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Stallman vs Ken Brown
An anonymous reader writes "Richard Stallman has become the latest person to speak-out about Ken Brown's "independent" study of Linux, which accuses it of being a Minix/Unix rip-off. Stallman says Brown deliberately confused the Linux kernel vs the GNU project, although I suspect Brown simply didn't know enough to be able to differentiate between the two."
"The actual words I used were quoted correctly, but [author Kenneth Brown] deliberately confuses his terms, like 'Linux.' He confuses the Linux kernel, which I had nothing to do with, and the GNU OS project, which I launched," said Stallman, who characterized such mistakes as "deliberate."M
I believe that Brown is probably far more knowledgeable about the differentiation between the kernel and the GNU project but for the masses it is certainly not something that most people know or care to know.
Perhaps Stallman doesn't realize that it isn't a single person making the confusion it's everyone. The whole GNU/Linux bullshit doesn't help a bit either. Anyone not in the know is going to say, hmm, GNU/Linux, all one thing.
It was certainly FUD but what MS funded "study" isn't?
Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.
This is a surprise? Hell, most of the people who work with FOSS on a daily basis can't agree on whether to use "GNU/Linux" or just "Linux" and whether that means an entire distro or just the kernel. What possible hope has a shill-for-hire layperson who can't be bothered to do research like Ken Brown got?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Is there any chance Brown will just scrap this misbegotten report? When you look at the critiques that have already been made, there's no way he can possibly revise the report to accommodate them. Maybe he should just not publish the report.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
...can be found here (it's inlined in the article). Not bad, for RMS. He kinda looks Jedi-ish. Or like a philosophical gnu ;)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Nice title for the book... So the author's implication is that open source is also communist?
Yeah, because doing something for the betterment of society without wanting to get rich off of it is just un-American...
Mr. Brown is up for the ride of his life (probably the last one as I can't imagine anyone taking him seriously after his paper gets out)
What are the odds that the paper will in fact be published? Couldn't this whole exercise just be a means of stirring up the pot? I can easily imagine a quiet statement along the lines of "the article was not published due to $RANDOM_REASON" coming out in the near future. But the FUD and talk remain fresh in the minds of the public.
(wraps tin-foil tighter)
Ken Brown will make lots of money from this book because of the massive free publicity.
I doubt it. It's being published through Booksurge.com, a vanity publisher.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
A. Tanenbaum has recently posted an email he received. Interesting stuff, in which you'll discover the way K. Brown does his analysis.
stuff here
blah
- http://findu.com
Another software writer's perspective on software writing. Not quite off-topic, more of a sidebar.The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
It is clear that Brown is doing one of two things. Trying to dumb things down for the non-*nix savvy, or trying to propigate negative opinions for the pervayours of Open Source. Both will cause problems for the Open Source community. People who read dumbed down versions of any subject, will end up more confused than if they read a detailed version but can only digest a few sentences or paragraphs. Having someone who is propigating misinformation about a subject, again underminds the proper understanding of that subject and can perpetuate myths that cause fear and confusion. I also believe that a technical subject, by it's nature can never be simplified for easier understanding. The only goal should be better understanding, and the way to accomplish that is by taking smaller morsels of the information and re-enforcing it more often. So, I agree. Brown needs to get his facts straight, whatever his motivation is.
I wish that Linus, Tannenbaum and the whole damn FSF crew would finally go see a lawyer and sue these people for libel. Given that both Tannenbaum and Linus agree on this point they might even be able to subpoena Alexis de Fuckville's mail correspendence with repsect to Microsoft.
I pray for this, in all honesty.
Hmmm...
But if Im a Microsoft OS coder and I contribute some code to the NT Kernel no one will know if I stole it from somewhere. Microsoft doesn't verify each of its coders contributions yeah?
[rationalization]This is a little off-topic, but if you consider the article in question to be Microsoft-generated FUD intended specifically to emasculate Linux, then it ties in a little better.[/rationalization]
I noticed yesterday that one of the articles was on a page with a Microsoft ad that said more people were using Windows Server than Apache, and I've also seen one that compared Windows Server to Red Hat.
Seems to me that Microsoft is now being forced to address the challenge posed by OSS, rather than ignore it. That's not exactly news, but it's interesting to see Linux popping up in MS's ads. Using the competition's actual name in your own advertisements is a bad sign - it says that they are credible enough to warrant discrediting.
The Dalai LLama
... picture it: two servers side by side, then the Apache server starts bumping some bangin' MP3's and bouncing up and down on hydraulics like a tech guy's hittin' the switches, the IT boyz start noddin' their heads, the Windows Server says, "That was awesome!"....
My sig could be your sig!
The point RMS is trying to make is that Linus did not write an operating system, but only a kernel. This distiction is important and shows that Brown is jumping to conclusions on the basis of false assumptions.
To me, the really boggling thing is that Ken Brown says that Linux must have been stolen from Minix because one man couldn't do it, yet overlooks the fact that Minix was a one man show.
I'm sorry but Ken Brown is a dirtbag.
I think you're missing his point. Microsoft, for example, doesn't require that each and every programmer certify that they haven't illegally copied anything every time they want to check something in.
You're right. In that sense, I don't think anybody else does this... Both open-source and proprietary projects. I was thinking of legal obligations.
However, in a proprietary project, you're presumably working for a company, and they are paying you to write code for them. If you steal code, the company has a great deal of leverage because they can fire you.
How often this has actually occurred is a different question, I admit.
In an open source project, there is no such agreement. Potentially, there is no relationship at all between the submitter and the submittee... This exposes the submittee to potential abuse.
The way I see it, Linus is establishing such a relationship. This makes the situation closer to the proprietary arrangement. IMHO.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.