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.'"

Comments

not true

[stuffedmonkey]

cowboyneal - you are an idiot.

Re:Dupe and a lie

[Coneasfast]

slashdot editing is getting worse and worse, the editors don't care because at the end of the day, they get their paychecks.

This is a sensational bull crap that...

[helioquake]

...that FOX loves to lure the dumb audience. Slashdot has come down to this.

You pompous piece of garbage, Perens

[slashdot_commentator]

and this story hoists Linus by his own petard.

So now it becomes moral and reasonable to blatantly LIE about what Linus has said? Is this what you call "responsible" journalism?

Re:Linus never was a representative

[LurkerXXX]

The other thing is, how much more reasonable would it seem for Microsoft to want to keep it proprietary if they were giving away MS word for free? And if they weren't a monopoly, and weren't abusing their monopoly power?

Linux gave away Linux for free, and BitMover was giving away BitKeeper for free. There's no monopoly abuse there. There are already lots of other programs like it, it was just best of breed. It was free as in beer already. If you want a free as in speech one, why not show some creativity, do some work, and make a new one from scratch? With a few notable exceptions, most OSS developers have seem to have zero creativity. All most of them can do is copy.

Re:Dupe and a lie

[WidescreenFreak]

And that's any different from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN???

Oh, they lean the other way, so they're okay in most people's books! Got it!