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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?
Brown's worst crime is confusing "Linux" with "GNU/Linux" ;-)
Is Ken Brown pregnant with Linus' love child?
*Dun Dun Dun*
How does it end? Tune in next week!
Hmmm.
Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.
I'm just dying to see this so called "academic study" of the history of Linux and the Open Source community get to see the light of day, and get tarnished so badly by everyone.
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).
Stop being afraid of reviews and books - the truth will let itself be seen...
(sorry for the karma whoring - this just drives me nuts!)
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!
That was next weeks episode you insensitive clod!
Hmmm.
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
Cynicism Personified got a hold of a pre-release copy of it, and we posted some similar editorial.
"All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss." - Douglas Adams
...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...
I can't believe I'm reading comments complaining about Stallman's use of the "GNU/Linux" moniker, when this whole Brown debacle highlights how important it is to differentiate between the GNU system and the Linux kernel.
Typical Slashdot reaction to a post about Stallman without understanding a single thing the man says.
Am I the only one that thinks of Root Mean Square when I see RMS? I mean, math is way less confusing than Stallman can be.
Ken Brown will make lots of money from this book because of the massive free publicity.
I hope the mainstream media's reviewers of this book are decent enough to mention that EVEN THE AUTHOR OF MINIX disagrees completely that Linux is a ripoff of Minix.
*Sigh* but he'll make money anyway. Sucks that you can proclaim a big lie and make mad cash from it.
One thing that stood out to me in this article:
"Torvalds' recent announcement that, in the future, Linux kernel contributors will have to certify the origins of their code before it can become part of the kernel."
Why?
Why do open source projects have to prove this for each piece of code? Proprietary projects dont have to do this right? But open source projects always have the code available for the world to check over.
Surely Linus should just accept any code and leave it up to any companys who own and IP it may infringe on to chase it up? Thats why we have patents, copyright etc right?
I cant believe that the SCO lawsuit and MS FUD has lead to this... extra work for Linus.... he should be left to concentrate on producing kernel code not dealing IP issues.
Fine, MS can continue to charge as much as they like for their OS, but from now on it should include the source code so we can check the codes "origins".
What is the big deal here? From my reading of the history of Linux and the statements of Torvalds, the entire point of linux was to reverse engineer Unix so that Torvalds could have an affordable personal unix.
That was also the point behind the development of Minix as well.
Bear in mind that at the time Unix licenses cost many thousands of dollars.
Ahh, in this world of uncertainty at least you can count on good old Stallman to filter EVERY SINGLE THING that ever happens through the Linux vs. GNU/Linux argument.
The thing that boggles my mind about all of this is that it seems like Brown thinks or wants to convince others that Linux ``magically'' appeared in a robust form.
I started using Linux in December 1991 with version 0.11. Stable and mature aren't quite the words I would use for that version, especially when you consider that I had to reinstall it about twice a day and it didn't even have login or a proper shutdown command.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
So why does it matter?
Why should we even bother reading such FUD if we already know the author doesn't posses the capability to make a reasoned argument? And whose fault is it if we get mad at what they say?
It is pieces like this which say far more about Microsoft than they do about Linux. This is as bad as people criticizing Microsoft carte-blanche with no rationale whatsoever.
I suppose these articles are useful as flame-fodder, but they do very little toward actually providing enlightment concerning the issues facing both Windows and Linux.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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
... I thought it was going to be a WWF match. I could only imagine what the commentary would sound like with interviews from their sponsors/trainers.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
- 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's being "rewritten", apparently. Was mentioned in an article a couple of days ago. Allegedly to add in Browns answer to the criticism he's recieved, and the news of Linus wanting more source history control in his tree.
My guess is that it will lose all the debunked bullshit and instead consist of "Look, Linus Torvalds want better source history control in the Linux OS (confusing the kernel with the OS, again), therefore we were right all along no matter what we said! Based on this we draw the conclusion that so there! Greetz to Team McBride and Billy The Goatsex"
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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.
Don't help them beta test their FUD please.
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.
I think this may be the Original picture source.
He definitely cleans up better than I thought.
Want proof? In the entire review copy there isn't A SINGLE WORD that hasn't been used by other writers, sometimes writing on the VERY SAME TOPICS that Ken Brown writes on.
By the way, I'm trying to be "Insightful" more than "Funny"....
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
[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!
To avoid horrible confusion perhaps we should call him GNU/RMS.
an ill wind that blows no good
Where is Hurd? Is it done? Is it usable enough for you to use it for your webserver?
m l.
It is: http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/04/2319209.sht
Frankly GNU has fallen from the Open Souce limelight. Open Office, Mozilla, Linux, and The Gimp have all taken the spotlight away from GNU. Why? Because they are useful.
GNU hasn't ever been a part of Open Source because it belongs to the Free Software Movement which is other completely differenct movement with different goals than the OS movement. Their goal isn't to be popular, it is to be Free (quoting RMS):
The fundamental difference between the two movements is in their values, their ways of looking at the world. For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, ``Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.'' For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.
No matter how much you rant about GNU's invisibility keep in mind that the basic building blocks of the GNU/Linux OS are GNU.
The Clinton plan included an increase in taxes on cigarettes from 24c per pack to 99c. Understandably, PM was not in favour of this, so a Philip Morris executive suggested an astroturf campaign, writing to one of his people:
If you want some astroturfing done, who you gonna call? The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute: And here is their proposal: And over the next two months ADTI ran a PR campaign against the Clinton plan. For the benefit of PM they documented all their activities. All the details are here.I thought my writing and grammar were bad.
Wow.
Lisa Stapleton should consider a night course or two if she continues to write professionally.
Steve
GNU was and a valuable part of Linux but it is now so bogged down by RMS's ego it is loosing it's way. The whole idea of a software social movment and how it is un ethical to sell software just gets to me. Why is it anymore evil to sell software without it's source code than to sell a book with out making it available in machine readable from? Why should I not take a copy of a book and add a chapter or two or none and resell it as long as I give away the "source"?
Frankly I find RMS saying that selling closed source software is immoral as offensive as SCO claiming that Open Source software is unamerican.
The right to give away your work is just as important as the right not to.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It seems to me that the community has already given this guy a lot more consideration (and free press) than he deserves. The guy is a hack. The "institution", as far as I can see, is an unconvincing sham perpetrated by a couple guys in their basement who were just barely smart enough to realize that, when unencumbered by morals, it's trivially easy to hack the media and make them print whatever BS your "sponsors" want distributed.
It's necessary to respond, of course, and do so in a way the media can understand, but enough is enough. If we ignore him, and persuade the media that he's an uninformed kook, he'll go away.
Stallman's arguement isn't that selling the software is unethical just that prohibiting others from owning it is.
No one prohibits you from modifying a car you buy because you own the car. But with proprietary software you're not allowed to modify it when you buy it, because you don't own it.
It's like buying a car but only being able to drive it if you rent software from the car dealer so you can start it up. That would be silly, and yet before the FSF we could only run computer hardware by renting the software used to make the computer run.
Everyone looks around, some point at the servers, some point at the VP, some think they've figured it out and point at themselves.
The VP pulls out an air tank and breathing mask and says, "Wrong." as the giant vacuum outside cuts in...
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
What makes me laugh out loud is the faulty assumption that Linus could not have accomplished the job independently, due to his inexperience.
I once wrote a paper in a College English course that my professor put on the rounds with the other department teachers, as an example of some outstanding work by his students. Several of the professors leveled accusations of plagiarism against me, due to my 'inexperience' I could not have possibly created such work.
These people did not take into account that I was 28 years old at the time (I am 40 now), had been writing my whole life in and out of structured courses, and had ample time to develop my own abilities for critical thinking and composition. I ended up having to persuade them I did not plagiarise the work.
It is interesting to me that in a professional setting no one's word has weight unless 'Doctor' precedes their name, and the burden of proof does not lay with the accusers.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain