Ken Brown Responds to His Critics

Comparing Apples and Oranges. by bjarvis354 · 2004-06-04 11:33 · Score: 5, Informative

Comparing the MINIX kernel to the Linux kernel is like comparing a microkernel to a monolithic one...Hey wait a minute!

Re:Comparing Apples and Oranges. by zurab · 2004-06-04 12:59 · Score: 5, Informative

Just shows the guy knows nothing about the subject matter, he is just creating some fictional story in his own little world:

Is it likely that a student (Linus Torvalds) with no operating systems experience, a non-Unix licensee, without any use of Minix or Unix source code, could build a functioning kernel in six months -- whereas it took you (Tanenbaum) three years to build Minix?

I think he already replied to that by saying "yes." Since Minix was worked only part-time during those 3 years. And creating a simple kernel for limited hardware and limited functionality is not that hard of a task as it's made out to be in this case.

Another problem with Tanenbaum's logic is that he only presents examples of people that were Unix licensees ...

Tanenbaum was not a Unix licensee and he told you the task was possible to accomplish in few months if he had devoted more time to it.

Yet Tanenbaum vehemently insists that Torvalds wrote Linux from scratch, which means from a blank computer screen to most people. No books, no resources, no notes -- certainly not a line of source code to borrow from, or to be tempted to borrow from.

Making stuff up eh? When you have no logical argument to make, just use your creativity. I am assuming Linus had programming books, knowledge and education, a compiler, and other tools, including an existing OS - Minix. Not to say that he copied code from Minix, as Tanenbaum already showed.

The GNU team contributed their GCC compiler, a complicated product with over 110,000 lines of code to the Linux project. Without the compiler, it is very likely that the Linux project would not have succeeded. The GNU team only asked that the product be called GNU/Linux, a very simple request for helping to make him famous. But Torvalds silently, but deliberately let the naming idea die.

Eh? Where do you begin? "Contributed" to who - Linus? Kernel called GNU/Linux? I don't recall reading anywhere anyone insisting the kernel should be called GNU/Linux. Surely, the guy knows nothing about the subject matter he is trying so hard to talk about.

How much 'inspiration' did Linus get from Minix? AdTI argues clearly enough to credit the Prentice Hall product. Not in conversation either, but within the copyright and/or the credits files of the kernel. Quite noticeably, however, there is not one acknowledgement of Minix anywhere in the Linux kernel.

Because Linus didn't copy any code from Minix. How many times does this guy have to be told, and by how many people? Or maybe he wants to come in and specify files and line numbers like SCO did? Oh wait a minute...

I also found quotes taken out of context quite amusing:

Tanenbaum insists that we are wrong to bring any of this up, but ironically, he comments on his site, "but Linus' sloppiness about attribution is no reason to assert that Linus didn't write Linux(8)."

Linus decided he was not the inventor of Linux commenting in a ZDNet story, "I'd agree that 'inventor' is not necessarily the right word(9)"

And finally, a reply to:

Linux is a leprosy; and is having a deleterious effect on the U.S. IT industry because it is steadily depreciating the value of the software industry sector.

Err... replace "Linux" with "competition" - because competition in general is also very bad - it has a deleterious effect and is depreciating the value of the products and services that our patriotic abusive monopolists provide to masses, right? Idiot! Why don't we ask HP (a Unix licensee, ironically) how "deleterious" Linux has been for them last year. Or maybe you want to try IBM, another Unix licensee?
Re:Comparing Apples and Oranges. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-06-04 15:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

Mr Brown has not the foggiest, vaguest clue about the essence of the human creative process.

When we create something "new", we are not forced to return to the first glimmerings of conciousness and higher cognitive function. Even a popular work like James Burkes "Connections" would tell him that *nothing* created by man gets created in a vacuum.

Furthermore, "standing on the shoulders of giants" is so utterly pervasive in science and engineering, and I can't believe that Mr. Brown doesn't understand this.

Clearly, Linus didn't start with a 200litre drum of refined silicon dioxide, and build himself a computer. He had tools. Like Minix, and a C compiler. And a keyboard, cpu, memory, CRT. And a place to live and work, and a regular supply of food and water. He likely took a shower once in awhile, and might even have been using electricity purchased from the power company, rather than cluttering his brain and wasting his energies repeteadly running magnets through
hastily-assembled coils of wire.

Clearly Linus stole the idea of his own existence from his parents, who, at least according to some, owe a great debt to some chimpanzees and a man called Charles Darwin.

Following Mr. Browns argumet, Linus can't reasonably have claimed to have invented anything, since the dependancy tree for his creative process (as described above) is actually staggering in scope.

OMG. by jhill · 2004-06-04 11:34 · Score: 5, Funny

A village is out there, crying, like baby jesus, because it's idiot ran away...please send him back.

Embedded systems.... by kidgenius · 2004-06-04 11:36 · Score: 5, Insightful

Does he not realize that Linux runs on embedded systems. He makes a comment that:
"Software is also embedded in hardware, chips, printers and even consumer electronics. Should embedded software become 'free' too, it would be natural to conclude the value of hardware will spiral downward as well." Let's see....PDA's, routers, cell phones, dvd players....yup, they all run Linux, and I don't see the value of these pieces of hardware spiraling downwards. The "cost" may drop, but the "value" could stay the same, or increase due to the possibly increased functionality (among other things) that running Linux on these devices allows.

Re:Embedded systems.... by chad9023 · 2004-06-04 12:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

Obviously he's never heard of BusyBox, or seen the list of products which run it. Or the list of products which run it without giving it credit. While some companies certainly seem to enjoy using F/OSS and giving credit where credit is due, others seem to have no problem ripping off the work others have done, atleast when they don't think they'll get caught.

A good point was made on GrokLaw the other day: it's easy for commercial companies to make sure that none of their code has made it's way into F/OSS, but it's monumently harder for members of the open source community to make sure none of their code is being misused in commercial software and/or products.
Re:Embedded systems.... by meburke · 2004-06-04 12:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

This (Ken Brown's portion) is actually a semantics-challenged statement that arrives at good economics: It makes total sense that as the cost of producing/reproducing human effort is reduced, then a competitive market will reduce the cost of the product to the consumer. I remember when I could make a pretty good living selling a couple of Vector Graphics Z-80/S-100 systems each week. The margins were 50% or higher and we were able to charge a reasonable amount for consulting and programming. Within a few years, the component costs, OS costs and expectations had reduced margins to about 15% on systems costing only 1/10 as much for the same features. It makes total sense that consumers would be interested in almost any method to to reduce their incremental cost, but we had to do about 30 times the business to make the same amount of money. In addition, the maintenance costs on proprietary methods and products is very good for the proprietor, but a real annoyance for the end user and consumer. People seem to resent being bent over a barrel while they are trying to accomplish their own goals. Lastly, the cost of reproducing a solution is much less than the cost of initially deriving a solution. One thing I like about producing software solutions is: NO INVENTORY! It's all brainsweat, and the distribution of the solution is likely to be jsut as valuable to the last person who uses it as to the first person, even though the cost of distribution is so much less.

--
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Re:Embedded systems.... by zcat_NZ · 2004-06-04 22:08 · Score: 5, Funny

" No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system."
- Bill Gates, from "Programmers at Work" by Microsoft Press.

You reading this, Mr Brown?

--
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2

Does he think Linux was completed overnight? by Brackney · 2004-06-04 11:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

Am I missing something, or is the implication made that Linux became a fullblown and mature OS overnight? The earliest version that Linus put together was incomplete and immature. No one ever claimed that Linus got from version 0.0 to 2.x.y all by his lonesome. We all know (now) that he had plenty of help from Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy...

Re:Does he think Linux was completed overnight? by the+gnat · 2004-06-04 14:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you read closely, he implies that Linus wrote version 1.0 of the kernel.

Yes, he claims that Linus and his supporters were claiming that Linus authored 32,000 lines of code that made a working kernel in a year as a first-year CS student. I read this and thought, wow, maybe Brown has a point. That's a pretty complex app.

So I downloaded some older kernels. I decided to look back earlier than 1.0. 0.01 is available from kernel.org, and is dated from the fall of 1991. With headers and everything, 'wc' reports that the entire thing is less than 7500 lines. (That includes blank lines, comments, lines with a single brace, etc.)

By the time you get to 0.95, released six months later, the kernel has grown to just under 9000 lines. The memory allocation routines are not even by Linux, but contributed by Theodore T'so at MIT.

By July of '92, four months after 0.95, the 0.96c kernel has around 11,500 lines. Linux already has mailing lists and alt.os.linux, and a growing user community testing the code.

Version 1.0 is not released until the spring of 1994, by which point the project was two and a half years old, and had 80 contributors listed. It is indeed around 32,000 lines, and is clearly not all Linus' work. It had also undergone extensive testing by a very skilled community.

Linus' original kernel seems like a very reasonable project for an undergrad, and someone pointed out that it was pretty raw at the beginning. I wrote a large code library this spring, and although it's packed with comments it's about 6000 lines. And I'm a biologist, not a CS student. Looking at kernel 0.01, I think I could write this if I wanted to, once I learned some basic OS design. (Guiding it from an undergrad project into an industry-leading product, on the other hand, I could not do, and therein lies Linus' real brilliance.)

The complete history of kernel releases is publically available on the web, and it's easy to verify that a) the original kernel was both small and incomplete, b) the initial growth of the kernel was slow, c) version 1.0 was neither written in a year nor did it pretend to be written solely by Linus. In other words, Brown is ignorant and/or flat-out lying, and can't even get the facts in his rebuttal correct. He's not doing much to dispell the impression that this is a paid disinformation campaign with little factual basis.

Brown says it all here: by roystgnr · 2004-06-04 11:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

Isn't fair to question the character and ethics of individuals that espouse contempt for intellectual property? Isn't fair to question their character, when the core of their business strategy is trust?

I certainly agree.

The difference is that I'm smart enough to recognize that when Linus Torvalds is telling a joke it isn't an expression of contempt for intellectual property, but when Ken Brown is viciously slandering an innocent author in order to try and sabotage the use of that authors creation it shows utter contempt for IP law.

Unfortunately, although everyone has questioned Brown's character, Brown doesn't want to answer any of those questions. This is just another "Linus couldn't have written Linux himself!" rant, which posts all of Browns leading questions and attempts to trap people into misleading soundbites, but which doesn't answer the most obvious question everyone has been asking: who is paying him to write this crap?

Hmmm... by Reteo+Varala · 2004-06-04 11:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Linux is a leprosy; and is having a deleterious effect on the U.S. IT industry because it is steadily depreciating the value of the software industry sector."

I think I read a phrase once that fit quite nicely... what was it again?

Oh, yeah, that's it...

"Tough. Adapt or die."

--
The Penguin Producer

Re:Hmmm... by Blastrogath · 2004-06-04 12:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Linux is a leprosy; and is having a deleterious effect on the U.S. IT industry because it is steadily depreciating the value of the software industry sector."

This is nothing new. What do you think henry ford did to his competitors? The only way to avoid "steadily depreciating the value" of somebodies business is to never invent better ways to do anything. This is blatant anti-progress retoric.

--
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato

Re:USPTO respected? by Compholio · 2004-06-04 11:42 · Score: 5, Funny

It's more like internationally laughed at for approving anything that shows up on its doorstep and not even checking its own database for conflicts.

Yeah but .. by kbsingh · 2004-06-04 11:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

Mr Brown, seems to have made loads of statements with no real basis to back him up at all - much unlike his critics who have used real facts and figures to build upon. Where did he come up with statements like 'Linux is a leprosy' - and have nothing at all to say as to why he thinks its like that. He has no answer to his critics, so he will evade the real issues and facts, just try to keep people thinking about different things by such a response.

Okay, so he says that Linux might not be good for the s/w industry ( uneducated and uninformed as he is, he is most likely wrong ) - but is that the only industry there is in this whole world ? dont the other industries ( who have been held to ransom, more or less by organisations like MS and Sage ), also have a right to benefit ? If you look at the reality - the user base is many many times higher than the provider base. So how does the economy suffer ?

All in all, its not even worth commenting on this anymore. Mr. Brown is the hall mark of a paid dog, who is going to make a fwe bucks from his backers who want to see Linux down - cause they are incapable of doing that in real terms, tech terms or in direct compeition - so they must resort to people like Ken Brown to create this fascade and false FUD.

Look around you - does any of this work ?

If Linux wasent as big a threat to MS and such companies, they would leave it alone. But they cant, because Linux IS very much a threat - and its breaking them down.

Re:USPTO respected? by ValentineMSmith · 2004-06-04 11:45 · Score: 5, Funny

The United States is the home of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an internationally respected agency

Says the article... I'm sure a few round here would disagree.

Well, I don't disagree that the United States is the home of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

I'm a little iffy on the "...internationally respected agency..." part, though

--
Karma: Chameleon - mostly influenced by bad '80s New Wave music

Newsforge comments as primary source by ozten · 2004-06-04 11:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

This guy actually uses Newsforge comments as a primary source! He is commenting on Cisco code theft and that open source zealots are happy it happened, his footnote 3 points to a Comments page.

Sooooo gooood.

Re:What a hatchet job by raistphrk · 2004-06-04 11:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

Um, while this is a blatant troll job here, it's certainly not a good one.

The problem is, Ken Brown HASN'T made a great case. The guy contacted a bunch of Unix hackers pretending to be writing a book about the Unix timeline, when in reality his only agenda was to come up with some load of hooey about Linus stealing source from Minix. And the sad part is, he was repeatedly given information quite to the contrary, and completely ignored all of that data. I mean...when Dr. Tanenbaum comes right out and says "Well, while I don't approve of Linus adding tons of functionality to Linux, because I'm a minimalist, I will say that Linus didn't steal any of my source code", and yet, Brown completely disregards Dr. Tanenbaum's answer, you know the guy is hardly a credible author.

No, the only hatchet job I've seen is one carried out by Ken Brown against Linus. Brown set out with an agenda: to try and say that Linux was pirated, so that he could lend credence to the SCO case, to Microsoft, and to all of the anti-open source/free software zealots out there. The guy got lambasted by computer scientists because he was dead wrong, and he should've seen it coming. I mean...his claims are about as good as the wackjobs who routinely crop up to claim that the Earth is flat. Those guys get tons of PR, because EVERYBODY AND THEIR DOG KNOWS THEY'RE WRONG. Then, after they're properly put in their place, they leave the spotlight and we resume our lives, until the next idiot comes along with another worthless and asinine assertation.

From scratch... by Brandybuck · 2004-06-04 11:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

Yet Tanenbaum vehemently insists that Torvalds wrote Linux from scratch, which means from a blank computer screen to most people. No books, no resources, no notes -- certainly not a line of source code to borrow from, or to be tempted to borrow from.

Mr. Brown is deliberately playing his audience for fools. Of course Linus didn't create Linux from tabula rasa. He didn't start with a blank harddrive and manually toggle in hex until he managed to get it booted up to an editor to start typing in Linux source! Duh!

When Linus "used" Minix and GCC, he used them as tools. Is this so hard for Mr. Brown to get through his skull? Apparently so.

Is it likely that a student (Linus Torvalds) with no operating systems experience, a non-Unix licensee, without any use of Minix or Unix source code, could build a functioning kernel in six months

Mr. Brown seems to be making the argument later than Linus couldn't of possibly have written Linux 2.6 in six months. Of course! He came up with version 0.1 instead. Although it was functional, it wasn't terribly useful.

People would take Ken Brown more seriously if he didn't write a book that was nothing more than his attempt to discredit his own erroneous assumtions.

--
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!

Re:The GNU/Linux naming issue, as I see it. by Nasarius · 2004-06-04 11:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

He shouldn't. That's up to the people who package and/or sell the OS. Using "Linux" to refer to a UNIX-style system built with the Linux kernel, GNU tools, etc. has caught on. It may not be "proper", but it's certainly not illegal. In other words: who cares?

--
LOAD "SIG",8,1

Alexis de Tocqueville once observed... by eggstasy · 2004-06-04 11:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. So now you know where they got the name. We live in a world of greed and spin, and AdTI is out to make a buck... brainwashing the people... being paid to hide "complex truths" from their view, replacing them with whatever simple lies the people will prefer to believe.
They aren't very original in this respect, but they should be feared rather than scorned.
You never know exactly how many influent people will buy this crap, not to mention the masses.
People cling to silly myths and urban legends for decades!

Re:Here it is, exactly what Brown is up to! by goon+america · 2004-06-04 12:16 · Score: 5, Informative

You may also be interested in the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution's Disinfopedia page

Re:USPTO respected? by Delos · 2004-06-04 12:24 · Score: 5, Funny

Kind of like /. ;-)

Re:What a hatchet job by swillden · 2004-06-04 12:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

I mean...when Dr. Tanenbaum comes right out and says "Well, while I don't approve of Linus adding tons of functionality to Linux, because I'm a minimalist, I will say that Linus didn't steal any of my source code", and yet, Brown completely disregards Dr. Tanenbaum's answer, you know the guy is hardly a credible author.

The thing that jumped out at me when I read Brown's little diatribe is that the man loves to rave about intellectual property, but clearly has no understanding of IP law.

A few examples.

Specifically, Torvalds and the Linux kernel management team accept blind source code contributions. Then, they ask for a certification. But the certification does not hold the contributor, the Linux community, or Torvalds legally accountable. Nor does it guarantee that the source is produced in a 'clean room'.

Where to begin?

In the first place, the certification doesn't have to hold anyone accountable, because the *law* does that. If I contribute code that I don't have a right to contribute, I'm violating someone's copyrights and can be sued for my lawbreaking. The point of Linus' new patch labelling process is to make it easier to automate the tracking of who contributes what and, incidentally, to make sure contributors understand that they must have the legal right to contribute. The contributions can be tracked with or without the labels, and the contributors *are* liable under the law, with or without the certificate statement, but Linus' changes help to make sure that everybody's clear on how things are.

Second, what's the crap about 'clean rooms'? "Clean room reverse engineering" is an unnecessary, even silly process. The only reason it was invented was because Compaq's lawyers wanted to make absolutely and completely certain that IBM's lawyers wouldn't have any way to complain about Compaq's version of IBM's PC BIOS. Legally, the Compaq engineers could have studied the IBM BIOS, put it away and written their code and been in the clear. The whole "virgin programmer" nonsense was just overkill to make it utterly and completely clear that a lawsuit would fail.

But I think Brown actually *believes* in the contamination theory of IP.

the same people that are selling the trust model cannot answer basic questions about what attribution, acknowledgement, and IP credit they may have owed ATT Corporation and/or Prentice Hall Corporation in 1991 when the Linux kernel was introduced

Here Brown is talking about attribution, acknowledgement and credit, and implying that they matter. While it's nice and it's polite to acknowledge your inspirations, this sort of relationship between works has no legal force whatsoever. Just because your favorite band idolized Jimi Hendrix when they were kids does not mean they owe any money or control of their music to his estate, unless they actually use his music or his lyrics.

Lots of people get irritated with RMS' refusal to use the term "Intellectual Property" but you know what? He's RIGHT. Talking about IP as though it's some amorphous set of property rights that mysteriously rub off on anything that is influenced or inspired by something else is a fantastic way to build FUD, to concoct ridiculous theories that lead to all software being owned by Microsoft, or to just plain confuse people.

--
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.

Re:The GNU/Linux naming issue, as I see it. by fatray · 2004-06-04 12:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

Brown says that Linux should be called GNU/Linux because Linus used GCC. He goes on to say "Without the compiler, it is very likely that the Linux project would not have succeeded." This is implying to those who do not understand such things that Linux somehow illegitamately used GCC to make Linux. Linus was using GCC exactly as GNU (Richard M Stallman) intended. If GNU wanted any program compiled with GCC to be named GNU/{program name}, RMS would have written it into the license.

It may be true that Linux may not have succeeded without GCC. While Linux could have been written for other C compilers, GCC is the ubiquitous, free, standard.

Re:USPTO respected? by mikeee · 2004-06-04 13:10 · Score: 5, Funny

f1rst p4t3nt!

An e-mail to Ken Brown.... by wintermute42 · 2004-06-04 13:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

OK, this was probably a waste of time. Ken Brown is so over the top that he has to have an agenda. But for what it is worth, here is a copy of an email I sent him (with minor changes)

Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 17:54:31 -0700 To: kenbrown@adti.net Subject: Linux, Linus and so on...

Dear Mr. Brown:

I am a software engineer with over twenty three years of experience. Much of my background is in the design and implementation of system software, including compilers and runtime support. If you are interested you can find my resume at my domain.

I am not in the Linux fanatic camp. I use Linux, but in many ways I am disappointed with its popularity. I would much rather that the freeBSD operating system, which I regard as superior, had Linux's popularity. But popularity is the result of many factors, some of which have nothing to do with technology.

As a highly experienced software engineer and someone who is not a Linux fanatic, let me state that I absolutely believe that Linus Torvalds wrote Linux. And I also fully believe Prof. Tanenbaum when he states that Linux was not "stolen" from Minux.

Linux has been many years in development. The initial operating system was not the operating system that exists today. Linux has evolved over the years and many people have contributed to this evolution. As you note, Linus was young when he wrote Linux and I have no doubt that he too has evolved into a skilled and expert operating system designer and implementer. Linux is now far better for this experience and the work of its many contributors.

I find it rather odd that you, who are not an expert in software, are arguing against a large community of people who are experts, that Linus did not write Linux. I would hazard a guess that most UNIX systems programmers find your arguments silly. I also find it interesting that many of your arguments mirror those that have been put forward by Microsoft, a company that clearly finds Linux a threat.

Yours,

Wintermute

Ken Brown is the Ebeneezer Scrooge of IP by mhackarbie · 2004-06-04 15:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

The debate about whether Linus Torvalds wrote Linux is just bait to keep the issue in the headlines. The real aim of Ken Brown and his supporters is to wage an ideological battle over the nature of intellectual property.

His flawed reasoning and poor judgement are too extensive for me to go into detail. I think the best way to summarize the error of his position is to compare him to Ebeneezer Scrooge, the greedy miser whose excessive concern with wealth blinded him to the truly important things in life.

The growth of information technology is part of a greater world of creative activity that includes science, art, music, literature and more. A critical requirement for continued creative work and innovation is an environment which enables the healthy flow of ideas between people.

Capitalism and the profit-motive play a part in enabling such creative activity, by helping to channel resources more effectively, but I maintain that the role of business and profit is strictly secondary. The true source of innovation starts with people who are passionate about creativity and discovery.

The great success of Science in the last several centuries has been critically dependent upon open communication and a free flow of ideas. The great success of software development in the last several decades has likewise been dependent upon an open environment for exploration and communication of new ideas.

Both of these creative activities are threatened by legal mechanisms such as patents and copyrights, which were originally intended to promote and reward innovation, but lately are mostly a means of protecting entrenched economic power.

I am not against Capitalism or rewarding creative endeavor, just as I presume Ken Brown is not against creativity or technological innovation. It all comes down to where you focus your energy. In Ken's (and Ebeneezer's) world, there is an obsessive emphasis is on building legal mechanisms and protecting corporate profits, at the expensive of an environment that can give birth to new innovations.

In my world, the focus is on the conditions that foster creativity and innovation, and subsequently deriving profit from the fruits made possible by those conditions.

Which world do we want to live in?

mhack

--
Building a better ribosome since 1997

Because it's being paid for by msobkow · 2004-06-04 15:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

The timing of the attacks is obviously being paid for by someone.

Someone who has previously funded discredited research through the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution.

Someone who previously invested large sums of money in SCO, leaving a debt to be called in the future.

Someone who is busy patenting common-sense user interactions using mice and GUI's.

Someone with the clout to buy a reprieve from justice, and treat the penalties as merely the cost of doing business, and likely calculated into the projected expense budgets.

I mean come on -- why settle for mere greed or glory-hounding when there is a perfectly good conspiracy theory out there.

Besides, the tack Brown has taken is entirely self-destructive. Glory hounds want attention, not to paint themselves as the village idiot, repeating blatant lies as if they're a defense against the criticisms levied by respected members of the IT community. If the man truly believes his "response" appears like a rational defense, he seriously neds help, and I hope he gets it soon.

Yes, I read the whole article. The use of buzz-phrases is interesting.

What happens when you Google those phrases? Has the reference to the report shown up in the search results yet? How long until it does, with all the news sites cross-referencing the trash information?

Fast forward a few weeks when the furor dies down and an "apology" is issued. Someone searches for those key phrases -- is this "reasoned argument" response still visible in the search results? Maybe long enough to influence a few people to accept it as fact because it achieved such a high Google ranking with all the cross-references?

Remember the people doing those searches likely don't have technical knowledge to realize the "research" is virtually non-existant. They've heard about this Linux thing, and SCO, and look -- here's a high-rated "Institution" report.

I think the combination of SCO and Brown's report are the most elegantly crafted FUD attack I've seen to date, and one of the most subtle. It even uses the OSS community's own outrage to boost it's ranking and visibility.

Now just imagine you could actually control a search engine and make sure only the "right" links show up in the results, with one or two mild detractions to appear balanced. How much Google stock would one need to buy to ensure that kind of control?

Sure it's all ranting conspiracy stuff, but it's amazing how such theories fit sometimes, isn't it?

--
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.

Whores for More by JInterest · 2004-06-04 17:21 · Score: 5, Interesting

What's clear is that like all True Believers, Ken Brown will do anything possible to win, and he will never give up. He will not rest to his dying days to fight what he has started. He has put himself in a position he must defend. He is going to shout what he wants to anyone who will listen, and as most people are ignorant of the issue, many of them will.

I don't think you should assume that Brown is a True Believer.

A story about the "Whores for More" who pollute our public policy process.

In the late 1980's, I interned at a small but locally prominent "Beltway insider" political organization that was essentially a conservative/Republican foundation set up as a 501(c)(3) educational organization.

I was given a bird's eye view of how these groups, groups like ADTI, operate. Party or ideology aside, they all seem to work the same way.

It is all about money, ego, and, sometimes, ideas, precisely in that order.

I was amazed at how much time, effort, and energy was spent in the drive for getting money. Why did they need the money? To expand. For what purpose? To have more prominence and influence. Why? Well..it makes fundraising easier.

Don't misunderstand. I understood then and now that you need to raise money in order to operate. But I wasn't comfortable with the tactics used to obtain the money. The letters were frequently inflammatory and, I was surprised to find, sometimes simply wrong. The organization I was with wasn't the worst offender on that point, either. I saw some terrible stuff coming out of groups who were supposedly on the same side we were. There was certainly a lot for them to complain about, so why not keep it straight?

Moreover, I had open eyes, and I soon saw that there was a LOT of hypocrisy inside the Beltway. Many of these people pushed agendas that they didn't even come close to following.

Ego played a big role in all this. These "public policy" organizations are really an incestuous little bunch, where name-dropping, fancy titles, and building organizations with large fund-raising arms counted for more than substantive results. Any ideas that didn't come out of your "clique" were automatically bad. If you were part of the "clique", kissed the right asses, etc., you got ahead. If you weren't, don't bother, they weren't interested.

Appearances mattered. Real principles were a less important. When an Ohio congressman who was a noted conservative had to resign after being busted for having sex with a 13-year old black girl, there was a sympathy party for his staffers. All well and good, but for all the clucking of tongues, most of the comments were about how unfortunate it was that he'd done something that would hurt him politically. There was little comment on the fact that this married father had had sex with a young girl, and how just plain damn wrong that was. And nobody seemed to notice the hypocrisy. Why? Because of one too many people living in glass houses, preaching one thing for money and influence, and living another.

Where there ideas? Sure. There was a lot of talk. But the prevailing viewpoint was that principles should be compromised when it came time to "deal", because it was better to have something than nothing, right? And this is no doubt true, so long as compromise actually advances your ideas, but I noticed that many of the principles that these organizations pulled so many dollars from donors to support ended up in the waste basket when the time came to "deal".

I observed that this was a problem that crossed lines of party and ideology. Finding that policy wonking inside the Beltway was high-school magnified, played with millions of dollars and by people older than my parents, was disheartening to say the least.

"Whores for More" was and is my take on that experience after the fact. It is a take-off on the famous line by Bogart in Key Largo when he describes what motivated Edward G. Robinson's char

Stop laughing; this is serious by violet16 · 2004-06-04 19:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'm genuinely concerned by Brown's article, but even more so by the community's response, which is to call Ken Brown an idiot and laugh the thing off. Even the Slashdot story begins: "Yes, I know it's getting boring by now..." as if every intelligent person can immediately see the gaping holes in Brown and AdTI's case.

The problem is that the community has almost entirely missed the thrust of AdTI's argument, and, worse, has failed to notice the danger it represents. The community has attacked the technical details of AdTI's argument while mostly ignoring the ideology. But Brown's new article clearly identifies AdTI's target--policymakers in the US Government--and these people will do the opposite: ignore the technical details and ponder the ideology. And to them, there will be an arresting argument here.

The key point AdTI makes is this: you can't trust OSS unless there's a big company or institution behind it. This is why Brown questions Linux's authorship; not to prove Linus is a fraud, but to muddy the waters sufficiently so that the answer is unclear. They are demonstrating not that Linus did not write Linux all by himself, but that we can't know for sure exactly who did.

And let's be clear: although Linux is the example, it's really the entire OSS movement in the sights here. AdTI wants to take software creation out of the hands of individuals and put it in the hands of corporations and institutions. It clearly draws an ideological line: software created by companies can be true open source, but software created by informal groups of individuals is "hybrid source," which means potentially stolen.

If the US government agrees, expect legislation that puts the onus on software creators to prove that their code is not stolen (in contrast to the current situation, in which the onus is on an infringed party to prove someone stole it). This would be a trifling matter for an organization with salaried employees, but onerous for groups of unconnected individuals. It could severely damage OSS projects that rely on code contributions from the general public, and make it much harder for new projects to ever get started.

Of course, when I say this is "what AdTI wants," I really mean that this is what the companies who fund AdTI want. They're talking about diverting billions of dollars, so the companies who stand to gain from this will make sure Ken Brown's words are heard in the right places in government. On the opposing side, however, we the community have very little money and influence. So our voice is at risk of going unheard in the places that matter.

The community needs to realize it can not laugh away Ken Brown. It must understand that the issue is not whether Linus wrote Linux, but whether any group of individuals should be allowed to come together, write code, and release it. That is one of the most vital issues we have ever faced.

--
I should buy some cement.

Re:I hope people do read this shit. by abreauj · 2004-06-04 21:56 · Score: 5, Funny

Don't forget that all this code is stolen from corporations like IBM. Billions of dollars of IP were stolen from IBM and given over to Linux. IBM stole that IP from itself and then gave it to Linux.

It's exactly like when my sister bought me a birthday gift at CompUSA, and then stole it from herself and handed it to me at my birthday party. She paid for it, so clearly it's her property, and since it's in my posession now, I'm holding stolen property. This makes me a thief and my sister an accessory to theft.

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