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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..."
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
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.
Why doesn't KB just cut his losses and slink away before he's made a greater fool of, if that's possible.
/. all day, confident in their superiority.
Are you kidding? He's trying to sell a book, it's 100% in his best interest to stay in the spotlight as long as possible no matter what that takes. Who's the greater fool, KB with his million dollars in book revenue or the people who laugh at him on
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
If you think what I think you mean, I sort of agree with you.
Linus and Ken ought to be screening their public responses to this mess through their lawyers.
I can bet you any money (and lots of it) that those funding this AdTI "research", have lots of money for their lawyers.
This is such an obvious hatchet job, I have to wonder if it isn't a draw for something, more
Lets hope the plot doesn't thicken.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Because there is a world outside of slashdot. Yes, everyone here is going to snicker and roll their eyes about how this guy is obviously an idiot since he questions linus, the gpl, linux, etc., but there are people in the rest of the world who actually will consider what he has to say. Maybe he doesn't care if the crowd here thinks he's a fool? Maybe that's not who he is writing for?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
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.
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
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.
He'll be lucky to break even on the publishing costs.
Especially since he intends to distribute most of the copies for free for the purposes of political lobbying.
KFG
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
Don't people think he was hired (i.e. paid) to do this political lobbying?
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Are you kidding? He's trying to sell a book, it's 100% in his best interest to stay in the spotlight as long as possible no matter what that takes. Who's the greater fool, KB with his million dollars in book revenue or the people who laugh at him on
/. all day, confident in their superiority.
Personally I think KB may turn out to be the bigger fool in the end. We can conspire about why he's so driven to his (repeatedly refuted) belief that Linus couldn't have written Linux without ripping someone else's code off all day, but the fact remains that KB's own consultants have contradicted him! Frankly I would suspect continuing to go to print with such a claim (even though it's his opinions, accusing someone of theft when your own research (e.g. consultants repots) have told you your opinion is wrong will probably not pass freedom of speech muster. KB may find himself on the wrong (and losing) end of a libel suit once his book is published. I doubt he'll have much left from his proceeds even after the legal battle's over, whomever wins.Yes I could be wrong, but there is so much out there already refuting, disproving, contradicting everything that we know KB's got in his book so far that I just can't see HOW it couldn't be considered anything but libel when it goes to print at this point. I also hope Linus follows up on it, I'm sure there are plenty of folks willing to help support a Linus vs. KB libel suit out there.
If KB's really doing this because MS is paying him and/or his institute to do it, I sure hope he got a good price for completely and utterly destroying himself.
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.
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!
"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 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.
To bad his consultant didn't demand a clause in their contract requiring his results to be included, unedited, in an appendix of KB's book.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Who's the greater fool, KB with his million dollars in book revenue or the people who laugh at him on /. all day, confident in their superiority.
So, your hypothesis is that the ends justify the means - particularly when money is at stake? A grifter in a suit and tie is still a grifter - regardless of his social standing.
The sad thing about all of this is that really brilliant people had to take the time to formulate rebuttals to the work of this second rate hack, who's only purpose in life is to serve as the mouthpiece of special interests.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
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.
Schandenfreude.
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.
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.
"... 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."
I'm afraid to said that Ken Brown is completely right here. I have been lobying for years to ban the use of light bulbs. Light bulb technology and any other electrical light producing devices have been reducing the value of candles for years now. Not just candles have been affected. Because of the low price of "electric" lighting other products are losing value because light bulbs are being used in their manufacturing plants.
There are deleterious effects on the whole US economy. Products have a lot less value and are available at a very lower price. Costly power lines have been built wasting precious money from the tax payers.
Please help me stop the light bulbs and all other kinds of electric lighting.
With all respect to Dr. Tanenbaum, it's not hard to look good when responding to someone as stupid as Ken Brown.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
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...
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,
Probably something of both. I suspect the project was probably pitched to him in terms of whatever principles he normally espoused. I doubt he was particularly knowledgable beforehand; while he may have had nagging doubts, it likely didn't seem too implausible.
So he takes the money, does the interviews, and somewhere along the way begins to realize how evil a thing he's really been asked to do.
At that point, he's already got the money, his reputation, and personal pride riding on this. Not to mention an aching conscience.
Of cousre it would be presumptuous to claim to know what really went on in his head; this is a guess. Regardless, someone in that position can either:
Once someone starts down that second road, turning back only becomes more costly. One lie begets another, and the whole vicious cycle begins again, each revolution effecting a further disconnect from reality.
It's like the moral equivalent of credit card debt.
That's how we end up with suicidal cult leaders, the Iraqi Information Minister, and Darl McBride.
Whatever you do, don't laugh, because in small or large ways it happens to all of us. Keep your conscience clean. If there's something you need to make right in your life, do it today, before the long-term costs catch up with you.
DNA just wants to be free...
Seems to me Linus has a pretty good libel case against him regardless, should he choose to sue. Malicious disregard for the truth about an individual can have consequences.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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.
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.
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.
Had Philip Morris taken AdTI up on their offer, we'd have seen something similar back then to what we're seeing today: an apparently disinterested think tank raising a public policy issue for debate, while silently taking payoffs from a beneficiary of the debate.
In other words, it's not a smoking gun, but it's a gun case and a couple of empty shells, to the effect that AdTI can be bought for astroturfing.
What's really compelling, I think, is that a tobacco company apparently acted in a more moral fashion than Microsoft by refusing to use a fundamentally dishonest PR tactic.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Lots of copying going on in the OSS world.
Specifically he says lots of copyright infringement happens, but he can't find even one single example of it. Can you? No, I didn't think so.
What KB might have been trying to say is that it's not a fun thought for a corp to make a new piece of software if the OSS community is going to work feverishly to try to make a free substitute.
Boo hoo hoo. If it wasn't open source hackers trying to beat it then it would be Microsoft or some other company. Any successful product attracts competitors. Do you see HP whining about Dell selling printers? Do you think it's fun for Sony that the XBox exists?
If your company can't manage to make something better than what can be produced by hobbyists working on evenings and weekends then you don't deserve to survive.