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Linus Not The Father Of Linux, According to Report
MrIrwin writes "According to this article on Yahoo, Linus is not the real father of Linux and Open source software is really just code nicked from other sources. " Groklaw has done a dissection of the press release. It's a press release by the Alexis de Toqueville Institution, who gets funding from MSFT, as well as believes that US IT troubles are because of free software. Oh, and terrorism works better because of open source, and the "Star Wars" program was a good idea.
tells it like it is....
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
um.. DOS was written from scratch by Tim Paterson. it was originally called qdos, which stood for "Quick and Dirty Operating System." MS bought the rights to it and renamed it MS-DOS. It looks similiar to cp/m but its an entirely different OS. look here http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Micronews/paterson 04_10_98.htm
Fact: AdTI employs James Kilpatrick as a senior fellow. Kilpatrick made a career defending segregation and apartheid.
Fact: AdTI employs John Norquist, the not-so-big-time younger brother of big-time conservative activist Grover Norquist.
Fact: AdTI president Ken Brown's sole research qualification is a BA in English from George Mason. He has built a career out of milking shady publications, agent-of-foreign-power lobby groups, and dubious business-academica-government incest groups.
Half of the links from the AdTI front page are broken. The other half send you to repositories of op-eds and recorded radio shows.
This is not a research institute. Not even a bad research institute. This is a demi-journalistic hack shop where goldbricking bottomfeeders of right-wing policy studies and editorial-writing filch cash from gullible corporations in return for hastily-written hokum.
Please do not post any more from these con artists. I'm sure they get paid by the hit.
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
Uh, I think Linus's claim to the first Linux kernel is quite valid and he cited prior art:
c t5.0541 06.4647%40klaava.Helsinki.FI
"As I mentioned a month(?) ago, I'm working on a free version of a minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers."
I think the lineage to Unix via minix is obvious. Linus wrote his own kernel. The other pieces may have already existed, but the kernel was new. Unless he stole it from another Linus who conveniently named the project "Linux" after himself.
Over the last 13 years, many others contributed to the kernel and development which, according to SCO, may have included some questionable copy-paste commands, but I think the beginning is clear and the origins are clearly cited.
See here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1991O
I'm not sure the author of the article really understands what Linux is and what Linux is not. He is right about varying degress of fanaticism and the very loose definition of "open source." No matter where you get your software, you're at the mercy of the developer to maintain it--commercial or open source. For example, I think the Linux community has been very good about responding to security issues compared to much larger corporations who have a very loose definition of quality control. When those corporations begin to loose money to smaller groups who out perform, then those corporations pay for studies that skew the truth and spread FUD.
Read the article--the math isn't all that fuzzy.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
You're joking, but something like year or two ago MS itself published an interview with Dave Cutler, who said that the name NT came from Intel's i960, code-named N-Ten, which was under construction at that time and was also the RISC chip that NT was originally coded for.
After it became clear for MS that i960 would never became a generic-purpose processor it was first meant to be, and that its release would get significally delayed, MS started quickly to work with an i386 port of NT. It did not took long, as at that time they did not have much except kernel ready, and it was quick to port as Cutler had insisted portable code without excessive asm optimisations.
(Disclaimer: everything IIRC)
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Thanks to "Assembly Language for Intel-Based Computers" by Kip R. Irvine (ISBN 0-13-091013-9) for keeping me factual...
6. Windows NT definitely contains some code from OS/2, which Microsoft ended up licensed to have because of the event you allude to. And, it was authored primarily (in the core) by VMS developers. I'm to lazy to look up which, unfortunately, but the information is readily available.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're funny. Of course, ignorant people won't see your joke, so I will lay to rest any unease that might arise when someone who is not acquainted with actual facts reads your little gem.
Linus was never an intern at Bell Labs.
Linux was originally written in Linus' bedroom at his mom's apartment in Helsinki, Finland. Linus was attending University at the time.
Linux started out as a little terminal program for reading Linus' email - I believe he could boot right into it without having to load MINIX. Linus kept adding features to it until it became more of an OS Kernel, and then other people started helping out with development.
Linus was impressed with the Unix philosophy and design, but saw limits in MINIX.
Linux never had MINIX code in it.
Linux was already very popular by the time Linus moved from Finland to California. Linus went to work for Transmeta. More recently, Linus moved to OSDL.
As far as we know, Linus has never worked around actual Unix System V source code, nor with AT&T or Bell Labs.
Linux was written to published POSIX standards.
There is no reason to believe that Linux contains anything but 100% original code, donated by Linus and a group of volunteers around the world. It does look like SGI once mistakenly contributed a small amount of System V code in one of their hardware drivers, but that code was redundant and soon removed from the kernel.
Audits on Linux code have now been performed by SGI and by a an open-source "insurance" firm. Probably others have also done audits.
These comparisons done between Linux and Unix have revealed very little similarity at the code level. Even SCO's lawyers now admit that there are no significant code similarities between Linux and System V. You will recall that SCO was not able to produce the apparent "millions" of lines of stolen code when ordered to do so by the Judge. Of course we can't find the code, SCO, said, because it's from AIX, not from System V.
> Just one bit of [proof] would be enough for me to not think you are some insane zealot.
If you insist...
Evidence of sabotage and fraud in The Sun vs Microsoft case:
Memo to Bill Gates from the manager responsible for Microsoft's Java strategy:
> When I met with you last, you had a lot of pretty pointed questions about Java, so I want to make sure I understand your issues/concerns....
> 1. What is our business model for Java?
> 2. How do we wrest control of Java away from Sun?
> 3. How do we turn Java into just the latest, best way to write Windows applications?
> 4. What are we doing to leverage/expose Windows to Java developers?
Microsoft's pricing strategy paper for its VJ++ development suite:
> The "strategic objective" of its new toolkit is to "Eliminate/contain cross-platform Java by growing the polluted Java market," "migrate and lock Java developers to Win32 Java," and ultimately to "kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market."
Statement by a Microsoft vice president:
> I would explicitly be different -- just to be different.... [W]ithout something to pollute Java more to Windows (show new cool features that are only in Windows) we expose ourselves to more portable code on other platforms.
Another Microsoft memo:
> At this point its [sic] not good to create MORE noise around our win32 java classes. Instead we should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps.
Evidence of contract interference and extortion in The DOJ versus Microsoft case:
> "Content drives browser adoption, and we need to go to the top five sites and ask them, "What can we do to get you to adopt IE?" We should be prepared to write a check, buy sites, or add features -- basically do whatever it takes to drive adoption."
> Gates wrote, "Apple let us down on the browser by making Netscape the standard install." Gates then reported that he had already called Apple's CEO (who at the time was Gil Amelio) to ask "how we should announce the cancellation of Mac Office...."
> In Waldman's words: Sounds like we give them the HTML control for nothing except making IE the "standard browser for Apple?" I think they should be doing this anyway. Though the language of the agreement uses the word "encourage," I think that the spirit is that Apple should be using it everywhere and if they don't do it, then we can use Office as a club.
Evidence of intentional destruction of standard protocols in the Microsoft Halloween Document:
> "OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."
And so on.
There is so much evidence that this (sabotage, fraud, and extortion) is Microsoft's normal way of operating, that the "zealot" position is anyone who attempts to claim that Microsoft is honest.
As to what Microsoft is currently trying to do to defeat Linux, there was obviously some speculation there, which I indicated by repeated use of the word "possibly."
I can't begin to do it justice (Groklaw is already linking to it). Enjoy!! (I will reveal in advance only that Torvalds "comes clean" about a lifetime of deception...)
In fact, the Altair 8800 hadn't even been RELEASED yet, when they developed Basic for it: they wrote it to run on the emulator that they had written to run on the PDP-10.
The funny bit? Because it was all emulated, they never needed to actually LOAD Basic onto their test "machine", so they never wrote a loader. Paul Allen wound up coding one up ON THE PLANE TO ALBUQUERQUE to demo the finished product! (hey, it had to be keyed into the unit from the front panel switches, anyway.)
What is the difference between a small revolutionary change and a large evolutionary change?