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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.
I think the main question that should be asked here, is who is behind the Hatchet Job? Best guesses are SCO and/or Microsoft.
Any further ideas?
Analyst: "There is no (copied code/weapons of mass destruction) in (Linux/Iraq)."
Great Leader: "That's not possible. Your analysis must be wrong. Do it again, and this time, tell me what I want to hear!"
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
I was just getting ready to send out cheques to SCO and Andy Tanenbaum for $699 each.
Trolling is a art,
I think that is what I like about this style. It is *unrevised* and raw. Note to email users? I don't think this guy is applying for a job. He is letting things flow to the keyborad.
... and furthermore
Yeah. It reads like a /. post.
Methinks you doth protest too much.
I do, thou dost, he/she/it doth, we do, you do, they do. Geeze, if you're going to troll, at least try to troll grammatically...
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.
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.
Writings of Mass Duplication?
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
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.
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.
Maybe it falls under the approach of "there's no such thing as bad publicity" - lord knows ESR won't miss an opportunity to write something where he can work in a way to mention "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." I'm amazed it took him over 1,000 words to get around to it this time.
Bad management trumps ideology - Show the world you want better leadership. http://www.timefornewmanagement.com
Way before Linux was on anyone's radar, Eric S. Raymond was Usenet's resident expert on Unix opreating systems for the IBM PC and other personal computers. He published a FAQ regularly and reviewed all the personal i386 Unix systems of the day such as Esix, uPort, and SCO. Eric has been at it a long time, and really knows the his stuff.
Actually, no. I was wondering who this Alexis is, and where I can get some of her world famous tacos.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I didn't read it that way at all. It sounds like he is saying "We know corporations legally use open source software, but is there any way to know that they don't also illegally use it?" And the answer really is 'no'. Unlike open source projects, (which are quite easy to audit the source of) we really have no idea if corporations are illegally copying open source code or not.
Finkployd
If you can't be good, be controversial. All this publicity is just going to sell more books.
I remember the controversy that existed over "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie. The novel was proclaimed as blashphemous to Islam, and a fatwah death sentence was pronounced on the author. Of course, the book sold out as fast as they could print copies. A student friend of mine at the time was proudly showing off his brand new hard copy edition he just bought, even though he could hardly afford his next meal. (He considered this a real prize, as they were selling so fast, it was hard to find a copy anywhere) So I started reading. It was an awful, improbable piece of literature, that undoubtably would have sold no more than a few thousand copies if not for the controversy.
I also remember a story about a US art dealer who was tasked with unloading several thousand prints of a sitting nude from an obsure french painter nobody had heard of. So he displayed the original painting in the front of the store, secretly paid some children a few coins to stand and gawk at it, while calling up the leader of the then equivalent of the "moral majority" with an anonymous tip. He got himself arrested for displaying indecent material, and beat the rap in a high profile trial. Of course the prints all sold out quickly, and the original painting fetched a sizable fortune at auction.
My rights don't need management.
If Linus's reputation is being harmed by patently false and uncorroborated information for the sake of selling books, does that allow him to sue for slander? If so, any lawyers want to take up this case? Brown is getting a lot of free publicity, and other than the messages on slashdot, I don't see articles on CNET or eweek etc. taking up the other side of the story. A lawsuit would shed light on the book's information gathering practices, or lack thereof.
By the way, the garage sales in the very upper-crusty 'burbs around Redmond make for great places to pick up fairly new tech books for cheap, and now's the season!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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.
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.
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.
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.