Bob Metcalfe on Open Source, IPv6, IETF

prostoalex writes "The inventor of Ethernet Bob Metcalfe is interviewed by AlwaysOn on current issues. Metcalfe is known for challenging commonly accepted wisdom and this time he's quite confrontational. On open source and operating systems: "If you look at Windows and Linux, both are based on 25-year-old technology. Windows is sort of a GUI version of the Mac's operating system, and Linux is of course Unix, which stems from 1968. These are both old clunkers. So the question is, Where are the new operating systems likely to come from?" On IPv6 adoption and IETF: "Back when you attended the IETF, you all looked down your noses at the ITU (or I guess it was called CCITT at the time)--the entrenched, corporately manipulated, corrupt, competent standards being embodied in IT. We were the IETF--the swashbuckling, institution-oriented, open people, the rebels. That's changed now. The Internet has arrived, and all of those people are now just like ITU: IETF has become the ITU.""

Comments

His comments on open source...

[tcopeland]

...are interesting:

Because modern software corporations know how to align the interests of the people. They know how to motivate people. They know how to sustain themselves over a long period of time, whereas I'm suspicious about the motivational structure of an open-source community and wonder whether it's sustainable.

That's an understandable suspicion. On the other hand, if you're using an open source product to help build your company, it's in your best interests to take some interest in that product and to help it develop. Then you're part of the community and you know how things are going.

Before OSes can be innovative, languages must be

[cscalfani]

Before we can ever hope to innovate the OS, we must first innovate software development, i.e. languages.

All the language techniques that we use are rooted in old technologies. Its still just as hard to code today as ever, if not harder.

I've been programming since 1980 and back then you wrote everything yourself. It was a lot of work but at least you controlled the quality of the system because you wrote it all.

Today, systems are so complex (unnecessarily so), and the technology hasn't changed enough to keep up with the demand. We still write for loops like we always have.

The spoon is a fine tool when all you dig are holes in ice cream but when you have to dig a trench in the ground, forget it.

Power Mongers Go Where the Power Is.

[darkonc]

The Internet has arrived, and all of those people are now just like ITU: IETF has become the ITU."

Not a big shock... about 15 years ago, the two power centers in BC Politics were the NDP and the Social Credit Party.. The left wing was in the NDP who had power at the time, and the Socreds had pretty much lost favour as the reigning right-wing party (( yeah that belies their name, but having been decades in power, the right wing had taken them over )). Then an upstart Liberal party maaged to worm their way into the leaders debate and caught fire, becomming the official opposition.

By the next election, the formeer Socred political machine had taken over the Liberal Party and kicked out it's leader. These are the people who now run the province.

The problem with our political/media system is that the only people who tend to end up in positions of power are those who really want it (and are willing to do whatever it takes to get that power). Unfortunately, these are precisely the people you don't want in power.

This Doesn't Work

[eno2001]

Metcalfe: Well, anonymity cannot be the rule. Anonymity has to be the exception. You should allow people to be anonymous if they want to, but the general rule shouldn't be anonymity, which is the present case. The source field of every packet in the Internet goes uninspected. You can cram anything you want into that and generate denial-of-service attacks (just to name one).

If networks were configured so that the "general rule" is NOT to be anonymous, then there is no way you can guarantee true anonymity. The reason being that if someone wantred to be "anonymous", they would have to request that privlege from some kind of "anonymity broker" or... own their own network. And even then, with the ability to track the packets, the only guarantee of anonymity is not technical, but social. The owner of the network that the message originated from would have to be the barrier. And as we all know, the current political climates around the world will be unlikely to respect that anonymity if they decide that your activities are "illegal". If someone wants to send e-mail saying they hope that a certain politician gets assainated, in some locations, that would be "illegal". Even though it's really freedom of speech. So, I don't think his suggestion works because it's not true anonymity unless you are in a very powerful position. Every citizen (from beggar to king) should have access to anonymity.

Um, and so they should. The automobile is obsolete

[Colin Smith]

"I guess someone should tell automakers that they should reinvent a mode of transportation from scratch."

Perhaps transport engineers rather than automakers. The automakers have a huge investment in the status quo. You don't need 4 wheels an engine, brakes, throttle or even a driver.

Transport engineers have already designed and built transport systems which don't have any of the above. Starting from scratch in the 1950s they devised a transport system which optimises the mathematics of getting from A -> B. Yes there is mathematics which describe the performance of transport.

It turns out that this is about as close to optimal as you're going to get with current technologies. Computer controlled, linear induction motors, a few rollers rather than wheels and only 16 moving parts. Non stop from A->B, no congestion, no traffic lights, no changing routes, no waiting on schedules.

It's been independantly re-invented a few times over the last few decades but we've now got the computer technology to actually do it.