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."

Comments

Re:Good interview.

[Syre]

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.

SCO Executive Addresses

[Anonymous Coward]

Darl C McBride
1799 Vintage Oak Ln
Salt Lake City, UT 84121-6539
(801)424-2006

Chris Sontag
32 Lone Holw
Sandy, UT 84092-5505
(801)576-0285

Re:Good interview.

[mfifer]

more like 5000: http://www.calacademy.org/research/anthropology/ut ensil/chpstck.htm

Re:unix history

[qtp]

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.

Re:Unfortunatly, SCO's case is not about IBM

[bazmonkey]

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.

Re:Minix: the origin of Linux?

[Daniel Phillips]

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.