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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
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...
- 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...
> Uh... sorry. Chopsticks have been in use for well over 1000 years, and probably longer.
Whereas we've only had 'forks' for the past 30...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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
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.
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?