idividuals. He seems like a human being with an interest in computers. I like this. It is a welcome read after listening to my professors make fun of people with their heads on tripods, when they should look in the mirror cause they have the biggest heads on the most massive tripods ever seen.
I would have liked to see longer answers and in more detail to some of his questions. Although, I can say tersness can be a desired trait.
Reserved Word.
Someone has to say it. Draw your own conclusions, etc. People have accused me of trolling in the past, but when I see something like this, all that FUD about Windows, all the Evil Empire snide remarks, all the lame 'M$' jokes, all the misleading and childish comments I've ever read here dissolve into a little white pixel and things are good again. The person who invented Unix is doing what the rest of the world does - use a desktop computer and desktop software that actually works - to be productive instead of to feel technically and morally "superior" (whatever that means). As Dr. Evil once said: put that in your pipe and smoke it. Yeah, I said pipe.
Because, in the real world, people use computers to get things done. They're not used to make a political statement or fight for human rights in Burma. They're tools, not toys.
Sorry again. No, really.
Mod away.
Ok, the guy is venerated by many and was behind Unix, the C language etc, but does he really have anything relevant to say about what is going on in the world today. Of course we will never know if the interviewers only ask a few questions and settle for short, vague answers. His comments left me with no new understanding of anything... from the interview it seems as though he hasn't really been doing anything at all. He said just enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth. In particular I disagree with his view of free software. Of course they had to reinvent the wheel on a lot of things to get Linux/freeBSD or any free software going. All the stuff that wasn't free was copyrighted. We are getting to the point now that there is a free foundation for sofware upon which developers can build more innovative things(not that there was a complete lack of innovation to begin with). In any event, Linux couldn't be en-vogue forever, but that doesn't mean it's not good. People shouldn't bash a good thing just because they're tired of hearing about it.
My Blog
"For all those lovely buffer overflows that C allows programmers to enjoy?"
Ask, rather, "does he take responsibility for the great flexibility that C allows real programmers to enjoy?"
If you're too stupid to learn how to program correctly, don't program at all. Stupidity is all it can be; it surely can't be laziness, what with snprintf and OpenBSD's strlcat and strlcmp functions. (Which are easily reusable elsewhere.)
Troll, eat thyself.
Why is it so important? Does it use a totally new operating system paradigm? A new way of kernel development? A better permission system?
Could somebody more knowledgeble than I explain what's great about it?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
As far as I can tell this was posted last July, people.
Datestamp from the page: 07.02.2003 01:20
I'm even more confused on how he thought it was last July. If you use his misconception of the date stamp, this is about 5 months early.
Any thoughts about the GNU project? How did you first learn about it?
Dennis Ritchie: (snip).... At the same time, much of it seems to have to do with recreating things we or others had already done; it seems rather derivative intellectually; is there a dearth of really new ideas?
Yes. One of the inventors of Unix is wondering why the GNU (and by extension Linux) community is rebuilding something he made 30 years ago. I've been wondering the same thing myself. Aren't there any better ideas in the past 3 decades?
Has anybody else taken a look at his other lives?
I was laughing when I read the one in Brazil.
Now if someody asks me what am I doing on windows... I can say that Dennis also does that.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
That's it. I am not using C, Unix and Unix Derivatives ever again. Oh, wait...
getSexySig();
I don't get it. You are like that NetBSD guy on our LUG list that kept bashing linux whenever someone asked how to configure Y do do Z.
/. basicaly started as a place to bash microsoft, support linux, GNU, etc, so what drove you here? Most of people FUDing M$ here know when they are overdoing it, and most of us know when they are bullshiting, but that is why we come to /. - to listen to some anti-M$ bullshit that gives us pleasure. Do you see me going to "Bill Gates is a god" list and supporting linux? No! So you should lay off too.
And what about if the post time would have been in ansi format???
Would you have said it was written 1998 days in the future?
Get out home.
He uses Excel and Word, however, which (I have to admit) are the best programs currently for those tasks. However, what if he was doing coding, or web page design? Then it would be different.
I used Win98SE for quite a while for development work, but got tired of running out of "resources" every couple of hours (non-NT-based Windows's have a limited stack in which to store "resources" such as icons and other images). This was because I had too many programs at once. A reboot every couple of hours, not to mention not being able to have too many programs open at once, are not great for productivity.
I then tried installing Win2k, but reverted back to 98 after it refused to boot for some unknown reason, and was not able to be recovered (I barely even managed to save the data on the HD - last time I ever will use NTFS, as no common tools work well with it).
Now, I'm running Gentoo Linux. While there definitely was a learning curve, my productivity is a lot higher than it ever was while using Windows. In addition to handling lots of apps open gracefully, the command line (which I've always preferred, even in Windows) is a lot more powerful. I can do this because all of the apps that I use (mainly coding and web design apps) have great Linux equivalents.
If I was doing desktop publishing or something, however, I probably wouldn't use Linux - it doesn't have equivalent applications to MS Office (though OpenOffice is getting close). I probably wouldn't use Windows, either - I'd use a mac, which has a better Office port than Windows (all of the good coders at MS work in the Mac division). If I was doing game developing, I would probably work under Windows, since that would be the primary target platform.
The point is, use whatever best fits the job - in this case, he uses a combination of Plan 9 and NT. I use Linux. Somebody else uses Mac.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution (as much as Microsoft would like to have you believe).
They got stoned, not drunk.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
While I agree the Plan 9 license isn't the best in the world, some of us aren't all that excited about software under the GPL or even LGPL. Stallman urges developers away from the Apache license let alone the Plan 9 license.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600
Oh, the heresy of it all! Actually, over in comp.unix.admin, a number of old-school Unix people have similiar headers in their messages; Dennis once said (1995 or 1996 issue of Byte magazine) that "Unix will never be a desktop operating system"; all of the MacOS X users have proven him wrong.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Established [in spirit] 1 Apr, 2000; modified July 2002.
Money for nothing, pix for free
I don't get it... please explain.
Since I'm Swedish and all.
All these brilliant programmers eventually become management. Management is great, but not if you are one of the best programmers in the world.
When I'm old I want to code. If I can't keep up with the kids then I will teach.
not easy to summarise
: /dev/mouse
:
/net/tcp/clone} # ( `{} is like bash's `` )
/net/tcp/$conn/ctl /net/tcp/$conn/data /net/tcp/$conn/data
try reading the papers
user level file systems
Instead of having one protocol for interrogating the disks, one for the network etc. plan9 uses the 9p protocol. In this way the physical devices are abstracted and one can use a single set of tools to inspect them. It taes the concept of Everything is a file to it's logical conclusion.
Want to know where the mouse is : cat
Get slashdot homepage using the shell
conn = `{cat
<[4] $conn { # keeps it open
echo 'connect slashdot.org!80' >
echo 'GET http://slashdot.org/ HTTP/1.0' >
cat
}
I wrote an irc bot as an exercise in rc. It dangerously executes given commands and returns the results
There are also other great technologies.
Incremental backups are built in.
Acme is an interactive editor that does all sorts of interesting things.
The plumber - forget file associations. The plumber uses regular expressions and executes whatever commands you would like it to for a set of given strings. So if you see http://slashdot.org in ANY piece of on-screen text, right click and select plumb and it will open it. [hehe not it plan9's web browser - that is one area seriously lacking.
The really sad part is that Lucent's financial troubles means that people have been shed from Bell-Labs. No-one is being paid to maintain plan9 any more. The heroes remaining and some outside [Rob Pike, Russ Cox, Dave Pressotto, C H Forsyth, et. al.] are doing it in their own time. And doing a great job.
I could go on but I need to leave the house. [that always seems to be the case when plan9 gets mentioned here!]
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
And successful, too!
Okay, all trolls from now on post "This isnt a troll, I really think this must have happened" at the end of your messages, and your troll posts will be moderated +4!
As for the rest of you, the non-trolls, go kill ajuda.
I shall bask here and do nothing, for I have accomplished many great things in the past and so my debt to the universe is paid.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Someone posted a parody on aus.tv of Dennis Ritchie being interviewed on an AOL chat session. It's more a jab at the AOL'ers, but I thought it was quite good.
It does make you curious as to what the exact arguments of these people against Linux are. Especially since Linux has become such a fine platform for desktop environments (KDE, Gnome) nowadays. In most people's experience, Linux has been more reliable on the desktop as well as the server for quite some time.
You're not even a good troll. You're just a big fucking failure in life, slowly decomposing into a pile of fetid shit.
The Nestle boycott is really retarded. The essence of the boycott is that Nestle is an evil company because some people mix the baby formula powder with dirty water, which makes babies sick.
In the same fashion, people should boycott McDonalds because it is possible to wipe your ass with the beef patty and then eat it. Evil McDonalds! Forcing you to wipe your ass with the beef patty!
Simple answer: jealousy. Linux succeeded where others wannabes failed. The amount
of sniping is proportional to the jealousy consuming those with their own failed agendas.
Yeah right, the man who invented unix is jealous because someone copies it decades later. Riight.
Because Linux is all hype, what is ther to like about hype? Nothing.
He got "se" confused with "cx".
The parent poster wasn't too bright.
Are you sure that you don't mean '.cx'?
You do know why they have to say "this isn't a troll", right? Because every goddamn zealot here will read any opinion that isn't theirs and their aggressive and (usually) misinformed reply often starts with something like "Mistake to reply to trolls, but..." or "I shouldn't bite, but..." and that results in the parent getting moderated as a troll. Bah. Grow up already and accept that not everybody is a GNU lover or Linux lover, and we might just come now and then to give a little contrast from the usual "Praise Linux" attitude that is obviously there in nearly every post here.
First there was Unix... Now there's AIX, AU/X, BSD, BSDI, Dynix, EP/IX, FTX, Hurricane, HP-UX, Irix, Linux, Mach, Minix, NextStep, Open Desktop, OSF/1, OSX, PC/IX, Plan 9, Polyx, Posix, QNX, Risc/OS, Risc/ix, SCO Unix, Sinix, Solaris, Sprite, SunOS, SVRx, Topaz, Tunis, Ultrix, Unicos, V, v10, Xenix, ..."
Firstly, a quick agreement - I've thought this for a long time, even before I got into such arguments on the web. It pisses me off in real life when people come up with analogies and then take them to extremes that no longer bear any relevance.
The main point of my comment however is that I am planning to write an article for K5 on this exact subject, and just thought it polite to ask if I could borrow some of your points/examples from your journal (credited of course).
Its a combination of "NIH" and envy. Linux has swiped ideas from all over the place. It was developed by many people all over the world instead of a small, select team. Its actually gone head to head with the big name, big money operating systems and come out on top. Its used their ideas but done far better than their work ever did. Its done everything wrong (smart programs, graphical desktop, open development) and still WON.
That, of course, is unforgivable.
Look at Ken's comments. "Not successful in the long run". Okay, so what will replace it? "Pieces that are good and pieces that are not". What project is this NOT true of? "In a non-PC environment, it just won't hold up". Yes, which is why Linux has been ported to everything under the sun (and some Suns, too) and stability on those systems is almost a higher priority than stability on x86.
You were great in the '70s, Ken, but you've become obsolete.
linux is not in the unix family tree. BSD is a direct descendant of the unix from Bell Labs. We need to spread the word that unix is now freely available as FreeBSD and there is no need to run an inferior imposter.
Yeah, I've been scarred for life too. We need a support group or something... With lots of beautiful blonde women.
scanning the headlines i thought it said "denise ritchie" and thought, "wow, great looks *and* unix proficient." I was so disappointed when i re-read it.
now if RMS was using NT that would be news but not the guy that wrote C
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
You are so misinformed you become libelous.
People have a tendency to do that with regards to anything RMS has anything to do with. I suppose it's because he's a somewhat unlikable guy(although I like him just fine).
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Well, all this really proves is that he is well behind the times. NT? Who uses NT anymore? Well, I have one machine here at work, but I am in testing so I have to. Not to sound unappreciative, but Dennis - what have you done for me lately? It is rather odd that someone who has contributed two of the most CORE computer technologies could be so far from the cutting edge. Maybe his time has just passed. Maybe it was just how the interview came across, but I found Dennis to be particularly BORING. I guess I was kind of hoping that someone of his legendary status would have had some interesting quirks or something. He is from a time when geeks were boring. Now they are sexy rock stars!
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
OK, maybe it's not exactly the same concept, but I still found it rather interesting...
Compiler geeks: flame away!
O.K. so someone goes to interview Dennis Ritchie. The *father* of C and Unix.
g answer the exact same questions again."
(potential for a really interesting interview here.)
Too bad they blew it by asking the most inane questions on the planet.
"What do you consider your greatest achievement in the field of computing to be?"
Are you f*cking serious? What did people expect him to say? His vim color scheme!?
And the rest of the questions are the same questions that we've seen every other tech guru answer.
Dear editors: please next time write something like this:
"Cox/Torvalds/Gostling/Wall/McCarthy/Turin
-... ---
You, sir, have not even the faintest idea what you are talking about. There will always be a place for programmers, as 99% of software development is not done developing proprietary commercial software. People and companies will always need software, so there will always be people paying to have software developed, it doesn't matter how it's licensed, it's needed and will be paid for, or volunteer groups will develop it and/or businesses will help fund development. Just look at Mozilla, Linux, GNU, BSD(even more difficult as not all improvements make it back in), Open Office, Gnome, KDE, Konqueror fer Chrissake!, Gimp, Vim, Emacs, Wine(an open source reimplementation of windows!), MPlayer, Xine. Just browse around Freshmeat and SourceForge. There are some huge projects there, among all the little ones, done by volunteers. Then when businesses help out, even more gets done. IBM, HP, RedHat, etc. are all putting money into furthering Linux development, because it helps them. It might not make as much money over the short term as proprietary software, but proprietary software is a bad business.
Proprietary software is a bad business because you can't expect people to buy the same products over and over, forever. Physical products are a different matter, as they wear out, get damaged, etc. Think about it for a second. Businesses, schools, governments, all spend billions of dollars on the same software over and over again. Why should they do that? Some organizations that buy proprietary software spend so much(hundreds of millions of dollars per year) on software licensing, that they could fund development of their own software to replace said proprietary software. Depending on what they need, how much they spend, etc., after one year they could have already saved money. Being more conservative, a lot of organizations could look at things over the long term, and be saving money within 5 or 10 years by developing their own software, or helping develop existing free software.
Seriously, you're stupid if you don't see that. The only reason to stick with spending hundreds of millions on software is simply that that is the status quo. Governments and companies are starting to realize that. That's why so many European governments and companies, even the U.S. government and companies, are starting to get involved with "free software". They plan to save money, and have better software.
The things you are saying are unworkable, are already being put into practice.
How long has it taken to get HURD to a semi-useable state again?
Ok, now that's just absolute stupidity. Linux was developed, licensed under the GPL no less so there goes your implication that an OS kernel is too difficult a task to be completed by groups of volunteers, and HURD development was no longer necessary.
Not only are you flat out wrong, you are bordering on being, as another poster said, libelous, with your possibly intentional disinformation regarding software licensing.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
It does make you curious as to what the exact arguments of these people against Linux are.
Simple: technically Linux is not that impressive... hear me out before you moderate this as a troll:
Suppose a bunch of volunteers got together in a garage and built a clone of the space shuttle. This would be an amazing feat, but nobody would claim that this makes the design of the shuttle any less outdated or flawed.
Linux is a clone of a decades-old operating system... let me correct that, Linux is the best Unix clone out there, but to quote Rob Pike "Linux's cleverness is not in the software, but in the development model".
Linux has no novel user model, no new UI metaphor, no replacement for the X11 mess (still waiting for display postscript). It has no alternative to the all or nothing Unix security model (root/luser), it has not improved over the "everything is a file" innovation from Unix.
That is why innovators like Rob Pike, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson are not that impressed with Linux.
(heck, not even a decent replacement for the X11 mess... still waiting for
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
But GNU gets results, stupid chief!
Second, how is having no sense of principle and decency a good trait? If killing people makes my life easier, should I do it(extreme example, I know)? Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you thinking?
Lastly, Linux works *for me*. I am not as comfortable using a windows machine as I am using Linux. I do not feel "elite" or any such nonsense. I do, however, feel morally superior to some of the shills from Microsoft, but that's another discussion that I won't get into now.
Does windows work for you? I would imagine it does, as it does for a lot of people. But why defend the actions of a company just because their product works for you? There are a lot of companies throughout history that are responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, but they created products that worked for a lot of people...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Yeah, if these guys don't like Linux, why don't they write their own operating system.
Oh, never mind.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
In the recent slash discussion of this year's linuxworld, a lot of comments expressed concern over how big business appeared to be taking over the show, and how perhaps this foreshadowed a corporate cultural and financial hijacking of linux, in much the same manner that corporate interested have tried to corner the internet and other emerging technologies in the past. One of the counter arguments that I found most powerful in allaying related fears that I had was that the GPL prevents corporations from making proprietary versions of linux and locking people out through private extensions. I would argue that this is an example of one of the prime virtues of the GPL providing a much needed democratization of technology in the face of corporate interests, interests which would gladly otherwise turn linux into their own private golden goose to slaughter for short term profits as long as those profits were theirs.
(I hope I did't miss your point)
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Yikes! That has to be ugliest GUI created by mankind. It makes Windows 3.1 look like OS X...
Shame on Google.
... that kind of involvment with C and Unix, he's pretty dull.
There's an easy solution for you. Whenever you encounter any of these pages while using Mozilla, cut and paste the URL into Opera. Opera has built-in scaling to overcome these marketing idiots. Oops, you said you're using a Sun...
Probably because while they may admire the technology, they're turned off by the ideology.
Would have to be moderated -1 offtopic
let me correct that, Linux is the best Unix clone out there,
WOW! If you can read the source for both a BSD and a Linux kernel, then honestly say what you just said, let me know!
Socialism is sometimes used to mean "socially conscious", but the technical definition is "state ownership of the means of production" (as against communism, "workers' ownership of the means of production"). It's a politically loaded term and should be avoided, really.
This is is the paradox of freedom: maintenance of freedom requires the limitation of freedom. For example maintaining your right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness necessarily requires a limitation of my right to kill, imprison and otherwise abuse you -- even if your death would make me ever so happy.
Similarly, maintainence of your right to the freedom to use GPL software requires a limitation of my right to 'imprison' that same software.
You choose your poison, you pay your price.
Unabridged libertarianism is little more than the thinly disguised right of the strong to enslave the weak.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
It's the most boring interview I've ever read.
"Simple: technically Linux is not that impressive... hear me out before you moderate this as a troll:"
:-).
No troll. You're quite correct.
"Suppose a bunch of volunteers got together in a garage and built a clone of the space shuttle. This would be an amazing feat, but nobody would claim that this makes the design of the shuttle any less outdated or flawed."
True.
"Linux is a clone of a decades-old operating system... let me correct that, Linux is the best Unix clone out there, but to quote Rob Pike "Linux's cleverness is not in the software, but in the development model"."
Very true.
"Linux has no novel user model, no new UI metaphor, no replacement for the X11 mess (still waiting for display postscript). It has no alternative to the all or nothing Unix security model (root/luser), it has not improved over the "everything is a file" innovation from Unix."
Linux does not, that is true. But Open Source/Free Software does. Hurd/EROS and Fresco may one day replace Linux and XFree86.
"That is why innovators like Rob Pike, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson are not that impressed with Linux."
Right. Linux isn't for them. It's ultimate purpose is to Get Job Done. Building new technology is a slow process. Hurd and Fresco are both very slow, but show great promise. EROS is also slow, but makes some key design decisions which vastly improve its potential to step up to the challenge of security on the modern internet.
"(heck, not even a decent replacement for the X11 mess... still waiting for"
Fresco
My ideal dream for the Next Great Free OS would be to do something like this:
Get all the Hurd and EROS people together, as well as the best computer scientists we've got. Have them work for a couple years designing and creating the best OS they possibly can, without worrying about performance so much. That's what hardware is for - the time of the microkernel has arrived. Use the best ideas we've got, and create the most flawless implimentation possible. Document and test thoroughly along the way, and mathematically prove relevant parts of the system.
The next step would be to bring in the Fresco team, and the best graphical designers, coders and artists (get the enlightenment guy if at all possible.) Design and creat the best windowing system possible, consulting with the EROS people for security and anyone else who could help. Prove protocals and code where possible. Build a rock solid, accelerated system.
Third, find the best application coders possible, and have them impliment a core set of graphical and command line programs. Take the best ideas from the various programs in open source, maybe code if appropriate, and create a native desktop and application suite.
Do all this without letting anyone know. Then, when it is ready, drop it on the open source world like a bombshell. Fully documented, stable, working. Have guides for porting X11 apps over to the Fresco system. People would be able to switch over immediately and have the basic functionality in place. Web browser, office, chat, utilities. With the full benefits of the advanced software being utilized, essentially a system designed as scientific art.
That would rock.
Maybe because Plan 9 never took off??? Its not the first time a "better" technology didn't get the exposure/traction it needed to flourish...
For example, it takes about 50 seconds to assemble and install a new UNIX system.
I think we can finally do that again now, but what kind of hardware would it take??
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Go check out Plan 9 for a "modern" server OS.
It must feel good to be able to put that on a resume.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
Stop whining. If it's something important I want to read, I'll quit everything I'm doing, quit X-windows, change the resolution in my config files to 1152x864, then restart X. When I finish reading the web page, I quit X, change config files back, restart X, and restart everything I was just working on. If it's not worth going to that trouble for you, then obviously, the web page wasn't important in the first place.
and of course Thompson was wrong.
Linux is embedded into millions of units of consumer level devices, from computer geek devices like the Linksys broadband routers to consumer electronics like Tivo PVRs.
Sigh. I don't know if this is cute or sad.
' "Pieces that are good and pieces that are not." What project is this NOT true of?'
Um...Unix? Unix V.6? Have you read the source for it? It's brilliant! It's occasionally scary and convoluted, but it's GOOD CODE! Linux is an unholy mishmash of some good code, and some deeply sucky code that barely works at all. Sendmail is good code. BIND is good code.
Linux taken seriously on the non-X86 platform is being left to the manufacturers. The various ports of Linux to Sparc processors, for instance, most definitely do NOT hold up! SunLinux will hold up, because it's being developed by Sun for Sun.
Why is it that whenever anyone points out some of the valid and legitimate problems with (a)Linux, or (worse!!!) (b) Open Source development as a philosophy they're categorised as either Microsoft apologists or obsolete? (depending on their respect in the *ix world)
Here's a trick. Go back and reread the article. Think about WHY Ken would say what he did. Think about WHY Dennis Ritchie is fairly unimpressed with Linux. Think about WHY Bill Joy is frightened by the future of computing. Quit dismissing them as 'old farts from before I was born' and you might learn something. God forbid, you might even become a better developer/admin/geek.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
People rant and rave about the "restrictions" of GPL incessantly, ignoring that what they really want is "public domain" software.
The reason you don't see much "public domain" software is that it immediately gets snapped up and repackaged under another license, and the original software dies. It's a nonviable license.
I think you are trying to label me an insane extremist. This is a strawman, you're attempting to shift the argument to one you can beat with a stick, and you're misrepresenting my words in order to do so.
Yes, it was a VERY extreme example I used, which I stated upfront*. I used such an extreme example, because nearly everyone agrees that killing is wrong, not because I'm some kind of loon that equates anything MS has ever done to murder.
My original point was very simple. I was simply demonstrating that taking a pragmatic approach to business, politics, "getting stuff done" can be morally wrong to do.
No, I'm not attacking those who "criticize" Microsoft.
Ummm... yes you were. How can you say that? That is preposterous. You lambasted the general population of /. for being so extremely critical of Microsoft, for making jokes about Microsoft, etc. You made fun, calling them childish. You appeared to be intentionally offensive, and I took offense.
I'd be more than willing to discuss my ethical qualms with Microsoft another time. I will not, however, simply dismiss my qualms for pragmatic reasons. And I will take offense at being labeled extremist, immature, childish, etc. for standing up for my principles.
Coincidentally, I notice a growing trend, especially in the United States, that people who take a principled, moral approach to life, politics, etc., get labeled naive, extremist, immature, etc. People with principles they live by are the ones who have historically been know to change the world, not those who accept the status quo.
For a great example, in the small, relatively unimportant world of computers, I give you Richard Stallman. Richard Stallman has changed the computer industry to a large degree. He started GNU and the FSF. Because of GNU, Linux has been able to gain very large penetration into the server arena, and is starting to gain penetration into the corporate desktop. IBM, HP, many governments, etc., are switching many operations to GNU/Linux. Linux now stands as Microsoft's greatest threat in the server arena, and is a potential threat in the future of the desktop. Without Stallman, this would not have happened. Stallman's "extremist" has gotten things done. Stallman is acheiving his goals.
My point? My point is simply that standing up for ones' principles can change things, and therefore should not be dismissed as being childish, despite the trend I noted above.
* I said it was an extreme example in my original post, get over it.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Good analogy, now suppose the space shuttle built by those geeks was able to safely travel in and out of our atmosphere because it was designed the right way the first time. It holds a better record than NASA or any other commercial venture and offers free flights to outer space. Then we might begin to realize how amazing the FSF movement is.
Nobody is complaining that the shuttle is outdated or flawed. But it certainly isn't free or safe (stable). And in our lifetime with how things are going we'll never be able to take it for a joyride. If the shuttle and everything else were developed like Linux we'd all have personal shuttles easy enough for a child to use in less than a decade.
I do feel that I have relevant things to say, and maybe Ritchie does too... but he certainly didn't say it in this interview. No one posted an interview with me on slashdot, so the comparison is hardly legit. Is it reasonable to think that just because someone has accomplished a great deal we should listen to him when he isn't saying anything of import whatsoever? Cnet is running an article called Linus says hello..
My Blog
So the mouse is in the cat. Good for the cat but not so good for the mouse.
And BTW Plan 9 sounds almost like Preparation H
You can't handle the truth.
Give credit where credit is due. Borland forced Microsoft to drop its prices. Their $99 Turbo Pascal brought the cost of compilers down, and made them affordable to the average joe. Before then, Microsoft was charging an arm and a leg for such software.
Ok, the guy is venerated by many (well, obviously his fans are shy, that's all, it's not that he's actually not venerated) and was behind many postings to Slashdot, but does he really have anything relevant to say about what is going on in the world today. Of course we will never know if he just posts a few short, vague criticisms of Dennis Ritchie. His comments left me with no new understanding of anything... from the parent, it seems as though he hasn't really been doing anything at all except sitting on his arse posting to Slashdot. He said just enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth. In particular I disagree with his view of Dennis Ritche. Of course Ritche invented the wheel, from a technical point of view, being the creator of Unix and all, We are getting to the point now that there is a core foundation for operating system designs upon which developers can build more innovative things(not that there was a complete lack of innovation to begin with). In any event, Ritchie can't be en-vogue forever, but that doesn't mean he's not good. People shouldn't bash a good thing just because they're tired of hearing about it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
People were writing simple simulators for machines that didn't exist anymore (or not at all) back in the 70s.
Java was a bigger, more amibitious effort; a language and core library effort coupled with a virtual machine.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
plan9 - plan IX
don't blame me, I didn't choose it.
The guys at the labs have a history of choosing names to annoy the marketing people.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Indeed... and for those of you who want to look at the source for themselves, check out Lions' Commentary on Unix 6th Edition: with Source Code. Truly amazing stuff...
Code is GOOD if it provides users with the features they need. The old Unix code may be robust and elegant, but it lacks features. Essential things like networking, graphics, and user IO over anything but a vt100.
When users start to demand features that are far beyond the scope of the original design, the developer can take two courses:
It's pragmatism versus ideals. In a vacum, the most beautiful approach may seem best. But is it "GOOD" if you can't really deploy it? Today's WWW is an ugly, hackish rat's nest compared to the design of the Xanadu proposal from decades earlier. But it exists, and it works.
(Even aside from unforseen new capabilities, the old Unix utils for things like text processing filters often turning out to be inadequate. They'd have firm upper limits on input sizes, or would deccelerate unacceptably when asked to do a big job. Simplistic design mean shortcomings in some uses. GNU versions of fileutils, for instance, corrected a lot of these limitations, at the cost of uglified source code)
Sendmail is good code.
If it's so great (and also free), why have so many people been inspired to reinvent the mail server? Qmail, Exim, Postfix...
I was really disappointed by Dennis' answers. The man that created C describes his current coding activities as "I fix things now and then, more often tweak HTML and make scripts to do things."
But, Dennis, thats what _I_ do!
Unless my textbooks have seriously misled me, this guy is one of the two most important people the history of computing. And he sits around writing HTML and browsing the web on a WinNT box?! This is just depressing.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Interviewer: So, errr...
Richie: Yeah, whatever...
That's what I like to see. This guy is revered by thousands of programmers/hackers/evangelists/nutters. And he's just a normal bloke. With normal opinions. Opinions that aren't especially radical.
GNU? Sure. Programming? Whatever. Influences? Just this Thomson bloke. Ambitions? Few.
At last! A computing 'hero' puts it all in perspective!
The more advanced the technology, the more open it is to primitive attack
Damn you! I can't find Victoria Bitter anywhere in the crappy USA!
Best..Beer..Ever, nowhere to be found this side of the Pacific.
They forgot to ask about his favorite color...
.
KNR C or ANSI C? hehe
RMS' GPL is not absolute freedom. It is a verry goodly and honerable license that establishes a freedom for the sole software's devloper/owner to release the software to the world without risk of liability.
The companies that don't release software under the GPL often establish their own release of liability which may or may not be honest. In respects of freedom, the GPL is honest: it does not construe words or confuse people that do not understand the premise of the license.
The GPL, as do all licenses, establishes a contract that disallows elements of conduct that may arise of usage of the GPL software. The GPL is not freedom. If you want freedom, then you get everything with it, including risk of being held liable for a software not operating to someone else's standards as expressed or implied by the creation or intent of the software.
The GPL simply establishes the pre-tense of freedom whereas the software is provided, here it is, nobody is held liable for its use or misuse or expressed or implied merchantability of fitness, and then establishes the methods of how the software may be modified and distributed.
Freedom has no conditions, the GPL establishes fairness for interfacing with freedom; people can't see the implications because (to my objectionable judgment) they are unable to look beyond the worthless Federal Reserve Notes because they are placed into a position to depend on Federal Reserve Notes.
To be honest on what free software is...it has no name, unknown origin, unknown developer, and of which no known origin of propagation: retaining all your freedoms to apply the subjective software to any dispute of law. The GPL simply supports the patent of software by its owner, retaining the tradmark, releasing liability from the owner, retaining owner's merit of being the original sole developer, and provides a honest ruleset for the owner of the software to grant a freedom by contract to the usage of the software.
In essence, software without a license is free software, not software released under the GPL. Free software is simply PASSED-ALONG and is unknown and nobody claims ownership of it and as well anyone can claim ownership of it and all the liability it may conjure.
In a perfect world, you can buy your apples, dissect, modify, study, document, and eat them. In a slave world, you can buy apples and may only eat them blind-folded.
Companies that muster a profit on selling software will only recognized EVERYONE as a criminal that only buys software to STEAL it to other people who didn't pay for it. Sure, all the companies want to give their work away for free, but they want to be compensated for their hard work so they can fund future development. The GPL does not recognize future development, it establishes software on verry goodly and honerable conditions of a freedom with limitations on the application of freedom that may or may not impede the release of software intended to be free.
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
Any new accomplishments in sight? What are your current project(s)?
"...Over the past several years, I've been more in a managerial role..."
How much time do you spend programming nowadays?
"Little programming as such. I fix things now and then, more often tweak HTML and make scripts to do things."
So even Dennis Ritchie has to go into management and do less programming.
-cmh
The fact that many people can't read the article and that the web designer made a horrible error is flamebait? Again we ask, are the moderators on drugs?
"Code is GOOD if it provides users with the features they need."
Hmm. I'm not sure I quite agree with this. I think we're using the word 'code' to refer to two different things.
A PRODUCT (application, tool, whatever) is good if it provides users with the features they need. CODE is good if it's well written. Code is well written if it's clean, logical, consistent, efficient, and extensible. Implied in there is that it's easy to debug as well. (which is actually a result of good code)
The old Unix programs lacked features because they weren't possible, realistic, and/or desired. When graphics hardware didn't exist, there was no need for a GUI-based editor. The fact that those applications are now obsolete doesn't make the code any weaker in the slightest! Sometimes the natural lifespan of a program comes to an end.
Think about this as a tech manual. A first edition of the Unix System Administrator's guide isn't all that useful anymore. It talks about how to build a kernel on OSes that don't exist anymore, and it's such specialised knowledge that it's not particularly transferable to modern Unices. It's obsolete. It's not relevant. The only way to 'fix' it is rewrite it from the ground up.
However, the writing style is as good now as it was then. Nemeth et al raised the bar for Unix manuals, by writing an excellent, well organised, understandable, readable, and entertaining book. None of those qualities are changed by obsolescence.
As for sendmail, it's effectively the same answer. No matter how it's written, sendmail is not the right tool for every mail job! There are very good reasons for writing smaller, lighter, easier mail MTU. There are also reasons for keeping sendmail. None of this is remotely relevant to the coide quality of any of them. If a sledgehammer is so good at its job, why would anyone waste their time inventing a finishing hammer? Or a ball-pein? They're DIFFERENT TOOLS!
"GNU versions of fileutils, for instance, corrected a lot of these limitations, at the cost of uglified source code"
Again, I disagree. the GNU tools certainly did fix a lot of limitations in the original tools (and those limitations in some cases are the result of bad code I'll admit, or at least poor choices for code), but the uglified source is not a necessary cost. There's no reason that they can't be written as elegantly as the original ones, or possibly better. From what I've seen of the current version of BIND, it's still clean well written code. There is nothing inherent about modern, 'complex,' massive computing that forces code to be ugly. Only laziness and poor practices on the part of individual programmers causes that. On a massive project, the only way to prevent that sort of bad code is to rigorously screen the programmers, and rigorously screen the code. (Note: Rigorously here means a formalised mandatory code review--having the code available for people to read and fix isn't sufficient.) Unfortunately, OSS by its very nature lacks in both of these areas. I think that was, in a roundabout way, the point that Ken was trying to make.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
jackass, there is no such thing as "right way the first time". obviously, you've never done anything of complexity.
Sorry... I thought BSD *is* Unix. Never in my mind that BSD derive OS consider as Unix clone...
I rather be free in hell than a slave in heaven.
That's not fair. Most FS/OSS advocates, including myself, are not THAT extreme; we simply want to 1. apply a large amount of pressure to companies like MS to help keep them more honest, and 2. create good software that is useful.
Granted, people here can/do get pretty worked up, but such is the nature of communication mediums where you can't actually see/hear the persons you're communicating with, I think.
But this is your strawman argument - you continue to try to make the case that I'm somehow morally inferior to you because I tend to keep my technical interests away from
*snipped silly stuff about spotted owls*
I do not feel morally superior to you, and I never said as much. I do, however, feel morally superior to those who lie, cheat, and steal to further their own agendas, as some MS shills have been caught doing. Note, I'm not condemning the whole of MS, just certain people and practices.
Oh for fuck's sake. RMS is a crackpot.
That is unfair to RMS. Yes, he is a rather unlikable person, but, he does have some redeeming qualities. He does cause damage, as he often makes a fool of himself. However, without Stallman, there would be no GNU, and without GNU, there wouldn't have been Linux.
I won't bore you with the whole history of GNU/Linux though :)
Look - I admire that. When it's geared towards something worthy. But in the case of this whole argument, the target and execution of those ideals is less than exemplary 90% of the time. Surely you can see that?
Like I said, I would be more than willing to talk about my moral/ethical qualms regarding MS, and other proprietary software vendors, another time.
I will grant the latter, but 90% is overstating it, IMO.
OTOH, surely you can see the damage caused by companies like MS with regards to software patents, BSA audits(harrasment!), having to buy the same software over and over costing governments and companies billions of dollars?
My greatest fears, with regards to the computer industry, have to do with the U.S. economy, national security, and the future of software developers' education and employment. Surely these things aren't petty?
Note, I'm not an extremist who wants to rid the world of proprietary software vendors. It could happen a long ways down the road, as people no longer have to purchase the same software repeatedly, and companies and governments all help fund development of useful software. This is already happening a little.
Anyway, let's put this discussion to rest for now. I'll be happy to discuss some of these things another time.
Cheers.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
While not necessarily disagreeing with you, your post would perhaps have been more useful had it suggested an alternative term to use instead of "socialism".
I will admit that I really shouldn't have capitalized "Socialism" as I did, but might the lower case version of the word still prompt your response? Let me respond to you in kind. "Socially conscious", or rather "social consciousness" only reflects awareness, and not necessarily the intention of action as "social responsibility" does. I used the vulgar sense of Socialism to mean the latter, not quite the former. I will grant to you that Communism is probably a better Strawman than Socialism in this illustration.
As for politically loaded terms, "Welfare" is hardly neutral, but I'm not sure that the combined bias against those worsds was quite enough to balance the Politically Incorrect "selfishness." I capitalized Individualism to perhaps conjure up images of "Rugged Individualism", trying to counteract selfishness, the only non-capital label in the phrase. Again, I probably shouldn't have capitalized either Socialism, or Individualism.
At least now I have "social responsibility" to replace Socialism. How do you suggest I avoid the more Socially/Politically loaded term of selfishness?
You're either trolling or you don't know about lynx. It's the best way to attempt to read these broken sites. There's no JavaScript or Flash to cause problems. The only thing is that most poorly written pages, like this interview, are very hard to read. w3m is a little better, but it doesn't other things wrong. I wish web designers wouldn't intentionally make their pages unreadable by most people, but obviously, we have been able to convince them to stop, so we have to find work-arounds.
Um...Unix? Unix V.6?
You mean the one that had the buggy context switch marked "you are not expected to understand this"? You mean the one that ran on one system that had mostly the same hardware on every computer? I don't honestly see how you can compare the Unix V.6 kernel with the Linux kernel; if the Unix V.6 kernel had to handle a dozen different broken filesystems and hundreds of different pieces of hardware, there would be some deeply sucky code in it, too.
Sendmail is good code. BIND is good code.
Both programs that ring bells as having many security flaws. I'd hardly catagorize a program that permitted the creation of the first Internet-killing worm as "good code".
The net is like a vast sea of lutefisk with tiny dinosaur brains embedded
in it here and there. Any given spoonful will likely have an IQ of 1, but
occasional spoonfuls may have an IQ more than six times that!
-- James 'Kibo' Parry
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