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Linus Torvalds about SCO, IP, MS and Transmeta
strmcrw writes " San Jose Mercury News has an interview with Linus. He talks about about SCO vs IBM and gives his opinion on Microsoft. He also shed light on his decision to leave chip maker Transmeta for a Linux corporate software consortium, the Open Source Development Lab."
Nitpick: I think you mean "chow mein" or perhaps "chop suey" rather than "chopsticks". Chopsticks were invented in China around the 11th century B.C.E., whereas chop suey and chow mein (and just about the entire corpus of what is considered "chinese food" in America) have the origin you describe.
Uh... sorry. Chopsticks have been in use for well over 1000 years, and probably longer.
Look here for some information about the history of chopsticks.
Darl C McBride
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Chris Sontag
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I've got a Transmeta-based tablet Pc here running Linux...
Current Transmeta CPUs run an emulated x86 instruction set, so you can run your favourite distro as long as it supports the surrounding hardware...
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Maybe you are thinking about fortune cookies, which were invented in china town in san francisco.
> Better hope RMS isn't reading this article, or
> he'll be PISSED.
RMS does not deny that the Linux kernel is entirely the work of Linus and his collaborators.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Better hope RMS isn't reading this article, or he'll be PISSED.
I doubt RMS would dissagree with Linus' statement.
Stallman may be a bore, and he may be self-rightous at times, but he does know what part is Linux and what parts are GNU.
Read, L
Actually, the idea that the earth has only existed for 6,000 years comes from Hebrew tradition, following the calendar from Eden up to the common era. You'll find that Y2K actually is AM 5760 according to Jewish tradition, where AM is Anno Mundi, Latin for "Year of the World". AM was derived from a number of rabbis around the Middle Ages; nowadays, many Jews choose to follow the Gregorian calendar, though they refer to history in terms of "Before Common Era" and "Common Era" rather than "Before Christ" and "Year of Our Lord".
Linus should be more carefull about SCO. Its not a SCO vs IBM at all. They are trying to squash it via fud and legal options.
Linux CANNOT be destroyed/removed/etc. as a result of this lawsuit. Just as SCO can't "accidentally" make its own IP GPL'ed software by releasing Linux before it realized that it has their code in it (if it is there), Linux can't be punished for letting illegal code in without his knowledge. He didn't see SCO code, there was NO way for him to tell (again, if it is there).
Like it or not, SCO must eventually give specifics as to what code is in the kernel, they can't claim damages without giving the defending side the ability to change ti. So Linus will soon enough learn about the offending code, and if it is indeed their code, it will be removed. Either way, true or false, the kernel is in no danger.
Wow, you're informed. Dim, but informed. "Forks" as in forking of software versions, as in the history of Unix. Which dates to about 1970. 33 years. Original post was being funny.
Linux was influenced heavily by Minix, yes. But Linus never had access to Minix source code when he began writing what would end up being called Linux, so your conspiracy theory of Linus borrowing code from Minix is non-viable.
Well, considering that the Minix code was included with a book written by Tannenbaum, I think you're a little wide of the mark there. What Linus wasn't allowed to do, or anyone else for that matter, was contribute code back to Tannebaum's OS.
Anyway, it's well-known Linux is a from-scratch implementation, which apparently started as a terminal emulator (and that possibly explains why the console handling code still sucks so much, but there you go). Andy Tannenbaum has had plenty of time to complain about any plagiarism, if Linus indulged in it, and trust me, he would have.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Q: Microsoft took out a license from SCO. Do you think that was necessary and that the timing seemed strange?
A: It's not exactly clear what they licensed.
Microsoft's been quite honest about what they licensed from SCO. Significant portions of Interix (the Unix subsystem for Windows) are direct ports of SCO's IP (the stuff SCO actually owns, not just what they say they own).
They weren't funding SCO's lawsuit, but it was a PR play. Now Microsoft can point to all of SCO's chest-puffery and say that they're compliant with SCO's licenses and that if you pick the Microsoft solution, you're safe from all of that liability.
NO CARRIER
..but GNU/Linux is definitly UNIX-like as a result of initial planning by the Free Software Foundation.
Before there was Linux, there was definitly GNU. GNU software was created to compile and run on all those commercial Unix-like OS's that were out there at the time. Including Solaris, a Unix-like OS so advanced that they left out the compiler (guess what people decided to use in place of the missing Solaris compiler). In any case, all this software had to run on Unix-like OS's, and that means it had to make use of standard Unix-like system calls and library functions. Funny how it all worked out.
Sure it's "open", but who exactly is it open to?
I'm sorry, but have you ever noticed that you have a hole in your head?
This is where you're fundamentally wrong. Even Linus himself is on record multiple times to the contrary. Without GNU he would never have had the tools to start the project, and he wouldn't have had anything to run on his kernel even if he somehow managed to create one without a compiler anyway!
You accuse Stallman of being bitter, I don't see that, but if he were it would be understandable with the sort of ignorance of history your showing here being common.
The amazing thing is you probably believe what you're writing. *sigh*
Linux is not an Operating System. Linux is a kernel. If you don't believe me believe Linus.
If it's fanatical and religious to make this point, then I guess it's fanatical and religious to point out that the CPU is a chip, not the entire box? I suppose it's fanatical and religious to point out that 3.5 inch removable magnetic media are 'floppies' not 'hard disks' even though they are, indeed, rather rigid in comparison to 5.25 inch removable magnetic media?
At worst it might be pedantic. Religious and fanatical is beyond a stretch though.
This is just more historical ignorance. The HURD didn't 'fail', and no one least of all Stallman was 'reluctant' to use Linux. Linux was a godsend. The HURD had been torn between two completely different design goals, one to get a working Free Unix-like kernel going ASAP so that GNU could be a full OS instead of a halfbreed, the other to really push the envelope and produce a next-generation kernel that did far more and did it right. When Linux became usable that tension went away - now we had the kernel to satisfy the first goal, and the HURD team could concentrate on the second.
Yet more historical ignorance.
If Linus hadn't created Linux, we'd be running GNU/BSD. The BSD kernel became Free shortly after Linux became usable, you know. Well, obviously you didn't. But you should. There was discussion about using it at the time, but ultimately there wasn't enough interest simply because Linux was already in place and working well.
If BSD had become Free just a little earlier, Linus never would have written a kernel, he would have just used GNU with the BSD kernel.
Seeing how poorly you know the history behind these things, I can understand why you think what you do. But that doesn't make it any less wrong, or any less pathetic.
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