Tridge wins 2005 Free Software Award

johnsu01 writes "The Free Software Foundation has announced the winner of the 2005 Award for the Advancement of Free Software. The winner, Andrew Tridgell, wins the prize for his work on Samba, the Linux kernel, and rsync. In his work on Samba and on a free software client for the proprietary version control system previously used by the Linux kernel hackers, Tridgell furthered what has been an important goal of the free software movement since the founding of GNU --- analyzing ways for free software to interact with the currently widespread proprietary systems so people can more easily move away from those systems."

Comments

well done

[Anonymous Coward]

He is a major asset to open source

Hmmmm

[man_of_mr_e]

In his work on Samba and on a free software client for the proprietary version control system previously used by the Linux kernel hackers

So they're giving him an award for forcing the kernel developers off of their most productive environment and into months of chaos.

Wow.

Re:Hmmmm

[Liselle]

Oh, come off it already. Linus was playing in a minefield by using BitKeeper and trusting Larry McVoy. If Tridge didn't step on a landmine, someone else would have. Kudos for him for doing what he does best.

Re:Hmmmm

[Jay Maynard]

Larry McVoy was playing in a minefield by trusting the open source community to live up ti its commitments.

Re:Hmmmm

[TheRaven64]

This is a GNU/FSF award, not an Open Source award. To the Free Software movement[1], being productive with proprietary software is only ever a temporary measure as (a Free Software advocate would say) the Linux kernel developers found out. By forcing the Bitkeeper authors hand, Tridge showed the world the dangers of relying on proprietary software, namely that you are at the whim of the licenser. This is 100% in line with the objectives of the Free Software movement, no matter how galling it may be to the Open Source crowd.

Of course, an alternate headline could have been 'Stallman Gives Torvalds The Finger.'

[1] Bruce Perens, if you're reading this, don't try telling me that they're the same. Only people in the Open Source community believe that, not people in the Free Software community, and if they were truly the same then both sides would have to agree.

Re:Hmmmm

[Knuckles]

"The open source community" had no commitment to McVoy in any shape, way, or form. Only the individual people accepting the BitKeeper license (i.e., not Tridgell) had a commitment.

Re:Hmmmm

[ozamosi]

No. He didn't force them off anything - he gave them a Free tool to use instead of a proprietary one. BitKeepers creator was the one who forced them off BitKeeper.

I want to make a car-comparison here, but it's been done too many times by now. Instead, I'm just gonna ask moderators to mod you down, troll.

Re:Hmmmm

[Liselle]

Larry McVoy was playing in a minefield by trusting the open source community to live up ti its commitments.

How can a "community" even MAKE a commitment, never mind live up to one?

Larry McVoy got a bunch of cheap advertising for his software, then he threw a hissy fit when someone tried to interoperate with it. He's a twit.

Re:Hmmmm

[drinkypoo]

Oddly enough, I consider myself part of both communities, yet I can tell the difference. I promote Free software in cases where it makes sense, but I always promote Open Source. Naturally, in my ideal world, all software would be both.

Re:Hmmmm

[Chirs]

Technically, by using BK Linus made a commitment on behalf of OSDL, and hence Tridgell.

Re:Hmmmm

[MichaelSmith]

Tridge showed the world the dangers of relying on proprietary software, namely that you are at the whim of the licenser

He also showed me how dangerious it is to deal with one particular licenser.

Re:Hmmmm

[MichaelSmith]

Technically, by using BK Linus made a commitment on behalf of OSDL, and hence Tridgell.

Does the commitment extend to me, a user of Linux?

I doubt that OSDL or Tridgell knowingly agreed to any such commitment.

Re:Hmmmm

[MichaelSmith]

Of course, an alternate headline could have been 'Stallman Gives Torvalds The Finger.'

Its a shame because Linus has actually made a tremendous contribution to free software. An award for him from the FSF might actually get the FSF into the popular media.

And BitMover could have been the BitTorrent of the source control world, if they had opened their protocols. Instead we get this security by obsurity bullshit from them.

Re:Hmmmm

[iabervon]

They're actually significantly more productive using git than they were using BitKeeper. To some extent, this is because more people are comfortable using git, so there's more uniformity of process. To some extent, this is because git is faster for some critical processes. To some extent, this is because people have tools for git tuned for their own use (because they can). To some extent, this is because people continue to work on the maintainability of the kernel, so productivity improves over time, tools aside.

As far as I can tell, the switch took a lot of Linus's attention, so nothing got done on putting changes in for a month, but development continued approximately as before, and then there was a period where Linus was applying patches blazingly fast, because they'd been developed and tested while he was doing git (and he designed git so he could apply and commit patches faster than 1/second).

Re:Hmmmm

[frogstar_robot]

bk tries to be all things to all developers. Git only tries to be exactly what the Linux Kernel project needs. A major point McVoy missed when slagging off the git developers is that a particular solution for a particular problem can always be developed faster than a general solution for all problems. Git being useful for anyone else is gravy.

Re:Hmmmm

[man_of_mr_e]

Look, all things aside, Tridge was being an asshole. he's like the guy that shows up to a party and trashes the place, since, after all HE wasn't the one that agreed to pay the costs if there was any damage. he's perfectly in his rights, right?

Tridge knew the terms under which BitKeeper had been licensed to the kernel development team. And, even though he wasn't using it, and hadn't agreed to them, he knew what his actions would cause. He deliberately forced the issue, effectively making the decision for everyone.

Re:Hmmmm

[MichaelSmith]

He deliberately forced the issue, effectively making the decision for everyone.

Yes, leaders tend to do that.

Re:Hmmmm

[fuzz6y]

he's perfectly in his rights, right?
no, he's guilty of vandalism, regardless of who's taking responsibility. Your analogy is crap because if McVoy didn't exist, nobody anywhere could reproach Tridge for his actions.

Re:Hmmmm

[iabervon]

Well, git actually tries to be sufficiently customizable that you can use it however you want, and it's just that the first set of git scripts people would actually use were done by Linus for his own use. Then they were followed by Jeff Garzik doing his own scripts (he maintains a ton of little trees, rather than one big one), and more people doing scripts for the use of individual developers, users who want to help with debugging, and now people with entirely different sorts of projects. It's following the UNIX way, based on the idea that, if you give people all the parts, they'll be able to build a better selection of things than you could build for them. You don't have to solve all problems, you just have to make sure that you don't rule out solving any, and someone will solve each problem when it comes up.

Re:Hmmmm

[jbolden]

OSDL never signed a contract. An employee has to present themselves as a contracting agent for a company to be held liable for thier contractual actions. That is:

1) I work for Burger King3
2) You work for Ford
3) I agree with you that Burget King should promote Ford cars. I never indicate to you I have authority to negotiate on behalf or Burger King.
4) You give me $50 and say "I'm glad we have a deal"
5) Burger King doesn't promote Ford
6) Ford sues Burger King based on the contract
7) Ford loses since there is no contract with Burger King.

Re:Hmmmm

[jbolden]

2003 Alan Cox

What do you think Cox got the award for? Clearly the FSF recognizes the importance of Linus's work.

Re:Hmmmm

[808140]

I understand what you're trying to say, but most Free Software advocates (certainly Stallman, but many others as well, including myself) would say that your advocation of Free Software "where it makes sense" puts convenience above principle, which is the "Open Source compromise" in a nutshell. This places you, at least from the perspective of Free Software advocates, firmly in the OSS camp.

You say you understand the difference between the two, and yet see yourself in both camps -- lots of OSS advocates say this. But when it comes right down to it, the Free Software movement is about eschewing proprietary software from our lives, even if it makes our lives more difficult or results in decreased efficiency. The fact that free software happens to often be better quality than its proprietary counterparts is a welcome thing, but even if it were far less stable and much less feature rich -- as GNU/Linux certainly was when I started using it exclusively -- a Free Software advocate would still advocate it, because it's ultimately a question of principle, not a question of convenience.

Simply put, from our perspective, it always makes sense.

Re:Hmmmm

[m50d]

And, even though he wasn't using it, and hadn't agreed to them, he knew what his actions would cause.

How was he to know that? He was just trying to reverse engineer the protocol, why should that lead to McVoy not allowing the kernel people to use it? What does he have to do with the people who have accepted the license?

Re:Hmmmm

[smash]

Alan Cox != Linus Torvalds

Equating Alan Cox to "Linux" in that context just supports the theory that they'd rather award Linux dude #2 an award for Linux than "the man" because they don't like him personally...

smash.

Re:Hmmmm

[jbolden]

My guess is that Alan Cox is not a household name. But lets assume that were the case.

Guy #1 manages the project but on the whole opposes the goals for the FSF. The award would do nothing for him.

Guy #2 wrote many of the key components and does a lot of work intigrating with other open source projects and assists the goals for the FSF. The award will have a strong impact for him.

Is it so unreasonable to pick guy #2?

Re:Hmmmm

[man_of_mr_e]

Prior to licensing BitKeeper to the kernel team, it was made very well known that the license was valid so long as nobody tried to reverse engineer it. He knew that. What's worse, is that he even AGREED to stop reverse engineering it while the matter was discussed, but failed to do so and kept up.

Re:Hmmmm

[drinkypoo]

Personally I see OSS as a stopgap in between closed and Free. Even if the whole world decided to move toward FOSS tomorrow, we'd still have to deal with proprietary, closed software for a little while, until we got everything cleared up.

Let's not forget his gift to the Tivo hackers

[jerkychew]

Don't forget all the work Tridge did in hacking the early Tivos so we could install Ethernet ports in them! The guy has had quite an impact on several projects, hardware and software.

Re:Let's not forget his gift to the Tivo hackers

[Otto]

Yep. Still have my original Tivonet card in my original Series 1 unit.

Hooray Tridge! Hooray beer!

The FSF shows its true colors

[Jay Maynard]

By congratulating Tridge in the way they did, the FSF shows that it is fundamentally hostile to the world of commercial software, period. This flies in the face of denials from its supporters that the FSF isn't anti-software business.

Tridge's work with Samba is certainly worthy of recognition. It's just the way in which the FSF chose to grant that recognition that I have a problem with.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Knuckles]

So interoperating with proprietary software on the protocol level is now bad? Why does this apply to a free bitkeeper client, but not to a free SMB/CIFS server?

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Jay Maynard]

McVoy was working with the open source community. Microsoft is not.

The open source community turned on McVoy. It never had a cooperative setup with Microsoft in the first place.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[WilliamSChips]

"The open-source community" is not a coherent whole in any way. Andrew Tridgell was not a licensee of any BitMover software. He just happened to work in the same place as one. No licensee of BitKeeper was working on that until after it was revoked.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[albalbo]

Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!

There's no possible chance that you'd predecided what you thought of this, were you?

So go on, tell us why Tridge shouldn't have won the award.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Knuckles]

McVoy had a license agreement with individual people, that's it. Whatever that "open source community" is you speak of, if I may myself call a fringe part of it for the sake of argument, Linus et al. surely did not represent me when they chose to go with BitKeeper in the first place.

This is all moot anyway, since the FSF never denied that it sees itself outside of any "open source community", so they would not be part of any commitment of this community to McVoy.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Jay Maynard]

You didn't read my original message, did you? I said that Tridge is deserving of the award for his work on Samba.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because he didn't use enough grease when he opened up Bitkeeper's orifices, or because he never kissed them while doing it?

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[drinkypoo]

No, the FSF is fundamentally hostile to misrepresenting assholes who think their shit don't stink. Here's a news bulletin for you: proprietary standards are bad, mm-kay?

They're also fundamentally hostile to non-Free software. Not non-free, non-Free. This is a good thing. And more importantly, it's not a secret.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[albalbo]

Actually, I did, it seemed to be something along the lines of "I would recognise Tridge's work in supplanting Microsoft's Windows operating system with a free replacement, but not his work supplanting BitKeeper with a free replacement".

Because, yeah, the "community" was friends with Bitkeeper and we somehow are anti-commercial because they withdrew their free licensing deal. Or something. I don't even get your point.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Jay Maynard]

They really should pick another term besides "free", since the one they picked is designed to confuse people...but then, they've been arguing by redefinition for a couple of decades, so why should they stop now?

Why is it that everyone but RMS and his slavish followers think there's a place for both open source and proprietary software in the world?

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Knuckles]

You haven't yet explained why interoperating (by telnet, since that's what Tridgell did) with a BitKeeper server is bad and interoperating with a SMB/CIFS client is good.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Knuckles]

Because the FSF does not want to have anything to do with Open Source. I gave the link to the relevant FSF text in another reply. It's many years old, you should try to read it some time.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

By congratulating Tridge in the way they did, the FSF shows that it is fundamentally hostile to the world of commercial software, period. This flies in the face of denials from its supporters that the FSF isn't anti-software business.

Assuming you're not trolling, your argument is essentially a straw man. The reality is that the FSF is hostile to proprietary software, which should hardly be a surprise.

If the FSF were opposed to commercial software, I doubt the GPL (the current version, as well as the GPLv3 draft) would say this:

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[drinkypoo]

RMS and his "slavish followers" (I would pick "mindless" personally - not all of 'em are, but I suspect that's what you really meant - but then it's bad to assume) do have an excellent point. The software that's most fair to users is Free software. If you enjoy freedom, and dislike oppression, then using only Free software is a logical decision. Well, so long as you can still get things done...

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

They really should pick another term besides "free", since the one they picked is designed to confuse people...

Nobody who actually takes the time to read any of the FSF's introductory material (e.g. the GPL's preamble, or The GNU Manifesto, or their "What is Free Software?" article) will have any confusion about the issue. The people who are confused are those who pass judgement on things without spending more than 250 milliseconds thinking about them.

Hell, the first thing you see when you visit the FSF's website is the following sentence:

Free software is a matter of liberty not price. You should think of "free" as in "free speech".

If the FSF is trying to spread confusion, they're not doing a very good job of it.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[ClamIAm]

By congratulating Tridge in the way they did, the FSF shows that it is fundamentally hostile to the world of commercial software, period.

REAlly.

Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover the cost.

Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. (link)

So, straight from the horse's mouth, we can see your argument is bullshit, "period".

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Jay Maynard]

The FSF makes this arguemnt all the time - but it blithely ignores that you'll only sell one copy, because it'll get given away or shared. You can't make money selling GPLed software.

And no, that's not what Red Hat, Novell, et al are doing. They're making money by building and packaging GPLed software.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[ClamIAm]

The FSF makes this arguemnt all the time - but it blithely ignores that you'll only sell one copy, because it'll get given away or shared. You can't make money selling GPLed software.

It depends on what your definition of "sell" is. If "sell" is strictly defined as number of licenses sold, then no, it's pretty hard to live off of Free software. But there are other ways to "sell" your software. Bram Cohen lived off Paypal donations for a while, where those who gave money were "buying" continued development of BT.

And no, that's not what Red Hat, Novell, et al are doing. They're making money by building and packaging GPLed software.

Oh, so if the particular way someone makes money off of Free software doesn't fit your definition as "selling", then you're right? That's pretty convenient.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[jbolden]

What you mean by commercial software: redistribution restricted applications sold for money. Well yeah the core principle of the FSF is to ensure that all software meets the 4 fundamental freedoms. The FSF has never claimed they aren't hostile to that sort of software business.

What they are friendly to is services based software, more of consulting nature:
-- one off apps for specific clients (client gets the source)
-- custom implementations
-- support contracts
etc...

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[HermanAB]

Huh? The FSF *is* a software business. It just has different business model from some others.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[gowen]

McVoy was working with the open source community.

By demanding that kernel hackers don't work on alternative source control systems? By systematically raping the free version of BK? By refusing to export change data in an open format? By continually changing his license to prevent interoperability?

If that's co-operation, I'll take MS's FUD, thanks.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[Jay Maynard]

That spells a permanent decline in the standard of living for programmers. Of course, that doesn't bother RMS, but it should bother those of us who don't want to live like ascetics.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[jbolden]

A huge number of the jobs have already been outsourced. More and more are likely to be. 10 years ago I could see the argument for programmers trying to stick with pure development jobs. Today what's the point?

Open source software, that is low initial cost and high implementation costs strikes me as a better model for American IT workers than closed source.

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[rtb61]

To put it simply, well "Duhh", they are the Free Software Foundation, that is their function. Are the Republicans hostile to the Democrats (in this case one could point out they are often criminally hostile to the Democrats) or are penguins hostile to fish or is the BSA rabidly hostile to the FSF.

Hostile in this case is just the incorrect word, the FSF, supports and promotes free software, and naturally enough acknowledges those who make signifcant contributions to it. The FSF has no real business acknowleging, promoting or recognising propriety software in any way shape or form, that's not why it was formed or why people joined it.

Of course rabidly hostile is the correct term when talking about the BSA (greed certainly can twist shallow people's minds). Congradulations to Andrew, he certainly deserved the award and I hope he continues to draw the ire of a particularly nasty software company ;-) (for the success of his work of course).

Re:The FSF shows its true colors

[rsidd]

The FSF *is* a software business.

No, it's not. It's a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Tridge is more like, however

[Anonymous Coward]

...a refridgerator. SUCK MY BALLS. FP

good day, sir

Trying to find the detailed story...

[IAAP]

from Samba.org ...Andrew Tridgell, who is both tall and Australian, had a bit of a problem. He needed to mount disk space from a Unix server on his DOS PC. Actually, this wasn't the problem at all because he had an NFS (Network File System) client for DOS and it worked just fine. Unfortunately, he also had an application that required the NetBIOS interface. Anyone who has ever tried to run multiple protocols under DOS knows that it can be...er...quirky. So Andrew chose the obvious solution. He wrote a packet sniffer, reverse engineered the SMB protocol, and implemented it on the Unix box. Thus, he made the Unix system appear to be a PC file server, which allowed him to mount shared filesystems from the Unix server while concurrently running NetBIOS applications. Andrew published his code in early 1992. There was a quick, but short succession of bug-fix releases, and then he put the project aside. Occasionally he would get E'mail about it, but he otherwise ignored it. Then one day, almost two years later, he decided to link his wife's Windows PC with his own Linux system. Lacking any better options, he used his own server code. He was actually surprised when it worked. Through his E'mail contacts, Andrew discovered that NetBIOS and SMB were actually (though nominally) documented. With this new information at his fingertips he set to work again, but soon ran into another problem. He was contacted by a company claiming trademark on the name that he had chosen for his server software. Rather than cause a fuss, Andrew did a quick scan against a spell-checker dictionary, looking for words containing the letters "smb". "Samba" was in the list. Curiously, that same word is not in the dictionary file that he uses today. (Perhaps they know it's been taken.) The Samba project has grown mightily since then. Andrew now has a whole team of programmers, scattered around the world, to help with Samba development. When a new release is announced, thousands of copies are downloaded within days. Commercial systems vendors, including Silicon Graphics, bundle Samba with their products. There are even Samba T-shirts available. Perhaps one of the best measures of the success of Samba is that it was listed in the "Halloween Documents", a pair of internal Microsoft memos that were leaked to the Open Source community. These memos list Open Source products which Microsoft considers to be competitive threats. The absolutely best measure of success, though, is that Andrew can still share the printer with his wife.

BUT, the real story is REALLY interesting...and I can't find it, now! The story talked about how he experimented with all of the bits and bytes to get the software to work. A lot of stuff in the beginning was hard coded and everytime MS released a new version, he had to rush to fix shit, until he figured out how things really worked.

Shit! I wish I could find that story again. It really explained how to reverse engineer stuff!

Re:Trying to find the detailed story...

[Anonymous Coward]

>What's with the "new" format?

I hate replies to .sigs -- thus anon, but caught my eye.

I assume you are referring to the sectioned content appearing on the front page? You obviously missed Taco's anouncement.

gee, it's not really that hard to find...

http://slashdot.org/search.pl?tid=124

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday January 23, @11:00AM
from the zomg-you-got-some-ajax-in-our-ui dept.
[ Slashdot.org ]
For years now Slashdot has posted what we call "Sectional Content". That is to say, stories that we think are good, but since we try to keep the Slashdot Main Page to around 15 stories per day, some stuff just gets put into the sections. This content is mostly lost to readers who simply don't know it exists. Today we're deploying new code to help you find that content (and alternatively, to disable it).

Now, if you missed it, its certainly a valid question. What kind of dipshit puts it in his .sig

I suppose the same sort of dipshit that replies to said .sig

surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year I remember reading Theo won, and being surprised and thinking what an excellent choice for this award.

This year I read Tridge has won, again I am surprised by the selection but absolutley pleased by an excellent pick.

Both of these characters have exhibited excellence and an attitude of not being afraid to buck the system when asked to stifle their beliefs of what free software actually means.

Strange Politics

[Eberlin]

Now was this award for his work on SAMBA or his smallish part in the whole bitkeeper debacle that led to git?

I truly do appreciate everything SAMBA has going for it and hell, hats off to Tridge, but is it kinda weird that FSF gives him this award after being almost blamed for the bitkeeper diplomatic breakdown? (especially with how vocal RMS was regarding bitkeeper's use in Linux development)

Re:Strange Politics

[MichaelSmith]

I truly do appreciate everything SAMBA has going for it and hell, hats off to Tridge, but is it kinda weird that FSF gives him this award after being almost blamed for the bitkeeper diplomatic breakdown? (especially with how vocal RMS was regarding bitkeeper's use in Linux development)

Reading between the lines it seems to be a reward for inducing BitMover to drop their free service for Linux.

Given subsequent events with mercurial I think this is probably a Good Thing (tm)

Re:Strange Politics

[albalbo]

Look at the history of who they've awarded it to. You can't call the likes of Larry Wall 'political'.

To say that Tridge got the award because the FSF wanted to recognise his "role" in getting rid of Bitkeeper is offensive, in my opinion - that's basically writing off all the other contributions he's made to the free software community merely to have a go at the FSF. I would like to hear people's suggestions of someone *more* worthy to win than Tridge - I can't think of anyone off the top of my head.

Re:Strange Politics

[Jay Maynard]

The FSF does nothing that is not political.

I'm not disagreeing that Tridge is deserving; it's just that the FSF chose to recognize him in part for work that advances their own political, anti-commercial agenda, and that is what I find offensive.

Re:Strange Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

The award does seem more like the "lifetime achievement" type, which makes more sense. Having originally thought it was like a 'best album' thing where the nominees are to be judged by their most recent work, I looked at the biggest 2005 Tridge news and sure enough, it involved bitkeeper.

The list of previous winners didn't include Linus...and as I looked through the criteria for eligibility, I think he fits. It just went to 1998 though, so I'm not sure if that's all the past winners.

Re:Strange Politics

[Jay Maynard]

Linus will never get the award. He doesn't drink the Stallmanite Kool-Aid. Stallman is too bitter over not getting to name Linus's OS, and that Linus doesn't hold the same dogmatic views as he does, to ever recognize Linus for anything - even though Linus has done more for his cause (not just the cause of Open Source, but the cause of so-called "free software") than anyone else alive.

Re:Strange Politics

[Knuckles]

Organisation gives award to someone who represents their beliefs! News at 11!

Re:Strange Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman doesn't care what Linus names his kernel, if you want to complain about the name of the kernel take it up with the FTP admin and call it Freax like Linus intended. The idea that Linus has done the most is absurd, either you don't know what he has done, or you don't know what others have done.

Re:Strange Politics

[SquadBoy]

In 2004 they gave it to Theo da Raadt... This is a reward with *no* history of doing what you are saying they are doing. So on what do you base this thought of yours?

Re:Strange Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard Stallman has said on record several times that he disagreed with Linus' decision to use Bitkeeper, and moreover that he found it symbolically offensive because Linux was the "flagship of the GNU/Linux operating system" (in Stallman's opinion of course - Linus would probably contend that Linux plus device drivers *is* a complete operating system).

So this is an obvious statement by Stallman. A more timely pick would be, say, Blake Ross.

No doubt Tridge should get the award this year

[olddotter]

What else is there to say?

Re:No doubt Tridge should get the award this year

[Xiaran]

Go Tridge! Hes from the same town Im from... good old boring Canberra :)

My Dad sometimes plays chess with him(if you dont know Tridge is into chess and has written a chess engine called KnightCap). Apparently the last time they play Tridge kick my Dads ass :)

Re:No doubt Tridge should get the award this year

[DJDutcher]

Giving Tridge the FSF award is like giving Chewbacca the rebel alliance award.

Awarded with...

[krunoce]

Is there anything else besides a big certificate and getting your name popularized? Just curious.

Tridge or Tridgell?

[Life700MB]

But is it Tridge or Tridgell? Is spelt both ways in the article, but in samba.org seem to call him Tridge.


--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95

Re:Tridge or Tridgell?

[terrymr]

Do you think that Tridge could be short for Tridgell ? ... not much less typing I know.

Re:Tridge or Tridgell?

[ibrown1]

At school he was called "Tridge" (and only Tridgell by Masters).

Re:Tridge or Tridgell?

[kebes]

There's an easy way to answer that question... just look at his "signature"! In a shell:
man rsync
man samba

(or check out an equivalent webpage on rsync, or samba)

In the "Author" section he always writes it:
Andrew Tridgell (that's the name used in the wikipedia entry, too).

In the examples section of rsync, however, he writes:
rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba/ nim-bus:"~ftp/pub/tridge/samba"

So I guess he uses "tridge" as a nickname for himself.

Reverse what?

[Yojimbo-San]

IIRC the proper description of Tridge's investigations into BitKeeper wasn't "reverse engineering", but discovering the "help" command when telnetting to the BK server.

Which version of history are we now supporting?

Handed Out at the GPLv3 Launch

[_xeno_]

This was actually awarded ages ago (OK, more like a week ago) at the GPLv3 launch. I happened to be sitting one row in front of where he was sitting when they called him up (which was kinda neat, I guess). I never did get to see what the actual award was there because the thing was rolled up, and he never unrolled. So it's nice to see the picture on the website.

I'll have to check to see if I have any pictures of the award ceremony. I think I might have one of him actually holding the thing. However I haven't gotten around to dumping my camera yet, so I'm not sure.

They should also be announcing (any day now) the winner of the FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software, which was also awarded at the GPLv3 launch. If I had been paying closer attention, I could tell you if it was Wikimedia that won, or Wikipedia. I think I also have pictures of that award being accepted.

Framing the question in a more familiar way

[SavvyPlayer]

1. ...
2. ...
3. ...
4. Win FSF Award
5. Profit!!!

Unlikely.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Very informative. I didn't know that :)

Fantastic

[foo fighter]

Samba is one the most important open source software projects. It's up there with the various open operating systems, apache, etc.

Anytime the creator and developers of this project get recognition it's a good thing.

I, for one, can hardly wait for a stable release of v4.

Destructive vs constructive

[dbIII]

This is a GNU/FSF award, not an Open Source award

So they are giving him an award for breaking the terms of a licence agreement?

namely that you are at the whim of the licenser

It is the same with the GPL and there really is nothing wrong with that - if you don't like the licence you use something else.

It was a simple situation - a group that was paying Tridge had licenced the software, Tridge used it in a way that was against the licence and the software vendor took it away. Nothing practical came out of it - Tridge did not develop a replacement. Other people took steps to make something practical happen as damage control afterwards.

After things like this people still call it gnu/linux - it's time to realise that they are two different projects with very different goals and both will take steps that the other group doesn't like on the way to their goals.

Re:Destructive vs constructive

[Knuckles]

So they are giving him an award for breaking the terms of a licence agreement? (...) a group that was paying Tridge had licenced the software

Tridgell never entered into a license agreement with BitMover, and whether license agreements entered by other ODSL employees extended automatically to Tridge is pretty questionable.

if you don't like the licence you use something else.

Right, sourcepuller.

Re:Destructive vs constructive

[dbIII]

Tridgell never entered into a license agreement with BitMover, and whether license agreements entered by other ODSL employees extended automatically to Tridge is pretty questionable.

You do realise that statement can be interpreted as it being OK to use any piece of software on a network you have access to without respecting it's licence?

If you use the software (even if you telnet to the port it listens on and type "help") you should respect it's licence if you expect others to respect yours. Now Tridgell may not be the sort of person that respects licences and may have had to go around a few to give us Samba - but the FSF expicitly stating that they are giving Tridgell an award for this action is a sign of hypocracy since enforcing the GPL is their main purpose for existance.

Re:Destructive vs constructive

[Darth]

Tridgell didn't use the software, so why would he have anything to do with its license?

What Tridgell did was access packets being transmitted over a network and access ports on a computer with the permission of the computer and network owner. From this information, he reverse engineered how the bitkeeper client worked without ever touching the bitkeeper client.

If you think this is inappropriate, i hope you aren't using Samba, because that's exactly the way samba was created.

Re:Destructive vs constructive

[dbIII]

Tridgell didn't use the software, so why would he have anything to do with its license?

Logging in and typing "help" IS using the software. Please at least get familiar with the major details before saying something did or didn't happen - Tridge was considered to be bound by the licence because he was working for a company that was granted a licence. If I was to consider myself legally free to make copies of MS Windows software purchased by my workplace it would be just as stupid as those who are saying Tridge didn't break the licence.

If you think this is inappropriate, i hope you aren't using Samba, because that's exactly the way samba was created.

Please bother to actually read the entire previous post where I mentioned Samba.

Re:Destructive vs constructive

[Darth]

Logging in and typing "help" IS using the software. Please at least get familiar with the major details before saying something did or didn't happen

as you yourself pointed out, he telnetted to a port and typed "help". that no more binds him to the license for the software than i am bound to sendmail's license if i telnet to it's port and play with the available commands. If I were to telnet to a public port on a machine a friend owns and play around with the commands available to me, and it happened to be the port bitkeeper runs on, how does that make me subject to a license i've never seen and never agreed to?

Tridge was considered to be bound by the licence because he was working for a company that was granted a licence.

Tridge was considered to be bound by the license by Bitkeeper's assertion. I've never seen anything that said OSDL agreed to any licensing terms involving Bitkeeper or that Linus was allowed to agree to licensing terms on behalf of the company and its employees. Linus was bound by the license and he was the one granted a license. Unless you can provide some documentation to support that OSDL had agreed to any licensing terms with Bitkeeper, I cannot see any way that Tridge was bound to any agreement with Bitkeeper.

If I was to consider myself legally free to make copies of MS Windows software purchased by my workplace it would be just as stupid as those who are saying Tridge didn't break the licence.

show me anything that says OSDL purchased any licenses for Bitkeeper. Show me anything that says the licensing agreement between OSDL and Bitkeeper bound all of the OSDL employees to its terms, even the ones who didn't use it.

Your analogy also fails on the fact that Tridge never possessed a copy of any software made by Bitkeeper.

Please bother to actually read the entire previous post where I mentioned Samba.
Actually i did read what you said about Samba. I fail to see how Tridge violated any licenses creating Samba too.

Re:Destructive vs constructive

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use the software (even if you telnet to the port it listens on and type "help") you should respect it's licence if you expect others to respect yours.

1. I don't have to respect something I didn't agree on
2. "Ours" are copyright licenses, that has nothing to do with the fact that we aren't bound by EULAs we didn't agree on.
3. Bitkeeper is rotting, get back to work while Bazaar-NG hasn't eaten your launch.

Re:Destructive vs constructive

[Knuckles]

Thanks, your post saves my evening from quite some googling :)

Well done!

[Dri]

I love Samba, I love Andy! /cheerz

FIRST P*OST

[Anonymous Coward]

ErRors. Future I conflicts that are there? Let's

Congrats to Andrew

[TTimo]

Andrew helped me here and there when I was looking at the Samba 4 code. A brilliant guy obviously, and quite friendly. Go Andrew!

More about Tridge

[aconkling]

Seems I'm the only one around here who doesn't know who he is.... So here's the skinny:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Tridgell
http://samba.org/~tridge

What are the judgement criteria for the award?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I looked at his ccache sources (http://ccache.samba.org/) I thought they were a right dog's dinner; not at all an impressive piece of open source software on the software engineering front.

"How Samba was written"

[toby]

Is this the article you're looking for?

There's also Tridgell's Myths about Samba.

Anti-commercial?

[Anonymous Coward]

> anti-commercial agenda

They're not anti-commercial so much as they're against insanely restrictive software licenses. The "you can't work on any competing product" clause of BitKeeper has, in my non-lawyer mind, an unfavorable comparison to some of the terms of Sony's EULA. You know, the ones Sony stipulated to be unconscionable in the settlement...

They don't have a problem with people making money. They just have a problem with the way some people choose to go about that. And if you have to screw over a few greedy bastards to get them to play nice, so be it.

In the buck

[Anonymous Coward]

I had anal sex with Tridge once, and he also gave me a good GNU'ing.

I agree.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh.. anusol. Lovely.

Congratulations Tridge

[Anthony]

Sensible, Passionate, Helpful, Friendly, Intelligent, Communicative, Considerate. These are not the criteria for a FSF award, but these are the attributes that comes to mind from the years I have known Tridge. A driving force in the formation of CLUG and getting Linus to visit Canberra all those years ago. Of course he is not a god, but he is certainly deserving of any award the world chooses bestow upon him.

Re:Congratulations Tridge

[Anonymous Coward]

but he is certainly deserving of any award the world chooses bestow upon him.

Even if the award was for, let's say, excessive body odor? Even if the award was for being popular with the ladies? Man, that's one charismatic smelly guy.

Tridge is huge

[DTC-Bob]

I worked off and on with Tridge at Linuxcare, then one degree of separation with work later on (Samba rocks). He is very deserving, and kudos for his view on most wordly and out-of-wordly things. DTC-Bob

Free Software

[eddygk]

Would someone please explain to me why people seem to believe that software should be free? I don't see why software should be free any more than I see why cars or anything else should be free. Maybe I'm missing the point and the belief is actually that only some types of software should be free.

Re:Free Software

[MichaelSmith]

I don't see why software should be free any more than I see why cars or anything else should be free

Cars are free in the sense that you can examine components and build your own extensions to them. You don't need permission from Ford to build and sell towbars for Ford cars.

Binary interfaces make this next to impossible with software.

Re:Free Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Software is not a "thing" it's an expression of an idea. The Free Software movement is about liberating and spreading ideas freely. More freedom is a good thing.

Also, treating software like a "thing" violates basic economic laws. For example, when Chevrolet sells you a truck, it costs them a lot of money to make that truck so the incremental cost is quite large. When Microsoft sells you a copy of Windows, the incremental cost for producing that copy is effectively zero.

Re:Free Software

[eddygk]

That's not what I meant. Your Ford vehicle will initially cost you $20,000 and then you can do what you want to it. In that sense, it is free. You are free to modify it. What I am referring to is that some people seem to expect the initial cost of aquiring software to be zero, which doesn't make sense. Not many people are interested in donating a lot of their time outside of whatever they do to make money, in order to provide people with free software.

Re:Free Software

[ClamIAm]

Assuming you're not trolling, there are many reasona Free software makes sense. I also find it an interesting coincidence that you compare software to cars.

From the Debian project's "about" page:

Most software costs over 100 US dollars. How can you give it away?

A better question is how do software companies get away with charging so much? Software is not like making a car. Once you've made one copy of your software, the production costs to make a million more are tiny (there's a good reason Microsoft has so many billions in the bank).

Second, relying on non-Free software to store your documents is not a very good idea. It's a bit like instead of buying a book, you buy a machine that reads specially-formatted books. But when buying the machine, you have to sign a contract that says you will never look inside these special books or the machine to learn how they work, and the company that you buy it from has the right to stop supporting the machine or your special books at any time. And when they stop supporting your machine (don't worry, they will) and the machine breaks down, you'll have no way to fix it.

These are not the only reasons Free Software is a good idea.

Re:Free Software

[MichaelSmith]

Free (as in Beer) is a side affect of Free (as in Freedom). I have to have the source to be free to modify it.

Re:Free Software

[jbolden]

Software is infinitely reproducable for free. That is given one copy I can make a million more at almost no cost. That isn't the case with commercial goods. This means that in a natural economy I wouldn't use the same pricing mechanism for software as for cars. Rather I'd use some mechanism where for cars I spread the costs out over each individual car while for software I'd need a different economy. Attempting to price software like cars neccesitates a great deal of government interference and the negatives of this can often outweigh the benefits.

Re:Free Software

[kfg]

Not many people are interested in donating a lot of their time outside of whatever they do to make money, in order to provide people with free software.

However, the very existence of free software is evidence that a sufficient number of people are, even discounting the fact that many people are actually paid to produce free software.

Also, bear in mind that most of the cost of the Ford is for the physical object, not the design, whereas for software the cost of the physical object may well be nil and it is only the design phase that requires labor/money.

What would a Ford sell for if there were Star Trek type duplicators?

Well, actually, quite possibly a lot because Ford would at least attempt to buy legislation to make their use restricted/illegal.

See Microsoft, et al.

KFG

Re:Free Software

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite... you can make towbars for cars because you can see and touch the car. You can do the same for proprietary software. However, most EULAs disallow this. Its as if when you buy a Ford, you agree only to buy accessories for your Ford from the dealer or have Ford sue you and take back your car. (You don't own the car, you have only purchased a license to use the car.)

Not quite ;)

[IAAP]

It went through actually explaining some of the technical details that he went through. Maybe I imagined it or confused him with someone else. Just as well, your link was very informative!

Thank you!

This award is going downhill fast...

[raddan]

First they give the award to a troll, and now to a hooligan. What's up?

In all seriousness, though, I just set up a diskless router based on OpenBSD that saves its state to flash using rsync. So these awards are spot-on, at least as far as I am concerned. And on the heels of Samba 4, too. Great work, tridge!

Peer recognition means something.

[jbn-o]

In this context, knowing that you have been recognized by your peers is quite rewarding.

He was one of the people I had hoped would win, in particular because of the pro-software freedom behavior he showed during Linus Torvalds' time spent with Bitkeeper. Andrew Tridgell was working on a free software program to let users pull data from Bitkeeper repositories, despite Torvalds' protestations. I think that Tridge's reverse engineering work on Bitkeeper and in Microsoft Windows printer/file sharing is important (perhaps there are other reverse engineering projects I'm unaware of as well). Hence, I'm glad he won.

Re:Peer recognition means something.

[jbn-o]

Reading the Wikipedia article on Tridgell, I see that I have mistaken "network protocol analysis" with "reverse engineering". I'll endeavor not to make the mistake again.

Midland Tridge

[Rich Klein]

Tridge? That's a bridge in Midland, Michigan. It's worth a visit if you're in the area, but it tends to flood in the spring.

Doing a tiny bit of research is a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

People such as Alan Cox, Miguel de Icaza, Donald Knuth, Larry Lessig, Brian Paul, Guido van Rossum, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Larry Wall who have already received this or other awards for their contributions, are not eligible for the Award for the Advancement of Free Software.

Source: http://www.gnu.org/award/award.html