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More Responses to de Tocqueville Hatchet Job
akahige writes "Fresh from the debunking of the 'Linus couldn't possibly have written an OS without ripping someone off' book published by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Tanenbaum has published an email he got from the consultant hired to do the code comparison between MINIX and Linux. Among other juicy comments, 'pay no attention to this man.' (There was no stolen code, either.) In related matters, ESR was apparently sent a pre-release excerpt of the book which he completely eviscerates with his usual zeal. Another story on NewsForge." See our previous stories if you're coming to this late.
Andy Tanenbaum is a hero.
A message I received from Alexey Toptygin
"Around the middle of April, I was contacted by a friend of mine who asked me if I wanted to do some code analysis on a consultancy basis for his boss, Ken Brown. I ended up doing about 10 hours of work, comparing early versions of Linux and Minix, looking for copied code.
My results are here. To summarize, my analysis found no evidence whatsoever that any code was copied one way or the other. (I realize that Minix predates Linux, but I did the comparison bidirectionally for the sake of objectivity).
While I was working on this in my spare time, Ken kept pestering me to hurry up and finish. He told me he had a paper awaiting publication, and that my analysis was the las bit of data he needed. I sent the final results (which are, exactly as given to Ken Brown, at the above URL) to him on May 17th.
When I called him to ask if he had any questions about the analysis methods or results, and to ask if he would like to have it repeated with other source comparison tools, I was in for a bit of a shock. Apparently, Ken was expecting me to find gobs of copied source code. He spent most of the conversation trying to convince me that I must have made a mistake, since it was clearly impossible for one person to write an OS and 'code theft' had to have occured.
So, I guess what I want to say is, pay no attention to this man; to the best of my knowledge he is talking out of his ass. I apologise for any inconvenience I may have caused you by participating (however indirectly) in Ken's pet project.
Please feel free to reproduce this email and the contents of my analysis webpage."
--Alexey Toptygin
Andy Tanenbaum, 20 May 2004
comparison analysis:
The raw comparison files are very large, but mostly full of false positives. This is due to the way SIM handles lists of constants and SIM's inability to distinguish between function calls and certain elements of syntax.
Only 4 actual similarities were found. They are excerpted in whole, with reference to the respective source files, and discussed. Since the similar code sections are fairly invariant over all versions of minix and linux compared, excerpts will be taken from linux-0.96c and minix-1.2.
1. in linux, include/linux/ctype.h:
[code sipped]
in minix, include/ctype.h:
[code snipped]
These are the 'character type' macros. They predate both minix and linux, and are a part of the majority of C libraries. They are specified in the ANSI C standard (ANSI X3.159-1989), and arereferred to in most C textbooks (i.e. "C++ How to Program" H. M. Deitel, P. J. Deitel --2nd ed. ISBN 0-13-528910-6).
2. in linux, include/linux/stat.h:
[code snipped]
in minix, h/stat.h:
[code snipped]
Both the names and values of these constants are specified by the POSIX standard.
3. in linux, in fs/read_write.c:
[code snipped]
in minix, in fs/open.c
[code snipped]
The behavior of the lseek system call is specified by POSIX. Since it is so simple, practically all implementations will be highly similar.
4. in linux, in fs/minix/inode.c: in minix, in fs/super.c This operation is required in order to correctly mount the minix filesystem. All implementations would need this or equivalent code.
Since, out of thousand of lines of code, only 4 small segments were found to be similar, and since in each case the similarity was required by external factors (the C standard, the POSIX standard, the minix filesystem format), it is highly unlikely that any source code was copied either from minix to linux or vice-versa.
And if you keep reading until the end, he acknowledges that the word "swiped" creates a bad impression/implication, and that Microsoft legally used BSD code.
The BSD TCP/IP stack is quite reusable. Most code isn't.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
But the lameness filter refused several attempts with varied formatting and ecode. Executive summary: out of tens of thousands of lines in Minix and pre-1.0 Linux, there were four similar sections:
a freecache link
The real question here is if Linus stole AT's code from MINIX, which both the creator of MINIX and an independant auditor both say he didn't.
"Everybody knows the moon's made of cheese," Wallace.
Well, it turns out that Linus never did make an operating system. Instead, he just created Linux which is a kernel that happens to be used with most of the GNU System to create OSes such as Debian and RedHat. Of course no one person could create an OS by themselves..... Hell, he wasn't even the only one working on Linux.
"there were shells found with both mustard and sarin gas."
Spent shells that are openly admitted by the White House to be from the Iran-Iraq war period and are therefore devoid of any potency (sarin has a shelf life of two months, I'm not sure about mustard gas)
are emphatically NOT weapons of mass destruction. Even if they were, two shells isn't a reson to massacre over 10,000 civilians who guily of nothing.
Stop watching Fox news, it's turning your brain into mush.
Just because you get paid to write OSS code does not mean that you are, coloquially, a "pro".
Of course not, but just because you write OSS code doesn't mean you do not also write code "professionally". Some of us code professionally and write OSS code either in our spare time or as part of our job. Are there more inept amateur open source coders than inept professional coders? Almost certainly, since anyone can do the former. However they are of little consequence. The real question is are the "cream of the crop" programmers in OSS better than the purely professional coders? The question actually could be phrased as "what is the better motivator for quality? money or doing something you love?. The music industry has clearly answered this question in my opinion, but the market still has to answer it for the coders. Right now there is no clear answer, looking at the top programs out there sometimes OSS is a clear winner, sometimes something proprietary is. It all depends on what your specific needs are.
It also depends on the goals of the program, I don't think anyone would consider AOL's IM to be the best AIM client. It's goals are to display ads to you. Gaim does the instant messaging thing much better (so do most client, open or not). One clear advantage of OSS is that it is designed only to meet the needs to the users, not anything ulterior. Mozilla blocks pop up ads, IE and Netscape didn't not because their users didn't want this, but because it was politically a problem for them to do. OSS also generally has better interoperability with other programs because it is not part of the model to attempt to lock people into using only a specific author's stuff.
Finkployd
from the Newsforge article:
But here again we have Microsoft attempting to use unethical guerrilla marketing tactics to influence public opinion and public policy by funding dishonest studies. I must be getting old -- I still remember the days when a superior product and corporate accountability determined public opinion and policy.
Do anything, anything, ANYTHING to win except develop a better product.
The more pain this causes ADTI, the lower their future credibility sinks, the number of people whose long-term memories record ADTI as the bunch of corporate whores they are... the more damage is done to their prospects of seeking future funding. Even from Microsoft, it won't make sense to pour more money into ADTI if they are widely considered a joke.
Better yet, if ADTI suffers, the public scandal will help deter other "think tanks" from attacking free software when Microsoft or other proprietary vendors come knocking with "research" dollars.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Where does it say anything about the TCP stack? All it say is that portions of software are under the BSD license.
The only way to tell that the TCP stack is one of the portions used is through behavorial analysis.
Well, actually, DOS was written by Seattle Computer Products, and the RIGHTS to it were "stolen" - i.e., by contract trickery and Bill's failing to inform Seattle that he had been approached by IBM to buy rights to it - which he did not own at the time.
While it is true that one can say Bill had no obligation to inform Seattle of the value of their own product, his behavior in crossing out all the "lease" language in the contract and substituting "buy" and then informing Seattle that they could still "have nonexclusive rights" was disingenuous to say the least - if not outright fraud.
You read the way this asshole does business - he once told Heidi Rozen, "Never tell me anything I can use against you." - and you'd know never to do business with him. Sadly, a number of companies have made that mistake and paid for it with lost sales and lawsuits and bankruptcy.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
My co-workers at the time I got involved with Linux were fond of saying, 'What in the world is that, it looks like crap'. To which I would say...'You don't understand, it's free.' It took a lot of hacking about to get it to run and it took hours and hours just to get simple things to work. That is not the case with 'stolen' goods. It's easy to take modern Linux for granted.
Anyone who thinks ESR is a leftist know nothing about his views.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Besides being well funded it is also ongoing. Anyone thinking that the Torqueville Job is a recent one off is wrong.
One of the trolls referred to by ESR - The "Pizduk" known as Nikolay Bezroukov was trolling on a similar assignment as early as the beginning of 2002 (obviously being flamed to charcoal by ESR in 1998 did not teach him a lesson). He tried to get my opinion on some of his scribbling, but he did not quite like what he got. At the time he was trying to compare Open Source to Intelligencia as presented in trash quality English translations of 19th century Russian novels.
In btw, he did not have a clue about the culture and traditions of Russian Science and Engineering as well.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
One possible argument being made by the ADTI is that Linus intentionally reverse-engineered the source code to some other Unix, tidied it up, and published it as his own Linux... possibly re-obfuscating it himself afterwards to make the deed difficult to discover.
Uh..
What would be the point of "reverse engineering" when Linus could just, you know, read Tanenbaum's textbook on operating system design and use that as a basis for how to design a UNIX operating system? Since that would be (1) easier (2) legal (3) and Linus already had a copy of said textbook, whereas he doesn't appear to have had access to the source of any commercial Unices?
When the "Linux infringes on the UNIX ABI" thing was briefly floated by SCO, Linus responded with a long complaint explaining that even if that were a valid legal complaint it wouldn't matter, because Linux didn't follow those ABIs-- Linux doesn't follow the POSIX standard in a number of ways because at the time he first wrote it Linus had no access to a copy of the POSIX standard! The POSIX standard was rather costly to buy a copy of at that point, so Linus had to just make stuff up. One example he gave was that the values of signals in Linux are not the same as they are in UNIX, and this became a big pain later. In short, had Linus been copying from a UNIX, he would have gotten the UNIX parts right because he wouldn't have been forced into so much guesswork.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts