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Tanenbaum Rebuts Ken Brown
Stephan Schulz writes "Andrew Tanenbaum has rebutted Ken Brown's reply to his original comments on the (in)famous AdTI report on Linux's origin. It's quite entertaining, and leaves little doubt (well, even less than before) that Brown is conciously twisting the truth. Choice excerpt: 'I'm pretty animated all the time. But I only get tense when people try to put words in my mouth. After half an hour of repeatedly answering the question "Could Linus have written the Linux kernel by himself?" in the affirmative, I was getting a bit irritated. ... People who know me would probably confirm that I do not suffer fools gladly.' I'd add that being called 'the good Professor' repeatedly would have me exploding in no time..."
... Seen this before?
So I guess this is the rebuttal to the rebuttal of the first rebuttal.. :-) Well done Andrew Tanenbaum!
Why doesn't KB just cut his losses and slink away before he's made a greater fool of, if that's possible. I suspect that his check has cleared the bank by now.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Last week we found out that Ken Brown was pregnant with Linus' love child, but this week may hold new meaning to their relationship. Will the relationship last? Or will it crumble to nothing before the masses. And find out who Ken may have been caught cheating with!
Tune in next week to find out!
Hmmm.
Anyone think we are watching a tennis match? Back and forth back and forth...
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
At what point do Tanenbaum and Torvalds decide the Brown is slandering or libelling them and actually sue for damages. Reading through Ken Brown's response to Tanenbaum I get the feeling that he's getting close to breaking the law against these two people.
John.
I think I just started something on that one! :)
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
Others have made this point, but it's true: there's plenty worse than this to come. There are very powerful forces that are threatened by the development of Linux, and they will fight to the death. Hired character assassins are just the beginning.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
...and people wonder why I don't watch soap operas anymore. Who needs them with stuff like this in real life!
After half an hour of repeatedly answering the question "Could Linus have written the Linux kernel by himself?" in the affirmative, I was getting a bit irritated.
Its always been interesting that when somebody (or a group of people) don't want to hear a certain answer, it often goes in one ear and out the other just in time for another "listener" to ask the same basic question phrased slightly differently in hopes of obtaining a reply closer to the desired view. It seems that many times the media in general has this practice almost molded into an art.
http://www.adti.net/samizdat/open.contradictions.h tml references an ESR quote from Cathedral.
Of course - i'm not sure they're aware that Minix isn't exactly Solaris-level UNIX that Linux is approaching rapidly...
Where the idea that the go-cart of Linux 0.1 - which borrowed the ideas of 4 wheels, axles, steering wheel and brakes from Ford cars - is the same thing as stealing Fords from the lot remains to be still explained by AdTI.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Critique of Ken Brown's response
I wonder if the companies that have a stake in Linux like RedHat, IBM, and so forth would be willing to pony up the dough to create our own illustrious-sounding "institution" complete with a European-sounding name that could "create reports and advice to policymakers and government" that would instead be backed by the truth. Or at least the truth as we see it and not the way Micro$oft does.
I like our truth more, admittedly.
For an even funnier laugh, I recommend reading this one Is Brown Really the Father of Samizdat? - A Parody by Justin Moore to counter the Fake Research, hmm did I mention about their Fake Research?
Why, are you a lousy professor?
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Introduction
For those of you just tuning into this soap opera, here is a brief summary of the plot so far. Ken Brown, president of a Washington think tank called the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution has written a book claiming open source using GPL is a bad idea and that Linus Torvalds stole Linux from MINIX, which I wrote. Linus, the alleged stealer, responded. As the alleged stealee I also felt the need to respond. Now Ken Brown has reacted to my responses. I very much doubt that when he came to visit me, he was expecting me to (1) defend Linus in our interview and then (2) do it fairly publicly later.
I was planning to spend my Sunday afternoon doing something useful, but since Brown has directly challenged me in his posting cited above, I feel I should respond. I will do this in the form of commenting on his posting. His comments are set off typographically like this:
I have to give credit where credit is due. Brown got that one completely right.
***EVERY*** country has a patent office. The United States is not unique in this respect. Furthermore, many people think that patenting software is a terrible idea. The subject of software patents is a very controversial issue in Europe right now.
I can live with this. Professors are always on the lookout for new sources of research funding.
Excuse me? A Finnish student writes some software (in Finland) that a lot of people like and he is accused on sponging off U.S. corporations? And last time I checked, quite a few U.S. Corporations, such as IBM, seemed quite happy with Linux. And a very large number of U.S. corporations seem to be using the (open source) Apache web server. And even if open source weren't in the best interest of U.S. corporations, where is it written that all activities everywhere in the world must be done with the interests of U.S. corporations as their primary goal?
This statement is not grammatically, politically, or factually correct. Does he mean "Linus has Hansen's disease"? I hope not. But if he does, fortunately, it is highly treatable these days. If he means Linux is wasting away, the facts speak otherwise. If he means "Linux is very contagious" this is true, but a better wording could have been chosen.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
I'd say being called, "the good Professor," would be preferrable to others, say for example, "the Nutty Professor."
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
but ADTI and Ken Brown are just coming off as idiots so I don't even laugh anymore. Seriously, anyone of us could debunk their claims.
This guy is way out there
OJ is thinking, "Kato is available. He hasn't implicated anyone in politics this year, so he's available for some character assasination."
"'Linux is a leprosy; ...'
This statement is not grammatically, politically, or factually correct."
Is it just me, or does Professor Tanenbaum really seem like the man lately?
Maybe he is hoping to be called as an expert witness for SCO? Then he can charge $300/hour for talking about his book?
Fight Spammers!
I think it's about time everyone got together and created one polished and solid response to Ken Brown's lies and insinuations. We've heard from Andrew Tanenbaum, ESR, RMS, Linus, etc., but what I would like to see is a formal and official response to the AdTI book that is being published, tearing up its insinuations point-for-point, in a way that his own target audience (i.e. "decision makers") couldn't ignore. Particularly, I think it needs to be made clear that even his *own* research on how Minix influenced Linux code showed no code "theft".
The people that KB is targetting just aren't going to "stay tuned" for the latest back and forth between KB and OSS advocate X. They need to have all the evidence presented to them clearly and concisely, and I think it needs to be from all the major players in the OSS community. I think this will *strongly* discourage people like KB from spouting lies and deception, as they know they will be called on it, at the expense of any journalistic integrity they may have had. And the more obvious it becomes that this is (likely solicited) FUD, the more the whole exercise will backfire on those that hoped to benefit from it.
And just because there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of qualified people who know they could easily do it themselves if called upon has nothing whatever to do with the issue.
.something.
Or. .
I can't wait until Ken responds to this, I can't wait for more Tanenbaum re-rebutals.
We can tell Ken isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, he doesn't know when to just shut the hell up.
KFG
is now that Linus is aware of Ken Brown trying to contact him, there may be a discussion between the two. Linus ought to make it pretty funny and humiliating for Ken Brown.
This guy is way out there
..all that matters is that it doesn't look fragmented, vindicitive and anarchical like the OSS movement.
But the OSS community is fragmented, vindicitive and especially anarchical. If you don't like it, thats just tough. Go away.
In his own words:
"It would be skewed and bias to only quote people that are anti-Linux or anti-open source. I have done this for years..."
A bottle of sleeping pills and a pint of Jack Daniels should solve your problem.
ABOUT TUX
Ballmer: The Open Source is strong with this one
Gates: The son of Linus must not become a Coder
Ballmer: He will join us, or die, my master.
And yes, my money would be on Linus. He probably knows that Finnish kung-fu...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Every year at the University of Waterloo the Computer Engineering and Computer Science students personally build their own operating systems (including documentation) in less than four months. This is done without any prior knowledge of how OSes work and without being taught C.
I'm sure many universities and colleges around the world do the same. Perhaps Ken Brown should investigate them as well.
http://www.ece.uwaterloo.ca/~ece354/
http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs452/
Agree 100% with him there. For some reason US corporations take it for granted that all countries/entities everywhere exist merely to pander to their interests. To this end, they are fucking not only with the citizens of the US, but with people everywhere.
The Patent on Basmati rice (a US corporation obtained a patent on Basmati Rice, which's been grown in India for thousands of years), and even the war on Iraq (the Halliburton/Cheney/Iraq_Reconstruction_contract connection) are just a couple of examples of what they're up to.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
These petty squabbles with lines like "I do not suffer fools gladly" is why MS dominates. All the does is (accurately) portray the OSS camp as a bunch of squabbling, temperamental individuals.
It's not clear at all what your point is here, if you have one... A CS Professor in the Netherlands quotes the old saw, saying that he "does not suffer fools gladly" - and this is connected to what you are saying, precisely how?
I can't find the cite, but an interesting point brought up on the discussion of this on K5 is that now Brown has started poking some of the original UNIX implementors like Dennis Ritchie asking them about whether they think Tanenbaum illegally stole from UNIX when he created Minix. It's beginning to look like Brown may be seeing, okay, well if Tanenbaum's not going to play along with my slander, maybe I'll slander him too.
--
Just pointing out the obvious that some readers may not have noticed.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Has anyone else noticed how eloquent and concise Tanenbaum's responses have been? I have many of the books he has written from when I was in school (and I enjoyed them all), but here he seems to take on an amazing writing persona. It's good to see him in top shape. Not to mention that he's so funny. There should be a book written about all of this.
I couldn't have summed it up better myself :)
Oh, I note on their home page that you can submit a study idea to them. How about a study into why Ken Brown is an incompetent researcher?
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
"they are reassured by a single entity that goes about its business with self confidence"
First, Linux isn't a single thing. The kernal is a single thing, but everything else is part of GNU and thus by definition cannot speak as a single thing.
Second, Microsoft doesn't always win. In fact, they lose more than they win.
Here are the wins:
1) Desktop operating systems
2) Wordprocessors/Spreadsheets
3) Servers
Interestingly, all of these were developed, or under development for more than 10 years. Since that time, Microsoft has not successfully (defined as profitable) opened any new market.
So you're asking for the impossible and putting it against an enemy that doesn't exist.
This article, and Brown's character assassinations prove to me that Linux is winning and the tide is starting to turn. Remember that Linux doesn't need 51% penetration to "win", as soon as it has a significant market share (defined as > 10%), the Microsoft monopoly falls apart as there are credible alternatives that will attract individuals and business alike.
Because, unfortunately, the Suits in Redmond (and elsewhere) have been quite successful in implying/suggesting/insinuating that the likes of Andrew Tanenbaum are nothing more than dirty hippies (and RMS has not been much to help to dispel this view) who don't believe in IP, Ken Brown will keep on looking like an expert to be listened to, and the various PHBs will continue to buy his crap. So, keep on wishing, but the truth is, the more noise people make about Ken Brown, the more believable his bullshit become to Suits and PHBs.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I dunno....
MS is having serious image problems at the moment.
Their own customer surveys show 'Dislike of MS' to be a top negative factor.
Somewhere in one of the latest halloween memos.
Not a single entity that goes about business with self-confidence---
Big, hairy dude, arrogant in the extreme, and unresponsive to complaints.
On the contrary---the squabbling, temperamental, individuals often strike up passable relationships with entrepnurial minded business people....
Even if there is a fair bit of petty squabling, there is a healthy, competitive open source community, and a GREAT deal more hands on/friendly service out there.
MS sales people do not tend to be as well received as they used to.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
The thing that's started to bother me, though: Is Ken Brown just a corrupt shill who is arguing a fallaceous premise in order to make a lot of money for his corporate backers (presumably Microsoft)? Or does he actually believe his own assertions?
... when somebody handed him a bunch of money to do his Linux report, what happened, exactly? Did he yawn, scratch his belly and say, "Oh goodie, that'll keep me in spare parts for my Rolls for a while"? Or did he seriously, actually, pop another Paxil, pound his fist on the table and say, "Linux?! Those bastards! By God and all the apostles of Jesus, this is a cause I can get behind!"
I mean, he sounds quite vehement in his reply to Mr. Tanenbaum. So, I wonder
Breakfast served all day!
KB has already done the "could not have done it at that age" argument. His next book will instead argue that Mozart was simply small and diminutive, which allowed him to lie about his age to the King of England. He was really 35 at the time.
"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."
That is all.
Is anyone else hoping that AdTI mentions Hitler or the Nazis so that this discussion can be officially over?
Ken Brown is being paid to put the FUD scare on Washington policy makers in the hope of slowing down Linux/Open Source.... nice try but too late. Every industrial nation and under developed country of the world is already putting Linux to work, cutting costs and getting more from less hardware. All one has to say to Washington is "You don't want to use Linux? Fine. Oh, by the way, the Chinese are building supercomputers that compete with ours, and they're not running Windows. What's that? You say we need more supercomputers for the NSA to fight terrorism? You don't have the budget for countless proprietary software licenses? hmmmm... what to do... what to do... too bad we can't use Linux. The Indians are using Linux everywhere and loving it. Boy we sure could use some Linux here..."
Please, no need to be so polite. Tell us how you REALLY feel!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I don't know, maybe i'm missing out on a key piece of the puzzle, here, but why do you guys care so much? Honestly, i don't understand why you're getting worked up by what this idiot has to say. :/
that's what it is.
and people might be interested in knowing that there is also a third party critique of the rebuttal to the rebuttal posted over at k5 with a pretty mature comment tree of its own.
lysergically yours
"The United States is the home of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an internationally respected agency ..."
Is the USPTO is even *nationally* respected any longer?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
I am not fully aware of Brown's expertise in the subject of OS history and computer science in general, but do you think that Tanenbaum might have an edge in that department?
From what I read Brown has a B.A in English Literature... WOW, this is so not impressive. Andrew has been a larger part of the CS community and probably has a better idea where the 'any key' is than Kenny does. I find the self-righteous B.A. types to be just that. You will never win an argument with them because they will never be able to ascertain when it is over. I think Andrew deserves a lot of credit for even writing a rebuttal to Ken's comments.
Ken Brown is serving a personal agenda by writing for the right, and to bolster his own personal exposure with those who he wants to work with/for. Doing some research, Brown's first Open Source article came in June of 2002. 2 years vs a life time... I think the term is 'on crack' when someone thinks they are correct over someone with a lifetime of exposure on the subject.
Andrew Tanenbaum has been there done that, and probably has more knowledge of what is going on than most people out there. I read a lot of ASTs textbooks, and still have them on my shelf. I think its pretty easy to side with him on this one.
that MS has they could fund a better opponent than Ken Brown. The guy can hardly type a sentence that sounds intelligent much less argue the history of an industry he clearly does not understand. Anyone can see his bias which makes the investment useless. This won't sway anyone who wasn't already in MS's back pocket. I'd say their SCO investment was much better than this.
Many of the recent Slashdot comments regarding the ADTI President Ken Brown's defense of his controversial tome noted that his principle audience was not the Linux community, or even the IT industry. His target audience is the policy-makers in Washington D.C. How is that group informed about issues surrounding open source in general and the Linux kernel specifically? One 'trade' publication, FCW Media Group, "produces information resources that help government IT buyers... form an integrated information system to help them purchase, build and manage technology in government." They are 'our' target audience in defending the concept of software libre, in advancing open protocols and other standards, and in correcting FUD. The May 3rd online issue provides one such opportunity to advance Linux in government research.
Nothing stops the flow of FUD like well-positioned information.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
No, I think it's time that *Linus* cuts his losses and slinks away. I mean, seriously, look at what Brown brought to the table this time: "In a recent ZDNet interview(6), he denies having the Lions notes. This is also unbelievable to AdTI."
It's time that Linus fold. Brown clearly has him by the teeth and isn't going to let go until Linux admits what has been so clearly proven to us. Linus must reveal his theft of code from Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny immediately.
I suggest that Brown establish a team in cooperation with the United Nations called UNOPUS (United Nations Office for the Prevention of Un-proprietary of Software), with the goal of getting Linus to turn over precisely where he stole his code from. Linus must immediately grant them access to his house at all times, as well as pay their salaries. He must provide an errorless full and complete accounting of his coding activities dating back to the 1980s; any contradictions found should be used as an excuse to sieze his property and jail him.
His past activities show that we have no reason to trust that Linus's interests are legitimate. His failure to hand over where he stole his code from is further evidence of his guilt; if he would simply hand it over, the penalties would be much less severe. Linus is a threat to our way of life and must be stopped.
Brown should then, if Linus refuses to state where he stole his code from, Brown should give him a 48 hours ultimatum to hand over the rights of Linux to SCO, or face retribution.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
KB will still make off of all of the people who buy his book just to see how stupid he is.
1. Act like an ass
2. ???
3. Profit!
Looks like another blunder by shitdots editors. This was already seen on newsforge here
and also on redat for some reason right here
Titled: As the World on which a pasty-faced M$ Funded Mouthpiece Shouting on a Soapbox Stand on Turns.
Maybe Ken Brown and Darl McBride are the same person ... masqueraded by a company that specialises in smear campaignes.
... always have kids early...) speak up and say that Linus was running after hockey sticks, soiled t-shirts, and doggy poop when he was "supposed to have written the linux kernel" ... that would be a good next step
think about it, the next step is to have Rut, the illegitamate son that Linus fathered when he was 18 (those north europeans
I PROPOSE the question, "Can Ken Brown think?". No, since it's obviously impossible to answer this question, let's examine a question similar to this one. Let's question, does Ken Brown know what the fuck he's talking about in his papers? Obviously not, therefore, He cannot think.
Who are they ? and why should i care if they are arguing amongst themselves ?
If you don't know then you obviously shouldn't be commenting on this.
seems more like a childish squabble fighting over sweets than a real debate between adults
It has to do with something that is becoming a legitimate business force and those who would like to hurt it. Sounds pretty adult to me.
Microsoft Windows(TM) - watching Linux get more un-professional every day since 1996
Linux - watching Windows get more insecure every day since 1991 (the real year Linux was started). Do your research if you're going to post; don't be a Ken Brown!
> These petty squabbles with lines like "I do not suffer fools gladly" is why MS dominates.
MS dominates because they suffer fools gladly?
Kenneth Brown is president of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution and director of its technology research programs. He is the author of numerous research papers and popular articles on technology issues, including the 2002 report, "Opening the open-source debate," one of the first papers to raise serious questions about the security of open- and hybrid-source computer software, a point recently raised by the president of Symantec Corporation. He is reportedly "not the sharpest knife in the drawer," but nevertheless is able to converse with many intelligent people, and is accepted at fine restaurants and hotels around the world.
There is no knife.
That alone would keep me from reading his book.
I don't think for a second that he even came close to making the case that LINUX is stolen MINUX code. However, Brown's larger point is scary. Given SCO's suite this could be a big hairy monster hanging over opensource for quite some time.
We in the Open Source community need to face up to the possibility that some of us may be cheating and contributing code that we don't have a legal right to contribute.
Complain about how Microsoft gets away with stealing code. Complain about SCO having a business plan based on lawsuits. But, we need to think about this: We (the open source community) may be getting off light. There may be a time when someone contributes something that they did not have a right to, when it will be obvious, and when it will be all over the NYT.
Opensource needs to get an answer to this fast!
I just read Ken Brown's reply, and one thing struck me quite forcefully: Mr. Brown's grammar is terrible! His writing is full of comma splices ("it wasn't a solo effort, it was a team"), tense inconsistencies ("for years, Linus is credited with being an inventor"), non-words such as "noone," and other obvious grammatical errors such as in "what is anybody suppose to believe?" and "it would be skewed and bias to only quote people that are anti-Linux or anti-open source."
I have a difficult time taking anything this man says seriously, quite apart from the actual content of his words, when they are delivered so poorly. This is especially troubling given that he is the president of the Alexis de Toqueville Institute! That such an uneducated man could rise to such a position in that organization does not speak well of the organization as a whole.
Mike
But the article was funny. I can't wait to see the relationship between the bunny and the Minix.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Microsoft has the patience and communication skills to write in a style and medium that government policymakers listen to and respond to.
The vast majority of open source advocates have no interest in this boring yet important work.
IMHO, This sounds like something I'd like to see Perens' " Open Source Risk Management" take on.
People aren't reassured by that - they are reassured by a single entity that goes about its business with self confidence.
Yep, Microsoft would rather have worms than public squables.
It should be clear to anyone and everyone that Dennis Ritchie did not create the C Programming language.
Check out `man bc`. You will discover that there was a previous programming language that was written by a man named Brian Kernighan which bears striking similarities to what Mr. Ritchie would later call C.
Mr. Ritchie obviously copied wholesale from this language, with the intent to destroy the American economy, and was obviously in collusion with al-Qaeda.
Subsequent interactions between these two men were most likely based on the fact that Mr. Kernighan was ``conflicted and tense'' while in the presence of such a dangerous terrorist, and due to the fact that Mr. Kernighan was worried that his own language theft from B's predecessor, BCPL, and Martin Richards' language theft from CPL.
(Note, if you mod this, please don't mod it funny.)
One of the lessons from this is to record the interview yourself. It can put the interviewer on the defensive. If the interviewer turns out to be a schmuck and twists your words, then you pull out the recording and throw it back in his/her face.
Somehow I always read the name of the institution as Alexis de 'Tortville' Institution whenever I come accross it.
The more I read by and about Ken Brown, the more he resembles Mike Vandeman, the legendary kook who used to harass mountain bikers in rec.bicycles.off-road. He used the same procedure:
- start with a conclusion
- collect facts
- ignore the facts that contradict the conclusion
- when no supporting facts remain, affirm the conclusion
There is a FAQ about MV....is that his own consultant says he's full of it.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I suppose what the grandparent post should have said was:
/. all day, confident in their superiority.
Who's the greater fool, KB with his million dollars in "funding" from Microsoft or the people who laugh at him on
"Hybrid source code" is a phrase coined by former Tocqueville Chairman Gregory Fossedal. The term refers to any product with a license that attempts to mix free and proprietary source code at the same time.
Would this be like taking a free TCP/IP stack and mixing it into a proprietary OS?
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
Ken Brown doesn't beleive Linus wrote the orginal Linux kernal... on his own... in six months...
Of course he doesn't believe it. Neither would Microsoft. MS purchased their first OS and hired a real genius from DEC to write NT.
It just isn't in their experience as software developers... and what do you want to bet that Ken Browns entire progamming experience is in VB?
Remain lost in hidden worlds where I reign. Head engine and caboose in my toy train...
That said, this asshat has probably already made his money, considering this whole fiasco was sponsored by other organizations.
There is nothing to lose by responding to him. On the contrary, we have already gained because of the rebuttals, that gain being that it is quite clear to everyone who bothers to look that this guy hasn't the first fucking clue what he's talking about.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Ken Brown says that it's hard to believe Linus could write ~10000 lines of code in a year at the age of 21.
Hell, *I* wrote 40000 SLOCs, (source lines of code, as counted by a program line counter program, not just the number of newlines... which would be more) in ONE SUMMER -- less than three months -- when I was 18. My boss was astonished, and wrote me a great letter of recommendation. Part of what was going on was it was my first job, and I didn't really realize that it was OK if I wasn't coding 100% of the time... I worked like a demon, just non-stop, never taking a break, it was ridiculous. I have to laugh about that now.
I sure as hell couldn't do that now -- don't hav the motivation.
I would say that the age of 21 or thereabouts is about the ONLY age one could be expected to churn out that much code. That's just the age when smart programming people churn out code like crazy. Once you're older, the novelty of programming has worn off, and output is naturally going to drop, you just can't sustain that kind of energy and enthusiasm for the duration of your whole career.
These petty squabbles with lines like "I do not suffer fools gladly" is why MS dominates. All the does is (accurately) portray the OSS camp as a bunch of squabbling, temperamental individuals.
I see. And what, exactly, do you think that using lines like "Linux is a leprosy" does for paid Microsoft representatives such as Ken Brown?
Are you saying that Microsoft dominates because the people who support them-- such as you-- are better at taking their opposition's quotes out of context?
I don't see why it is plausible for Canadian students to produce 16,000 lines a year but not plausible for Finnish students to produce 10,000 lines a year. It is just as cold in Finland as in Canada so programmers are never tempted to go outside.
I know novelists who can write a 400-pager - from plot idea to submission to their publisher - in under six months. That's with the pages edited, spell checked, and proofread. If you know the goal and have the tools, it's NOT A BIG DEAL!
Is an agency which is internationally respected by everyone who is unfamiliar with it.
Sure, they may be a corrupt, underfunded failure with a tendency in many tech areas to work more against their intended purpose (to promote growth in the useful arts and sciences) than toward it, but most people don't know that because the general media seems very unwilling to report on this.
To most people "The United States Patent and Trademark Office" is nothing more or less than a very distinugished sounding name with several capital letters in it, which makes them automatically respected.
I doubt that, even with this latest rebuttal, the book will change its "Linux is the devil" tone, and will go on to sell probably a *dozen* copies, unfortuantly all to people in the government.
So how can we get the message out to them that this is all propaganda? Is there a similar organization that can put out a fair and balanced version and get it into the same hands of those who would read this book?
Seriously, why is it that jerks like this can write stuff that suggests that using Linux causes cancer, and then nothing is done to prove otherwise? If the politicians are given only one side of the argument, that's the only side they'll know.
From the ADTI link:
``The United States is the home of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an internationally respected agency''
Ugh! I nearly choked on that! Everyone I know laments the bad decissions taken by the USPTO (provided they have enough knowledge about it). It is not respected by many in the US, let alone internationally, with so many people opposed to US imperialism.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The site seems to be struggling under Slashdot's load, so here is a mirror:
..."
..."
... Torvalds and
Introduction
For those of you just tuning into this soap opera, here is a brief summary of the plot so far. Ken Brown, president of a Washington think tank called the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution has written a book claiming open source using GPL is a bad idea and that Linus Torvalds stole Linux from MINIX, which I wrote. Linus, the alleged stealer, responded. As the alleged stealee I also felt the need to respond. Now Ken Brown has reacted to my responses. I very much doubt that when he came to visit me, he was expecting me to (1) defend Linus in our interview and then (2) do it fairly publicly later.
I was planning to spend my Sunday afternoon doing something useful, but since Brown has directly challenged me in his posting cited above, I feel I should respond. I will do this in the form of commenting on his posting. His comments are set off typographically like this:
"Samizdat is a series of excerpts from an upcoming book on open source and operating systems that will be published later this year. AdTI did not publish Samizdat with the expectation that rabidly pro-Linux developers would embrace it."
I have to give credit where credit is due. Brown got that one completely right.
"The United States is the home of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an internationally respected agency which contributes to the worldwide effort to protect and govern intellectual property."
***EVERY*** country has a patent office. The United States is not unique in this respect. Furthermore, many people think that patenting software is a terrible idea. The subject of software patents is a very controversial issue in Europe right now.
"The Samizdat report recommends that the U.S. government should invest $5 billion in research and development efforts that produce true open source products, such as BSD and MIT license-based open source. Government investment in open source development will accelerate innovation."
I can live with this. Professors are always on the lookout for new sources of research funding.
"The disturbing reality is that the hybrid source model depends heavily upon sponging talent from U.S. corporations and/or U.S. proprietary software. Much of this questionable borrowing is a) not in the best interest U.S. corporations
Excuse me? A Finnish student writes some software (in Finland) that a lot of people like and he is accused on sponging off U.S. corporations? And last time I checked, quite a few U.S. Corporations, such as IBM, seemed quite happy with Linux. And a very large number of U.S. corporations seem to be using the (open source) Apache web server. And even if open source weren't in the best interest of U.S. corporations, where is it written that all activities everywhere in the world must be done with the interests of U.S. corporations as their primary goal?
"Linux is a leprosy;
This statement is not grammatically, politically, or factually correct. Does he mean "Linus has Hansen's disease"? I hope not. But if he does, fortunately, it is highly treatable these days. If he means Linux is wasting away, the facts speak otherwise. If he means "Linux is very contagious" this is true, but a better wording could have been chosen.
"... and is having a deleterious effect on the U.S. IT industry because it is steadily depreciating the value of the software industry sector. 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."
If, say, HP puts free software in its printers, how does this reduce the ***value*** of their printers? It would reduce the cost a little, which in a competitive marketplace might encourage them to drop the price somewhat, but I don't see why having cheaper printers is such a bad thing.
"
Clippy certainly is/does.
The ground rules when talking to reporters or writers seem to be...
.
1. The story is already written in the writer's mind. They merely want you to supply some quotations to flesh out the "interesting" angle they have chosen
2. your comments can and will be bent to support the chosen angle.
3. some interviewers are dependent on "pushing people's buttons" to generate provocative or "sexed up" copy. If you fall into this trap, your response will become the quotable "sound bite" and the rest of your fine ideas will be pretty much buried.
The writer needs to characterize or "define" you in a word or two and if you can be induced to say something intemperate, there's the definition of yourself that you're going to see in print.
4. rebuttals and protests to the editor don't matter. Reporters and editors support their version steadfastly and with total impunity.
5. to avoid embarassment, interview with caution and be as bland and generous in your comments as you can.
Say you're writing an MP3 decoder. You don't start from scratch -- there's no reason to. You start by copying the source files from the open ISO reference implementation into your project. That's the "scaffolding" that ESR's referring to. You then go through the project and rewrite individual functions, and finally entire modules, to conform to your needs: smaller code, faster code, platform-specific optimizations, removal of legal encumbrances.
That's a very common procedure in the coding business when starting a new project. It's very likely that Linus did start by copying the minix/src/*.c tree, and it's also very likely that his first public release didn't contain a single line of Minix code.
No.
... I *did* know that Brown was being sarcastic. I was just, y'know, being a smart-alec.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Torvalds story because the comparisons were too unbelievable. For us to accept Tanenbaum's argument, Linus Torvalds at 21, with one year of C programming, was Doug Comer, an accomplished computer scientist, or smarter than the Coherent team, and of course a better programmer than the good professor too."
Huh? I learned more in high school from a single computer science teacher than I did in four years of college. Some of my college CSCI professors were the biggest idiots I ever encountered, and easily 5-10 years behind-the-times. I often corrected test questions.
I am beginning to believe that most of these mean-spirited, burned-out baby boomers blew away a lot of their youth getting wasted or something, and resent anyone who pursued more productive ends. While it might not seem common, young people can be incredibly bright and productive. Linus' accomplishments at that age are actually not atypical IMO, among young people who have decent priorities and focus.
I was programming for a Fortune 500 company when I was 13 years old. Before I got out of high school I wrote the billing system for a major public utility. Hell, I once got a contract to write a book on C programming for the web and at the time, I actually had about a month's worth of C programming, and none of it was web-related. I ended up taking a "crash course" in programming and writing that portion of the book within a few months and it still holds up today. When I was younger, I did a lot of computer consulting and I'd often accept teaching/consulting gigs on subjects I was unfamiliar with, but I'd bone up the night before and pull it off with nobody being the wiser. 10,000+ lines of code in a year? Try 10,000 lines of code in a few days.
It really bothers me when people who don't have faith in their own abilities suggest others, such as Linus, are incapable of operating beyond the boundaries of their own mundane self-expectations.
'That's old. We're into this string now!'
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
>I'll bet [Ken Brown] dismisses the widely reported claim that Mozart wrote three symphonies and performed for the King of England when he was nine on the grounds that 9-year-olds don't normally do this sort of thing.
So Linus is a prodigy like Mozart?
Even MORE reasons to use Linux!
Thank you, Mr Tanenbaum.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Post your reviews before the book comes out (if it will)
A DT I00024
http://www.booksurge.com/author.php3?accountID=
My favorite KB quote (completely pulled out of context, but not reworded a bit):
"It would be skewed and bias to only quote people that are anti-Linux or anti-open source. I have done this for years, and will continue to do so"
The facts speak for themselves. We should be considering the facts of the case, not the facts about the people debating the case. Your comment smacks of elitism. Completely unnecessary elitism.
My undergraduate compiler class had only one homework assignment: write a compiler by the end of the semester. That gave us four months time. We got the grammar for an Algol-like language to be compiled, which was relatively standard and simple (but it did have runtime allocation of arrays, IIRC). And the work was spaced out over the course of the semester -- first we did the lexer, then the parser, then the code generator. But that was basically it, you got four months, go write the compiler or flunk, chump. (We had to write it in C.)
Not an easy assignment by any stretch, but we all got it done. I was an undergrad junior at the time, and there were juniors, seniors and grad students in the class as well. Don't ask me about the sleepless nights during the last week before the due date, I still remember it all too well.
Writing an OS is even harder than writing a compiler by an order of magnitude, and getting that done within a year may very well be too much for your average undergrad. But it's not the kind of thing that a young programmer couldn't possibly do if he's talented, hard-working and has a little experience. Ken Brown's suggestion that it just can't possibly be, which is a weak argument in any case, has no force at all.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Linux 0.1 was totally different to Minix. Everyone I interviewed said Linus wrote Linux 0.1 himself. But Microsoft is paying me a lot of money to say otherwise. I love money, and don't care what I have to do to get it. Microsoft even gave me a copy of the same script Darl McBride is using. It's a literary masterpiece, and totally not derived from any other work ever. Look for the AdTI Review of Books, coming out soon. P.S. Anyone else notice how I didn't accuse Dennis Ritchie of remembering anything about Multics when he worked on Unix? That's because a friend of a friend of mine owns UNIX, and they would be upset if I slandered its provenance.
--
I wrote a book. All by myself. In less than six months.
A group of 3 of us had to write a linker, loader, and compiler in 'C' on a primitive Unix (Solaris) box in like 3-4 weeks back in 1985.
I'm no genius... and this wasn't a big challenge. Am I missing something here?
I was shocked to see that Linux 0.1 was only around 10,000 lines of code. Could one programmer write that! You bet they could. I have wrote a 14,000 line application in less than three months. Linux could have easily written the kernel in a year. So what if he was only 21? That just means that he is right out of or close to being out of school and hopfuly full of the latest and greatest ideas. I hate to say this because I hate RMS's GNU/LINUX rants but the truth is Linus wrote the kernel he did not have to write all the untilities or the compiler. Those came from the GNU project.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Sadly enough, the stupid thing will be published, people will waste their time writing explaining why none of it is true and some people will still be fooled by it. Oh well.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
SOFT WARS
Darth McBride: The Source is strong with this one
Emperor Bilgatine: The son of Linus must not become a Coder
Darth McBride: He will join us, or die, my master.
Ricstawaca the Wookie: ROOOOAAR!
I think that when new snippets from the Houses of Parliament
"Right honourable gentlemen..." and then proceed to politically rip into them.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
For the VH1 special.
[[Camera slowly zooming in on photo of Linus Tourvalds]]
NARRATOR: BUT BEHIND THE SCENES, THINGS WERE STARTING TO FALL APART.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
one quote from Ken Brown's page:
We should support both invention and innovation. However, building a product that starts with the accomplishment of others and announcing it as completely your own work product, is not invention, nor is it innovation.
Nothing could be more damning to Microsoft!
I have not idea how many hits a day slashdot gets but I think many people would be suprised how many people in the industry read it. What's even more likely is how many people that write for more mainstream news out lets read slashdot.
I would bet good money this gets out to the rest of the world pretty quickly.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
As it happens, there is another POSIX-ish kernel that was written by a student in about a year. That's the Thix operating system.
(I played with it once and it wasn't very impressive, but from my casual examination, it seemed at least as advanced as Linux 0.01.)
Ken brown is a troll and should be ignored forthrightly.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
if you buy his book, you give him money.
Did anyyone else notice the "ad" on tanenbaum's site, leading here? Damn furninrs telling us how to vote! :P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's hard to point my finger to, but Brown seems to make a few pretty big leaps and generalizations in his arguments, and doesn't seem to back his arguments up with rigorous source code/design comparisons. This seems to be written like some kind of popular political/public figure book, not a detailed investigation of kernel programming. This rubs me the wrong way.
are getting easier and easier to spot
In 1993, the Operating Systems class in the Computer Science department at the University of Arizona wrote a layered linux kernel in C, based on Minix and using Tannenbaum's textbook. The class was one semester, and the average team size was 3-4 people, and each team was assigned the same project, to write the layered kernel. I worked on the project alone and finished it in the semester, and I don't consider myself brilliant (only exceptional). So if a single computer science student at the UofA can do it in a semester, why not Linus in a year?
I don't understand all of the hatred for this guy. He is doing exactly what needs to be done to make linux a secure financial investment, he is: making a hypothesis that linus stole source code, and is working backwards and forwards. The police do this on a daily basis: listen to some chumps story and then investigate alternatives. This kind of legal investigation is a necessity, otherwise 10 years from now when linux is in everything someone can step up and start charging whatever they want (see SCO). He is the first of many to try to bring Linux out of it's buisness adolescence and turn it into an adult.
What a soap opera this has become... Next Week on 'As the Kernel Turns': Ken Brown is Melinda Gates and OJ Simpson's love child Seriously...all of AT's and ESR's are great reads for those of us who were to young to remember OS's without configuration wizards. All Ken Brown (ADTI) is trying to do is spread a little FUD about linux and the Open Source movement. In fact, I bet Ken Brown snuggles up with his diploma from Redmond University every night...
QUOTE
For years, Linus is credited with being an inventor. AdTI argued the claim was false. Coincidently in a recent interview, 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)"
UNQUOTE
Ken Brown by that above comment is a flaming
a*hole. This is a pure word game on Brown's
part.
I'll bet he [Brown] dismisses the widely reported claim that Mozart wrote three symphonies and performed for the King of England when he was nine on the grounds that 9-year-olds don't normally do this sort of thing.
Game. Set. Match. But knowing Ken Brown, I'm sure a "KompozerImpozter" book is in the works.
The AdTI has a survey asking people to report factual inaccuracies in the "Samizdat". But don't send your data to the AdTI - you've seen how they twist facts. Instead someone should quickly set up a similar site with results posted publicly for the benefit of truth. We'd end up with a very thorough rebuttal of the entire aggregation of manure. Any takers?
Here's the text of the survey:
Report "Samizdat" inaccuracies
A due-diligence review on behalf of the directors of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. If you would like to report more than one inaccuracy, please submit one entry and then use a fresh form -- multiple entries are allowed.
Have you located any inaccurate statements in Kenneth Brown's report, "Samizdat"?
Yes
No
Please enter the page number of "Samizdat" on which the inaccuracy occurs:
Please quote exactly the section of Samizdat that you wish to report is inaccurate:
Please enter any information you wish to supply which demonstrates that the section of "Samizdat" you cite is incorrect.
Please enter your email address below. Thank you for participting.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
The fishs translation (which is pretty hillarious in itself) can be found here.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Okay I am an idiot. So be it.
Ignoring the off-topic political overtones of the parent for a moment, do all US corporations expect the world to pander to them? Seems like a bit of a generality to me. In fact, I can only think of one instance where it was argued that the role of the various US "intellectual property" guardians (ie, copyright) is to enable large corporations.
Yes, our old friends at SCO. Recall when they tried the whole "The GPL is illegal because US copyright laws protect the profit motivation" argument, and got laughed at? And now we have Ken Brown saying that OSS is bad because it will kill the software sector?
*I don my tin-foil hat...*
It's looking more and more likely that Microsoft could be behind this crap, pulling the puppet strings. The arguments are the same. Linux is legally insecure, no company vouches for linux, linux is bad for the software sector, linux is stolen from Unix, linux will rot your brane!. MS is definitely funding SCO, and the AdTI has been verrrry touchy about where their $$$ comes from. I would wager at least even money that MS is behind it.
I know it sounds like the same slashdot ravings, but it's looking more and more like all this could be the voice of MS at work. So my ultimate point is don't assume that this point of view is anything but FUD until further notice.
I personally think he is right, it takes a long tinme to write an OS even to be as functional as the first version of Linux. Linux got the inspiration from somewhere. The title of "inventor" is ridiculous. He didnt invent concepts and methods that were in use in UNIX before he was born.
...to go around, but Ken Brown will take home more than his fair share for this one. For a person in his position, credibility is necessary for him to continue to recieve grants from people like Microsoft. They may be willing to give money to a hack, but not a discredited, proven hack.
"I have to give credit where credit is due. Brown got that one completely right."
These lines are just one of many examples why Professor Tanenbaum should not personally try and rebut Ken Brown's statements any longer. Rather, a visit to the next police station may be appropriate to make sure that (if there is such as thing in their statute books) the prosecution has their criminal defamation lawsuit -and hopefully handcuffs- ready next time Brown dares to visit the Netherlands (or Finland for that matter).
Moreover, Professor Tanenbaum's and Torvalds' lawyers might see sufficient grounds to sue for compensation as well... and it's to them that the aggrieved should leave the talking:
According to Professor Tanenbaum's own account, he immediately identified Brown as a clueless individual who had failed to do his homework, and that was within minutes after meeting him. So the idea of Professor Tanenbaum now spending many hours or even days writing rebuttals to Ken Brown as if both of them were holding opposite but equally defendable views e.g. like two researchers involved in a bona fide scientific debate... this only gives Brown undeserved credibility and an opportunity to brag even more about "the most important people talking to me all the time."
To make things worse, replying to Brown misses the point, as from their latest piece of slander at least (even viciously insinuating, in an utterly patronizing tone, that "good" Tanenbaum was some kind of nutty professor, which reminded me of McBride's equally arrogant allegation that Eben Moglen rather than himself was the one who did not know copyright law), it is clear that the Institution does not engage in a discussion at all: As Professor Tanenbaum and others have sadly had to observe, AdTI just continue to uphold their claims even where they have been proven wrong. Rather, they are building a case for an entirely different audience in which their report will be the first and only thing ever read on this subject matter, and believed without hesitation, for among its targetted readers it commands nothing less than the sacrosanct authority of Alexis de Tocqueville (le pauvre tourne dans sa tombe...)!
Pretending that a grown-up discussion with them was possible only gives Brown a chance to assert that every word not expressly rejected had been conceded by his interlocutors. Professor Tanenbaum had to experience this already, so it should come as no surprise if the next Brown communications will be somewhere along the lines "The good professor has immediately acknowledged most of our findings, in particular that pro-Linux developers are rabid zealots."
Torvald's early kernels were very small and not extensive (and not too stable either). From the beginning, he's invited (publicly) the hacker community to contribute. The kernel grew and it became an open source project from the beginning. The organic growth of the kernel came from lots of people and was MANAGED by one person. Alot of the ground work had already been done by MINIX so, as a "novice programmer," Linus didn't have to re-invent the wheel-he used the structure of MINIX as a template and hacked it from there.
It's like a composer using the sonata form--the notes are different but the form is the form.
To extend the metaphor, the form has actually grown from simple tune to a full symphonic work as the motif began to grow and other musicians' contributed with different textures, sounds, and rhythms.
Aaron Copland's "Apalachian Spring" features an old "Shaker" tune called "The Gift To Be Simple." Copland didn't write the tune, but he did adapt the work into a larger polyphonic structure with variations and formal development. (It was a ballet score for a small ensemble then a full symphonic suite).
I suggest that Linus took Minix and did the same. Only Linus's symphony contains a bit of jazz improv by the use of extemporaneous solos from the contributing musicians in his orchestra under the baton of the conductor/composer.
I fail to see why Ken Brown feels a need to call out Linus as some sort of phoney. Maybe he can write about how Copland ripped off all those poor backward hillbillies in the Apalachians.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I don't think there are *ANY* Windows Super Computers, don't think it was an option.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Time now to go on to something that'll actually make a difference in this world... like getting the Free/Open Source comminity active in the many elections comming up this year.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Microsoft will have to look for another VoxBox now.
I fail to see a connection between the Microsoft Mouthpiece ADTI and the original French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville, convincing enough so that the name sharing would stand to reason.
1. Linux 0.1 == Linux 2.6
... inevitably the entire IT economy". (See 4 too).
2. Minix is a "Prentice Hall Product".
3. "Hybrid Source".
4. Software being cheaper is bad for the economy.
5. Proprietary software is immune to the problem of software attribution.
6. Rhetoric constitutes an argument.
1. This fallacy is used in the inference that since Coherent took several man years, Linux must have been stolen.
2. As even Brown admits, Prentice Hall released Minix under a libre license.
3. Perhaps "Noone can ever truly accrue any value from owning hybrid source software", but so what? Everyone can accrue value from such software. It is a rank non-sequitur to claim that "The hybrid source model negatively impacts
"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."
This guy has never written a line of code in his life, and it's painfully obvious. I cannot think of a single program that I have written where I have never used a book. Linus just typed in every line of Linux version 0.1 himself. That's what "from scratch" means.
Posters recognized by their sig,
>> "How will open source user's be assured that they won't be pulled into court because of some actual or alleged stolen code?"
> How will closed source user's be assured that they won't be pulled into court because of some actual or alleged stolen code?
> Why should open source shoulder all of the doubt?
Because of a very basic marketing fact:
You take you biggest weakness and pretend it is your major strenght.
Closed source knows that not beeing able to show source code to big customers may be their biggest weakness (in particular with recent security problems). Hence, they tell people that having the source code in the wild is a mistake, and that closed source is inherently better.
Basic MS FUD.
And they know it won't cut it. But even if they get one month of delay in linux adoption, it means 1 billion in cash.
They will try *anything* to stop linux. Scox, Atdi is just the beginning. Stay tuned.
Anonymous Coward suggests:
;-)
This sounds like something I'd like to see Perens' "Open Source Risk Management" take on.
I'd rather see Daniel Egger's Open Source Risk Management take such issues on. If Perens had his own OSRM, that would confuse things. He'd potentially confuse himself, since he already accepted a position on the Board of Directors for Egger's OSRM.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Has anyone else noticed that when this topic first spread, everybody was talking about "Andy Tanenbaum" as if they all were old buddies of his...
what a hoot. a guy using a web hosting service from one of the biggest users of open source to distribute broadsides condemning open source.
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
if I write a book claim M$ didn't write the DOS, will some one pay me some money? I guess no, because it is not a lie. How about a book like this, after Kevin Mitnick stole the source code of VMS, he sent the source code to someone named Bloodax3 at Netherland. And then a group of hackers at northern Europe wrote a kernel and they also found a stupid young kids named Linus to put it on the internet, and one administrator named the kernel "linux" by some kind of mistake. And they successfully introduced their work to the world. But actually there are many back doors in the "linux", for example, there is a default root user, "superman", and the password is "21241036". And several years later, this group of hackers did the same thing about DeCSS, but they were unlucky this time. So, that's it, will some body pay me some money for this fantastic SciFi book?
I have problem accessing the original. Here's the google cache version: http://www.google.fi/search?q=cache:M2evSXeG0NcJ:w ww.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/rebuttal/+&hl=fi
One man couldn't possibly write so much crap in such a short time. I'm sure parts of it must be written by somebody else, and included in the Brown Book with or without permissions.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
"Another problem with Tanenbaum's logic is that he only presents examples of people that were Unix licensees, had Unix source code, or who were exceptionally familiar with software development. He cannot provide one example reasonably comparable to the Torvalds case."
obviously, this is not from at, but from brown. but if brown does not understand how a cs student is able to write funky software without beeing a unix licensee, i think he does neither understand why it's cold inside the fridge but warm at it's backside.
one good thing this soap opera has: it reveals some "history" that some people did not know, like how linux came to life and that.
beer as in "free beer"
And I was wasting a lot of time reading /. ,groklaw, and mainstream news.
...is cheap. Is AdTI not able to hire competent secretarial staff? Ken Brown's reply borders on illiterate.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
...Ken Brown will be a future Darwin Award winner.
I think the genius of Tanenbaum's response is the part he points out that Windows itself has a very shady past with regards ownership, and IP pollution. I hope Ken starts to get cold feet when he realises that the Open Source community can fight fire with fire and start asking difficult questions about where Windows really came from. I can only assume that he may be concious that Microsoft are probably behind this poor hatchet job.
Thanks for the ideas Ken.
Looks like this guy is running a campaign to google bomb adti with "Fake Research" and
"Clueless idiots" keywords. Let's help out folks!!! After all, all ADTI does is publish Fake Research conducted by
Clueless idiots
Roger Red-hat framed Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny!
It IS a good idea for him to shut up. I was hoping for another round :D
I am the Barber of Seville.
you are a "heavyweight" like Andy Tanenbaum.
Andy's first rebuttal included enough name-dropping and obscure significant facts about UNIX to establish himself as someone "in the know" and Brown as incompetent.
It is important to note that Andy Tanenbaum has not switched from anti-Linux to pro-Linux. Andy has not shifted his position at all. Andy is not clobbering Brown for a hatchet job on Linux. Andy is clobbering Brown for an incompetent hatchet job on Linux.
Personally I think Andy is making better copy.
"This statement is not grammatically, politically, or factually correct. Does he mean "Linus has Hansen's disease"? I hope not. But if he does, fortunately, it is highly treatable these days. If he means Linux is wasting away, the facts speak otherwise. If he means "Linux is very contagious" this is true, but a better wording could have been chosen."
I think he means something like "Linux is a disease which feeds off of the healthy body of commercial software."
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
I've been whipping out this de Tocqueville quote most every chance I get:
It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
except at *this* point in Brown's case, that would be desperately clinging to a now complex lie rather than the simple truth.
Should embedded software become 'free' too, it would be natural to conclude the value of hardware will spiral downward as well.
As far as I can see the Linksys WRT54G is selling for about $91.50. It would be natural to conclude that Linksys is saving time and money not reinventing the wheel.
Meanwhile, we should also very plainly ask, "who[m] are we trusting?"
Yes, whom are we trusting? Who is financing the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution's study into this? Why did Mr. Brown refuse to disclose this information when asked?
If Linux was based on Minix, doesn't it owe rights, attribution to Prentice Hall? Does it owe attribution or rights to anyone else?
If Unix was based on Multics, doesn't it owe rights, attribution to MIT, and General Electric Company. Does it owe attribution or rights to anyone else?
Doesn't the quote "the U.S. government is one of the largest patent holders in the world, owning the rights to 20-30,000 patents" (from Ken Brown's reply) pretty much underscore the commitment to top-notch research at the Alexis de Toqueville institute?
"Hey, Bob! How many patents do you think the US government holds? 20,000 or so?"
"Ummm, yeah.. maybe 30,000"
"Ok, yeah, 20 - 30,000. That ought to cover us."
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
To anyone familiar with the topic being discussed -- as opposed to a government bureaucrat that couldn't recognize a piece of code if it fell on their head -- it seems obvious that Ken Brown is being disingenuous.
AdTI did not publish Samizdat with the expectation that rabidly pro-Linux developers would embrace it. Its purpose is to provide U.S. leadership with a researched presentation on attribution and intellectual property problems with the hybrid source code model, particularly Linux.
Clearly not, because the pro-Linux developers are aware that the claims, as outlined in this document, are preposterous. "rabidly" is simply a thinly disguised ad hominem attack trying to lend some semblance of credence to claims which deserve none.
The United States is the home of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an internationally respected agency which contributes to the worldwide effort to protect and govern intellectual property. In addition, the U.S. government is one of the largest patent holders in the world, owning the rights to 20-30,000 patents.
The USPTO cannot easily be said to be "internationally respected", when in fact huge organizations and a tidal wave of dissatisfcation have arisen, because the USPTO grants 95% of all patents filed, has no manpower to assess the validity of patents and has spawned an industry of patent litigation and manipulation. The government's portfolio is relatively unimpressive; IBM, a single US company, has 23,000 active patents and was granted 3415 in 2003 alone. (And, it should be noted, IBM is one of the largest corporate supported of Linux; funny how they are simultaneously the largest patent 'consumer', but also one of Linux's biggest supporters; that in itself seems to imply a disconnection in the documents conclusions)
The disturbing reality is that the hybrid source model depends heavily upon sponging talent from U.S. corporations and/or U.S. proprietary software. Much of this questionable borrowing is a) not in the best interest U.S. corporations b) not in the best interest of IT workers in America c) at a serious expense to the investment community, an entity betting on the success of intellectual property in the marketplace.
This is very cute, and the derogatory language immediately gives away the intent. "Sponging"? Linux inspires grateful contributions of improvements from developers excited to be a part of a phenomenon. That's not "sponging". And I'd like to see Ken Brown justify his argument of theft of proprietary software, which sounds slanderous to me. Note that OSRM now offers intellectual property insurance because their EXTENSIVE review of Linux concluded that it was legally unencumbered. I doubt Ken Brown was so thorough.
Moreover, Brown's paragraphs conclusions about 'best interests' is fallacious. Because with respect to: (a) U.S. Corporations like IBM support Linux because it gives them access to powerful technology that they can build services and other revenue models on top of without forcing them to develop it themselves and Linux inspires more confidence than their proprietary products (such as AIX) ever did; (b) IT workers can benefit enormously from cheaper and more accessible software; expensive proprietary products simply allow soaking customers for IP, which does not benefit IT workers who do less work and see corporations charge more for it; moreover, OSS gives independant and small IT shops the ability to build powerful services on top of openly available tools; I make my living this way (and a good one), and (c) the investment community is irrelevent -- their "bet" on the IP marketplace is not one that government policy makers need to hedge for them; if someone betting on an "IP marketplace", if in fact such a bet has been made, th
I find it interesting that AT doesn't mention the Lions notes. Perhaps that is the link between linux, minux and unix.
University of Chicago, where I went for my CS degree, had a class where you wrote an Operating System as a project. In talking with my peers at work, many other colleges had a similar class, where students also wrote an OS. I am not sure what is so theoretically hard about doing this, especially when Linus turned this into a group project, and invited other interested people to assist. If college students can build a basic system in a quarter or semester of college, I suspect that the more dedicated types could whip out a really nice example in 6-12 months.
Greg
Hey! I'm out of work!
More important! Is it likely that a student (a single person) with no Tennis experience, without any use of written Tennis rules, could build a functioning Pong game in six months? :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Oh yeah... and the links are Fake Research and Clueless Idiots.
;)
Guess the original poster forgot a " after the address.
If you read the arguments of Ken Brown, then read what Tanenbaum has to say, it's immediately clear to someone of average intelligence that Brown does have a consistent argument--with a condition, if you take the time away. In other words, he's trying hard to argue with anachronism.
Unfortunately, most things in the world change in time, so you must be careful what you argue about. For example, according to Tanenbaum, it used to be legal to use Lions' book to teach Unix internals, until AT&T decided to forbid it. Brown would assert that Lions' notes have always been an illegal distribution, and therefore an infringement on Intellectual Property. In fact, he uses this argument to show how Tanenbaum is unaware of IP issues. But this is not true. If you can't tell how events unfold themselves in time, you'll buy his argument.
Furthermore, even if there was Minix code at the beginning for testing purposes, it would be gone by now. It's meaningless trying to argue if there is a possibility that some reminiscent of Minix is still preset in Linux. The only way to find out if that is the case is by analyzing the code line by line. The person making the claim (Ken Brown) is supposed to do that. But he didn't.
Ken Brown is free to say whatever he wants, but this just hurts his own credibility.
I once had a signature.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Brown: "The point of [my] paper is to magnify potential problems associated with this type of software development."
One of the definitions of "magnify," from Merriam-Webster: "to increase in significance : INTENSIFY b : EXAGGERATE."
Brown just ignores all the facts and persists in his belief. I'll bet he dismisses the widely reported claim that Mozart wrote three symphonies and performed for the King of England when he was nine on the grounds that 9-year-olds don't normally do this sort of thing.
;-)
Andy is definitely amusing. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this re-rebuttal. I pity Brown. A person who needs to take his medication as ordered by his Doctor
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Every time I see this name, I read it as "toqueville" (maybe because I'm from Michigan). I keep picturing some little town in the northern part of the US or Canada where the whole population walks around wearing wool hats.
One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duck tape to make them stop. ~G.M. Weilacher
Under Linux knowledge is accumulable: everything you learn today serves you tomorrow.
With Linux I can spent my time learning new tricks. With Windows, I must spent my time re-learning the same basic tasks, time after time.
(Yes, English is not my first language).
From the article (emphasis is mine):
Whether he had an agenda when he started or not, after conducting his research and interviews, of course he knows the difference. Influencing Public Policy = Money + Attention, however, and that's a pretty powerful incentive to convince yourself of a lot of things.
The Dalai LLama
...I'm going to publish an article showing that Linux was actually a communist plot developed by Stalin...I'm just waiting for SCO and Microsoft to put me on retainer...
My sig could be your sig!
I don't know why we think KB isn't on our side, he just admitted that the Tannenbaum was morally good and excellent. Or perhaps he was saying that the professor has a higher social rank than the average pig farmer, but isn't quite noble.
It is a quaint and annoying affectation. We aren't on the Orient Express anymore.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
One thing that sort of pisses me off about Slashdot is that if you take time to read everything, and form a response - it's so far down that it probably doesn't get read.
I read - completely - Brown's webpage. Purple text gives you a headache. I then read Ta bu shi da yu's response on kuro5shin.
Andrew tannenbaum sums it up when he comments on his webpage about Brown's visit. Here was a guy (Brown) who clearly didn't understand patents, or how to sumbit patent applications or release them into the public domain. He didn't understand tenets of intellectual property law. His paper is full of deliberate misuse of terms . tannenbaum says he wasn't very sharp, and he was being nice.
The guy, Brown, comes to visit him and Tannenbaum asks him outright who funds this "thinktank". He dodges the question. Andrew asks - OUTRIGHT - is it Microsoft? Of course, he knows it is. The guy won't answer. Brown then starts down a series of questions that shows he hasn't done ANY research into the history of UNIX. None! He doesn't know about the AT&T vs. BSD lawsuit? To the lawyers out there, this is tantamount to going before the Supreme Court to argue a racial discrimination suit and not knowing what Brown vs. Board of Education was about. It's that stupid.
It's clear that Andrew quickly sizes this guy up as a moron, and tries to educate him. Brown will have none of it, diverting the questioning into a series of leading questions.
It's pretty sickening. Andrew Tannenbaum is a super bright man. His book, "Computer networks, Fourth Edition." is the BIBLE for network professionals. It is to networking what Kernigan and Richie's book is to C programming. Actually, that's not right. K&R is a primer, nothing more. AT's book is the definitive history of how we got to where we are.
It genuinely sickens me when little turds like Brown get a few bucks from some Microsoft frontman, and then set off on a smear job like this. What it says, ultimately, is that Microsoft is afraid. I chalked that up to Slashdot hype and wishful thinking, but stuff like this makes me re-think that position. MySQL and PostgresSQL are beginning to really cut not into Oracle, but into SQLServer. Sun has been bought off, but IBM is coming hard with Linux and clustering. The Dell's and HPs out there are putting together bigger deals doing Linux. It's pissing Microsoft off, where before I honestly believed they didn't care. They ignored it.
I guess we should all be happy that guys like Tannenbaum exist, and that they choose teaching and University as their vocation. They are the counter-balance to the mass of hysterical bullshit. They will live to document this era correctly for the next few generations. Sorry to be so melodramatic, but it's basically true. In 100 years, whatever happens, people need to know how it went down. It didn't matter when crooks like Jack Tramiel decide to bust out companies for their personal fortunes and change the face of personal computing (sorry, still bitter over the Amiga all these years later). But the stakes are 1000x larger now.
From the article:
"Ironically, the main character in these wonderful books by Sheila McCullagh was Roger Red-hat. Conspiracy theorists should go wild with this new information."
Not quite, the picture shows a drawing with a white dog going by. Shouldn't it be a yellow dog?
(emphasis added)
Well, you can say that again...
He is a real liability to anyone he tries to "help". Remember him claiming it was "one of us" who DDOS'ed SCO. He is a mediocre programmer and a mid-level flamer who sadly was annointed by the press as some kind of spokeperson for the free software community.
It's time he just shut up.
Your post highlights my worst fear about the F/OSS community (at least, as represented on /.): Yet another comment that should have been modded "Insightful" is modded "Funny". Oh well, at least you were modded up... deservedly.
You can be Communist all you want as long as you have ONE BILLION CONSUMERS. Or should that be ONE BEEEELION CONSUMERS...
(the source code, that is).... but, did Linux-0.1 have ext filesystem support? I seem to recall that it relied on a minix filesystem of some sort, no?
thank you, sir.
AdTI here demanding $60,000 from lawyers of Philip Morris to start a media campaign.
Better stick to the far better originals with Joel.
When Tanenbaum isn't writing books about how to create operating systems and computer networks, he's writing books about how to create food. (Yes, he really did write a book titled How To Prepare Your Input.)
I think people are missing some very important items here:
1) There is a high degree of probability that Linus Torvalds *did* write the original Linux kernel on his own.
2) Since so many people contributed to the Linux Kernel over the past years, it is *possible* that some code from proprietary sources made it into the Linux kernel.
3) Whether any proprietay code is currently included in the present Linux kernel is still under speculation. SCO *did* show several snipets of code that *were* proprietary and *were* part of the 2.4 codebase; hence, it *is* possible that other proprietary code is still within the current 2.6.x codebase.
What I'd like to know is this: what kind of code review goes into the process of submitting code to the Linux Kernel? Is there actually a group of people who check the code for possible violations of the inclusion of proprietary code into the kernel, thereby invalidating the GPL/LGPL or whatever Open Source licensing the Linux Kernel falls under? I'm aware that there are people who check the submitted code for other tendencies, but it would be interesting to see if there is anyone who watches for the inclusion of proprietary code into the Linux kernel before it actually gets included. In other words: does code checking include the legal requirements under the licensing model that Linux uses?
--ScottKin
I don't give a rat's behind about "karma" here or anywhere else. Don't like what I have to say here? Deal with it!
"captain Needa.(sp?)"
Less look fast, more go fast.
When I see the words "think tank," I replace them with "paid mouthpieces." This properly indicates the purpose of these groups.
Near as I can tell, there are few real "think tanks" left in the US, unless you mean, "Stick these people in a tank until they think of a way to sell our bullshit as chocolate pudding."
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
ah, yes... it comes down to this:
"Being accepted at fine restaurants and hotels around the world is directly proportional to the intelligence one has." - Ken Brown
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
A Reminder... (Score:1)
by ScottKin (34718) on Tuesday June 08, @05:29PM (#9370763)
(http://users.adelphia.net/~scottkin/)
To remind everyone:
Linus Torvalds is EMPLOYED by OSDN, who also happens to own Slashdot.
Never trust everything you read. OSDN & Slashdot have a vested interest in "defending" Torvalds, as well as defending Linux - regardless of whether Torvalds *created* Linux on his own or he copied and/or transliterated code from other sources.
The word that comes to my mind is "nepotism".
--ScottKin
You sure proved that poor thinking does not inhibit the abilty to type.
Your Brown's kind of reader facts be damned.
Linus works for OSDL - Open Source Development Labs
Slashdot is a part of OSDN - Open Source Development Network
No connection between the two, other than Linux enthusiasts have an interest in but, but no direct business connection.
In your mind aparently the difference of one letter or one word makes no difference,
well then I'm sure you'll understand this Tuck oft cupid".
we will call bogues reports which claim, insinuate, or are being portrayed as neutral scientific research, but in fact are FUD to the greater benefit of their corporate sponsors, 'Tocquevilles'.
Also as a verb, like: "He (Linus) got Tocquevilled'
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
"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."
But it's having a corresponding benefit on software consumers, who get a better quality product (both from the OS community and from the proprietary vendors). At the end of the day consumers spend more of their hard-earned money on doing interesting things with the software instead of paying for it, which probably translates to much more net innovation and job creation than if Microsoft ends up with all the money.
"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."
No, it would be idiotic. A chip costs money to produce, money to assemble into hardware, money to package, ship etc. I'm unaware of any hardware company which has it's embedded software dept as a profit center; the software that runs on an embedded processor is sunk cost from the producers point of view. Not paying a license fee or development costs is pure profit for the hardware company.
BzzzzT!
Wrong!
This is a common misperception.
Mind you, I'm not talking about Mr. Joe Blow.
I'm talking about the people Mr. Joe Blow works for. There are plenty of linux consulting shops that will develop an end-to-end solution for you.
Their service tends to be outstanding, but of course there are always exceptions.
And, if you read my post, instead of just pounding reply, you would notice that I indicate there is survey evidence among IT professionals and business managers in an IT related field regarding the 'favorability' of MS versus OSS, and these surveys generally paint MS in a poor light.
Not just among slashbots mind you.
Yes, or course, the surveys were biased.
Biased by whom? Microsoft, of course. I was refering to that leaked microsoft memo released as the halloween Document #7.
Link here
Microsoft is fighting neck and neck in the image war, and at this moment in time, they are loosing.
That could change, of course, but don't count it on.
CTO are pissed of about the new MS licensing, constant MS patching, and dealing with the hassel when their WHOLE FRIGGIN NETWORK goes down. Not that it was unavoidable...But its still happenning. Even if MS releases the patches in time, networks keep going down.
And then there is the TCO battle.
You are wrong about this being a slashdot only thing. Linux really is getting to be well known in the business world.
Is everyone switching? No. But mindshare, and marketshare, are building.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Let's start a legal fund to sue Brown for libel.
An absolutely brilliant, thorough, and well deserved Fisking by the Good Professor!
God I love that word!
A "dupe" is when the same story is posted more than once on SLASHDOT.
In case you didn't notice, SLASHDOT is neither NEWSFORGE nor REDHAT.
Idiot.
Best quote:
"It is just as cold in Finland as in Canada so programmers are never tempted to go outside."
Imagine a beowulf cluster of THOSE - you could generate blue screens at an INCREDIBLE rate!!
I sure hope this page:
http://adti.net/ysurvey/survey.php?s_id=2
isn't vullnerable to sql injection.
Especially since it uses the mysql "hybrid source" database.
That would be a pity...
Quite the contrary -- besides the whole feud with Linus, even earlier he quarreled with Stallman. It seems that Andrew, being at a Dutch institution called (in English) "Free University", had created a compiler kit called "The Free University Compiler Toolkit", and Stallman was intrigued and assumed that Tannenbaum was a kindred spirit and suggested a collaboration (this was in the 1980's, when the GNU project was first taking form). Tannenbaum in no uncertain terms told Stallman that "the university is free, but certainly not my software", and tried to dissuade Stallman from continuing his quixotic quest to create GNU.
Anyway, the point isn't to criticize Andrew, but to show that his current support is all the more useful because he's *not* a traditional fan of free software.
SCO and AdTI are wonderful jokes.
If this is the fight part then perhaps
an updated version of the quote would read:
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you,
then they fight you, then you laugh at them,
then you win.
1000 SlashDot sigs
Celebrity web deathmatch!
"where is it written that all activities everywhere in the world must be done with the interests of U.S. corporations as their primary goal?"
The US Constitution.
Ammendment #47 section 1d.10-t:
The United States shall be thought of as the 'Supreme Nation of the Earth'. All activities therein shall only be allowed if they benefit United States' Citizens^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Corporations. Any activities to the contrary shall be deemed unAmerican, and must be eliminated.
Mod parent up as "Informative", please.
Kenneth Brown is president of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution .... He is reportedly "not the sharpest knife in the drawer,"
haha thats funny! even the article about him can't resist a sly dig!
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Just ignore that guy (Brown).
I can claim all of the following:
"Nobody can run 100m in less than 10secs, because the human leg is not strong enough".
"Albert Einstein could not possibly develope his theory of relativity in such a short amount of time".
"Microsoft didn't develop the initial version of Windows, because they only knew how to write Basic code".
"Iraq was involved in the events of 9/11 and has WMDs, because all dictators are terrorists".
"The moon mission was a fake. The US did not have the technology and money to pull that off".
"The Allies could never have won against Germany, because they didn't have enough troups. Hence we all live in a state of hynosis believing the Allies won".
I can even write a book about all this. I can even come up with circumstantial "proof" backing my claim. That does not change facts.
So instead of getting upset just ignore the guy. Nobody takes him seriously anyway.
The only person who knows whether Linus wrote all of the first version of Linux is Linus. We can all claim whatever we want, it doesn't change a bit.
And let me just say this: Everybody with some knowledge in OS theory could write the *first* version of Linux in six months (and this is not to discredit Linus). I remember we wrote a virtual memory management system and filesytem in our OS lecture in 1/2 semesters and that was only one of our projects.
The fact the Brown needed to quote Tannenbaum out of context was enough for me to ignore him.
I think you ignored all the comments that said "Linux 0.1 wasn't that great."
HP does put free software out to operate its printers at least.
Watch an awful show made by a liberal to restore cosmic balance.
just because it takes what 4 years to write longhorn doesn't mean....
Mozart's first few concertos weren't that great either.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Is it just me, or does the name "Joseph Lieberman" stand out in the AdTI letter mentioned in this comment?
Is it the Joseph Lieberman? The one who ran alongside Al Gore as VP? If so, how did he become "Honorary Co-Chairman" of AdTI? What a shame.
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
What ever this guy is smoking, it must be able to make Tommy Chong pause for a minute and wonder if it's a good idea to try it. Maybe it's that drain cleaner that that chick snorted in Up In Smoke?
I drank what? -- Socrates
IMHO, Linus should sue Ken Brown for libel as soon as the book is published. Ken is calling Linus a liar with respect to Linus's writing of the original Linux kernel, which is arguably an attempt to damage Mr. Torvalds' public reputation and career. Every source Ken has named has publically contradicted Ken's version of what he said, which should make demonstrating the falsity of Brown's allegations a slam dunk.
Perhaps IBM's legal staff would be willing to handle the lawsuit against ADTI on a pro bono basis. This is arguably just as much a threat to their Open Source-based products and development as the SCO lawsuit, and IMHO, for the same reason.
It may well be that in the course of a lawsuit, any parties that might have paid ADTI to prepare this book and the press releases could be forced to disclose their interests, which would speak to the question of malicious intent and motivations for Brown to engage in what appears to be reckless falsehood directed against the Open Source community in general and Linus Torvalds in particular.
Even if the book is not published, the press releases may well adequate grounds for legal action.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Morons abound... Response to a rebutal is a rejoinder... sheesh. Uneducated geeks.
Re:the microsoft shills (Score:1)
...just like the Linux shills:
by ScottKin (34718) on Tuesday June 08, @05:49PM
(#9371020)
(http://users.adelphia.net/~scottkin/)
Slashdot
OSDN
Kuro5in
Richard Stallman
Tannenbaum
etc, etc, etc.
The door opens both ways, bucko!
--ScottKin
And you wouldn't be a Microsoft shill now would you?
Come on Scott, in the name of full disclosure fess up, your not that far south of Redmond and I'm sure Linux represents a potential hazard to you or your community in M$ terms.
Slashdot & Kuro5in are communities not shills, good work insult an entire community and complain your unloved.
Richard Stallman is an Open Source advocate that predates Linux by ages, if anybody is a shill it would be Linux to Stallman not the other way around.
Tannenbaum, crap man your making me laugh - where's Tannenbaum's interest as a shill?
Microsoft is more likely to give him grant money than any Linux entity.
OSDN, well you could be right there they've got that wonderful SourceForge Enterprise Edition, that they give away an Open Source version of.
Come on MickeySoft is a powerhouse in your neck of the woods and it's un-nerving to think anything could challenge it.
Then again, what unix loser does?
we sure will be making fun of ken brown.. but i guess all of us will buy his book just out of curiosity and that exactly is his purpose.
this sig violates slashdot rules
This is perhaps more interesting in what it says about the author of the article...
"Isn't fair to question their character, when the core of their business strategy is trust?"
I love the idea that the only true way to write software is to sit down with a blank page and start typing away. How many developers out there don't share each others' code?
I don't know many mathematicians who start from scratch on anything. I'm pretty sure ol' Einstein built on the work of others. He was just a little more creative than most.
In your face Tanenbaum! - Homer Simpson
Hey, it's the Think Tank that didn't!
Amazing. They have 404 accomplishments. Pretty impressive, I must say.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
You mean, the Santa Claus Operation?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I wrote a piece on Kuro5hin a few days back. Is this what you're talking about?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's trivia time:
What kind of person does the following ?
1. Claims a single individual sponged talent (?) (he couldn't say stole) from U.S. Government and Corporations
attempts to find proof of such an hideous horrible crime (in order to give his bold statement some foundation)
only to be refuted by his own expert and apparently disregards expert opinion.
2. Probably thinks even taking inspiration from works of others is an intellectual crime, let alone learning from others
for the all-but-good purpose of writing the roots of a free-for-all operating system.
3. Uses ad hominem rethorical attack, hidden behind the statement that operating system is a human disease (an orange=apple
kind of equation) disregarding the fact Linux hasn't uprooted Windows et al yet and that this is necessarily an outcome as
bad as that of leprosy.
4. Uses the non sequitur : if a thing comes for free (price) then it lowers the value of something else, apparently forgetting (yeah sure) price and value are not always proportional and are two entirely different concepts to begin with.
5. Claims that a single 21 year old can't do what a group of elder experienced people does in years, apparently forgetting that
what wasn't coinceived or realized in the past may be conceivable and realizable in the future, regardless of the constrains
experienced in the past , and using "age" as a factor that gives less likelyhood to a technical accomplishment ?