Slashdot Mirror
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.
Anyone who has the book know what the ADTI's claim on code obfuscation was and why the issue was even mentioned?
Hi -
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.
TWR
Actually, this strongly resembles the process I've seen when an Open Source project dissects a tricky bug. Everybody posts their opinion and analysis on it, and eventually, someone figures out the exact answer and the problem is solved. Kind of like scientists figuring something out too.
Of course, something like this is so fuzzy that there isn't really 'a solution'. But the process is still similar.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
You're misunderstanding him.
It is difficult for amateur OSS programmers to lift code because it is above their ability.
Proprietary shops are able to hire talented indivduals who 1) are familiar with code reuse, and 2) have the ability to adapt existing code to other projects.
No contradiction at all.
I hope Mr. Brown is getting compensated well, because he's soon going to find that's he's completely destroyed his career. I seriously doubt that anyone will wish to obtain his services after this fiasco.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
That reminds me of the exact time I realized that Linux would overtake MS. It was while reading an article the Economist published a few years ago that profiled something related to Linux. Their summary conclusion was it's small but we wouldn't bet against it as this is the same method that scientists have been using for the last few centries.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
From here
Photos.
The sad part of this is that it really makes little difference just how much people rip into this piese of literary excrement. Since it is "published" the majority of its intended audience will never even hear a whiff of any criticism, no matter how much we holler here.
Compare to the thriving business of fortune telling or psycics (or evangelists), or of convinced political partisans. Debunking is happening continuously, but it doesn't even make a dent in these charlatans pocketbooks, as their marks do not hear about it anyway. They just aren't consumers of the kind of media that will publish anything critical of their chosen belief.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
here.
posted almost at the same tiem as your post.
could linus sue these guys for libel? not that I would advocate that but I was wondering whether there would be legal basis for such a suit.
meep
I find ESR slightly more scary then RMS (Since ESR likes guns a lot) but his post from the link is quite good at destroying, piece by piece, most of the arguements this anti linux book has.
My favourite quote:
"If the inventor of Minix agrees with the inventor of Linux that Linux is not a derivative work of Minix, who are *you* to claim otherwise?"
I also liked this one:
"Really, there are only two factions. One says Theft is wrong. Proprietary software is also wrong. Don't do either. The other, which I belong to, says Theft is wrong. Proprietary software is mostly crap. Therefore, we don't need to either steal it or condemn it as wrong, just write better code. ";
---
hr@maficstudios.com
It all sounds 'fishy' that all of a sudden we have all this debate about Linus, and others like him.. Just makes me wonder what the true reason behind it all is. Sure it sounds like 'conspiracy theory', but with the way things have been in the industry lately, its not that far fetched.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Heh, you should read PJ's take on it, as this story is also covered on Groklaw
... Of course, IANAL.
Speaking of which, has anyone else noticed the singular omissions Brown of AdTI is making here? One might think that he was acting with a reckless disregard for the truth, which counts as evidence of "actual malice." Not that that should be surprising to us, as those on SCO's side of things have been known for defaming people before (see my sig or journal), but it might be a basis for a lawsuit, even though Linus is likely a "public figure"
And another question is "why?" The whole thing is silly and will eventually be discredited and forgotten in short order. The problem is that it takes a great deal of time, emotion, and energy to do the discrediting. It is great that people are coming out of the woodwork to explain why this is so bad, but their time could be better spent spreading good news rather than discounting bad news.
In fact, all hackers condemn IP theft - this is what distinguishes us from the cracker/phreak subculture. Even the FSF faction that thinks proprietary code is evil has repeatedly and publicly condemned piracy and stealing other peoples' code. They want to destroy the proprietary system, but they insist on doing it by their own efforts, not by theft.
Mostly true, but not intirely. Freesource hackers seem all be against stealing proprietary code but I seem to remember stallman endorsing music "piracy" during one of his speeches.
You claim that "To date no other product comes to life in this way", presenting Linux as a unique event that requires exceptional explanations. This is wrong. Many other open-source projects of the order of complexity of the early Linux kernel predated it; the BSD Unixes, for example, or the Emacs editor.
Wow. Stallman never ceases to impress me. I knew that gcc was as large and complex as linux but I never realized that emacs was too.
Torvalds's ambiguity about "GNU/Linux" in 2001 was not complicated; he dislikes the term rather strongly but was at the time reluctant to get into a political scrap with Stallman, whom he personally dislikes. The dislike has since hardened and become sufficiently public that I am not betraying a confidence by writing this.
Sad that they don't get along. Linus is such a happy go lucky guy that it seems out of character for him to dislike anything.
No, Linus came out bad too. Tanenbaum appeared to be dissing Linux because he felt it was inferior. Linus took the bait and replies, something he shouldn't have done. And when Linus was ready to end the thing (the "Flamewar over" post), Tanenbaum couldn't let go and just continued the thing. He came off as an arrogant bastard ("If you were my student you'd get an F"). Overall the whole thing was ugly, but the point is that Tanenbaum is no angel where Linux is concerned.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
From the funniest movie of all time:
Linux's design is obsolete. But as obsolete designs go, it's doing quite well.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Well, if it's truly false, and the author has been told by several independent sources before the publication, and he still publishes it, how is that not libel?
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
ESR has had a nasty habit of donning a tin-foil hat, jumping up and down and then ranting like an in-coherent zealot - to the detrement of OSS in the eyes of CxO types. "Look at how this loony, a OSS leader, responds - is this the type of person you want associated with your business?"
/. trolls could have done better.
Unfortunately for Mr. Brown, ESR seems to be responding to the critisism of his past rants and couter-productive behaviour. This one, though perhaps self-serving at times, is measured and based on facts. AdTI's strategy of provoking a senseless flamewar with the OSS community is backfiring. If they had of made a more convincing argument, they may have gotten somewhere, but as it is, any of the
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Unless he's one of those incomptetent people who have no idea how incomptetent they really are
Ah, time to trot out one of my favorite links:
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessment - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 1999 Vol. 77, No. 6, 1121-1134
An entertaining read.
I was part of the discussion, and I still say they're both wrong about each other's systems.
It's a lot harder to get decent performance out of a microkernel, so Linus wasn't wrong to build Linux as a monolithic kernel, and Andy's criticisms of that aspect of its design were over the top.
But Minix' performance problems were due more to its goal as a teaching system than the fact that it was a microkernel, so Linus was wrong to so vehemently attack microkernels... and he's wrong to continue doing so today.
It strikes me that ESR and others who shout loudly about how awful this book is/is going to be are making a big mistake. In the face of unethical and ridiculous statements from AdTI and SCO silence speaks more loudly than loud protestations.
If you must say something then how about "I'm not going to dignify that with a response."
John.
The fact is that these claims are a well-funded marketing campaign to create FUD about Linux because those entities which are finding themselves less able to compete with it on technical merit have to attack it in other ways.
There are already a number of IP related attacks--Microsoft's "Shared Source" for one is calculated to give some of the benefits of having the source available, while crippling the ability of anyone who might want to use it in GPL'd software. There are also issues with patented standards, like Microsoft's XML patents. To be fair, this cuts both ways, I seem to remember someone (Lucky Green?) patenting using DRM to control the use of "pirated" software, after a Microsoft speaker claimed to have not thought of doing that. Indeed, on might theoretically patent something and make the *only* way to use that patent to incorporate the GPL'd software one provides. This is certainly somewhat more coercive than the GPL usually is (since generally, if you don't like it, you can write your own damned code instead of taking mine), but it is yet another way to advance the public interest via IP law.
Back to the point, we're looking at a well-funded character assasination attempt here. And if we're not, it sure as hell looks that way. I'm certainly not convinced that we should be ignoring this, since they're working on convincing the types who don't read Slashdot, and who aren't likely to see all the facts contrary to this insipid book.
I mean, I'm just waiting for Lyons of Forbes (a scolecophagous scorbutical scoundrel, in my biased opinion), or Enderle to write some poorly-researched prattle about what this "proves." Then, only to turn and complain about the questioning of their reputations, in spite of their being known more for quoting press releases than for doing independent research... And no, calling a company to confirm that it believes its own press releases is hardly Pulizer material.
But you're right. This isn't new. Lyons wrote an insipid character-assasination piece against PJ, defaming her with spurious allegations and incredibly weak associations to some random troll he quoted off the Internet. Enderle has called those who oppose SCO "terrorists," the crime being pointing out to the media that he has no credibility and talks out his ass half the time. Oh, and some people alledgedly sent him hatemail. That's not right, but it's nothing new, and his article goes far beyond mere hatemail, especially when he invited it with his flamebait writings, painting so many with the same brush, doing worse than the things he accuses others of, in my biased judgement.
And my favorite, the one enshrined in my slashdot journal, is where SCO set out fake signs to defame the people picketing them--ones claiming to support communism and whatnot. The Groklaw article on that is linked in my journal, and it even has nice pictures, so you can read them for yourself.
So no, I have no intention of ignoring this campaign to malign us all. It's not likely to stop on its own. I would hope that anyone with standing to sue would at least consider doing so. I don't think this should be left to stand, even if I find it to be in the credit of Linus and the others that they are not litigious.
Any further ideas?
Sun.
It's too direct for Microsoft (and too bungled too). Their FUD engine is well greased and is quite honestly self-perceived to be too above this troll trash to be implicated. Not that there aren't moneys from Allen being moved around on the side, but that's not official Microsoft policy. Granted, Microsoft has admitted
to funding Tocqueville but there's a missing beneficiary.
Sun, on the other hand, is fighting for their life though it's receiving little coverage. Linux has decimated Sun's sales, and their missteps with Java have only frustrated efforts to find a solution - any solution. Perhaps some of the settlement money from Microsoft went here instead of directly to Sun?
Consider: Who does having Linux portrayed as stolen property push the Linux base to?
- FreeBSD/OpenBSD/netBSD? Not at all. If it was impossible for Linux to create Linux and therefore Linux is TheftWare, the *BSDs are next in line for accusations and implications.
- SCO? This fossil? The same fossil one of their largest investors (and slush fund source) says should be canned? The fossil that litigation targets like Daimler Chrysler have confessed to not have used for nearly a decade? Doubtful.
- Apple? A more interesting theory, but OS/X != Intel *NIX.
- Microsoft? They're not at all in position to capture the Intel *NIX market. Convert to XP? How?
Solaris, on the other hand, presents an inviting candidate for migration should the F/OSS *NIX's need a commercial home.
*scoove*
Andy teaches operating systems theory and design. The monlithic *NIX kernel had been tweaked and perfected for 21 years at that point, its interfaces were well designed and (reasonably) well documented, it was not interesting from a pure research or teaching perspective. 13 years later, some things have changed, but still the actual linux kernel work is "polishing the turd" that Thompson and Ritchie created at Bell Labs. The linux kernel is now a base for some of the more promising research in CS theory (the O(1) scheduler comes to mind), but linux is not a pure research OS by any streach of the imagination.
Look at where we are heading now on the hardware side, NUMA, Async Processors, and Multi-core processors all have interesting side-effects when you look at micro vs monolithic kernels. When one looks at Sun's "FireMan" next-gen TCP/IP stack, it has elements of a microkernel personality siting on top of the Sun kernel. OSX/darwin's development also seems to favor moving to a pure microkernel arch in the future as Power5 and Power6 are developed. Imagine if the Quartz layer was simplified down to another microkernel running on the base Niwrad kernel.
I guess what I'm saying is that you have two different worldviews represented in that flamefest between Andy and Linus. Andy's itch to scratch was theoretical, Linus's proved to be practical. Both are valid and both are important to this young science, so don't be so quick to judge the good doctor for being honest about his student's work.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
I'm beginning to think that this couldn't have been done by Microsoft, simply because it's so bad for their position. In order to have effective FUD, you have to make vague claims that people might worry about. If you make specific false claims, they can be refuted. And if you make specific false claims which offend the authoritative sources, you don't have FUD, you have a straw man.
I think this book, along with the press surrounding it, will do a lot to defuse the FUD that Microsoft and SCO have spread. The vague "Linux may infringe something" claims will be clarified in people's minds to "Linux might have copied Minix". And then they can be countered, because the owner and author of Minix has said that Linux didn't copy it. If anyone knows, it would be him. So now people's vague ideas will be that the "Linux may infringe something" claim turned out to be false. (Of course, the logic here is flawed; just because Linux doesn't infringe on Minix doesn't mean that it couldn't infringe on something else; but people don't think that way, or they wouldn't buy FUD in the first place).
Microsoft has been good at producing FUD. SCO has even been reasonably good at it (although revealing particular lines of non-infringing Linux code was a mistake there). But this has a serious lack of uncertainty. It gives the impression that, in order to worry about Linux's IP, you'd have to ignore all information remotely relevant, from every possible source, including the ones supposedly wronged. This is like accusing someone of murdering someone who is still alive and willing to testify for the defense. So I think that Microsoft didn't sponsor this, or at least didn't sign off on the result; SCO probably didn't either (although they've messed up worse in the past). I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be someone like Sun, though. They could benefit from Linux looking bad, or from Linux looking good. For that matter, they could really use a justification for their former coldness to Linux, while allowing them to become enlightened about it (considering that they're using it now).
The hysterical paert for me is, having taken both Mr Tannenbaum's Networking and OS course in the late eighties, early nineties, was that it was stupefyingly simple to get a passing garde, if not a 10 (scale 1 to 10, 10 good) in the book courses. The books were a pleasant and fast read, and, according to college culture in the Netherlands at the time, nothing on the tests would not be in the books (So I stopped going. Duh; they were morning courses.) The test for both these introductory courses would consist of five relatively simple essay questions requiring a, maximum, 5 sentence answer, out of a standard pool of, oh, say, 25 questions at most and all the previous tests and correct answers were archived and retrievable at the faculty student union.
In other words, to ace the test you had to memorize not even the whole wonderful books, but 25 very clearly explained features of networks or OSes, along the lines of "list the 7 layers if the OSI model".
If you couldn't ace either of those tests in the first of the allowed three hours, you were a slow writer, or you just simply hadn't done your legwork to the copying machine. It never took me more than a week to study for either, and I didn't get 10s on them because I was on Usenet too much. The practical section of the work for either course consisted of having eight weeks to modify his clearly written C code for Minix or a networking stack. If you were new to C and compiling your OS for the first time like most of us were, you could actually get in trouble and be confused and be late, otherwise it was pretty straightforward. (Mind you, the times were such we were doing everything on 5.25" floppys, and 3.5" floppys were these things only the macheads had seen.)
In short, as far as undergrad life went, if someone went all happy happy joy joy that s/he passed a course by the great Tannenbaum, the appropriate reaction was to cock an eyebrow and wish them the best of luck in the rest of their computing career: s/he'd need it. Maybe things got way way tougher once you became a grad student with him, but an undergrad Tannenbaum grade just didn't mean that much.
The term "intellectual property" is vague (here, ESR means copyrights, rather than trademarks or patents), and the term "theft" doesn't apply particularly well. The wordier statement "all hackers condemn the unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted works, with the exception of fair and personal use" is somewhat more accurate, though probably still not true. Even better would be "all hackers condemn plagiarism," which is really what putting your name on someone else's code is. Plagiarism is a matter of honor, not law, and is somewhat more likely to be something that all hackers -- a pretty big and diverse group -- might condemn.
I know at least one hacker (ahem, a libertarian, even) who condemns copyrights and patents altogether and would probably describe ESR's assertion as nonsensical or undefined.
Condeming IP theft, Eric says, "is what distinguishes [hackers] from the cracker/phreak subculture." Nonsense. Destructive intent is what distinguishes crackers from hackers. Denial-of-service attacks and website vandalism have nothing to do with so-called "IP theft."
For the record, all hackers also don't use the hacker logo, any more than all hackers channel Greek gods. Eric would do well to describe his own opinions and let me describe my own.
I dropped by adti.net and read some of Brown's other stuff. I think it's safe to say he simply doesn't understand the technologies that he writes about. His description of VoIP at http://www.adti.net/voip_primer.html is a confusing mess of buzzwords that as often as not seem to explain things exactly backwards, but once he finishes the technology explanation and starts discussing public policy, it gets less confusing, and perhaps more accurate. My favorite quote from his VoIP paper, by the way, is "What the Bells Are Arguing Regarding Long Distance?". I must assume your base are belong to Bell.