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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."
"Blessed are the poor in threshold: for theirs is the Kingdom of the Page-Lengthening and Page-Widening Posts.
"Blessed are they that mourn the death of *BSD: for they shall be comforted with an ultradense Linux server from VA Linux, now sold by California Digital Corporation.
"Blessed are the posters of smug one-liners: for they shall inherit an Account Capped at 50.
"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after The First Post: for they shall have the Third or Fourth Post.
"Blessed are the karma whores: for they shall obtain "Score: 5, Insightful".
"Blessed are those who dismiss out-of-hand: for they shall fail to see the Point of the Original Post.
"Blessed are those who seek to associate themselves with the latest techno-fad: for they shall be called 3L33T for at least Another Half Hour.
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for their own self-righteousness' sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of "Ask Slashdot".
"Blessed are the over-eager, who believe that Open Source is a social movement heralding the rise of a new generation: for they shall not realize that There Are No Sacred Cows.
"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for the sake of your Favorite Operating System.
"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in Heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD
From article:
" Do you steal a car in the bright daylight with a lot of people around? Or do you steal a car, go for a joyride at 4 am in the morning when there aren't a lot of people around."
I have visions of that scene from Groundhog day, except instead of Bill Murray and a groundhog driving it's Linus and a penguin...
graspee
I thought that he was mostly famous for saying 'whatever' and then just doing things his own way?
Perhaps they are confusing him with RMS.
Beep beep.
It's interesting how the interviewers always seem to go into the same thread of what makes Linux great. Given the history one would never have expected it to do as well as it has; like chopsticks, which were actually invented by immigrant restaurant owners in America's mining communities in the 1800s, Linux has picked up a myth of its own that actually covers the more interesting fact that it was simply a hobby with momentum. It's a bit wierd to think that such a thing has evolved to contend with and possibly displace software actually engineered for the enterprise.
Can't wait for 2.6.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
But not as bad as the nitpicks, who don't realize that "an" is not a typo.
I enjoyed that IBM started porting Linux to the S390, found that hugely amusing. I thought, OK, somebody has done a few too many drugs.
Alright that made me laugh out loud. And confirmed the fact to the wife that I'm a geek because it did.
Damn you Torvalds...
Linus Torvalds is the creator of the Linux operating system, the open source version of Unix that is sweeping through the software world in a direct challenge to Microsoft.
[Emphasis mine]
From Rob's own http://cmdrtaco.net/
What? You haven't heard of Linux? It's an operating system created by Linus Torvalds, and a band of hacks scattered accross the globe.
[Emphasis mine]
Sorry GNU/FSF/RMS. You're like Rodney Dangerfield; you never get respect...
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
- He sounds a bit stressed out. Maybe it's the new job + trying to get 2.6 out the door + SCO and possible depositions + the usual stuff he has to deal with. Or I'm imagining things.
- It's funny how many evolution/ecosystem type metaphors he made - maybe he's been reading the complete works of S. J. Gould or something
> San Jose Mercury News has an interview with
> Linus
Alright, always wanted to know what happened to that round headed kid and his delusional dog! Why didn't Schroeder ever make it as a concert pianist - was it drugs, or did the parental pressure finally get to him? And that little red headed girl - is she working in the "male entertainment" industry somewhere?
And don't get me started on that bossy Lucy...
Linus summed it up beautifully.
Linux keeps evolving, and diversifying, SCO is ultimately irrelevant. Heres a follow up from IDG http://www.idg.se/ArticlePages/idgnet.asp?id=4636
The one good thing that might come out of this, is there finally enough anger to get some changes in our idiotic patent and copyright systems.
I agree with Linus that Linux will be damaged if the case is not resolved soon. It already has with assholes like McBride suing everyone who mentions the word Linux.
http://saveie6.com/
And confirmed the fact to the wife that I'm a geek
;)
Wife, heh. Next you'll be telling us you've had sex with said wife and have kids.
The coolest voice ever.
Direct quote from the article:
"I think they are struggling to deal with Linux partly because Linux is undermining them the same way they undercut their competition."
I guess the old goose-gander thing should apply.
"Q: You moved from Finland. How do you like living in Silicon Valley.
A: Some parts I love. I have a convertible. I will never ever move to a place where I can't drive a convertible."
Amen brother...
I don't know anything about the Nobel Peace Prize, but it seems like a good award the world community could bestow upon Mr Torvalds for gracing us with his forsight.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
I don't know about you, but I blame the Dutch Tulip Craze^W^W^WDot Com Bust for the lack of a Unix-optimized version of the Crusoe. The original benefit of the Crusoe's code-morphing technology was supposed to be the fact that it would be able to run nearly any other platform's code natively. Then, the bubble popped, and the Crusoe was delegated to the small market of low-power consumption x86 compatible chips.
IMO the whole thing's a shame. TMTA would have probably been a lot healthier if they would have offered a native VLIW chip in addition to the Crusoe, so that embedded people who didn't care about x86 compatibility could use this damn nice chip to provide real good, low power devices for markets such as set-top boxes, where x86 compatibility is a non-issue.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Looking at the questions in mind, it's fairly obvious that they were set up - ie. that the journalist in question was asking for specific answers (ie. had done his homework properly), but Linus was far too prepared to answer briefly, obviously giving the journalist a reply he'd understand, but not making for good reading.
My wife - who has a fairly good understanding of how open projects work (and has coded both programming languages and html), but is by no means a linux geek - only just understood what Linus was saying, and she's both fairly knowledgable and extremely insightful.
This paragraph, for instance, has so many dependancies (:p) - it requires the user to understand coding, *open source* coding, and have a fairly good understanding of the ethos of.. well, several things. Most readers will *not* be reading with these understandings - if anything, they'll read in *order* to glean these kinds of understandings of something they'll only barely have heard of.
I don't think it's entirely because Linus doesn't speak english natively, either, to fend off potential criticism: I speak three languages, and I know *plenty* of efl (english as a foreign language) speakers who speak english which isn't as good as Linus's (which is excellent) who can explain technical issues with more clarity
In summary.. this is yet another of the problems facing popular adoption of a niche's product. ;)
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you
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
This could all just go away if SCO said, "We think lines xx - xxx of the Linux kernel violate our contracts/licenses/copyrights." Then it would be easy. The Linux community looks at the code and traces it back to who put it there. The problem is solved (as far as Linux goes) once the code is removed and SCO has their "violator" if there even is one.
This is called "discovery phase". It will be years away at this rate, unless IBM's lawyers decide to clusterfuck SCO with various motions. (I'm surprised this hasn't happened already.)
As I've said before. SCO isn't in this to do the right thing. SCO wants money and power.
I suspect what they're really after is some collateral damage. They'll never win against IBM, but they can ruffle enough feathers in the Linux-using corporate world to either boost their pathetic sales or to score some phat licensing deals from witless CTOs. The case doesn't even have to make it to trial: Darl just needs to continue making noise, and some idiots will think he's for real. SCO may not win <dr_evil>one billion dollars</dr_evil>, but they'll make enough and quietly drop the case.
I know paranoid theories are in vogue here, but I don't think it's that loopy. The parade of apparently clueless analysts who have been attesting to SCO's honor and victimhood are worthless for impressing the tech community or from a legal perspective, but very good at setting a precedent for eventual licen$e fee$. . .
Why o why does everybody and their grandma have to resort to analogies,
Well, that's a interesting question.
You see, analogies are like the string that binds together the langu-
In those days, Richard Stallman appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of free software has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: prepare the way of Linus, make his paths straight". Now Stallman wore clothing consisting of worn-out jeans and a T-shirt with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was pizza and Jolt. Then the people of Berkeley and all of Silicon Valley were going out to him, and all of the region along the Bay, and they were baptized by him in the swimming pool, confessing their sins.
But when he saw many Microsofties and Appleites coming for baptism, he said to them, "You spawn of Satan! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentence. Do not presume to say to yourselves, "We have Altair as our ancestor"; for I tell you, The Computer God is able from these circuit boards to raise up children to Altair. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the btrees; every btree that does not bear fruit is cut down and thrown into a fire."
"I baptize you with water for repentence, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sneakers. He will baptize you with The Kernel and an email. His code fork is in his hand, and he will clear the threshing floor and gather the software into distros; but the vaporware he will burn with unquenchable fire."
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
I think GNU did themselves a disservice back in the late 80s/early 90s by not getting HURD written sooner.
If that had happened then they could have named it whatever RMS wanted. Instead Linus cobbled together Linux, GPL'd the source, and pretty much stole the show as far as naming the operating system.
Yet, much of the success of GNU is the freedom to distribute it WITHOUT permission of RMS (just as long as you provide the source code...). Of course, you can do this with non-GPL code too (*BSD, perl, python) but RMS hacked the copyright system first.
So the real success story is that GNU's bash can be used with Linux, Windows (under Cygnus), or with Mac OS X. RMS might have lost the battle (over GNU/Linux), but he certainly won the war (bash is just one successful example).
My father is a blogger.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I like the comment about visibility, it's true. Software developers commonly take their software from job to job. Who is going to notice if you plug in a wad of code that you wrote and brought from your previous company. After all you wrote it once, you can write it again. Since no one ever sees the source, this sort of thing happens all the time. Linux is different, it's developed in the open inside a glass house. If a developer dumps in code that they stole from work, some one might notice, and it will be fairly easy to track who did it. I'll bet that most major software companies couldn't stand that sort of scrutiny.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
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
"Linus Torvalds is the creator of the Linux operating system..."
More misunderstanding. I know it's preaching to the choir, but Linux is just the kernel, and the GNU project deserves just as much representation as does Linus Torvalds for it's creation of low level tools such as GCC. Linus is hardly the sole creator of the base system, although he did write the kernel as I'm sure you know.
"...the open source version of Unix..."
Linux is not a version of Unix. GNU/Linux is a derivative clone of UNIX. The system was initially chosen by the GNU project to be a clone of UNIX because it was the most portable OS at the time. I don't know how closely the Linux kernel compares to UNIX kernels and such, but GNU/Linux is definitly UNIX-like as a result of initial planning by the Free Software Foundation. Furthermore, if Linux was a version of UNIX (all of which must be licensed) wouldn't this whole interview (at least the SCO parts) be pointless since SCO licenses UNIX? Saying it's a version implys that it uses UNIX code, which is what brought us to all this madness in the first instance. Honestly, do these reports even know what they're saying, or do they just run off scripts?
"He is a technical leader and an outspoken advocate of open source development, which allows software users to develop and modify their own versions of software for free."
Notice how they use the term "for free" rather than something like "freely modify". Just a subtle point which I felt was worthy of pointing out. Also, notice the commonly used over-patronage of Linus. I think the media does this, unconciously, to effectivley set the boundaries of acceptable discourse on the amazing social phenomenon that is the movement commonly refered to as the "Open Source Movement," which sets unprecidented examples for healthy human society and interaction in comparison to the failed systems of the past. One can't even begin to draw parallels simply because of this sort-of systematic patronage of one man, and overlooking of an entire movement.
For our readers who don't know the origins of Linux, can you talk about how it was written given the existence of Unix?
A: The origin was all written by me. For the first six months or so I was the only person working on Linux. It took almost a year before there was a major contribution from people outside. It's all original code since day one.
Linus: "I am at the center...
You get a lot of folks bashing on RMS because he politely asks people to at least acknowledge the work of the Free Software Foundation by calling the system GNU/Linux, but here you have Torvalds claiming entire responisibility of the OS, granted in response to a question about SCO's involvement in the origins of the OS, but nonetheless claiming total responsibility. So how can we conclude that RMS is cocky when we have this kind of total disregard for everyone else involved in the development of the system.
Until we stop using terms like Linux meaning the whole OS and Intellectual Property as being every legal issue under the sun, we simply can't even begin to have a logical discussion about the issues at hand, and will only further confuse those who may casually read about these subjects in the news.
After reading this article I really thought about a lot of things, and came to the conclusion that the term "Open Source" is really pointless and should be avoided. If you think about it, all source is open. Propreitary code is open to the developers who work on it. It's just maintained in a system of checks, balances, non-disclosure agreements, and "need to know" prediciments. What you're really talking about when you discuss "open-source" is exactly how open it is, and who exactly it's open to. That's why I think it's better to use the term free when discussing these matters, as it's a more liberating term without the boundaries that "open" source can have. Sure it's "open", but who exactly is it open to? If something's free, it's just free; Their are no heirarchiel limitations.
More misunderstanding. I know it's preaching to the choir, but Linux is just the kernel, and the GNU project deserves just as much representation as does Linus Torvalds for it's creation of low level tools such as GCC. Linus is hardly the sole creator of the base system, although he did write the kernel as I'm sure you know.
You could still use Linux without GNU tools. Linux is the kernel that is controlling my freaking laptop. It is operating my computer into a usable state. I can replace bash, GCC, and all the rest if I wanted.
Linux is not a version of Unix. GNU/Linux is a derivative clone of UNIX.
Ah, a "GNU/Linux" weenie.
He said "open source version," which is another way of saying it's the open source counterpart, clone, whatever. Version wasn't meant to be so literal.
The system was initially chosen by the GNU project to be a clone of UNIX because it was the most portable OS at the time. I don't know how closely the Linux kernel compares to UNIX kernels and such, but GNU/Linux is definitly UNIX-like as a result of initial planning by the Free Software Foundation. Furthermore, if Linux was a version of UNIX (all of which must be licensed) wouldn't this whole interview (at least the SCO parts) be pointless since SCO licenses UNIX? Saying it's a version implys that it uses UNIX code, which is what brought us to all this madness in the first instance. Honestly, do these reports even know what they're saying, or do they just run off scripts?
You posted an entire insane diatribe over the non-literal use of the word "version." Go see Terminator 3 and relax a bit.
Notice how they use the term "for free" rather than something like "freely modify". Just a subtle point which I felt was worthy of pointing out. Also, notice the commonly used over-patronage of Linus. I think the media does this, unconciously, to effectivley set the boundaries of acceptable discourse on the amazing social phenomenon that is the movement commonly refered to as the "Open Source Movement," which sets unprecidented examples for healthy human society and interaction in comparison to the failed systems of the past. One can't even begin to draw parallels simply because of this sort-of systematic patronage of one man, and overlooking of an entire movement.
Maybe they just liked the idea of free stuff.
You get a lot of folks bashing on RMS because he politely asks people to at least acknowledge the work of the Free Software Foundation by calling the system GNU/Linux, but here you have Torvalds claiming entire responisibility of the OS, granted in response to a question about SCO's involvement in the origins of the OS, but nonetheless claiming total responsibility.
He claimed responsibility...for LINUX! You injected "OS" and went off on another GNU rant. The two letters "OS" were not even uttered. He did not claim total responsibility for "everything."
So how can we conclude that RMS is cocky when we have this kind of total disregard for everyone else involved in the development of the system.
Because RMS didn't have anything to do with the original code of Linux, and it WAS all Linux those first six months. What is your friggin' point? Next.
Until we stop using terms like Linux meaning the whole OS and Intellectual Property as being every legal issue under the sun, we simply can't even begin to have a logical discussion about the issues at hand, and will only further confuse those who may casually read about these subjects in the news.
You are so clearly biased.
Linux is my operating system. I'm not afraid to say it. It is the software that is managing all the of the hardware in my computer, providing drivers, making sure memory is taken care of, managing all of my processes...GNU tools are in there along with a bunch of other things. I could replace all the GNU tools with other software and still use Linux. Linux is operating my system, whether or not G
"Sufferin' succotash."
While you made a decent post, I really think you too are missing the point.
Stallman had a dream. A dream everyone else thought was crazy. A dream of a Free as in speech Operating System, a kernel, text editors, compilers, everything you need to actually use the computer, and all Free. He called that dream GNU. And because, back when everyone else thought he was crazy, he persevered, worked his ass off and didn't give up, we now have actually not one but several different Free Operating Systems. There's one to run on just about any hardware you can find, from a PS2 to an old Acorn box to an IBM supercomputer.
Did Stallman write all that code? Of course not. Did the FSF write it all? Of course not. That would have been silly. He knew from the beginning that road was impossible. They just wrote from scratch what they had to - i.e. X was already there, no need to reinvent the wheel, but there weren't any decent Free compilers, so they made GCC. Linux came along and contributed a kernel, one piece among many to make the OS.
If people don't want to call GNU by it's proper name, no one can force them. But don't let the issue be sidetracked into trying to label what percentage is GNU and what is X and so forth - it doesn't matter. GNU was the vision, and the FSF produced the pieces no one else would, to make that vision reality. I, for one, think we all owe them a debt we can never repay. Calling the OS by it's proper name is only fair.
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