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.

Comments

There's no doubt about it

[jg21]

Andy Tanenbaum is a hero.

Re:There's no doubt about it

[jg21]

whoever startd it or didn't start it, it's clearly at an end now - from that same LinuxWorld piece by Tanenbaum:

Clearing Up Some Misconceptions

I would like to close by clearing up a few misconceptions and also correcting a couple of errors. First, I REALLY am not angry with Linus. HONEST. He's not angry with me either. I am not some kind of "sore loser" who feels he has been eclipsed by Linus. MINIX was only a kind of fun hobby for me. I am a professor. I teach and do research and write books and go to conferences and do things professors do. I like my job and my students and my university. If you want to get a masters there, see my home page for information. I wrote MINIX because I wanted my students to have hands-on experience playing with an operating system.

After AT&T forbade teaching from John Lions book, I decided to write a UNIX-like system for my students to play with. Since I had already written two books at this point, one on computer architecture and one on computer networks, it seemed reasonable to describe the system in a new book on operating systems, which is what I did. I was not trying to replace GNU/HURD or Berkeley UNIX. Heaven knows, I have said this enough times. I just wanted to show my students and other students how you could write a UNIX-like system using modern technology.

A lot of other people wanted a free production UNIX with lots of bells and whistles and wanted to convert MINIX into that. I was dragged along in the maelstrom for a while, but when Linux came along, I was actually relieved that I could go back to professoring. I never really applied for the position of King of the Hackers and didn't want the job when it was offered. Linus seems to be doing excellent work and I wish him much success in the future.

While writing MINIX was fun, I don't really regard it as the most important thing I have ever done. It was more of a distraction than anything else. The most important thing I have done is produce a number of incredibly good students, especially Ph.D. students. See my home page for the list. They have done great things. I am as proud as a mother hen. To the extent that Linus can be counted as my student, I'm proud of him, too. Professors like it when their students go on to greater glory. I have also written over 100 published research papers and 14 books which have been translated into about 20 languages. As a result I have become a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the ACM, and won numerous other awards. For me, these are the things that really count. If MINIX had become a big 'commercial' success I wouldn't have had the time to do all this academic stuff that I am actually more interested in.

Copy of email, /. effect

[blakestah]

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

copy of comparison analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

The comparison analysis linked to in the email (with some long snipets of actual code removed because it violates the slashdot 'postercomment' compression filter when you put it all in).

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:

s->s_imap[0]->b_data[0] |= 1;
s->s_zmap[0]->b_data[0] |= 1;

in minix, in fs/super.c

sp->s_imap[0]->b_int[0] |= 3; /* inodes 0, 1 busy */
sp->s_zmap[0]->b_int[0] |= 1; /* zone 0 busy */

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.

Re:Does anybody else find ESR's writing style odd?

[SoTuA]

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.

Re:slashdotted alread? mirror please

[frankie]

I tried to post a mirror of http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/codecomparison/ alexey.html

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:

1. in linux, include/linux/ctype.h:
in minix, include/ctype.h:

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 are referred 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:
in minix, h/stat.h:

Both the names and values of these constants are specified by the POSIX standard.

3. in linux, in fs/read_write.c:
in minix, in fs/open.c

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.

Re:Like it or not, Linux owes a lot to MINIX

[sbuckhopper]

I know there is a tendancy here to deify Linus, and he deserves so much credit, but Linux overall owes a lot to MINIX. I worked with MINIX back around 1989 and Hendricks should be given a lot of credit for helping to get the whole open source movement rolling.

That's not really what's in question with these series of accusations. Linus does not hide the fact that he does have a lot to be thankful about for MINIX in the creation of Linux, which can be seen in Linus' book.

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.

No OS

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:minor flaws in ESR's message?

[finkployd]

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

Re:The sad part

[pjrc]

Yes, the damage has been done. But complaining loudly does accomplish something useful... ruin ADTI's reputation.

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.

I call *your* bullshit

[InfiniteWisdom]

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.

Early Linux

[pr0f3550r]

It's easy to say that Linux was 'stolen' from other code because when you look at the ability that it has to interoperate now the tendency is to say that it was 'taken'. Having used Linux since the early days, I can tell you that it would have been a lot more feature rich, all lot sooner had it been taken.

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.