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

What a farce.

[grub]

Read to the bottom of the article:
Brown's study is part a book he is writing on open source software and operating systems. Excerpts from the book will be published at www.adti.net on May 20, 2004.
That says it all. Inflammatory statements preceding the release of a new book. This latest FUD is nothing more than a book promotion in the guise of a press release.

Re:What a farce.

[yo303]

To this day, we have a serious attribution problem in software development because people have chosen to scrupulously borrow or imitate Unix

The author even contradicts himself, as to the motive of open source programmers. Perhaps he meant unscrupulous.

yo.

Re:What a farce.

[Tin Foil Hat]

And lets not forget their belief that ideas may be owned. You'll find it in point number one at this document, published on the the AdTI website. It contains all sorts of factual errors, misconceptions, and outright lies. It was this quote, in particular, that really set me off:

"Unfortunately however, the belief in free exchange characterizes a core disagreement with models (ie. proprietary software) that strive to own and protect ideas, to later leverage their value in the marketplace. Thus, mixing the open source world and the patent world has all the makings of an explosive relationship."

Last time I checked, ideas themselves are not property and cannot be owned. Now, one may secure a right to capitilize exclusively on a new idea (patents), and one my reserve the right to copy original works (copyright), but nobody can own an idea. You may as well try to own the wind.

In my mind, this is the crux of the matter. Many proprietary software companies want to be able to own ideas, to say, that's my idea and you can't use it unless you fork over all of your dough. They hire pundits and paid-for researchers to make absurd claims as though they are obvious truths.

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

[Zak3056]

I happen to like the headline of this story from The Register: Alien puppet Linus swiped Linux from SCO, says balanced study. Trust the Reg to put this story in the proper context.

Of course, what REALLY burns me is the line that says For almost thirty years, programmers have tried to build a Unix-like system and couldn't, somehow suggesting that UNIX is like the the tinfoil hat version of the pyramids of Egypt--some mysterious advanced technology that no one understands and couldn't possibly replicate.

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

[superpulpsicle]

Well the 5 year study is still far better than the M$ commercial having 1 IT guy run the entire IT department because he now has one windows 2003 server replacing many win2k boxes. Then he claims to have saved the company $$$. At the same time M$ goes about saying they help create IT jobs. Wait... your 2003 server allows 1 person to run the IT department.

Complimentary tin-foil considerations

[maximilln]

At first reading I saw this as a deplorable move to sway public opinion against Linus, Linux, and other open source providers. After a few moments of thought, however, I see that this may be the forefront of a larger, even more deplorable, endeavor. Consider the following quote:

-----
"The report," according to Gregory Fossedal, a Tocqueville senior fellow, "raises important questions...While you cannot group all open source programmers and programs together; many are rigorous and respectful of the intellectual property rights..."
-----
Could this be a movement to undermine Linus' right to release Linux under GNU/GPL? Could this even be the beginning of legal research to undermine GNU/GPL itself?

If enough lawyers and businessmen can be swayed to believe that Linux itself is a product of UNIX then, though a convoluted interpretation of patent law and prior art, is it possible to invalidate GPL as it applies to programs written to conform to POSIX standards? Can the publishing rights for POSIX compliant programs then be assigned to the creators of the POSIX standards or the organizations that have implemented them first: ie. Bell Labs, AT&T, and UNIX?

Consider that MS didn't invent HTML, TCP, SMTP, or other common standardized protocols yet they seem to have an enormous amount of intellectual property assigned to them which prevents other people from producing software which competes with them in those arenas on the MS platform. I don't know the nature of the POSIX organization, where it's funded, or how cohesive it is with respect to legal and business support. However it does seem possible that malicious lawyers could argue that *NIX type operating systems, patented by corporate entities, are the first major implmentation of POSIX standards and that any products which come afterwards are an infringement of those intellectual property rights. This then leads to the arena of the status and age of the patents and how willing the original patent holders would be in funding the legal endeavor to pursue this track.

It sounds far-fetched but we all know that this similar roundabout claim of intellectual property has been pursued by SCO. With MS grasping for straws to slow the advance of Linux it could be a legal filibuster to sandtrap Linux. MS and their allies can afford enormous teams of lawyers that can turn out legal briefs by the thousands and the stories of their rapid acceleration of patent submission have also become popularly known. With enough patent filings and a popularly accepted, however untrue, argument about the nature and origin of Linux and its right to be distributed under GPL it might be their strategy to legally discourage organizations from adopting it.

With enough legal clout it is conceivable that, if the legal community could assign POSIX standards and *NIX operating systems as prior art preceding Linux, that they could force Linus to legally accept being bought out by the major operating system vendors who could choose to shelf it or turn its direction into nonproductive, bloating development.

The 100 mpg carburetor may be tin-foil but this situation is certainly real.

Consider this analogy: intellectual property is like a liquid beverage. It's everywhere and everyone has some. One day a large corporation patents lemonade. A week later a local company begins producing lemonade and giving it away for free charging only for the cost of distribution and the container (a cup, glass, mug, whatever). A month later the large corporation claims that its lemonade patent incorporates the property of any similar beverage based on lemons and sends a team of lawyers to shut down the local lemonade company. In this analogy software is a beverage. POSIX is a lemon based beverage. The large corporations would be those who made *NIX type operating systems and the local distributor would be Linux.

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

[PonyHome]

6. If Windows NT was really based on the source of VMS, M$ would have definitely been sued. And they haven't AFAIK. Instead, M$ had just been done with the OS/2 cooperation debacle, and it's pretty probable that they took quite a bit of code from that to get them started on NT.

AFAIK, they were sued, and they lost, which is why DEC was allowed to modify NT to run on Alpha systems, and to distribute it themselves. It wasn't an outright theft, but code that migrated into NT with several coders that had come from VMS development.

Microsoft's history of dishonesty and crime

[Anonymous Coward]

> I was reffereing to the fact that Paul Allen and Bill Gates started Microsoft porting Basic interpreters from a "borrowed" open source base.

Why stop there? Almost every victory that Microsoft can claim has been achieved through dishonest, if not criminal means. Consider...

MICROSOFT DEFEATS DR-DOS BY:

- Fraud: Windows issues a warning about DR-DOS that MS knows is false.
- FUD: The DR-DOS evidence includes Microsoft memos planning the FUD campaign.
- Sabotage: Windows 95 has secret calls to prevent it from running on DR-DOS.
- Sabotage: MS purposely keeps DR-DOS out of the Windows Beta-test program (also documented by evidence).

MICROSOFT DEFEATS GEOWORKS BY:

- Sabotage: New MS-DOS release causes Geoworks to fail.

MICROSOFT DEFEATS WORDPERFECT BY:

- Fraud: MS publicly announces that OS/2 is the future direction.
- Sabotage: MS provides WordPerfect with faulty Windows APIs.

MICROSOFT DEFEATS OS/2 BY:

- Fraud: Microsoft pretends to support OS/2, then abandons it.
- FUD: Microsoft pays people to disparage OS/2 in posts in forums, letters to the editor, etc.
- Suspected Theft: Microsoft is believed to have borrowed OS/2 IP to use in Windows 3.1.
- Suspected Sabotage: Microsoft is believed to have provided less than their best code for OS/2.

MICROSOFT DEFEATS AMIPRO BY:

- Sabotage: Windows 95 causes AmiPro function-keys to break.

MICROSOFT DEFEATS NETSCAPE BY:

- Contract Interference: Microsoft pays sites to stop using Netscape (thus "cutting off Netscape's air supply").
- Extortion: Microsoft threatens VARs who preload Netscape.
- Extortion: Microsoft threatens Apple with the cancellation of MS Office for the Mac, unless Apple drops Netscape.

MICROSOFT ATTEMPTS TO DEFEAT JAVA BY:

- Sabotage: Microsoft tries to "kill cross-platform Java by growing the polluted [J++] Java market."
- Fraud: Microsoft memo shows plan to keep quiet about the incompatibilities so that J++ users will unintentionally create Windows-only code.

AND NOW MICROSOFT IS ATTEMPTING TO DEFEAT LINUX BY:

- Fud: Obviously.

- Fraud: False claims, planted by partners like Toqueville.

- Legal Attacks: Microsoft funded the SCO attack.

- Patents: Future.

- Legislation: DRM, etc.

- Proprietary Internet Protocols: MS Multimedia formats, .Net authentication protocols, DRM.

- Secret Hardware Protocols: Working with partners like NVidia (closed source drivers), ATI (closed source drivers), and AMD (the unpublished memory-access fix).

- Locking-in Linux: Working with partners like NVidia and ATI (closed source drivers), possibly Trolltech (the proprietary version of Qt, Qt support for .Net), possibly CodeWeavers (promoting MS Office on Linux, and ActiveX on the Internet), possibly Xandros and a couple of other Linux distributers (proprietary Linux admin tools, Qt-only desktop environment, promoting MS Office on Linux, etc.), possibly Macromedia (Flash), and who knows who else.

- Infiltration: MS plants joining Open Source projects to cause interference, wearing out the leaders through constant complaining, driving away other developers by acting like jerks, pushing the project in bad directions, etc.

- Infiltration: MS plants joining Open Source projects and pretending to be die-hard supporters, then pushing for overly-tight licensing, convincing others to add special restrictions that limit the software's use (possible examples: DotGNU, XFree86), using LGPL for what should be BSD (CodeWeaver's Wine), using GPL for what should be LGPL (MySQL), and so on.

AND JUST GENERAL DESTRUCTION...

Re:Microsoft's history of dishonesty and crime

[0x0d0a]

Uh...while a lot of this is true (and some is clearly stuff that folks are justified in being suspicious of but will never, ever be able to prove), there are some awfully bizarre claims here, and plenty of speculation.

- Fraud: False claims, planted by partners like Toqueville.

You have no knowledge that this particular instance was instigated by Microsoft. Microsoft has *definitely* paid off "independent researchers" to come up with misleading studies in the past, but this is not in the least unusual for large companies in the technology industry, much as I hate to say it.

- Legal Attacks: Microsoft funded the SCO attack.

This is certainly worth looking into, but it's not as cut-and-dry as you're making out.


- Secret Hardware Protocols: Working with partners like NVidia (closed source drivers), ATI (closed source drivers), and AMD (the unpublished memory-access fix).

Microsoft has not, to the best of my knowledge, conducted a "secret hardware" campaign or anything of the sort. A lot of the industry is (unfortunately) secretive for competitive reasons -- that doesn't mean that Microsoft is behind it, or even actively encouraging it.

- Locking-in Linux: Working with partners like NVidia and ATI (closed source drivers), possibly Trolltech (the proprietary version of Qt, Qt support for .Net), possibly CodeWeavers (promoting MS Office on Linux, and ActiveX on the Internet), possibly Xandros and a couple of other Linux distributers (proprietary Linux admin tools, Qt-only desktop environment, promoting MS Office on Linux, etc.), possibly Macromedia (Flash), and who knows who else.

Absurd. This isn't even remotely plausible. You have no evidence to back this up, numerous statements to the contrary from reputable people (if you think that Miguel de Izca is lying and secretly being paid off by Microsoft for doing Mono, and that TrollTech is in bed with Microsoft (instead of the much more obvious just trying to make a buck on their products)) you're loony.

- Infiltration: MS plants joining Open Source projects to cause interference, wearing out the leaders through constant complaining, driving away other developers by acting like jerks, pushing the project in bad directions, etc.

Sorry. People are jerks on their own. Microsoft may do this in the future on strategically valuable projects (it's clearly a viable and legal strategy), but I doubt it.

- Infiltration: MS plants joining Open Source projects and pretending to be die-hard supporters, then pushing for overly-tight licensing, convincing others to add special restrictions that limit the software's use (possible examples: DotGNU, XFree86), using LGPL for what should be BSD (CodeWeaver's Wine), using GPL for what should be LGPL (MySQL), and so on.

[Laughs] If Stallman and friends, with their pro-GPL rhetoric, are Microsoft shills, they could just revise the GPL. That's absurd.

The most egregious things that we know happened that I think I'd highlight would be:

* Netscape's server compatibility and attacks on the client by servicing MSIE clients first. These are clear, true cases of anticompetitive behavior.

* Microsoft deliberately monkeying around with DR-DOS compatibility in their applications.

* Microsoft working hard to keep protocols and formats closed and avoiding third-party compatibility to promote lock-in. Not that unusual for the technology industry, sad to say. The Kerberos SMB stuff was a good example.

* Driver signing -- the claim that it's "for security" or "reliability" is as ridiculous as the claims of DRM being "to promote end-user security against malware", and everyone involved is quite aware of the fact. It's to give Microsoft a powerful club.

* OEM pressure. Bundling, doing Windows only, etc.

* Using Office support as a club against Apple.

* Microsoft attempts to make Java Windows-specific have not, as far as I know, been demostrated clearly enough for a court to decide against them, but I'd say that most folks can comfortably say that Microsoft had malicious intent.

* Anti-GPL propaganda and misinformation. It's not as if many GPL fans don't do the same to Microsoft, mind you.

My take.

[bgeer]

I'm seeing a lot of theories about the motivations behind this press release--that they want to smear Linus personally, that they are trying to provoke a response, and so on. I think it's much less ambitious than that, but I also think they were successful at their goal. Let's look at the very first paragraph:

"Popular but controversial 'open source' computer software, generally contributed on a volunteer basis, is often taken or adapted from material owned by other companies and individuals, a study by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution finds."

I think the whole point of this was to get out the adjective "but controversial". The adjective was repeated verbatim in the Yahoo article without a quote attribution. That means that everyone who read it on Yahoo thinks that the reporter is making that characterization.

I think MS has a new strategy, one borrowed from the Bush administration: In the run-up to the Iraq war Bush and his cronies would answer every question about Iraq using the words 'war on terrorism' and 'september 11th'. Even though they never once claimed that Iraq was involved in 9-11, just from word association 53% of Americans believe Hussein was personally involved in it and 44% believe that most or some of the hijackers were Iraqis.

I think MS wants to put this word-association strategy to work for itself. By getting attack dog think-tanks to put out press releases connecting Linux with words like 'controversial' or 'unscrupulous' in the first paragraph, MS would be able to damage Linux's credibility without having to put forth an actual argument. If they can get their blurbs read often enough, it might even stick.