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Linux For Losers According To De Raadt
elohim writes "Theo has some scathing comments about Linux in his new interview with Forbes Magazine. From the article: 'It's terrible...Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, "This is garbage and we should fix it."'"
I'd be angry too. About how the Forbes article portrayed me as a raving lunatic out for blood, after giving what was probably a thoughtful interview.
All the article consisted of was trotting Theo out for choice quotes about how Linux sucks, and a tiny bit of BSD history. Only 2 out of the 16 paragraphs even started to cover *why* Theo thinks the way he does. The rest is tabloid-style trash-talk and what seems to be an ADD-inspired history lesson. There's nothing approaching a coherent argument.
I'm giving Theo the benefit of the doubt on this one- he probably gave a fleshed-out argument then Forbes eviscerated it. Even if that's not the case, they should have written a better article. This is awfully shitty journalism.
Theo is openbsd's greatest strength (a fanatical security coder) and their worst handicap (a PR nightmare)
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Dan's Resume
Remember folks, UNIX was fragmented and dying before Linux became mainstream. BSD and GNU were nothing but obscure academic projects. The popularity of Linux brought UNIX to a whole new generation of users, and BSD has benefited from the uprising as much as anyone. Even the big boys, like Solaris and AIX, are trying to be more like Linux.
And the whole quality thing is a myth. Linus approaches the kernel with the approach of an engineer, and the rest of Linux mirrors this approach. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to work. Theo thinks of himself as an artist, and his arrogance does as much to hurt BSD as it does to help it.
Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is "difficult" and declined to comment further.
Eloquent and refined as always. Apparently, De Raadt has chosen to be less so. If his OS were as superior as he claims, its merits would be apparent without him having to act like the -1 Flamebait posts that are to follow.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Is this the seafaring, raping, murdering pirate ?
Or the copyright infringement pirate ?
Or the license infringement pirate ?
You do realize that none of the above apply, right ?
If you contribute to a BSD under a BSD-style license then yes... others can use your code in their closed-source products.
Don't like it ? Don't release under that license.
As for the GPL.. crikey - which one ? which version ? There's too many of them out there already. You mean GPL 2.0, I take it - which doesn't stop a company from "pirating" your code by using it only internally on a webservice and just spitting out the results of the code. That's one of those things GPL 3.0 is supposed to address, I guess ? whatever
Actually the worst part is that Theo is often right, which means you do have to actually listen to him rather than the easier just ignore him.
Reguardless of whether Theo is right or wrong he should not be such an asshat. Honestly have you ever dealt with the guy? If you don't see eye to eye with him he treats you like a giant turd. WTF? This is why it is good to have social skills and to know when to keep your mouth shut and when to open it. Theo from my experiance appears to have niether.
Without the GPL I would be about the same place it is now. Like it or not the GPL requires that if a company uses and adds to Linux they have to give back. The BSDs would all be used and abused but wouldn't get the company support that Linux has. Look at how Microsoft ripped the TCP stack from BSD. Did BSD get any benifit from that? Other than bragging "Windows uses our network stack!!" Well not really something to brag about.
It may not make you or anyone happy but it does force the improvement of Linux as a whole.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
If the developer isn't confident about even *where* some part of the code should be, and code from that confused developer actually made it into the kernel despite that confusion, why should a user have confidence in it?
A specific feature may be implemented in many ways. If there are several equivelent or nearly-equivelent ways, it makes sense to question your implementation decision. It does not necessarily imply the developer was unsure if "it" really belonged in that particular location; it is far more likely that the developer was unsure if there wasn't a better way of doing it that he was overlooking.
Sometimes writing code, something just doesn't feel right, even if you know your implementation is just fine. You have the feeling there's a better way. Usually, when you come back to it later, the better way is apperant. Often, the better way is simply cleaner code, not a better algorithm.
Comments like that are markers that welcome improvement, not an indication of lack of developer confidence.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Hey, I just used the first PC Unix to support MY hardware.
This could have been NeXT.
This could have been Solaris.
This could have been FreeBSD.
As it turned out, it was Linux. End of discussion.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yeah. That and there is some very well reasoned arguments over on undeadly that Theo was taken out of context. Which given everything else I've ever read from him on the subject makes perfect sense.
Also the person here seems to have left out this link.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0704/071.html
Having said that I've been using Debian since 1997 and I'm in the process of switching over to OpenBSD. To a large degree this is because the "secure by default" mindset fits with where I want to be and want I want to do more than any Linux distro can or to be honest should. But to a large degree the attitude on behalf of Linux users is a *big* part of the reason I'm leaving.
It will be interesting to see what Theo has to say about the accuracy of this article. I'd suggest you watch undeadly to see what happens.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
If Linux just "happens to run", how come it knocks out OpenBSD when it comes to performance? I very much doubt that Linux would win tests like these if "many parts" of its code were low quality and badly designed.
Granted, the test linked to above is soon two years old, and De Raadt refers to style of coding or general code quality rather than raw performance -- which other prominent people also have commented (in a perhaps more balanced way), but the fact that Linux runs is not merely a coincidence, as De Raadt seems to insinuate.
Your recollection of that moment in history is accurate, and I find it interesting because the BSD license is ostensibly "more free" than the GPL, because it doesn't require you to do a damned thing...but the surprising emergent property of using the BSD license is that improvements to the codebase did not flow as freely as did the changes to the linux kernel. There seems to be a tradeoff between the two licenses, and this is how the BSD license can work against you.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Theo is a paranoid, perfectionist, peckerhead. I say this in the most kind, loving manner possible, as I've got half a dozen OBSD boxes running on the internet right now, along with many more FreeBSD boxen and a few SuSe Linux machines that I'm learning to love.
BSD and Linux are different animals - on the development side BSD is like an American funeral home lawn - not a blade out of place, while Linux is more of an English garden, with all sorts of wild experiments happening.
I prefer BSD for server work because I like the discipline that exists in both development and maintenance, but I love the steady flow of GPL software that comes from Linux into the FreeBSD ports tree.
Both have an ecological niche to fill
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
What stands out in my mind: better documentation, cleaner code, more structured filesystem layout, less distribution fragmentation, more informative kernel/log/error messages, "base" OS seperated from packages better.
BSD gets some things first, Linux gets other things first. IMHO, more often than not, when the BSD stuff comes out later, its generally because it was done the "right way" rather than the "quick and dirty way" and then re-written with an incompatible interface 3 months later :D
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
OpenSSH flaws are pretty much entirely in the portable version, which is done by a seperate team of people that add the so-called portability goop - things like PAM support are not in the OpenBSD version.
OpenSSL is done by other people under an apache-like license and OpenSSH is done by OpenBSD under a modern BSD license. If you want another SSL make your own, if you want another SSH use lsh.
And your true free comment is something that doesn't belong here, take it to a GNU discussion - BSD users don't care.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
I use and love adblock. I also understand that ads help pay the bills for the websites I visit and enjoy. My general rule of thumb regarding ads is simple: If it moves, blinks, flashes, or annoys me in any way, I nuke the ad, block the server and never see it again. I usually don't block ads that just sit there quietly. I have even clicked on a few of google's textual, relevent, non intrusive ads.
Like most other issues, I feel the reasonable ground is a shade of grey and lies somewhere in the middle between black and white. (i.e. 'All ads are bad / all ads are good.')
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
I made myself a bet before I ever clicked on the article. I thought "wow, sounds like a Lyons piece" then I clicked on it:
Is Linux For Losers?
By Dan Lyons
So the Linux is for Losers part is from Dan Lyons. That's no surprise. He's still smarting from the thorough debunking PJ of Groklaw did. Speaking of which, I'd advise checking over there to see if PJ has made any comment on this story.
Lyons has to know he could get some flamebait out of Theo (not to difficult, but try comparing this interview to the one Theo gave to NewsForge).
This is just a troll for hits. Nothing more, nothing less. Lyons has just been studying up on how to rile people up. Please ignore him.
I mean look: Lyons chose that headline, Lyons chose to interview Theo, Lyons helped Theo look bad (not hard, given Theo's reputation).
This is nothing more than a cynical bid to sell ads on Forbes. Just like when Dvorak said that Maureen O'Gara should've gotten a medal for increasing readership when she stalked PJ of Groklaw, this is flamebait from an idiot meant to rile you into mindlessly clicking a Forbes story and generating ad revenue.
Lyons is laughing at you all the way to the bank. Have the last laugh; blackhole Forbes and their advertisers in your DNS and tell others to do the same.
A friend of mine just said to me (who happens to be a big FreeBSD user) - "think of him as a bsd manifestation of rms."
This is why the Debian camp and the FreeBSD camp turns me off of their distributions/OSs - the pig headed stuck up attitude of its leaders tends to cause friction with everyone else including people on the same side as them.
Point in case, from my experience, every Debian developer I've run across seems to be trained in the art of insulting and harassing RedHat users.
Now, thats just my experience, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who may have seen that.
Brielle