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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.'"
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.
Anyone who RTFA will find that the quote in question is false. Its spelled out in the page that it is a false quote.
Indeed, editors need to keep tabs, but asshat submitters need to shape up as well.
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.
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.
(even after I sent an email to the "on duty editor" after seeing this in the "mysterious future")
yeah, I did the same thing. Appearently they just don't care.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
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.
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.
The slashdot summary is definitely incomplete, and represents a falsehood by omission. On the naming of this article as a dup, I think this is a worthwhile followup because TFA effectively reframes the issue, and clarifies the clean-room aspects of Tridge's implementation.
:)
In this reframing: Linus has clearly come down against reverse-engineering. TFA is further correct in pointing out that this is inconsistent with what Linux, OpenOffice, gcc, and a bunch of other open source projects are all about.
So, Linus is inconsistent and chose to side with his friend over his principles in this case. I can understand that even if I don't agree with it. Even Linus is entitled to make mistakes now and then
Regards,
Ross
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.
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.
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.
False or not, Linus Torvald has never been known for his profound thinking on any topic. He's good at designing, managing and coding the Linux kernel but aside from that, his "political" interventions are always very poor, and not always well-thought. One example is his handling of the whole free BitKeeper issue.
I think we hear too much of this guy in areas he has nothing to do or say. That's not because he's a lead open-source developer that everything he says should be taken for granted. There are instances (like the BK thing from the start) where he just got it all mighty wrong. But who's going to admit Linus *can* be wrong, without being tagged as a Microsoft freak, an insensitive clod or a russian hacker?
When I followed the link, I realized why that quote sounded so familiar: it's the false quote from the Reg article that I read yesterday.
So, not only is Linus no ordinary fool, but we can strike the ordinary: Linus is no fool.
See what I've been reading.
"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.
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.
Don't be an idiot. Relying on the masses to send you stories is one thing, but relying on them to do all the editorial legwork (fact checking for instance) is just naive. Even if every submitter is making a genuinely good effort to provide nothing but good stories (and believe me, that's not that case) you're still going to get a lot of crap. The fault here lies with the editor.
Sigs are awesome huh?
I wish the article had spent a bit more time justifying the analogy, as you have done. The way it's written, it seems to conflate three things:
Perhaps people with more experience in writing software can correct me, but it seems like these are three distinct, inequivolent things. From what I know Linux is an example of #1; Samba, Gaim, and Open Office are examples of #1 and #2. I guess what McVoy is claiming is that Tridge is doing #3, while Bruce seems to be claiming it's actually #2. It would seem Linus can only consistently object to #3. Can one draw a clear, unambiguous division?
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Because Linus didn't snoop out undocumented proprietary formats in order to figure out how to make Linux compatible with Unix operating systems. He simply built a free operating system that conformed to the published and open Posix standards. If he had examined Solaris binaries to figure out how to make Linux a binary compatible Solaris clone, that would have been reverse engineering. Implementing a published standard is not reverse engineering.
Don't get me wrong, I disagree with Linus' opinion here. I don't think there's anything wrong with reverse engineering, as long as you don't steal trade secrets or perform some other such corporate espionage tactic to facilitate the reverse engineering. That doesn't make Linus a hypocrite, though. It just means that he's not in line with the predominate opinion in the open source world (which anyone who follows Linus' opinions already knew anyway).
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
Except that very few of those projects are entirely based on reverse engineering. Linux was a reimplementation, Linus didnt reverse engineer anything, the vast majority of the specs were in the open for him to adhere to. OpenOffice is an attempt to provide Linux and other OSes a quality office package, that otherwise does not exist, the inclusion of .doc capabilities isnt the main reason for it and dont compete with MS Word on Linux. GCC reimplements the C and C++ specs, no reverse engineering there. Tridgell reverse engineered something that already had a capable and popular client on Linux, the other projects didnt have a comparable alternative, and as someone said in the last story, Tridgells main reason was to circumvent the license for Bitkeeper.
Im hardly shocked that Linus came out with a stance that pretty much noone expected him to take, and I have great respect for him doing it. He doesnt really care much for the FOSS philosophy, and that is entirely his right to do so, although I am shocked by the number of people who expected Linus to have a similiar outlook as RMS or Alan Cox.
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.
How do you get interoperability without reverse-engineering?
Pick any or all of the above. Granted, RE can often be a hell of a lot faster and/or accurate.
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
Sad that in this case it comes from an actual quote from The Register, a reputable news source. They made it easy to take the quote out of context, and that's bad writing. I'd expect to see this from J. Random Blogger and repeated on Slashdot, and I'm disappointed to see it in The Register.
Whatever. They did it for effect, it's a question of style.
I don't think it's fair to require that writers do all kinds of things to avoid their writing being "easy to take out of context". Good writing usually isn't easy to take out of context, sure, but I think journalists ought to be allowed to pull the sort of things that the Register pulled here.
At some point you have to just force someone to accept responsibility for what's being resyndicated and RTFA in its entirety.
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
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!"
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.
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
Journalists have a rule that anything between quotation marks has to be an exact quote. You're not even allowed to correct the grammar or make irrelevant changes to help it fit into your sentence better. That is, if your subject says, "I like tapioca", you're not allowed to write, "Bob says that he 'likes tapioca.'" There are a few things you can do, like using editor's brackets and asking them to verify a rephrased quote, but in general if it appears in quotes (and not in brackets) it had better be exactly what they said.
So I slap the wrist of The Register for screwing up, and further for putting the retraction AFTER the advertisement (though I don't know if that was deliberate or not.) Both Slashdot and the poster also screwed up, but The Reg is the one who really blew it, IMHO.
Would I love it if Slashdot took responsibility? Sure. But I'm not going to expect it, so I live with it. I haven't got any "force" to apply except voting with my feet, and I like Slashdot too much (warts and all) to do that.
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.)
This place is going south, fast. I have paid my last subscription since I can no linger justify even 5 USD on this site. This just confirms my theories that the editors won't even bother to read to paragraph 3 in an article. And won't even do it when people spell it out for them via e-mail. Slashdot has become a shadow of its former self.
No, not BS. It took less than 30 seconds to click on the link, and get to the sentence "Well, we just made that up". The story should *never* have been posted in its original form, let alone corrected only after many comments pointing out the error had been posted. I wonder if the editor in question ever clicked the link to TFA - I'm betting if the link really had pointed to a copy of goatse on the Register's website, the story would have still got posted verbatim.
If this happened only once in a while, it wouldn't be a big deal - but dupes, bad stories, misquotes get posted rather too frequently.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I suppose you typed that comment on a genuine IBM PC AT, right?
This has nothing to do with what Open Source is all about.
Correct, but there are many open source projects that rely on reverse-engineering to duplicate the features of another system, which is why I said, "...a bunch of other open source projects..." and didn't claim the value for open source as a whole.
GCC wasn't created by examining the bytecode output of an Intel compiler.
True, but several of the optimizations that used to be found only in commercial compilers were figured out through a reverse-engineering process.
[Linus] is not in favor of reverse-engineering someone elses implementation against their wishes.
1) When would anyone ever be in favor of someone else reverse-engineering their work?
2) Linus is inconsistent with his principles.
3) Linus is inconsistent with current law and the current ethics surrounding reverse engineering.
4) Linus is going after the wrong guy. He should be acknowledging that his decision to go with BitKeeper was always at odds with much of the Linux development community and was bound to eventually blow up in his face. Which it has.
As it turns out, all of these things are okay. Linus seems to have some very good skills that, along with the work of other kernel developers, benefit millions of people every day. This doesn't mean that he should be infallible or that anyone should take his advice when he speaks outside his area of expertise. As for the ill-fated decision to go with BitKeeper, there was value, but there is now cost.
Regards,
Ross
I whole heartedly agree with you that The Register was irresponsible in the way the structured the article, however I firmly believe that people in general are very much to blame. the cardinal rule of article writing you quote is indicative a much larger problem, and a worsening trend in our society as a whole. In that frighteningly large segments of the worlds populations now form opinions based reading one paragaph, hearing one two minute sound bite, and then immediately embark are society changing crusades. I just wish everybody, on all sides of every issue, would spend a little more time reading whole articles/books, listening to entire lectures, and most importantly spend as much time researching the oppositions arguments as you do your own.
I wish somebody would invent prozac for civilization.
my old sig is obsolete, and I haven't come up with a stupid enough new one yet
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.
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.
Which OS do they mean, anyway? Unix or Windows?
Are you joking?
Sure, it has Unix-like behavior, but that isn't gleaned by reverse engineering.
Observe the behavior of a system, and then attempt to create a system with identical or similar behavior. How is this not reverse engineering?
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..."
Except that very few of those projects are entirely based on reverse engineering.
Do they have to be based entirely on reverse-engineering to qualify as being reverse-engineered? How about if they qualify as benefitting from reverse engineering? I don't differentiate between those two levels of reverse engineering. I also think that reverse engineering is good for competition and the markets in which you and I make economic decisions.
Tridgell reverse engineered something that already had a capable and popular client on Linux,
You and Linus appear to have a problem with that, but for the life of me, I can't see what it might be. Reverse engineering a duplicate of a working existing product is legal, ethical, and highly beneficial to free markets (whether open or closed source).
as someone said in the last story, Tridgells main reason was to circumvent the license for Bitkeeper.
I don't mean to sound condescending, but why else would he put the time and effort into such a project? He wanted an open-source alternative to a closed-source tool that he didn't want to have to use. So he reverse-engineered an implementation of the client to achieve that goal.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. Also seems pretty ethical and completely legal.
Regards,
Ross
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
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
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?
And Tridgell didn't reverse engineer something that already had a capable Free Software client. You know, the PC actually has a "capable and popular" operating system. So, presumably, it's absolutely wrong for the Linux developers to continue to use reverse engineering to develop a Free Software alternative. Right?
Wrong. This is about freedom. The Bitkeeper people had no business discouraging those who want to use free tools yet who want to interoperate with those who lack the same standards from writing free tools to spec. It was bad enough that the protocols were undocumented and proprietary to begin with. It's worse that this kind of vengeful stance was taken against third parties for daring to have an association with someone trying to create those free tools.
I'm absolutely amazed. He may not be the loudest proponent of FOSS in the world, but he's at least made himself look like such a proponent, and he has relied upon the very people he attacks doing exactly what he's attacking them for doing to make his kernel usable and what it is today.Your respect for him may have risen, mine has dropped. I was prepared to handle the fact he adopted BK in the first place because, well, people do often see themselves as pragmatic when making decisions that essentially defy good practices. He should have learnt something from this lesson, but essentially it looks like he's merely digging himself into a deeper hole while yelling "You all suck!" at those trying to get him out.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I haven't heard Tridge's exact words on the subject, but what little I have heard suggests that he didn't particularly care about Bitkeeper's great features and he wasn't trying to write a replacement for the entire Bitkeeper system. He was just writing a replacement for the non-OSS Bitkeeper client - and purely so he and/or others could interact with other developers on Linux kernel development without being several technological steps behind.
The fact that the non-OSS Bitkeeper client had a morally repugnant license was probably a major reason that Tridge thought this a worthwhile project.
Everything I've heard so far indicates that Tridge was doing nothing more than the OpenOffice.org and /or Abiword developers do in reverse-engineering a closed file format, thus enabling people to access their own goddamn data if they cannot (for whatever reason) use the "usual" software. For example, if you're running Linux on PPC hardware, you can't run Microsoft Office and so you can't access information locked up in Microsoft Word documents from that platform - or at least you can't without the open-source applications that have (mostly) reverse-engineered that file format.
And if you're a Linux kernel hacker and you want to develop on an equal footing with other kernel developers, but you happen to occasionally hack on source-control software too - well, you're not allowed to use the free Bitkeeper client. A roughly equivalent opensource client is your only option.
Well, aside from convincing Linus to stop using Bitkeeper :). And as that's now happened (or is in the process of happening), I think you'll find that Tridge has absolutely no interest in continuing development of his OSS bitkeeper-ish client.
I think you don't really understand why people do reverse engineering, nor what a slow and painful process it can be. People don't reverse-engineer stuff to get a cheap thrill. Writing software using your own file formats and/or your own networking protocols and/or accessing your own bits of hardware is much more fun and interesting (and productive) than reverse-engineering someone else's.
But often it can be of enormous benefit to the wider community to be able to open and modify that Microsoft Word document, or use that interesting piece of hardware, or view those Sorenson Quicktime videos, with free and open-source software. And the reverse engineers are the wonderful people who make it possible for us to do this.
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.
Yeah, it's more like an honest mistake. Given Torvalds's recent level of morality (force other people to use a system they don't want; work with people trying to block development of free SCM systems; try to get your colleague fired; criticise colleagues in public), it's pretty easy to believe he would say something like that. In fact, as The Register pointed out, that's pretty much what he did say, just he said it about his "friend"'s wonderful BitKeeper product and its files.
Did anyone notice Torvald's admission that it was actually himself who got rid of BitKeeper (out of spite?) ( "... got to the point where I decided that I don't want to be in the position of trying to hold two pieces together..." ) and is now trying to blame Tridge.
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.
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."
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.
And a handy device for sensational journalism. This isn't social commentary, this is the Register jumping Linus for not playing the way they want him to. They (and you) are trying to cast Linus' decison in a bad light because he's not being as gung-ho about their ideals as they want him to be.
This is a non-issue.
Why are Fox "beating the pants off" the other networks? I've got my own hypothesis: because the average-to-dumb outnumber the smart by a wide margin. This is no secret: look at IQ statistics for the general population. Got a lot of money and Want a successful TV network? Write dumb, loud, shiny content which appeals to the cross-section of the population covering "average" down to "foolish mush brain", and you are guaranteed the widest audience. And you get to perpetuate that audience by filling their heads with your mush! Bonus!
It's the same reason that PBS and NPR historically must struggle to survive, while the Dr. Phils of the world turn into megamillionaires. There just aren't enough smart people to go around, and the dumb ones multiply faster than the smart ones to boot.
So congratulations, stupids, you're extinguishing your best hope for long-term survival. Who wants their kids to get physics degrees, when everybody else's kids are becoming latte-slurping pinheads
with MBAs?
At least you can take solace in the probability that when the end comes, you'll probably all be - statistically speaking - too stupid to realize it.
"Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!"
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.'
There was no free tool to access the portions of the revision metadata that Tridge wanted (the CVS gateway exported a lot, but not everything).
Larry and Linus _did_ offer him the means to export that data in a neutral format ... but only by accepting the license and using the non-free BK tool. (Linus had written some scripts that used bk to do the export, and Larry had offered to make it a standard feature)
I can understand why Andrew might not be satisfied with that alternative.
In the next bit I'm going to ask some questions. I don't have good answers for all of them.
It would have been one thing if the agreement Linus made with Larry had simply been that no user who consented to use the free BitKeeper would be allowed to reverse-engineer the repository format/protocol. Then it would simply have been a question of people being free to trade their legal right to reverse-engineering in exchange for using BK if they so chose. That condition may or may not be legal, but it does seem fair.
However, what Larry asked was that nobody in the world reverse-engineer BitKeeper, whether or not they agreed to his terms. Obviously that can't be enforced by law, but once kernel development had become dependent on BitKeeper, the demand could be backed by a threat to withdraw it.
I don't know what Larry was thinking. I do think whatever else, he really did mean to be helpful by providing BK, and Linus really did need help. But whatever his motivations, Larry also took advantage of an opportunity to restrict competition in a way that he would not normally have had open to him under the law.
Was it ethical for Larry to take advantage of his newfound position to manipulate others for personal gain? Does it change things that we "owe him one"?
Many of the developers saw this coming, and had publically declared a decision in not to accept that tradeoff in advance. Linus did not respect that decision by his colleagues; he was too desperate for a quick solution. Was it ethical for Linus to enter into this specific kind of agreement (which would affect them pretty directly) over their objections?
Of course, just because someone is inconsiderate doesn't mean one has an ethical right to respond in kind. However, there are other factors involved.
Metaphor. In effect, Larry had said that in exchange for providing life support for the injured penguin, we must obey him, or he'll take it away again. Andrew and others (he wasn't the only one reverse-engineering) stubbornly refused, Larry followed through on his threat, and now the penguin's been unceremoniously dumped bleeding on the floor.
The question here is whether it was ethical of them to do this, knowing that Larry would hurt Linux development in response?
Let's step back a moment and consider a situation with higher stakes: many governments, as a matter of policy, refuse to accept the demands of hostage-takers, even when people's lives are in danger. Why do they do that? Is that ethical? Why or why not?
Now, rhetorical question: does Linux development carry more or less ethical weight than human life?
How would that difference affect the earlier "hostage-takers" analysis? Would that make the sort of action taken by the reverse-engineering developers more or less ethical?
For the sake of the metaphor, is it important that the damage to Linux isn't "fatal"? Does it make a difference that many core developers had not agreed to Larry's intervention?
Personally, based on my own answers, I'd have some reservations about simply branding Andrew an unethical jerk.
DNA just wants to be free...
Dude, don't you think it should be illegal to post a person's name and address on a blog?
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.)
Not true. For those on the Free Software side it is *exactly* about Freedom. The problem is the "pragmatists" the ones who are said to have "common sense" are the ones who are blind to the concerns of the other side. Have you read Linus's responses to the allegations brought up in this thread?
Look here.
In one of the responses, Linus says:
Now just about any FS person out there will have an enormous problem with this. Why? Because amazingly, Linus had little concern over the freedom of the code/data. Being required to use BK and agree to its license is not even an issue in his mind. In Linus's mind Tridge's tool was pointless because it didn't replace BK, but most FS people, probably beginning with Alan Cox, who refused to use BK from the start, would tell you that the crucial point all along was being able to access the repository code/data of the kernel source code WITHOUT HAVING TO USE BK OR AGREE TO ITS ONEROUS LICENSE (his point #2 above is wrong). In their minds, Tridge's tool is FAR from pointless, its value lies in its ability to retrieve what arguably *belongs* to them without having to agree to terms they find unethical or reprehensible. It was never meant to be a replacement of BK, but something that would allow them to retrieve the data for migration to another SCM when the time came. This concern is not even on Linus's radar, it doesn't occur to him even now.
When Linus chose to start using BK, he wasn't the sole author of the kernel anymore, hundreds of contributors were involved by then, and Linus was well aware that many of them had strong views about BK and that there would be problems in the future. He chose the pragmatic route and used proprietary software for a free software project, indirectly forcing Free Software people to rely on a system for their own Free code that itself wasn't free. Sadly, I have to agree with the one previous poster that had the courage to say the raw truth: if *anyone* is to blame for the mess we have now, its Linus himself, not Tridge. To use the Matrix analogy, Linus created the flaw, or imperfection, in the system, and that made the creation of a "Neo" at some point in the future inevitable. We know RMS saw this coming from the get-go, but if we go back to the LKML archives at the time, I would not be at all surprised if several other Linux developers outside the FS camp didn't end up predicting the coming of Tridge back then too.
I am not trying to denigrate Linus, far from it, you have to respect his enormous programming skills, but when it comes to the larger issues of the use of software in our society, its RMS and Moglen that I listen to, not Linus, because Linus doesn't really "get it". He's clearly "Open Source", and not "Free Software", and that's OK really, but he was working with a lot of FS people back then, so for a guy famous for being able to herd cats, he simply did not (and seemingly still doesn't) understand half of his "cats" well enough to realize that the use of BK was guarantteed to be a disaster in the making.
This isn't really worth an argument now, and I'm not here to bash Linus, and especially not to open up the FS vs OS fight again, but please stop bashing Tridge (not to the parent, but many previous posts), there is enough blame to go around on this one. Lets move on.