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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..."
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.
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...
No. That was the rebutal. This is the rebutal to the rebutal of the rebutal. Do try to keep up.
"'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?
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.
A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is leaning against the
headboard smoking a cigarette, with a satisfied smile on its face.
The egg, looking a bit p*ssed off, grabs the sheet, rolls over, and says,
"Well, I guess we finally answered THAT question!"
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
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.
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
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!
Is anyone else hoping that AdTI mentions Hitler or the Nazis so that this discussion can be officially over?
"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.
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..."
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!
...is that his own consultant says he's full of it.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
"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
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.
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.
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.
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.
The fishs translation (which is pretty hillarious in itself) can be found here.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
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...
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
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?
From the k5 article (and Tanebaum's site):
AST: Who funds it?
KB: We have multiple funding sources
AST: Is SCO one of them? Is this about the SCO lawsuit?
KB: We have multiple funding sources
AST: Is Microsoft one of them?
KB: We have multiple funding sources
If only Tanenbaum had been a little more clever, there could have been these two extra lines:
AST: Is K-Mart one of them?
KB: No.
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.
AdTI here demanding $60,000 from lawyers of Philip Morris to start a media campaign.
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.
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".