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.

Comments

Re:Sounds more like MS/DOS

[helf]

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

Murky FUD

[catdevnull]

Uh, I think Linus's claim to the first Linux kernel is quite valid and he cited prior art:

"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=1991Oc t5.0541 06.4647%40klaava.Helsinki.FI

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.

Re:AdTI: Handouts for Neocons

[ChopsMIDI]

Fact: AdTI employs John Norquist [adti.net], the not-so-big-time younger brother of big-time conservative activist Grover Norquist [mediatransparency.org].

Using John Norquist as the example here is a bad idea, since (even though his brother may be conservative) John Norquist is in fact quite the liberal (Up until a few months ago, he was mayor of Milwaukee, where I live, for many,many years).

Hardly the "Neocon" you claim him to be.

Re:Seeing as they like history......

[drinkypoo]

3. MS-DOS has a kernel which is an executable loaded into memory first and a shell, e.g. command.com. Windows 3.1 carried everything out via assorted software interrupts and BIOS calls, except for video access, which was done by the driver and probably primarily involved direct video access. By "pass commands to MS-DOS" it means use interrupt 21h, MS-DOS services. The heavy use of the DOS interrupt and BIOS calls meant that windows could support anything dos could support. If you had a special keyboard which operated via a TSR, which in turn was typically activated by INT 16h (keyboard bios functions) as it had patched the vector table, it would work in windows, too.

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.

Re:Microsoft's history of dishonesty and crime

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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."

Re:Seeing as they like history......

[RenaissanceGeek]

The best part is, they WEREN'T using an Altair 8800 to write the code! (they were a terribly designed machine: a reliable Altair 8800 is practially an oxymoron.)

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.)