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OSDL Denies Rewriting Kernel
yootje writes "Although there were rumours saying that OSDL writes a version of the Linux kernel that doesn't infringe patents (an argument that was used by Microsoft), OSDL denies this: 'OSDL officials have said that the report was not accurate, and that while Beaverton is putting $1.2m into economic development around open source software, this is not connected to rewriting the Linux kernel.'"
It was Maureen O'Gara, a writer without an ounce of credibility or ethics. She's been a huge part of the MicroSCOft campaign against Linux all along, this is just another bow shot.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
The article at the centre of this particular storm-in-a-teacup was written by the infamous Maureen O'Gara, who regularly gets dumped on over at groklaw for the quality and balance of her linux reportage and whose company (G2 computer intelligence) is behind a motion in Utah connected to the SCO IBM case to unseal submissions to the Court by both parties. Summary: Nothing to see here.
That's something made me laugh this week. NO, the code isn't 10 years old. One of the core developers said this week that the kernel is getting 4mb of patches every week. Now, lets compute a bit:
/usr/src/linux-2.6.7
# du -hs
290M linux-2.6.7
# bc
(...snip...)
290/4
72
This would assume that in a little bit over 1 year, the kernel is totally replaced. I know its logically flawed, but it means in my interpretation that there is no obsolete code in the kernel that would be >10 years old, or maybe with a few exceptions. I think it's safe to assume that most parts of the kernel aren't older than 2-3 years. Your logic is flawed.
Personally i think the kernel is perfectly good without a rewrite.
Legal issues shouldn't be a consideration neither, since SCO-code in the linux kernel is something in one class with Santa Claus. Linus stated on multiple occasions that he doesn't believe sco code could be in the kernel. I don't have evidence who generates those rumours, but i got a hunch it's from the SCO,Microsoft side of the barricade.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
"Rewrite", to a programmer, doesn't mean to throw everything out and start from scratch, either. It means rethink some the design. Reevaluate why feature X was done the way it was, and if that's stillt he best way to do it. Make sure it's still relevant for modern hardware, and make sure it will still be relevant for tomorrows hardware.
...And linux is doing this with odd releases(2.1, 2.3, 2.5) and now with -mm while keeping 2.6 around. Did you ever look at LKML? You could see tons of discussions about what and how should be done.
MSFT is doing this with Longhorn. The hardware evolves, why shouldn't the software that runs on it?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Like Ann Coulter is to Democrats and Michael Moore is to Republicans Maureen O'Gara is to Open Source Only the weak minded, lazy, and easily led will beleave a word she says. But, unfortunately, the majority of the populace is one of the above...
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
No, I was reading somewhere (groklaw, perhaps) that actions to ameliorate a controversy can't be used as evidence of knowledgeable wrongdoing. So you can rewrite code to sidestep a patent infingement complaint, but that doesn't mean you are acknoledging the legitimacy of the patent or the claims of infringement. And this makes sense.
Personally, I don't care about the edits - the difference between a "stable" release and an "unstable" one is the number of characters you choose to represent it with. It's just a label, it doesn't confer any magical properties.
Some of the networking code is getting a little old - there are sections of the IPv4 code which haven't been touched in 2-3 years. You can have a lot of new ideas on how to improve something, in that kind of timeframe.
A complete rewrite is unlikely at present. The kernel is still evolving too rapidly. Nobody would be able to keep up with the changes. Now, once we reach Linux 3.0 or 4.0, things might settle down some. Then, a rewrite might be smart. Code that evolves is inherently going to have inefficiencies and redundancies, because nobody can track every possible interaction between every possible combination of blocks of code.
In consequence, yes, I think it would be smart to stop at Linux 4.0, deconstruct the kernel and then reassemble. That would be a good time to do a thorough security audit, too. Then we've got a stable base to start the rapid evolution all over again.
The problem with evolving code is that the number of potential interactions rises with the factorial of the number of blocks of code. This means that, beyond a certain point, it's impossible to maintain. By "resetting" the code to a stable state, you can get round that problem to some degree. You still can't increase complexity forever, but you can raise the upper limit.
The problem with a purely designed piece of software is that it's very hard to change the design midway. This means that it's great for producing static results, or a stable starting point, but it is useless for dynamically updating the code.
Finally, OSDL doesn't have the money or the manpower to do a rewrite of the Linux kernel. Do you realise how large the kernel is, these days? Linux 2.6.11-pre1-mm1 is 22,892,878 lines long. Every block of code in that would need to be cross-referenced with every patented algorithm, to be sure Linux was IP-violation-free. I don't know how many patents there are for algorithms, software and "business methods", but it's probably in the hundreds of thousands, maybe the millions.
Let's say that there's an average of a thousand lines per block, and ten thousand business methods. Then you'd need to perform almost 229 million comparisons. By hand, as a computer can't compare two abstract concepts for similarity.
If OSDL employed 10% of the entire population of America, they could probably manage it within a year and keep in step with all the patches that are being submitted. If OSDL could afford to hire 10% of the entire population, they could afford to buy SCO. And IBM. And Microsoft. And every other damn computer software and/or hardware manufacturer in the US. At which point, why would they care about patents? They'd own them all.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
So its the same as the official kernel then!!
OSRM estimated last August that Linux may infringe on 283 patents.
Personally, I believe that if specific instances of actual infringement are known, those parts of the code should be rewritten. Unless the kernel writers are part of a civil disobedience campaign I'm not aware of?
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