Slashdot Mirror
Linus Defends Proprietary File Formats [Updated]
Simon (S2) writes "Torvalds launched a blast against OpenOffice.org, and defended Microsoft's right to keep its binary Office formats proprietary. 'I'm happy with somebody writing a free replacement for Microsoft Office. But I'm not fine with them writing a free replacement just by reverse engineering the proprietary formats,' said the Linux founder. 'Microsoft has its own reasons for keeping them proprietary, and I can't argue with that.'
At the heart of Torvalds' decision to refrain from using Bitmover's BitKeeper source code management tool last week, a day after BitKeeper decided to drop its limited functionality free client, is a dispute between BitKeeper developer Larry McVoy and Samba developer Andrew 'Tridge' Tridgell. It has subsequently emerged that Tridgell was working on a clean room reverse engineered implementation of McVoy's proprietary software, and Torvalds has come down on the side of his friend McVoy." Update: 04/13 17:24 GMT by T : As reader Daniel Callahan points out, this is a goof. "The Register article made up the Torvalds quote. The article offers the quote
and then continues: 'Actually he didn't - we just made that quote up. But what Torvalds really
did say this weekend is only slightly less bizarre.'"
The only addition is the false quote from Linus, I think it is pretty unforgivable that CowboyNeal would put a deliberately false quote in the blurb of a story, but its not surprising given that slashdot editors really don't appear to give a flying fuck any more (even after I sent an email to the "on duty editor" after seeing this in the "mysterious future").
Torvalds launched a blast against OpenOffice.org, and defended Microsoft's right to keep its binary Office formats proprietary. "I'm happy with somebody writing a free replacement for Microsoft Office. But I'm not fine with them writing a free replacement just by reverse engineering the proprietary formats," said the Linux founder. "Microsoft has its own reasons for keeping them proprietary, and I can't argue with that."
Actually he didn't - we just made that quote up.
Well, thanks for another misleading headline Slashdot! While I applaud your recent efforts to fix crappy editorial comments and duplicate removal you still are showing that you refuse to even read the articles that users submit. Now on to the rest of the article...
You know Linux is a clone of Unix because Linus couldn't run Unix on his 386 machine. He wasn't pleased that he couldn't do something and he worked around it. Why can't someone be displeased with other proprietary systems and create workarounds for them?
I'm preaching to the choir here but reverse engineering is a Good Thing for all communities. There is absolutely no reason that we should not support working around what others have obfusticated to make money for themselves.
Linux wouldn't have nearly the same capacity in the Windows world we live in if it wasn't for Samba. Yeah, there is NFS for Windows and various other file sharing protocols that could have been used but Samba makes it easy for anyone to fit their Unix clone right into their pre-existing Windows network without much trouble.
The free client was costing Bitmover $500,000 a year, explains McVoy. "At that point we started looking at what it would be like to discontinue the free BK.
So? It's obvious that the pay-for client offered nothing worth what you were asking if the free client can do the job. Either price properly or make the pay-for product much better. I'm not talking about crippleware or nagware. I'm talking about creating a much more superior product that entices people to buy rather than hobble along with what the free version offers.
Plenty of companies out there have been doing it just fine by basing their business model on Linux. Why can't McVoy find the same happy existence?
"What Larry is not fine with, is somebody writing a free replacement by just reverse-engineering what he did. Larry has a very clear moral standpoint: 'You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails. Solve the problems on your own, and compete honestly. Don't compete by looking at my solution.'
They are competing honestly. They are doing it in a clean lab. They aren't trying to steal your code and use it themselves but they are trying to take a great idea and make it better. Welcome to the real world. Crying doesn't do anything but piss people off. Do something to your own software that will make it stay one+ steps ahead of the reverse engineered competition.
From the article:
Actually he didn't - we just made that quote up.
Sheesh.
Saving throw of "Tempest in a Teapot" ... failed.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
The reg: ... we just made that quote up.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
But I'm not fine with them writing a free replacement just by reverse engineering the proprietary formats
Linus never said that. From the fucking article:
"Actually he didn't - we just made that quote up."
Please don't put words in Linus' mouth. That's very sleazy, Mr. Andrew Orlowsk.
Also from the fucking article:
So is Linus going to come down hard on other efforts to create a free and open alternative to a proprietary product - say, for example, a UNIX(TM)-like operating system?
Does the author understand that this is a different situation? Linus did not reverse engineer Unix.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
That quote was made up.
Who is this imposter and what has he done to the real Linus?
MS shouldn't be forced to open any application source code, but _should_ be forced to have open file formats. They can 'innovate' all they want, but their customers shouldn't be locked into their software. IMO, of course.
Aren't most of the really good Ethernet and Sound drivers for Linux based on reverse engineering drivers under other OSes? It seems very strange for Linus to take this possition now.
Oh well, I guess everyone has the right to their opinions, I just respectfully disagree.
Wow, not too bright on the poster's/moderator's part.
The statement aledged to have been made by Linus is part of a report where a very tasteless analogy was used of Linus sticking up for Microsoft proprietary document file formats.
The original article wass trying to make a point, rather poorly in my opinion.
Dude
cowboyneal - you are an idiot.
Nor did CowboyNeal, apparently.
Before anyone who didn't RTFA gets up in arms: No, he didn't say that, and the article header really should explain. The Register is drawing a comparison with his attitude towards BitKeeper. s/BitKeeper/Microsoft and s/Tridge/OpenOffice.org.
/. summary acts as if it's a real Linus quote.
Were the submitter and editor confused, or are one or both intentionally trying to provoke a reaction by providing an inaccurate summary? At least the Register article has a clear "No, he really didn't say that" line. The
How do you get interoperability without reverse-engineering?
Nonaggression works!
lol... i predict RTFA to be written at least 200 times.
...or has Linus' views become so radical, that Linux should be taken away from him?
Slashdot: News for Trolls, Stuff that's Bullshit.
What's wrong with reverse engineering? In the past it's been considered legal if it is done in a 'cleanroom' type environment, meaning that none of the participants had or have any connection with the company that originated the format (in this case Microsoft). Of course laws like the DMCA cast some legal doubt on some reverse engineering... But ethically it seems just fine.
the false headline will hit google news and spread further, whereas the correction in the comments will go unnoticed.
This story should be yanked now.
read the story a bit more carefully next time. the sentence in The Register story immediately after the one quoted is:
"Actually he didn't - we just made that quote up."
it was the register journalist trying to illustrate a point by substituting "OpenOffice" and "file formats" for "BitKeeper" and "what _he_ did" (read the newsforge link from the original story). and the (quite valid) point that he was trying to illustrate is that linus's position is a strage one for someone who's so intimately involved with free software.
There's a big difference between reverse-engineering a file format and reverse-engineering an application's full functionality.
This is an editorial disguised as news. And a poor one at that.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Congratulations, submitter! It's not every day you can successfully troll on the front page. Ten points to Slytherin.
This is really unforgivable: to quote the 'Linus quote' from the Register verbatim, and then to not quote the bit immediately after:
Actually he didn't - we just made that quote up.
It doesn't matter how well the quote summarizes Linus' position. The Register makes it very clear that the quote is not really Linus' by denying it right afterward. Slashdot should too.
This is worst kind of out-of-context quoting I've seen in here quite a while, in a story at least. Both the submitter and CowboyNeal should apologise.
Look how many people have read the article!! They should have a new entry in the Hall of Fame. Most Read Article. And this would WIN!!
People will argue about whether the quotation is accurate, but there's no doubt that Linus right now has more conservative views on intellectual property and the development of ideas than many in the software community, even proprietary software developers. You might call this hypocritical, considering how early releases of Linux were so closely modelled along the lines of Minix, including components like the cloning of the Minix filesystem with absolutely no modification or improvement on its design.
I don't really care. He's a kernel engineer and as long as his kernel continues to kick ass, I'll use his software. In the same way, I don't use GNU's silly excuse for a kernel, but think a lot of their politics is insightful and their userspace software unrivalled.
A few mere minutes and seems like every post is about how that quote was made up. Apparently, the typical Slashdotter will do anything in exchange for free karma.
"Look, even Linux Torvalds supports our right to innovate!"
Lies!
The headline writer is either malicious or inept. Or both.
Wow...I can almost hear the inrush of flame-mails cascading thru the Internet all headed to CowboyNeal's INBOX.
I mean, shit, I'm very tempted to stop reading this site.
Slashdot, the Weekly World News of tech journalism.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Torvalds launched a blast against OpenOffice.org, and defended Microsoft's right to keep its binary Office formats proprietary. "I'm happy with somebody writing a free replacement for Microsoft Office. But I'm not fine with them writing a free replacement just by reverse engineering the proprietary formats," said the Unix founder. "Microsoft has its own reasons for keeping them proprietary, and I can't argue with that."
Actually, we didn't make that, up, that's totally what he said, really. We was there when he said it, though I don't think anyone else heard it.
You know Linux is a clone of Minix because Linus couldn't run Windows on his 486 machine. He wasn't pleased that he couldn't do something and he worked around it. Why can't someone be pleased with other proprietary systems and create workarounds for them?
I'm preaching to the pulpit here but reverse engineering is NOT a Good Thing for all communities. There is a reason that we should support working around what others have obfusticated to make money for themselves.
Windows wouldn't have nearly the same capacity in the Unix world we live in if it wasn't for NFS. Yeah, there is Samba for Sun and various other warez sharing protocols that could have been used but NFS makes it easy for anyone to fit their Dos clone right into their pre-existing Unix network without much trouble.
The free client was costing SCO $1,500,000 a year, explains McBride. "At that point we started looking at what it would be like to discontinue the free BK.
Plenty of companies out there have been doing it just fine by basing their business model on Windows. Why can't McBride find the same happy existence?
They are competing honestly. They are doing it in a clean lab. ...where they are taking apart the product and figuring out how to make a copy of it. They are making the honest effort of manually reproducing the source code from the binary as best they can.
This is nothing more or less than an end-run around copyright. It may be legal, but it's not honorable.
Misleading headline... RTFA editors! (Score:5, Informative)
Erm (Score:3, Informative)
RTFA (Score:1)
Linus did NOT say that, RTFA! (Score:1)
RTFA (Score:1)
RTFA - "we just made that quote up" (Score:1)
RTFA (Score:1)
RTFA (Score:1)
Did you even look at the article? (Score:1)
Lies, More Lies and a bad joke... (Score:1)
not true (Score:1)
This is a sensational bull crap that... (Score:1)
GG (Score:0)
Slashdot is run by dolts... (Score:0)
Lovely (Score:0)
'Blast' was SARCASM (Score:0)
someone didn't RTFA (Score:1, Insightful)
And this is news why?
Dudes - Hey, here's an idea... why don't you start making up entire news articles while you're at it!? Look, if you're going to quote an article that *intentionally* makes a false statement, but corrects that statement with a "just kidding", AT LEAST include the "just kidding" when you quote it! What are you thinking? Were you going for a humor angle? Were you trying to get people excited? All you did was confuse me. WTF? -ETA
This is nothing more or less than an end-run around copyright. It may be legal, but it's not honorable.
Offering a free version of your product and then complaining later that you can't make money on the pay-for version is just as bad.
Bait and switch is certainly not honorable. Especially when you do it just to make money.
This would have made a great April Fools joke. What a pity it's not 1 April.
I've always said that when brilliant experts pontificate outside their fields of expertise, they make bigger fools of themselves than an ordinary fool could ever manage, and I think that Linus just proved me right.
See what I've been reading.
You can tell that the moderators here rarely read the posts, they actually use a 7 sided coin(?!) (-1 to +5) i.e. they flip a coin.
I actually just made that up...
Okay, so I'm new here, but can't the whole bloddy article be modded down? Everybody has jumped on it about the misleading (incorrect? absolutely false?) quote on the teaser, the fact that it's a duplicate posting (or at least a referential posting - a /. article about an article about a /. article), and then the postings wander offtopic.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Indeed, editors need to keep tabs, but asshat submitters need to shape up as well.
Then submit unasshatted stuff yourself. You have the opportunity to fix something that annoys you, so do so.
I agree..
I think every company has the right to try and obfuscate their technology, but also to try and break that of others. All this in my eyes is fair game, in a competitive technological environment, and will lead to new innovations and better security, not one based on merely obscurity.
This is also why I think software patents are a crime to the betterment of mankind. Nobody should have a monopoly on an idea. If you have an idea first, you have a head start.. you can try to dominate the world by trying to come out with a product first and market your product for being the 'inventor'. You don't need to have a patent on bread, to make money as a baker.
In a world that is becoming more globalized, and population rapidly increases, having 1 person on earth to hold a monopoly on an idea, is absurd!
Stealing ideas is one thing, but coming up with same, or similar (and slightly better) ideas on your own, or by picking up hints from your environment (all new ideas are ALWAYS based on previous ideas.. that's how the human brain works) should be free game.. only information THEFT (documents that are not public).
But to reverse engineer, is simply to buy a radio, open it up and figure out how it works.. or put a mod chip in your Xbox, all that is fair game and in support of technological development that serves mankind, and not the interests of a single entity in disadvantage to the public.
Fonz
"How do you get interoperability without reverse-engineering?"
Somehow, men and women manage.
This line, which comes directly after the Linus Torvalds "quote", is a very careless omission on the part of the /. submitter:
Actually he didn't - we just made that quote up.
This changes the entire meaning of the article, to one posing a question to Torvalds: Is this something you'd agree with, being that your support of McVoy seems to imply you would?
Very different than him actually making that statement himself.
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
The proof is in the conspiracy theories or political drivel that pass as "insightful" and "informative" comments.
Linus asserted a while back that he created the original Linux kernel using concepts from Tannebaum's Minix project, but implemented everything on his own without using the source from Minix. I hope I haven't misunderstood this, but I think his views on the BitKeeper thingy is the same.
April Fool is WAY over, man!
I've read this make-believe story and now I can't get it out of my head ... oooww!
Please yank this article to protect future victims, and replace it with a true story. Or maybe turn this into a meta-article about how the original article got so screwed up.
Thanks.
Now, let me start off by saying that given the previous comments already posted, that Linus's quote is most likely fabricated or out of context.
That said, could this be the end of Linus being the spiritual leader of Linux? Given the already shakey legal status of external modules and firmware interfacing with the kernel, plus the wake-up call caused by the whole BitKeeper fiasco, could this:
Poor McVoy. Being oppressed by an evil open-sourcer trying to reverse engineer his product. Really, my heart just goes out to this downtrodden coder.
Perhaps he should look into employment with Microsoft. Seems to me he'd fit right in.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
This whole story is particularly odd since the format for office 97 binary files was released by Microsoft already.
You can find them on both the July edition of the Microsoft Developer's Network (MSDN) CD and in the library section of the MSDN Web site (note that entry requires you to complete a simple, free registration process). http://premium.microsoft.com/msdn/library/
First Mr. Moore backs away from his stance, and now Linus too? What's next, free OS upgrades from Apple?
"This is nothing more or less than an end-run around copyright. It may be legal, but it's not honorable."
Depends on whether you see copyright as a law enforcing a principle, or as just a law. For those of us that look at "IP" and see only an artificial, government-enforced monopoly, copyright is just a law. A technical workaround has no negative moral implications.
Besides, we are really stretching the idea of reverse-engineering here. Isn't all they are doing trying to produce a functionally equivalent product? That is NOT reverse engineering. Reverse engineering is using the end result to figure out how those results were accomplished, then copying the accomplishment. What Tridgell is doing is copying the end result using his own means.
If McVoy thinks that reverse-engineering is so 'dishonest', then why did he offer to give free tools to a worldwide project whose primary focus is to reverse-engineering an entire OS?
I'm assuming the "project" in question is the Linux kernel. Well, I'm sorry, but Linux isn't about reverse-engineering an entire OS. Which OS do they mean, anyway? Unix or Windows? In either case, they're wrong. The Linux kernel is not developed by reverse engineering some other operating system. With the exception of a couple device drivers that were designed by reverse engineering their Windows counterparts, it's completely original development. Sure, it has Unix-like behavior, but that isn't gleaned by reverse engineering.
Sounds to me like the article author has a overly broad definition of "reverse engineering".
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Pragmatists are fine but still need people who believe in our freedom.
I was very irritated to see people bitching about an editorial oversight within a couple of minutes of it being posted...claiming that the editors "must not care." What a load of BS. The error was corrected in seven minutes. If that's not good enough for you, too d*mn bad.
Jens Wessling
Can we agree that the idea of 'non-fiction' is intrinsic to the idea of 'news'?
The whole BK thing is turning into as bad a farce as the BBC Dr. Who 'leaked my episode?' non-event.
Hopefully, as
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
...to point out that what he did say seemed equally bizarre and hypocritical.
Reverse engineering of file formats and protocols is a right, and it's an important one to ensure a competitive and free market. The real question is whether we shouldn't just force formats to be open. Legislatively, that's a dead end, but big (eg government) can just make open formats a requirement.
"What Larry is not fine with, is somebody writing a free replacement by just reverse-engineering what he did. Larry has a very clear moral standpoint: 'You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails. Solve the problems on your own, and compete honestly. Don't compete by looking at my solution.'
Aside from the false starting about openoficce, this one is real, but it looks to me that he's defending that Larry's can choose, which is not the same than agreeing with him
Besides,
If stealing ideas was not allowed, Microsoft wouldn't have existed.. Windows, Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger, etc. etc.
Register Ed #1: Hey, watch this, we'll post a fake anti-opensource, pro-microsoft quote from Linus and those Slashdotters will have a hissy fit!
Register Ed #2: But if the quote is fake, we can't post it!
Register Ed #1: We'll just state that it's a fake quote, right after the quote. Do you think Slashdot readers or editors actually read _complete_ articles!
Both: MUAHAHAHAAAH FOOOLS!!!
So now it becomes moral and reasonable to blatantly LIE about what Linus has said? Is this what you call "responsible" journalism?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
So, do you believe there's no negative moral implications to taking the genuinely inventive new work of another man and repackaging it as your own product for the express purpose of denying the actual producer any claim on his due reward?
Linus used BitKeeper despite its closed source/free use license because it was THE BEST TOOL FOR THE JOB. Linus defends other developers choice of license because it's their choice.
Linus, thank $DEITY, is no ESR.
You know, I choose to drive a vehicle I bought from a proprietary car manufacturer because it works better than anything I am able to build myself. I hope you don't think less of me.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
CowboyNeal is reported to have be heard saying: "I love to have sex with dogs, cats, and sheep. Oooohhh, especially the sheep!"
...)
(Disclaimer: yeah, I just made that quote up
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
Parody is an appropriate tool for social commentary.
Bruce Perens.
Linus worked for Bell Labs as an intern the summer before he started work on Linux. He was invloved in the development of their UNIX.
I wonder if Linux is somehow *tainted* by Linus seeing all that Bell UNIX code.
I know samba refused to accept code form anyone who saw the leaked MS code base.
Linus is a hack and a thief.
No they're not. They're attempting to figure out how the binary behaves under all applicaple conditions, and then produce their own code that mimics that behavior. What you're describing is decompiling.
Again - no it's not. Copyright has nothing to do with actual functionality. You're confusing copyright with patents.
If you have a problem with the morality of this process, you may want to take a hard look at the IT industry. Reverse engineering has played a key role in the advancement of technology. Numerous times.
Actually they weren't - I just made that up.
Slashdot got Registered!
Not to mention the "articles early for subscribers". Now, I understand they need to support their bandwidth and server costs, but they should not do so at the expense of their viewers. If they produced news of their own, it may be a different case. Like LWN... News is free to read and post on. Their *own* articles/editorials/bulletins are available a week earlier to subscribers.
Larry says, "This is costing us too much." Linus, his friend, says, "Okay, then stop doing it." This doesn't imply that Linus disapproves of reverse engineering.
Linus didn't seem pleased (from what I've read) about how this particular reverse-engineering so irritated Larry that it blew the whole freeish-BK deal, but that's a far cry from declaring that reverse engineering itself is unethical.
(And, as other posters have pointed out, it's just silly to call writing Linux a matter of reverse-engineering.)
Why I'm even commenting when the SlashDot article was the most idiotic, misleading article I've ever seen here, and that's saying something, I don't know...
'nuff said.
Linus admits he's running PowerMac G5.
(Yeah right, like that would happen!)
...has been taken off my /.-editors-to-show-articles-from-on-front-page list thingy. Good riddance.
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
Reverse engineering is not just grabbing the binary and disassembling it. Using the code you get that way is called plagiarism.
Reverse engineering is also looking at what the program does and figuring out a way to do it yourself. If the way you figure is exactly the way the original works, so much the better - but you haven't plagiarized.
It's the first method, disassembly and copying, that Linus and everyone else should be against. The second method is just interoperability, and everyone should be in favor of that.
Marketing 101: you only look as good as your competition. If there isn't anyone else in your product space, find someone, or no one will think your product is worthwhile.
And another thing: they say the free BitKeeper is costing them $500M/year. That sounds like a load of hooey. What they mean is that if they could sell the free one for the price of the non-free one, it would total $500M in revenue. That still sounds fishy, but at least it's easier to swallow than their implication that they spend $500M in cash every year.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
No, Linus has not gone nuts. This is simply a false quote made up by The Register and should be been annotated as such. However, Linus made some comments lately that he should better think over twice before saying. Lets hope people get this the right way.
This has gotten so out of hand that someone might just need to drag Linus himself away from his busy schedule to clarify this. Get it straight from the horse's mouth.
The article actually is about Linus Torvalds defending proprietary file formats. It's just that he's talking about a different format from the almost-made-up quote.
I say "almost made up" because it's got a grain of truth. The original quote is:
"Larry is perfectly fine with somebody writing a free replacement...What Larry is not fine with, is somebody writing a free replacement by just reverse-engineering what he did."
The made-up quote has the same gist, even if it's critically wrong in (a) the file format, and (b) the fact that Linus is talking about somebody else's beliefs, not his own. This gist, however, is clear that Linus believes roughly the same thing:
"It says: 'Get off my coat-tails, you free-loader'. And I can't really argue against that."
So I'd say the score is:
Headline: 1 point (for being accurate)
Summary: -2 points (for repeating a false quote without the retraction)
Submitter's final score: STFU
Slashdot: -2 point (for not verifying the quote)
Slashdot: +1 point (for the retraction on the front page)
Slashdot: +.5 point (for posting an article that's kind of interesting with an accurate headline despite a bad summary and bad editing)
Slashdot's final score: try to do better next time
Register: -2 points (for making up the quote)
Register: -1 point (for putting the retraction after the advertisement)
Register's final score: Really stupid, but they're usually reliable, so I'll let them off with a warning.
Hypotheically speaking, as we know you don't host kid porn.
/. devolving into the National Enquirer for the tech-set?
Is
How the Register gets away with what they did is amazing. They make up an entirely fake quote, attribute it to Linus and then say, almost parenthetically, "we just made that up, he didn't really say it".
Think about it. How would like it if somebody did to you what they just did to Linus?
Shame on you Register!
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
slashdot has jumped the shark
I haven't yet RTFA, but since the issue of file formats is near and dear to my heart (and what I do professionally), I figured I should say something.
I'm working on a Digital Archiving project for a government agency. And what we have determined thusfar is that proprietary file formats are -very bad- for long term preservation.
Now, you may ask, who cares about long term preservation? To which I would respond, clearly you are not a fan of history- or at least, good history. Innocuous documents end up being primary sources! People find new uses for and interest in old documents!
Still you seeem doubtful. Fine. But, should Microsoft disappear (unlikely as it may seem) or otherwise leave us with a bunch of proprietarily-formatted files that we cant read save through- shudder- emulation of something like Windows XP, a lot of people will be unhappy. And a lot of data may not be fully recoverable.
You may say that if such things really bother people, then they should only purchase software using open standards. I sort of agree. But we are dealing with a field in which -certain- companies are convicted monopolists, so....
Proprietary formats are still the bane of my existence.
It's not what you know, or even who you know- It's how many people recognize your damn
Now Bill, is this what you call innovation? Come on, you're supposed to be a Bayesian. You can do better than this.
somewhere in england a lowly reporter is going to be visted by a team of angry penguins.
Everybody is blasting Slashdot, the submitter, and their mother for running a fake quote in the Slashdot headline. Doesn't it seem like it's maybe a wee bit irresponsible (read: incredibly irresponsible) for a supposedly legitimate news outlet like The Register to run a fake quote at the top of their article, and follow it up with, "Just kidding!" The cardinal rule of article writing is that the likelihood that somebody will read a paragraph is inversely proportional to how far into the article it is. So, if you lie in the first paragraph and clear it up in the second, about half of the people who read it won't ever make it to the second paragraph. These clowns think their prose is amusing or something, but it's just badly written and irresponsible.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
Parody is an appropriate tool for social commentary...
...when it is clearly parody, and not disguised as legitimate news.
If your local news broadcast suddenly started churning out fake news stories, without identifying them in some way, you'd probably be up in arms, screaming "Irresponsible! Bias! Lies!"
sorry.,
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
> for the express purpose of denying the actual producer any claim on his due reward?
Who said he is due any reward at all?
I was product manager for 2½ years at a software company, whose product was partly open-source based (it was our own OS webserver). I was in the business when Eric Raymond tried to convince s/w companies to "go open source." "It's much better, bugs get fixed, security holes shut much faster." And so on. But the truth is that open source is about free (gratis) software, and software companies are about selling software. There are one or two exceptions, those who can sell support and so on, but the whole _concept_ of having a software company is to charge people for the software you develop. This doesn't mean that I'm against open source, possibly I'm more against software companies.
The bottom line is that open source may one day cover all possible software need for every person, but it will come out of academia, non-profit organizations, and hobbyists. Software companies will not be the primary drive behind open source. I think Stallman has known this for a long time. And if you _do_ have, or plan to start, a software company, there is nothing wrong with keeping some parts of your code proprietary. Alternatively, just don't start a software company.
"
So? It's obvious that the pay-for client offered nothing worth what you were asking if the free client can do the job. Either price properly or make the pay-for product much better. I'm not talking about crippleware or nagware."
You wanker. The guy gives free software, but that's not good enough. Nooooo.
"Crying doesn't do anything but piss people off. Do something to your own software that will make it stay one+ steps ahead of the reverse engineered competition."
Like linux, right? ROTFLMAO
I couldn't agree more about Slashdot really dropping the ball on this one. The funniest/worst part in my view is that the Register story is about a previous slashdot story, with a link to a post provided! Talk about a dup.
For sure, I agree with the thinking that reverse engineering is good. I think that the issue here though is the use of unsanctionned client software that can produce costly effects for BitKeeper.
McVoy did mention that in the past, someone played a bit with some of the internal file structures and that it ended up costing him $35,000 to fix the problems that it created. I can imagine that a client software, that was developped only by reverse enginneering, has the potential to cause serious damage to his company. In truth, open source software is not always tested extensively. In this case, especially not against a server who's developper doesn't want to share the interface.
Now, are there solutions to this situation? Yeah, plenty I think.
Farmix
A pity that Linus does not think more like RMS.
RMS and others said, "Don't rely on non-free software--it may bite us in the ass down the road." And GUESS WHAT? It did bite them in the ass!
Everyone say after me: RMS was right.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
With no possibility of copyright violation. However, it could still be patent-contaminated.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It's understandable that quality will suffer as popularity/population increases, but journalistic errors like this are exactly why I feel it's safe to laugh at loud when people quote web sites, even reputable news sites, as evidence for some of the nutty things they believe.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Is it just me or has there been way too much 'factually incorrect' information in front-page Slashdot articles lately? A very simple peer-review system for facts in Slashdot articles before they go on the main page would do wonders. Additional "+5 Informative" comments could potentially be appended to the article, such as the parent, and more factual and well-balanced news for the general reader would appear on the main page without the need to read all the "+5 Insightful" opinions and "+5 Funny" jokes to just get the facts. It's a humble opinion. What do you guys think?
(This was a response to another terrible article, but reusing it saves time and energy. Dupes are a way of life on Slashdot.)
Just to get this straight (Correct me if I'm wrong):
Throw bits at a server and see what you get back: good.
Save known data to a proprietary format and see what you get: good.
Emulate programs by writing code to get the same result: good.
Taking somebody else's binary and figuring out the code from that: bad.
Is only the latter case considered "reverse engineering" ?
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
What's wrong about printing a fake quote, and then admitting it's a fake?
Everything!
It's not nearly as clever as the author thinks, it's not terribly funny nor very illuminative of the issue, and it imposes a burden on the person falsely quoted.
But most of all, it erodes the trust in the publisher. Most of us have limited time, so we need to be able to assume that the publisher of a serious site tries to quote accurately. A reasonable number of mistakes are unavoidable, but unless the site is intended to be a humor site, the content must be trustworthy.
When a publisher deliberately publishes a fake quote, it doesn't help to say, "Ha-ha! Just kidding!" or "RTFA". The trust is weakened already.
What a boo-boo!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
"He is not in favor of reverse-engineering someone elses implementation against their wishes."
You mean how Compaq reverse engineered the IBM BIOS and sparked a PC revolution.
Yeah, that was evil and mean-spirited. And stupid.
That is correct, and of course I deny that he is "due" any reward at all.
Free my ass. He got some pretty good advertising in return.
But it seems clear to me now why nobody has taken it personal. We don't care. Since the slashdot editors themselves do not seem to care anymore whether slashdot's news does indeed matter, the community has stopped caring too. Nobody feels the urge to defend the slashdot community, because we feel you're right. We have yet to adjust our daily routine and find another site to habitually waste our time on.
...is that the retraction (in the /. blurb) had to be added as an edit.
I mean, isn't the 20-minute "email us if you see something wrong with this story" subscriber preview period supposed to catch exactly this kind of thing?
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Don't you just hate it when you start going out with some girl, and your friends are all like, "She's a tramp, don't go out with her, she's just using you to get popular. She's gonna dump you and break your heart, just you watch." Then you say, "No way! She loves me. Besides, she does things the other girls won't do. It's true love, just YOU watch!"
And then it turns out they were totally right, and not only does she leave you, she ends up giving you VD.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I suppose you typed that comment on a genuine IBM PC AT, right?
FOX disagrees. They claim that the 1st ammendment gives them the right to lie and distort the news in order to protect sponsors from embarrasing reports and findings. This argument was upheld in court, and they are legally allowed to fire reporters for refusing an order to lie to the public and present it as investigated fact.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
No worse than what Samba does.
The proprietary file format in question is that of BitKeeper; Tridge reverse-engineered it so that people can have access to their own data when BitMover pulls the plug on the free-as-in-beer BitKeeper (which hadn't happened yet at the time he did it, but which was inevitable as Larry kept changing the license and threatening people with losing their rights to use the software). Linus sided with Larry, despite the fact that Linux, GNU, Samba, and everything else we run has had to rely on reverse engineering of proprietary formats, devices, and protocols since forever just to function.
Writing is another matter. It's not so critical. It matters only if your peers require a particular data format.
And we have our Wookie on SCOXE's CC Day
--fatboy
Reverse engineering has played a key role in the advancement of technology.
Indeed, the x86 clones that are the most popular deployment platform for linux wouldn't exist at all if Compaq hadn't reverse-engineered the IBM PC BIOS.
Maybe they liked bitkeeper but thought the proprietary client sucked, or maybe they want an open source client to insure that it can be run on new architectures. There are a lot of legit reasons for mimicking an interface. Why should I be forced into using only the prepackaged client to access bitkeeper?
Proprietary software developers also engage in reverse engineering. It's completely legal if done in a way that complies with the license (Tridge, the guy behind Samba and the free BitKeeper data extracter, uses captured traces of network traffic as his preferred method). If you think it's unethical, then you are basically saying that you believe in monopolies, and you might as well just buy all your software from Microsoft.
Word offer save as many other formats that include open formats such as RTF, XML, HTML. Of course every time you use an RTF Word complains and wants to convert it, and HTML produced by Word is filled with proprietary MS-HTML. The RTF and XML options are pretty good though, and I have always stuck with RTF no matter what wordprocessor I use. It really is just about the most universally editable document format out there, next to plain text.
reverse engineering for the purposes of interoperability is legal iirc.
.doc. more info needs to come to light though before a definitive decision can be made.
tridge apparently was not using bitkeeper, nor had he accepted it's license. he was doing what the samba team did with smb and oo.org do with
for the parent of your post - publishing standards is done specifically to allow people to write software to those standards. how is the writing of a posix compliant os unethical? the whole point of posix was to create interoperable oses...
sum.zero
BitKeeper
Samba
That was great!
Now, who has devoted more time, energy and resources to community development of software?
BitMovers
The Samba Team
You know, I think you really have this thing down by now. Last one:
Who would you rather be stuck in an elevator with?
Larry McVoy
Andy Tridgell
Wow! 100%
I'm sure glad that Andy did raise his hand in class and ask to go to the potty in Professor Bill Gates' class. And I have to wonder how many Samba installations are cooking on the machines of BitKeeper employees.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Sucks......nuff said.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
Linus acts as though he's never heard of interoperability. Open source and free software are full of programs that are designed for interoperability. Should we remove FAT and NTFS support from Linux as well.
I wont agree/disagree that reverse engineering is good for all communities. But your arguments/examples dont do anything to prove the point though.
You know Linux is a clone of Unix because Linus couldn't run Unix on his 386 machine. He wasn't pleased that he couldn't do something and he worked around it. Why can't someone be displeased with other proprietary systems and create workarounds for them?
How was that reverse engineering? The basic principles of Unix were well documented and available. Andrew Tanenebaum had made the sources of Minix available so people could read through it. Linus in fact rengineered most if not all of it. The important thing you want to note here is that the original authors of Unix/Minix made information about their respective OSes available to people implying that people can use that information to do what they want with it. But to claim that it is reverse engineering the way that Tridge is reverse engineering the Bitkeeper client is definitely not correct.
Linux wouldn't have nearly the same capacity in the Windows world we live in if it wasn't for Samba. Yeah, there is NFS for Windows and various other file sharing protocols that could have been used but Samba makes it easy for anyone to fit their Unix clone right into their pre-existing Windows network without much trouble.
Giving an example of the positive effects of some action does not make the action a good thing. Thats like saying "Invading Iraq rids the people of the tyranny that was Saddam. So its a good thing for sure.." Now if you disagree to that statement then its a different argument on its own.. Note that I dont disagree that creating Samba did not benefit the community as a whole, but making that as the basis for a blanket statement is what I am refuting.
Plenty of companies out there have been doing it just fine by basing their business model on Linux. Why can't McVoy find the same happy existence?
Does it even matter that he does'nt want to find that happy existence? If he believes that that kind of an existence is not enough for him then its his decision entirely. Or have we forgotten the primary tenets of being a geek..I am an individual blah blah..
They are competing honestly. They are doing it in a clean lab. They aren't trying to steal your code and use it themselves but they are trying to take a great idea and make it better. Welcome to the real world. Crying doesn't do anything but piss people off. Do something to your own software that will make it stay one+ steps ahead of the reverse engineered competition.
The problem with this particular example is that its only the client that is being reverse engineered. The server that is being used either is being hosted by the company or by some other paying customer. What if sometime in future they decide to change the protocol in the client and the server. The old reverse-engineered client wrecks code repositories. (He alludes to a similar point in his previous interview.) Bottomline is he has made a conscious decision that he does not want his client code to be reverse engineered or open sourced for reasons that are better known to him than the rest of the world. Whether you decide to abide by it is your decision. Rebelling (even illegally) is an accepted way of showing dissension. But be very clear that it is rebellion (rather than euphemising it as competition). And be prepared for its consequences...
For example now Linus is developing some custom made programs to manage patches, and has discarded all Open Source alternatives like Arch, SVK, and others without any given explanation or reason.
Perhaps the reason is that he does not want to promote a Free BitKeeper alternative.
MOD THE CHILD UP!
This snafu is a perfect example of why /. is considered a bad joke across the net. I participate in several online political blogs, and whenever some moron pulls a "first post" stunt or something equally sophomoric, they're inevitably told that if they want to enagage in such idiocy they should move to /.
/. doesn't clean up its act it will be the biggest example yet of a computer project falling short of expectations since Linux and the desktop.
If
I'm preaching to the choir here but reverse engineering is a Good Thing for all communities. There is absolutely no reason that we should not support working around what others have obfusticated to make money for themselves.
I completely agree. RE is an indispensible tool.
On the other hand, I think we should be cautious not to extrapolate Linus's views inappropriately. The inference that he is completely against RE in OSS is baseless. The simple fact is that he had a conflict of interest over BitKeeper and was forced to be political about the whole situation. It is quite possible that his statements were intended to de-fuse McVoy and/or others in attempt to mitigate any impending bad-mouthing of the community he helps to shepherd. I do not think Linus was trying to make any sort of 'moral statement' whatsoever. He even admitted that it was only a matter of time before the Linux community would move away from BK to something open source.
The editors should be yanked now, in addition to the story. It's a long time overdue.
I keep telling the learned slashdot readers that this is the dreaded End of Days attributable to the slashdot consipracy. Oh no, I'm contributing to the loop, my comments are turning into an infinite loop, which will help propagate the /. effect over the galaxy.
it's misleading stories like this that make me want to switch my homepage from /. to Foxnews. At least there I KNOW every article is a slanted half-truth.
It's called /. because the / is slanted, just like the news. If you want straight news without a pro-commons slant, go to Pipedot.
Not that anyone cares, but as someone who has been reading the site since 1996, I can't continue to support this place with my mouse clicks.
/., and thanks for a decade of keeping me up to date.
What was once a smart, savvy place to read news has become an embarrassment of dupes and untruths.
Farewell,
This is perhaps the first time I've strongly disagreed with Linus, but I think he's completely wrong here. How do you think we got Samba? All of Samba was reverse engineered, and Linux has gained a huge amount of functionality from that.
There's nothing dishonest about looking at how someone else did something and using their ideas. If Larry Mcvoy has a problem with that, he can take the low road and apply for software patents.
AccountKiller
Might explain my taste for the BBC.
Do you remember how the Iomega ZIP drivers for Linux were developed? Reverse engineering the MS-DOS ones. A more recent example: forcedeth is a reverse engineered driver, so that you don't have to load nvidia's POS nvnet driver to use the nic in your nforce mo-bo.
So either reverse engineering is acceptable all times or it isn't. You can't have it both ways.
I don't get how some of these comments are being tagged as "Insightful" or "Informative" if they're just the 5487235th time someone pointed out that CowboyNeal was misleading in his post. A big part of the reason I come to /. is to read intelligent and sometimes funny additions to the articles that are posted, not to read 50 flames that somehow scored high. Let's talk about the morals of open source development and Linus, not CowboyNeal's mistake.
Now, one could make the argument that he had no business makeing such an agreement, but it is his project. And those who did not like BK did not have to use it (they could still work, but not as easily).
It seems a bit unfair to blame the OSI for anything done by its people, but they should have done more to separate themselves from Tridge's personal projects. It almost seems like they were happy to see the deal fall apart.Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Cowboy Neal clearly posted this just this to watch the flame wars.
He HAS to read the articles, right?
Maybe April 1st has been extended this year.
This Sig doesn't like The Force, The Matrix or Middle Earth. It also gets laid.
I personnaly don't have much respect for the reverse engineer
If you do not respect reverse engineers, then you do not respect the people who bring you the documentation necessary to add support for new hardware in operating systems published by entities other than Microsoft Corporation and Apple Computer Inc. Why do you want GNU/Linux and *BSD to have poor hardware support?
You know as well as anyone that Tridge wasn't just reverse-engineering the over-wire protocol (and trying to produce a SCM which happened to be wire-compatible), he was reverse-engineering BK's functionality. Spreading a lie about it to those who don't know any better may help advance your political programme, but I for one didn't expect you to stoop to this.
"Linus didn't reverse engineer anything" only because producing specs necessary to write device drivers is typically the job of kernel developers other than Mr. Torvalds.
I agree with some of what you wrote, but this is bollocks. I don't know many companies that can make money supporting a source management system. It either does what you want or it doesn't, and support contracts generate little revenue if your users are all techie programmers - we generally fix it ourselves within reason. Open source doesn't work here, or at least from the perspective of a company paying for someone to develop it.
You mean like saying "we just made that up" right after the fake part, just like this one did?
Some people have reported getting the false quote, then a nearly 300 pixel tall SWF advertisement, then the retraction. It's as if a newspaper were to put the false quote on the front page followed by "See page 5A", and then the retraction on page 5A.
Innovation comes by building on top of what others have done. Whether or not it cuts into those others' profit margins is patently irrelevant to the moral question. McVoy is just being selfish here; there's nothing "moral" about his position.
Agreed. Reverse-engineering is permissible legally (and morally, though truthfully I'm not sure exactly how morality ought to fit in here) when it's an effort to make a widget you've already made work with somebody else's widget. Linux was a reimplementation of existing standards (i.e. creation of an OS that worked with existing standards), plus a bunch of drivers that do so. If anything comes close to the kind of reverse engineering Tridge is doing, it would be the recreation of the utilities and shells that made the Linux kernel viable, which were reverse engineered versions of their UNIX counterparts.
I'd say the ethics and legality of this depend on what Tridge is trying to accomplish by reverse engineering. When you're essentially attempting to duplicate someone else's widget, to do so against their wishes is dicey. This of course, is where a functional patent system ought to come in - if BitKeeper is truly a novel, useful idea, then McVoy should be able to ask for, and get a patent for his invention.
I don't really have a good enough sense of what Tridge is doing to know where his work falls, but if it is, as McVoy and Linus represent, a complete recreation of the product using reverse engineering, clean room or no, I'd say Tridge is out of bounds unless he has a pretty compelling argument for why he should be able to recreate the product against McVoy's wishes.
GCC had to (at least partially) reverse engineer several architectures due to incomplete/missing documentation. This is ironic since GCC ended up being a far better development platform than the vendor's own "native" tools. (some of these architectures have since been obsoleted, heh.)
Tridgell did in fact reverse engineer microsoft SMB. He did it before anyone knew there was any linux client available and before anyone knew that there was any documentation available. And the documentation that was there was incomplete, so there was still reverse engineering that needed to be done. Hell, there's STILL reverse engineering being done in order to meet all the little incompatibilities that MS keeps sticking in new releases of XP and W2K3.
Don't believe me? samba team's own account of samba history states:
So Andrew chose the obvious solution. He wrote a packet sniffer, reverse engineered the SMB protocol, and implemented it on the Unix box.
The access to the product in question was based on a license agreement that said (in essence) in exchange for getting this for free to use for specific types of work I won't reverse engineer it.
Now if they wanted to pony up the cost of the licenses and then go to work on it then they might have had a case.
The argument about is "free as in beer" worse than "free as in speech" is unrelated to this. If they wanted a "free as in speech" code management system then they could have started with the concepts as they've absorbed them from working with BitKeeper and started coding.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
So what's happned to Linux lately?
I'm waiting for the abduction story in the National Enquirer.
Maybe Microsoft has kidnapped him and replaced him with his evil twin, the moustachioed Winus?
#include <sig.h>
Heh. Didnt realize it was bitkeeper and not SMB. Ignore the samba drivel :-P
But the GCC stuff still stands. Sorta just desserts that the proprietary architectures that needed to be reverse engineered are now dead.
Internet "journalism" at its best. Run a quote and then admit the quote was never uttered. I would take better care to run stories without misleading elements in them, especially if there is any hope of web-only news sites and blogs being taken seriously.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
People dont read The Register for an unbiased and unemotional source of news. The whole point of reading the register is to get news mixed with dilbert-style commentary.
/. editors and /. trolls seem to miss the point.
Think of The Register as a real life version of The Onion.
I think most people who read The Register know exactly what they're getting. Only clueless
I love when people say its ok to reverse engineer the document format of some word processor only if there isn't anything available to read it. And that intentions matter at all when reverse engineering.
Either you are for the free exchange of information and equal access to ALL programs, no matter how many clients exist and for what platforms or how large the companies are that made them, or you are against it. It can't be both ways. You can't chime in and say if its a tuesday and the sun is shining then its alright. We're not talking morality or ethics here, we're talking legality and freedoms.
You can't impose your own morality on others as law...and if you try you might just become the president on the united states.
Some other things you must be against if you are against the ability for someone to interpret file formats- aka data:
- VCR's
- DVR's
- VMWARE/Emulators
- File system drivers
- Word Processors
- Free MP3 players
- DOS and all IBM PC derived OS's that use BIOS
- Multiformat Printers
- bnetd
- Samba
- Apache (Mime Magic for instance)
- unix command "file"
- Kaffe
The list goes on and on. Did all of these technologies have to reverse engineer something? Likely not all, but the common theme is that they interpret a foreign format that wasn't necessary intended to be used with them. And if companies had the ability to squelch interoperability, how many of them would be helping to proliferate open standards or publish their own private standards?
So please don't post how the intentions matter here. A data file is either treated as speech or its not. If its ruled a communication- such as a language 2 people use to pass information to each other - then you have every right to read and interpret it in any way you like. If the contents of that data file are your property, then you own the data. If you own the data, and its encoded in a file format, you are simply reading that which you already own.
Anyway, this thread is ridiculous. Linus didn't say that, but I do believe that individuals have the right to come out on either side and change their mind at any time on what is right or wrong. But Linus isn't making laws, he is just saying he doesn't think its good. Thats a personal choice on a particular incident, not a stated position.
If you ask him if it should be illegal to reverse engineer the bitkeeper archive formats, he'll probably so no. If you ask him if its a pissy thing to do to his buddy's company, then he might say yes and ask you not to do it.
he was reverse-engineering BK's functionality
And that would be terrific. Just like Samba started by duplicating functionality, and then became hugely better than the original.
Try not to use double standards. The FOSS community lives by reverse-engineering, and Linus merely suffered a mental lapse in objectivity owing to his friendship with McVoy.
No biggie, but he now requires a wakeup call to force him to defend reverse engineering, before it causes the community to split down the middle over Linux fanboyism vs the needs of FOSS.
I strongly suggest that the Slashdot editors sit down and devise a sort of KILL procedure, too. Use scull and crossbones, or the comic figure Death, use Gates Triumphant, and then a short line like: The story "Linus marries a three-breasted space alien after drunken fling in Tokyo bondage-palace" is wrong and is hereby withdrawn. Sorry, guys.". That's all it would take.
Gee, you might even use this for dups...
If I may ask, why "shouldn't" the customers be locked in? It's hardly a secret that Microsoft's software uses proprietary file formats by default. If I don't want to get "locked in" to these format, I can either make a point of saving my MS Office files in something other than Word format, or I can use OpenOffice.org and avoid the problem entirely. So long as I have the option of not using Microsoft's formats, or even their software, why should I care how proprietary their formats are?
I'm the stranger...posting to
Slow news day apparently.
The editors must've posted this to get a rise out of everybody and take notice off of the lack of good news rolling in. As an avid register reader I'd have to say that article sucks, must've been a slow news day Monday as well.
While this Register article *is* a story about something Linus Torvalds said, if you look at the article, this is more about a reporter working for his bonus!
This article is a perfect example of why many people feel that the current media has gotten out of control. By hiding behind their reporter's badges, they think they can report anything and everything that will sell more copies and/or capture more market share, and will present it in such a sensational fashion with NO regard to the collateral damage they may inflict. Now there is only one way to combat this kind of journalism... TURN IT OFF!!! Don't read it, watch it and CERTAINLY don't click through on any of the sponsors. I, myself, am not a regular subscriber to the Register, and after having read this article, I will now view ANYTHING that references a Register article with an air of suspicion. Not that I will totally discount those articles either... But, now I will have to do even more research into the truth behind the articles that come from the Register. And, if I can't find a corroborating article from a reliable source, then I will totally discount it.
We are the ones really in control here. We are the ones with the research tools at our fingertips that people a mere 20 years ago would have killed for, yet many of us are failing to use these tools. If we stop playing up to the sensationalism, then it will have to stop because the bottom line for any publishing company is money. If you are losing your market share because people don't want to see crap, then you have to give the people what they want or go out of business.
We like to think of ourselves as being near the top of the intelligence scale (or at least in the upper half.) Well, that comes with the responsibility of using that intelligence to find and verify the truth behind the lies. Not to give the reflexive knee-jerk reaction to everything we read. We *are* the best, but that means we need to continually prove it!
ShadowCat8
"Think for yourself and beware the fnords!"
"We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem."
And of course you meant to include links substantiating this and you just forgot. Right???
OR are you making stuff up and hoping to be up-modded.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
kthx
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
There are one or two exceptions, those who can sell support and so on, but the whole _concept_ of having a software company is to charge people for the software you develop.
IBM and Red Hat can't be the only vendors who make their money selling support. Business models evolve, and companies that don't evolve with them may become as dead as the dinosaurs that perished in the flood.
when one supposed news site quotes another supposed news site and they both get it wrong?
so to expect them to understand parody is really pushing the envelope. :-)
I think there's a slight difference between reverse engineering to provide driver support where none existed before for *paid for* hardware and reverse engineering to produce a *competing product* to *bypass the original product's license* so as to destroy that product's market
So with that stance, do you disapprove of Samba and Wine as well? Where do you draw the line between good interoperability and bad interoperability?
it's extremely irresponsible journalism for the writer to slip it in there
For plain news/fact delivery, yes, you'd be right.
But The Register wasn't delivering news or facts, plain or otherwise. They were applying pressure on Linus (indirectly) to force him to correct his faux pas which is splitting the FOSS community down the middle.
To put it simply, we cannot afford for Linus to be a quotable opponent of reverse engineering. I'll pardon The Register's fairly evil use of really cutting parody if it helps Linus to refocus. The current situation is bad, bad, bad.
I didn't think he would actually say these things. Personally, I have no problem with MS's way of doing things. They are a business, there to make money and their method seems to work for them. It doesn't work for me so I don't use their products.
But as for data, I believe if I create anything and it spits out a proprietary file format, I have every right to use algorithms that pick away at it and do with it as I please. MS may own the binary software, but users should have access to their data and if MS doesn't want to publish their data formats, then I will simply use things that figure them out for me and use my data as I please.
Somewhere here I sense the whole monopoly thing...
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
How they got Slashdot comments before they even wrote the article?
That's amazing.
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
links please....
Bnetd was writting a look a like and also reversing a protocol. Is bnetd a parallel case to this? I think many /.ers were pro-bnetd. This FOSS stuff and "misquoting" is inciting alot of flames.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
Larry should have put some simple authentication into the protocol if he is so much concerned. This would not be unreasonable at all. Then the key would need to be found and extracted from the binary, and that may be more than is normally accepted as proper.
The (possible) fact that there is no authentication means that the BK server is stupid enough to allow anyone to connect and feed any random data into it. If so, it is highly unwise. Even CVS can use encrypted communication (like it is done at SourceForge.)
The free client was costing Bitmover $500,000 a year, explains McVoy.
Now how did he figure this out? By taking the number of people using the free client and then multiplying by the price he will charge for the non-free client?
This is exactly the same math that Microsoft et al use to estimate how much piracy costs them! It completely ignores the fact that many of those using the free client will not, repeat not, cough up the bucks to use the non-free version.
My guess is that BitKeeper is not going to see anything near $1/2 million moving into their coffers as a result of this decision.
'You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails. Solve the problems on your own, and compete honestly. Don't compete by looking at my solution.'
Ah, bullcrap! Tridgell was not trying to use any of BitKeeper's techniques. He says directly in the article "The aim was to provide export to other source code management tools and provide a useful tool to the community,".
In other words, he was trying to provide a migration path to other source code management tools for people that could no longer use the free client that McVoy no longer provides! McVoy, in the time-honored Microsoft tradition, thinks that he has the right to "lock-in" customers by providing, and then withdrawing, a free version of his software to force people to pay. Then he bitches when someone else wants to provide tools to move them off of what he no longer wants to give away. If you don't want to give it to me for nothin' anymore, fine. But don't tell me that I cannot reverse-engineer your files, containing what may be a considerable amount of my effort, to move it somewhere else when you do so.
Somebody needs to explain to Mr. McVoy what "compete" means!
I'm sorry, but the people who wrote the article on the register as well as the person/people who posted this slashdot article, and possibly bruce perens, (although I'm sure his words were taken out of context just as everyone else's were who were a part of this article), are obviously trying to start a fight for no good reason. I read Linus's email, and it seamed reasonable to me. I get tired of free software zealots trying to ram their perogatives down everybody elses throats. I like free software, I like the GPL, I'm glad Richard Stallman is the type of guy who sticks to his guns on his moral issues. At least he always manages to do something constructive to try and effect change in the world rather than trying to defame other people that he might disagree with.
He also has a proven track record of sound common sense.
This does _not_ however imbue him with infalibility.
We have two issues, and a side point, here:
(1) is reverse engineering wrong, HELL NO, it is the basis of most human scientific progress, in fact, you do the research, publish the paper and wait for collaborators to reverse engineer aka confirm your results.
(2) are Corporations unconditionally entitled to develop, or incompatibly extend, data formats or protocols and then claim them as patents, trade-secrets, or Intellectual Property, or semble to claim Copyright protection for them HELL NO.
The side issue is, was Andrew Trigel morally entitled to take the view he did.
So, if you try to extend an existing format or protocol, if you document it it is a _derived_work_ and your publication is infringing, unless it is fair use, so the M$ Kerberos extension fails.
To have a trade secret you must keep the secret.
Reverse Engineering is legal almost everywhere.
To protect against Reverse Engineering you need a patent.
If you are a monopoly, so M$ is, and Bitmover is not, different rules apply. Sherman & Mann, acts; see existing settlement(s) and the compliance process in the US and EU.
So, if the EU requires M$ to disclose its Office Formats, for example, then that will mean that they are in the public domain and can be used anywhere, whether Linus likes it or not.
All the above, simply restate the law.
Now, as a matter of opinion, I believe Andrew was: (a) fully within his rights, and (b) the resulting furore was a consequence of Linus lack of legal and commercial accumen in accepting Larry's licence with its in-built poison pill
He should have demanded that the 'free-licence' was irrevokable and that the BK source was in escrow before confering the benefits on Bitmover.
If you work in a large company, and made that sort of mistake, you would be be big trouble.
your a microsoft plant aren't you, I know that you are. I see through you buddy.
Start here.
Some choice selections:
Shall I go on?
I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."
Honestly, this is why The Register is a dangerous source for news. NO half-decent news source would ever -- and I mean *ever* -- make up a quote from someone and then go on to say they made it up...
-----
"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
It's always been that way. You haven't been here long, have you?
Anything of value is in the comments section. Yes, crap gets upmodded, good stuff gets downmodded, a lot of people are shit-stupid, the admins come in every so often to fling their authority around and hide their lying abuses of the system, and fully half of the dialogue consists of Slashdotters complaining that the good old days were so, so much better.
But still, I come here for the comments.
Subscription money doesn't go to the commenters, it goes to the editors---who don't even bother to edit. Why send money to them?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What do promises made by Linus have to do with actions taken by Tridge ?
You (or Linus) may make any promises you want, but that doesn't bind me (or Tridge) in any way.
Anyone is free to make whatever promises they want to. However, those promises don't bind anyone else.Linus doesn't have any authority to make promises on behalf of other (kernel or otherwise) developers.
OSI is free to hold a ten-day feast to celebrate the downfall of BitKeeper, even if they had promised to not help in that downfall. Or does the BitKeeper license say "You agree to not be glad about any setbacks the company might suffer" ?
Furthermore, law enforcement (including contract disputes) is the duty of the police force and justice system, not any private organization. There is absolutely no obligation for OSI, or anyone else, to police their members in any way, or to try to coerce (or even encourage) them to behave in a certain way.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
.... makes me want to just >plonk< /. A f*cking modicum of RTFA would be appropriate.
Recommends: CowboyNeal loses posting privs. Better: gets canned. This is unprofessional to the extreme, and seriously undercuts any credibility Slashdot has.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
And backslashdot would have Pro-Microsoft articles.
The GPL is valid because nothing else gives you rights to use copyrighted, GPL'd software -- your choice is to accept the license and use the software, or not use the software. This has been covered over and over. Did the article you submitted add anything to this?
things sounds quite interesting.. I do agree with the fact that you can't force someone to do something..
OpenOffice is essentially attempting to force Microsoft to make their products free.. Giving people the compability to produce Microsoft Format ted documents, is a direct invasion on the goal they are trying to pursue as a business..
Yes we hate MS.. but attempting to force them to do certain things, (like giving people free capabilities and alternatives to their software), is merely fueling their fire.. there are plenty of rich people out there that are MORE THAN WILLING to spend their stupid money, on STUPID OPERATING SYSTEMS.. because they themselves, are in fact, quite stupid..
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
things sounds quite interesting.. I do agree with the fact that you can't force someone to do something..
OpenOffice is essentially attempting to force Microsoft to make their products free.. Giving people the capability to produce Microsoft Format ted documents, is a direct invasion on the goal they are trying to pursue as a business..
Yes we hate MS.. but attempting to force them to do certain things, (like giving people free capabilities and alternatives to their software), is merely fueling their fire.. there are plenty of rich people out there that are MORE THAN WILLING to spend their stupid money, on STUPID OPERATING SYSTEMS.. because they themselves, are in fact, quite stupid..
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
So, er, how exactly does O'Reilly denying he called the Pope senile prove Fox News is biased?
Or are you trying to claim that O'Reilly is biased against conservatives, and that's why he first called a generally considered conservative Pope "senile", and then declared that claims that he said it were proaganda from the conservative Catholic League?
Sorry Dean...i on=detail&PostNum=3322&Thread=2&entryID=49312&room ID=11
http://www.realworldtech.com/forums/index.cfm?act
I can speak from experience - this is how submissions are accepted. I twisted the story a bit in Jakob Nielsen Defends "1-Click" Patents. In fact, the quote is real, but the title contained my own interpretation. As robolemon pointed out, "Nielsen never mentions one-click patents" (real quote, not made up or distorted).
But nevertheless, that was how I wrote the submission and, of course, it was accepted. Kids, it's journalism. You can twist the truth in any way you want, you just need some excuse later. If you don't flat-out lie, you will be fine. And since it's Slashdot, you can probably flat-out lie, it's not like editors care.
P.S. I think this is unethical and won't do it again. There is a million other Slashdot users though.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
because it was a dupe! That must be the reason :p
I am harvesting funny/good quotes. Please help by putting them in your sigs
Media Research Center. Look, now the bias horserace is neck-and-neck!
Fox's "bias" is usually shown to exist because they don't automatically assume that Republicans are inherently evil. Also, it's worth noting that at least part of your examples come from editorial opinion-type shows. Holding Fox as a whole responsible for bias in an opinion show is silly. I'd say "stupid", but that would make me biased.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Tridge was not given a gift.
Tridge tried to reverse-engineer the network protocols used by bitkeeper, without using a copy of bitkeeper.
Ethics are hard to nail down? In this case WTF??
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
They're attempting to figure out how the binary behaves under all applicaple conditions, and then produce their own code that mimics that behavior.
In other words, they aren't trying to make something new, but reproduce the functionality of an already-existing copyrighted product as exactly as possible for the purpose of not having to abide by the restrictions of copyright.
In other words, they're making an end-run around copyright.
There's a difference between reverse-engineering for compatibility because you believe you can do the job better yourself in your own device, and cloning so you can have all the advantages of having made a thing yourself without facing the challenges of design.
This is a flat-out confession, "We can't do anywhere near as good a job at designing a source code management tool as McVoy, so we're going to ride on his coattails and take his design so we don't have to pay him to use it."
Firstly, look at the cases people cite as why reverse engineering is ok- the PC BIOS, file formats, communications protocols. What do these have in common? They were reverse-engineering for interoperability rather than reverse-engineering programs' functionality, and they were doing it with clean-room processes. If the reverse-engineering of .doc was done by people at OpenOffice decompiling MS Office and lifting algorithms from that, anybody (Linus included) would be right to condemn what they were doing. Samba was (unless something shady happened behind the scenes which we don't know about) never involved with reverse engineering the networking functionality of MS operating systems- they were reverse-engineering the networking protocol and writing entirely original code to perform the operations required by the networking protocol.
There is no problem for a company to promote proprietary formats and protocols. Unless it is a monopolist. So comparing BitMovers file format with Microsoft Office file formats is outrageous and plain stupid. But once again Andrew Orlowsky jumps on a few words without understanding what he is speaking about - and does not even mind making up outrageous quotes. Kind of Laura Didio IMHO...
Reverse engineering has played a key role in the advancement of technology. Numerous times.
There's tens of thousands of things that have been RE'ed.. think Xerox PARC, graphics adapater algorithms, printer cartridges, drivers of all flavors.
Just some of the biggies of the PC world...
AMD
Cyrix
Compaq
Phoenix
Award
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Apparently no one here has noticed the part of the article which reads:
"Larry is perfectly fine with somebody writing a free replacement."
This is not a question of whether McVoy is trying to crush free clients for his software. It's a question of how those free clients should be written. And Tridge should know the difference since he wrote this article on how Samba development is more about network and protocol analysis than reverse engineering.
One paragraph from that article reads:
Classical reverse engineering techniques in software engineering revolve around the use of disassemblers, debuggers and other object code analysis tools to examine directly the executable code of an existing product in order to create a "clone" that behaves in the same way. While these venerable techniques have been successfully used by many groups, they are not what we use in the Samba project.
So clearly Tridge does make a distinction between ripping the binaries and doing protocol analysis.
This is not a debate about Openness. This is not a debate about Freedom. It's a debate about methodology, and Tridge knows the distinction between cloning a binary with a disassembler and re-implementing a piece of software from the protocols better than most people do.
...wouldn't be where it is today.
Flashback, early 80s:
the IBM PC - developed by IBM, made by IBM, sold (at a premium) by IBM, mediocre performance determined by IBM, future direction determined (to not compete with mainframes) by IBM.
Today, early mid-00s:
commodity hardware, made by anyone who wants to bolt it together, sold by anyone (at extremely low margins), phenomenally fast performance determined by industry competition, future direction determined by a wide cross-section of the industry (and Microsoft on the OS side, though anyone who throws together a good Linux distro could challenge that to some extent).
Compaq's reverse engineering was quite a good thing for us...
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: Slashdot is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Slashdot community when IDC confirmed that Slashdot intelligence has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all article submitters. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Slashdot has lost more intelligence, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Slashdot is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by yet another moronic dupe.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict Slashdot's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Slashdot faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Slashdot because Slashdot is dying. Things are looking very bad for Slashdot. As many of us are already aware, Slashdot continues to lose journalistic integrity. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Slashdot is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core readers. Yada Yada Yada.
Fact: Slashdot is dying
I really get a kick out of how seriously this place takes itself.
This isn't a news site with an editorial staff and real journalists - it's just a freaking list of stories with some one liners.
Stop trying to compare this place to CNN folks - I don't think you should hold them to the same standards - it's a linux enthusiast site for freaks sakes, and the folks you are comparing them to are supposed to be objecive.
But Linus is not Jesus. He's not terribly important.
I agree, but Linus *is* important.
Think about it. How would like it if somebody did to you what they just did to Linus?
Winkydink said "I can't have an orgasm unless I kill a dog."
Or not.
Enlighten me here... Linus focuses on Linux. He doesn't work on Samba, WINE, or anything else that attempts to emulate something else in order to function. He doesn't really even reverse engineer (to my knowledge) any specific flavor of Unix. He just works on improving Linux.
No, but he got Linux to nearly conform to POSIX by reverse engineering the standards which were not free at the time. He did this by trying to run the GNU utilities and fixing the kernel where these broke.
However... I think that this attack on Linus is really overblown. All Linus seemed to say is "I wish I had better source code management options from the open source world. If this had happened in another year or two, it would have been better."
The perceived attacks are taked from McVoy's bit. For all we know, Linus (McVoy's friend) was approached by McVoy and asked for permission to discontinue the free version in the form of business advice. (This is costing us so much and we are not getting anything from it. What do you think we should do?) So if Linus says, "If I were you, there would be no question. I would discontinue the free version," it doesn't seem as incindiary as it is made to be.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
All of their shows are opion-type shows. Every last one of them.
The Register is a lot of things. It's entertaining. It's funny. It's timely. Sometimes it's even informative. But a reputable news source? From a site that brings you the Bastard Operator from Hell? The group that used to sell hazardous nuclear keychains? That Punctuates! Every! Article! On! Yahoo! In! An! Annoying! Fashion!?
They're news satire. They're a slightly more reputable news source than the Daily Show. If someone wants to quote them as a reputable news source, that's totally acceptable and probably not a bad idea, as The Register doesn't let anything get in the way of the timelyness of a scoop. Especially not journalistic integrity. But to quote The Register without even reading the article? No one can blame a satarical news source if someone else quotes them without being arsed to read the article.
The ______ Agenda
I noticed that you didn't bother to refute any of the facts pointed out in the grandparent... just attacked their source as biased. How typically Republican - when you don't like the message, attack the messenger.
Sean
Linus has made a series of very serious mistakes over bitkeeper.
He's not a saint, watching the slashdot fanboys work themselves into a lather because people are pointing out that Linus is wrong, and badly wrong, is very disapointing.
I thought you people were better than the microsofties wetting themselves over Bill Gates.
But I was wrong.
However good on the editors for being brave enough to join in the well deserved booting Linus is getting over this.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
what's a petard? And how do you hoist with it?
Are you suggesting the analogy is for Torvalds & McVoy, or Torvalds and the F/OSS community?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I forgot - how many years do I read this crap?
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
He is forgetting that the information that Microsoft has performed a proprietary encryption on belongs to the user. It is not the property of Microsoft. Just because I or some other user entered the information into a Microsoft tool does not mean that I or others should forever thereafter have to use Microsoft tools to read or edit the information.
Just decoding the encryption is hardly stealing how the Microsoft program works. It looks like Linus has been turned to the dark side.
I suspect they have a quota, so if they have a max of 25 stories a day or 8/4hr block, any more than that that are older than 24hrs get trashed to rejected due to too old.
Its just my guess... otherwise they could fill 200 usefull good articles a day.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
cock
Guys, if you think the way to deal with monopolies is to fight them when they emerge, you are wrong. As clearly demonstrated by the Microsoft case, it's very inefficient. Rather, we should focus on not letting monopolies appear.
Now, proprietary closed protocols and file formats serve pretty much no other purpose than to create vendor lock-in, which naturally increases the chances of the aforementioned vendor to become a monopoly in the market. Taking BitKeeper as an example: currently, they don't control the entire market, and they actually have to compete with other SCM systems - and they are doing a good job at that. The problem is, once they do crush the competition fairly (that is, by being so much better noone wants to use anything else), their closed file format will then prevent any new player to fairly compete with them in turn - because now there exists an artificially introduced additional migration cost, as you can't just take your existing tree and use it in the new product. The result is, for anyone to compete with BitMover, they will have to provide a product which is not simply as good, and not even better, but significantly better - and even that might not be enough. This is, in fact, a technique which is often used by MS to strengthen their monopoly. And that is why closed proprietary protocols and file formats are bad - they encourage companies to become monopolies.
So, remember: the battle for open formats is on the frontier of the global war for open source (or free software, whichever camp you're in).
Agreed. About the only thing sillier than that would be an obviously biased network calling itself "fair and balanced" every 3 minutes through those viciously conservative opinion shows. Oh wait...
(Sorry, everyone besides Fox's Fanboys knows their biased. What angers so many is that they constantly claim not to be what they obviously are, and that indicates a level of arrogance that many find distasteful.)
And all the AMD fanboys like myself should get down on our knees and be thankful that Advanced Micro Devices decided to do more than just be an unknown chip making company producing identical copies of The Monopoly's CPUs under contract, but had the sheer audacity to think they could clone The Monopoly's product's functionality and and actually do it *better*. The pundits laughed, every one said they'll be destroyed in litigation with The Monopoly, but now my machine is running a 64-bit CPU that cost roughly as much as Intel's 32bit chips, and Intel's CPUs today would be slower, hotter, still 32bit, and more expensive if not for AMD.
Reverse Engineering within the defined limits is necessary for Competition, Competition is GOOD, ergo, Reverse Engineering is GOOD.
Did the files magically appear for him to work on? I find a little difficult to think that a CVS-type program could magically drop files onto someone's computer.
The thing is if you read the Samba talk about the French waiter you see that the type of reverse engineering work that they do requires actually conversing with the server. Obviously to make sense of the BitKeeper files you would have to take a snapshot of a file, make a change, and take another snapshot. By knowing what and where was changed you could then analyze the two files and start your reverse engineering process.
The thing is that you can't create those files without using a BitKeeper client.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Yes, using a biased "watchdog" group to prove the other bias is a worthwhile argument.
Careful with those quotation marks, your bias is showing. As I write this, the front page of Media Matters has articles about MSNBC, ABC & CBS. However, I can find no mention of Fox News on your MRC link. Is the FNC exempt from this "liberal media" moniker?
Also, it's worth noting that at least part of your examples come from editorial opinion-type shows. Holding Fox as a whole responsible for bias in an opinion show is silly.
Do you believe that the average television news viewer makes that distinction? Does the O'Reilly Factor carry a disclaimer that says, "The views expressed in this program are not necessarily those of the Fox News Channel?"
Look, now the bias horserace is neck-and-neck!
This sentence must be what got you the +1 Insightful mod. As long as news media is produced by humans, bias will be inherent. The only news media outlet I know of without notable bias is C-SPAN, and that's because they just show a video feed of the House & Senate floors with no commentary. That's not journalism, it's just reporting.
In fact, I would argue that bias in journalism is important and desirable. Without it, the news regresses to a faux balance of "he said, she said" bullshit. My point was that the FNC has bias, not that the other media outlets do not.
I prayed about it, and God said, "Don't do it!" But I thought, "I know better."
Is /. devolving into the National Enquirer for the tech-set?
That's what Slashdot has always been.
How the Register gets away with what they did is amazing.
It's clear that you don't understand what sort of publication The Register is either.
Register: -1 point (for putting the retraction after the advertisement)
There was an advertisement there?
Okay, I have only heard this point made once before here on /., but it is a big one:
All those statements about "what Linus said" are quoting what McVoysays he said. So who died and made McVoy Linus' lawyer? Do we all listen when McBride claims to know the mind of Linus? Why listen to this guy?
Until I see something by Linus himself, or other reasonable third parties, I for one won't go believing that Linus really sided with McVoy against Tridge. From what I have seen of the issue, Tridge is clearly in the right, and he is clearly more in line with Linus' known viewpoints.
From Tridge's comments in the NewsForge article:
- In late February I wrote a tool that is interoperable with BitKeeper. The aim was to provide export to other source code management tools and provide a useful tool to the community.
- I did not use BitKeeper at all in writing this tool and thus was never subject to the BitKeeper license. I developed the tool in a completely ethical and legal manner.
I really just don't see what he was hoping to accomplish here. You can already export the code out of any CVS system. Was he trying to get the commit information and versions out too?
At the very least he would have had to monitor client-server communications to learn how to talk with the server in the first place. (This was how they did a lot of the SAMBA work.)
Additionally if you read that interview it would appear according to McVoy that Tridge wasn't living up to an agreement either:
We did get a verbal promise from OSDL that Tridge had discontinued his work and would not begin again as long as we were trying to work things out. We believed we had an uneasy truce, but it ends up Tridge was still working.
Now in the grand scheme of things after a lot of court rangling Tridge could maybe successfully claim that he was performing legal "clean room" reverse engineering but that's not something that he can decide and declare himself.
More detail on what he actually did would help to evaluate those claims. I find it difficult to think that he just simply started throwing random communications at the BitKeeper server and was able to check-in a file.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Slashdot = Fatbabies
Started off good - then went to the dogs...
Troll.. Flamebait.. u name it.. all intended..
If you automatically dislike someone who's right of Chomsky--that's you, BTW--then, yes, I'll bet Fox is a right eyesore.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Possibly. Maybe they are "fair and balanced" after all! MRC only gets its panties in a wad when just a single liberal point of view is offered. If you cover both sides, they're okay with that.
Of course, if you search for "Fox" on MRC, you'll find that Brent Bozell takes Fox (the network, not the news division) to task quite often, but usually for being raunchy, not biased.
Do you believe that the average television news viewer makes that distinction? Does the O'Reilly Factor carry a disclaimer that says, "The views expressed in this program are not necessarily those of the Fox News Channel?"
Ah, so your argument is that "people are stupid". Nice. I'll bet that you're also one of those people who believes in loosening voting restrictions too, to include felons and deviants and other Democratic voting blocks.
Here's an idea! "The Fox News Update" comes from Fox! "The Bill O'Reilly Show" likely comes from Bill O'Reilly! I know it's a clever, clever encryption scheme, but I think a few of the brighter bulbs can figure it out.
I'm not so sure that Fox has that much bias. They have bias, sure, but they seem to actually try to acheive some kind of balance, and that mitigates things quite a bit. Other news outlets tend to assume that Republicans are doing something dirty or criminal, and it's up to the politician in question to prove their innocence. Whereas lefty politicos largely get a pass. When was the last time Bill Clinton got a hard question thrown his way? Or Hillary Clinton? When did John Kerry EVER get hammered about not signing his Form 180 during the Swift Boat debacle?
You seem to admit that the other news channels are biased as well. So even if Fox were heavily biased, wouldn't that seem to be an ideal situation? We get meta-balance by watching CBS, then Fox, and mixing the two together. Of course, you've already stated that people are too goddamn stupid to figure out that the Bill O'Reilly show isn't a mouthpiece for the Fox News Channel's editorial board, so maybe a "meta-balance" is too tricky a concept.
Look, you don't like Fox because they don't portray Republicans and Conservatives as hate-filled, self-loathing aliens from the planet Puppysquisher. Fine. But don't delude yourself into thinking that you're somehow more highly evolved simply because you hate hate hate the Bushy McChimpler.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
"But we do assume the Democrats would if they could."
Oh yea, that's fair and balanced. Hehe.
The thing is that in order for it to work you needed to know at least one side of the conversation and to observe the behavior of the other side.
This is of course a good way to reverse engineer a protocol but you have to at least be able to compare what is requested with what is received. If the requests aren't documented and the received isn't documented either then how do you even start? In that case you'd probably have to know what is requested.
This is conjecture on my part but it certainly is on the telling side and so far Tridge's explanation is definitely light.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Your "normalization" is completely flawed. It assumes that the average bias of all the networks is center, and that the problem is that republicans are less trusting people than democrats. Allow me to illustrate with an example:
For the sake of argument, lets say that FOX news is so biased that 100% of republicans, but 0% of democrats trust it, and that all the other networks are biased in the opposite direction and are trusted by 100% of democrats and 0% of republicans. A perfectly valid example, statistically speaking.
After applying your "formula", we must conclude that Fox actually earns a trust level of 400% from republicans (and still 0% from democrats), at the same time CNN dropped to only being trusted by 57% of democrats, even though every one of them actually trusted it completely initially (until your formula stopped them, that is).
So clearly, by your logic, if sufficiently biased in the opposite direction of the majority of the other networks, any network could become trusted by MORE than 100% of the viewers. (Who needs democratic viewers if you can get 400% of the rich and selfish republican viewers? imagine the advertising sales!)
Maybe you should drop statistics and go full time into politics? I bet if you fine-tune your statistical methods, you could win over 400% of the vote!