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Linus Calls Microsoft Hatred "a Disease"
Hugh Pickens writes "In the aftermath of Microsoft's recent decision to contribute 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community, Christopher Smart of Linux Magazine talked to Linus Torvalds and asked if the code was something he would be happy to include, even though it's from Microsoft. 'Oh, I'm a big believer in "technology over politics." I don't care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don't have to worry about licensing etc. issues,' says Torvalds. 'I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out.' Smart asked Torvalds if Microsoft was contributing the code to benefit the Linux community or Microsoft. 'I agree that it's driven by selfish reasons, but that's how all open source code gets written! We all "scratch our own itches." It's why I started Linux, it's why I started git, and it's why I am still involved. It's the reason for everybody to end up in open source, to some degree,' says Torvalds. 'So complaining about the fact that Microsoft picked a selfish area to work on is just silly. Of course they picked an area that helps them. That's the point of open source — the ability to make the code better for your particular needs, whoever the "your" in question happens to be.'"
That was a succint overview of the difference between open source and free software, though to be fair, even pragmatic free software supporters would find this new contribution by Microsoft as a positive thing.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
That's the sexiest thing to come from the Linux community in forever.
I'm no fan of microsoft either however I think Linus really does have the interests of the kernel and the greater linux community at heart. I agree with him that we need to be very careful to make sure there are no potential licensing issues involved here but as long as the lawyers give it a good look and make sure there are no hidden patent claims, etc. then I think there is no reason not to include the code in the kernel.
-Buck
It's really refreshing to hear some level headed comments from high profile open source guys once in a while. I tire of all of the "watch out for X!" and "Y are just out to get you!" stories, no matter how relevant they may or may not be.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
RMS is going to helicopter out of his grave. 'The Ride of the Valkyries' is going to start playing and innocent civilians will be killed. Theo will say he loves the smell of 'Fresh Napalm in the Morning'. Mark my words.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Unless I'm mistaken (and I very well may be) the code released is under the GPL, which seems to me to eliminate any worry about "licensing etc. issues", regardless of Microsoft's history.
I mostly agree with him, but just to be anal (nerdly prerogative)... Stupid, irrational fanboyism isn't really a disease, it's just tribalism. We're apes. We choose some stupid tribe to identify with, be it PS3 or XBox or Windows or Linux or Mac whatever and death to all outsiders. The more underdog the group, the more rabid the members are (Linux, Mac, Amiga). Religion is one of the best, if not the best, strategies for cementing loyalty and killing all competitors, so it shouldn't be a surprise that even something as secular as this takes on strongly religious overtones.
Not so strangely, as Linux continues to spread its influence the fanbase is getting less stupidly polarized (but then the old guard entrenches further, to combat this 'threat'). Generally this eases up as you get older and your penis stops ruling your brain, but not always.
Sounds very reasonable. Linus is correct. The point of open source is to do something you need done. Sharing it with others gives you satisfaction and reward. What's wrong with that!
Disease is just your body's way of letting you know that some part of the body is going rotten. Diagnosing something as a disease does not invalidate the cause nor does it cure what is rotten.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Their code was released GPLv2, licensing was never an issue that was discussed by anyone remotely informed.
Now if we want to start arguing over weither or not patent violations could come into play then fine, we can also delve into the whole Embrace Extend Extinguish theory, but at this point we are right back to arguing politics, not technology.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I don't think I can say anything, other than the fact this confirms my assumptions that Linus is an extremely level-headed, perceptive person.
Do you honestly believe the whole open source movement depends on people uniting around a hatred for Microsoft, as opposed to sharing a love for innovation and technology?
Sorry if that sounds kind if "hippy", but saying that the entire FOSS world is based around nothing but hatred for a particular corporation really cheapens the accomplishments of the people involved.
If hating a company that lies, cheats, and steals its way to the top is a "disease", then I don't want to be well.
If you hate anything so much that you injure yourself or your cause in the process of avoiding it, then yes, you have a disease.
Ironic this story is coming from kdawson. He's like the Fox News guy from Slashdot. The story doesn't have to be true if it garners a ton of posts. His stories about MS are often shallow, w/ summary full of some perceived slight often having nothing to do with the story. This often induces a feeding frenzy as MS haters who take the bait goes. My only reason why this continues is that these bring a lot of ad revenue to Slashdot.
No no no, the is the opportunity for us to say to Microsoft, look it really isn't that bad, is it? You benefit from open source, other people benefit, and it's a model you can profit from as well.
MS is scared of open source because it has been seen as a threat. But what if at the end of all of this, MS realizes that giving people the source code, while selling a product and related support, benefits everyone? It will happen slowly, but they are coming around.
WiX was the first shot, and now they are realizing that helping others helps them. So maybe somewhere down the line, we can get for example explorer.exe source code. Or something else that they give away free - so we can customize and fix bugs instead of whining that it sucks.
If the "average open source developer" is supposed to hate microsoft, and not evaluate anything simply because it's Microsoft, we're going to have some very out of touch projects and non-interoperable software and an overall loss of quality.
I think its quite healthy to dislike ( ok, hate ) an entity whose stated goal is to wipe you from the face of the earth. We arent talking about some bully in a school yard, we are talking about a well funded organized corporation that wants you eradicated..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Microsoft-hating is a disease that you catch from doing business with Microsoft.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I don't use Microsoft products, and I don't like their corporate agenda, but I don't hate them. It's very counter productive.
Making ironic jokes here and there is fun, but there are better things to do than hating someone/something.
As long as I/anybody is actively forced to use Microsoft products, I'm fine with them being around.
People who don't have a clue about the topic irritate me at times (OSS fanatics and clueless users and OEM's that don't give me choice).
It is an acquired distaste. The fact is, nearly everyone here who hates Microsoft for various reasons once loved and admired Microsoft. The love was eroded and destroyed by Microsoft's own actions and choices. For me, it was the way it intentionally abused "partners" by various means (especially) including some tactics such as forcing partners to fail in their contracts and then claiming whatever work was done by the partners. In particular, a story about a mobile phone maker who partnered with Microsoft where the agreement was that if the company failed to meet specific terms and deadlines, the partnership would dissolve and Microsoft would claim whatever IP that existed. Well, as it turned out, the other company needed something from Microsoft which it did not deliver, causing the deal to go bad and then Microsoft came in to claim whatever they wanted leaving the other company with nothing. That was a particularly dirty and rather deliberate act on their part and this was no isolated incident... there are others; many others.
It's not that Linux or any other alternative is a Microsoft "opponent" for many of us. It's that Microsoft is simply evil in much of what they do. They do things that are difficult for many to believe or understand and they most certainly play dirty and illegally.
Microsoft created the disease. Microsoft is the cancer on software--and I'm sure we all have heard Microsoft claim Linux is a cancer on software.
I used to be like you. I really cared about all the drama that surrounds Microsoft vs Linux and then later, in my mid-twenties and continuing into my thirties, I stopped giving a shit. Why? Because it just doesn't matter anymore. I suggest you listen to Linus' words and take heed. The man is a visionary. He wants you to stop concentrating on the bullshit and start concentrating on what matters--supporting what you want to support.
I can definitely drink to that and I think I will. Bell's Lager FTW. Cheers.
I just have to put a big Thank You out to Linus. This uproar over MS putting out this code is ridiculous. MS sells programs to make money. True in the past they have not been the friendliest of companies, but point me to a major OS vendor that has. The fact that MS even wrote this code so that virtualized Linux machines will work better under its HyperV is fantastic! Not only are they recognizing Linux as a useful OS, but they are participating in the community appropriately. They wrote code for the OS that used GPL'd code, so they released their code. As Linus points out, this is how the GPL is supposed to work! You need something added? Write it and release what you wrote. What else do you expect from MS? "Oh, I see Gnometris is using 10 year old sprites, I'm going to be nice and upgrade it to vector based graphics"?
MS deserves hate for some things, but when they play by the rules is hardly one of them.
So copyright infringement is theft? Or did they steal their only physical copy from the lab, denying DEC from using their own software?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
While we all love to 'bash' Microsoft and its tactics here, on occasion, please let' s not lose sight as to why they released this code. They did so because it contained both open and closed source components and were issuing them with both a closed and open source license. Those who aren't 'new around here' know that licensing them in this fashion is a violation of the GPLv2 terms. So basically they did this to avoid any 'repercussions' from the community -not that that would stop anyone anyway- and not out of a sense of 'contribution' to the FOSS movement. Ramji and the legal department at Microsoft probably had one of those 'Oh, SNAP!' moments and decided it was best to look like benefactors than the 'evil hive of scum and villainy' that most people perceive them as.
Sig this!
Microsoft-hating is a disease that you catch from working with Microsoft products.
There. Fixed that for you.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
I don't hate Microsoft, in fact I've done quite a few implementations of Exchange and SharePoint and AD for companies in the past.
But I do understand that they're a typical scumbag corporate giant acting the way scumbag corporate giants do - trying to make it so that you HAVE to buy their product because you have no other choice.
So now I make sure that I don't become dependent on that product by actively avoiding it wherever possible - which means my home family machine, my personal laptops, and my work machine all run Ubuntu quite happily. And when people ask me how I do it, I happily show them so they know they have that option too. Does it involve sacrifice? Yes, a little bit, and less every day. But it also involves great advantages, namely that I don't have to worry much at all about my wife and kids visiting the wrong Web site (and that's all it takes!) and getting our family machine rooted nine ways to Sunday, leading to my bank accounts being emptied out. That's really the stakes here.
Could I spend all my time positively hating Microsoft and all that they do? Yes, I could, but I'd rather spend my time making sure they don't matter to me. Recently I read an article about Microsoft's change in the upgrade rules, meaning you have to jump through more hoops to do a bare install from an upgrade CD. In the past, I would have been ticked off and hated Microsoft more. Now, I just thought "man, sucks to be you if you're still a Windows user" and moved on to trying out the latest Ubuntu alpha release and looking for bugs. Much more productive use of my time, and more hurtful to MS as well, because it means Ubuntu will be a better OS if the bugs I find are fixed.
GP is talking about the fact that Dave Cutler, the dude who architected VMS at DEC later went to work for Microsoft and ended up architecting Windows NT. Either GP is ignorant of this fact, or they were being intentionally misleading and trying to imply that someone at Microsoft stole something from VMS. Which isn't true. (unless you count Cutler's freely choosing to change jobs "stealing" somehow.)
It's useful to know when an entity/organization has tendencies. If Microsoft has a history (and/or a nature) that leads you to expect more shitty behavior from them, you have to be smart and act accordingly.
Hating them for their misbehavior is kind of unreasonable. Having a bad opinion of them without clear reasons (case histories, e.g.) is also irrational. Folks are sometimes driven by bandwagons and general hating, and those are surely diseases.
Seeing every detractor as a hater is more stupidity.
I'm just sayin'. Watch your reflexes.
MS released a server product. They recognized that for it to be as profitable as possible, it needed to support Linux, so they produced the drivers to make that happen.
Result: MS makes more money, Linux is usable on more systems. Everyone's happy.
Obviously MS only cares about the money part, but who cares as long as:
1. The code is of sufficient quality. (The reviewers will determine this.)
2. There's valid reason to include it. (There is.)
and 3. They're not trying to exert control or otherwise screw with the Linux model (they GPLed this code, so they pretty much can't.)
There's a LOT of reasons to fear some of MS' moves, especially when it comes to open source, but in this case, we're simply looking at a business decision that happens to be beneficial to all parties involved, so why not just take the code (assuming it doesn't suck) and move on? There are MS decisions that need to be fought, but I really, really, don't think this one of them.
Microsoft is an easy target; at times they appear to actually strive to be one. Nevertheless, geeks are supposed to be about tech, not religion. :)
How about "freedom", "law", and "standards"? Does that count as "religion"? If I want to partake in the usage and development of new technology, should I give up a part of my freedom in order to do so, because I'm a geek?
Sure, MS can't cut off my air supply or electricity (yet), but they can cut off, or change, or add draconian conditions to the platform I'm working on, as long as I'm working on it.
Check out this Silverlight stuff -- it's great isn't it? It's cross-platform and everything. What happens if MS decides to charge for development tools for Silverlight one day? Or decides to change the "standard" so that you've forced to migrate to the new set of tools they've developed, which doesn't add much, but it does make you buy new software.
I'll be the type of geek that avoids having his chain yanked in order to satisfy a company's commercial needs.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Hatred of Microsoft is indeed a problem. A healthy mistrust of them and everything they put their stamp on, however, is not only rational but frankly quite prudent. After everything Microsoft has done to this industry, having done so little for it, they have a lot to prove. They have not yet proven it to my satisfaction, or apparently ot a lot of people's..
Yeah, they did.
So why the mod up to +5 with no working link to support the assertion?
Why the Fastest Chip Didn't Win" (Business Week, April 28, 1997) states that when Digital engineers noticed the similarities between VMS and NT, they brought their observations to senior management. Rather than suing, Digital cut a deal with Microsoft. In the summer of 1995, Digital announced Affinity for OpenVMS, a program that required Microsoft to help train Digital NT technicians, help promote NT and Open-VMS as two pieces of a three-tiered client/server networking solution, and promise to maintain NT support for the Alpha processor. Microsoft also paid Digital between 65 million and 100 million dollars.
Interestingly, throughout the 1990s, Digital introduced many NT features to VMS, and Microsoft has added VMS developments to NT. For example, VMS featured native clustering support in 1984, and 64-bit memory and system APIs in 1996. Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story [1998]
Digital began spinning off bits and pieces of the corporation in 1992 - the last remnants going to Compaq in 1998. Digital Equipment Corporation You could argue that when the VMS team abandoned ship, Microsoft was there with a lifeboat.
It happens in this business.
Modded funny, but insightful is more like it. If someone were to force Torvalds to do all his coding on a Windows box using Visual Studio and Visual Sourcesafe, he'd pick up at least a minor case of Microsoft-hate.
So, everyone who fought against the Nazis in WW2 had a disease, then?
**Ding Ding Ding!**
We have Nazis! Finally this has become a real discussion!
Remember players, extra points if you get "Nazis" and "Hitler" in the same jab!
(I actually agree with your position, but adding nazis to an argument does nothing that make it seem like a parody, most of the time)
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
And "celebrities" are no different, apparently.
After all that Microsoft did, does, and will probably always do, the hatred for Microsoft is completely rightful and perfectly founded on those actions.
It's like calling it "a disease" to call a murderer and mass scammer what he is, just because some of it was some time ago, and some of it is still happening, but more or less sneaky.
If that someone got what he deserved, then it's acceptable to stop the hatred. But not before that.
I will treat Microsoft for exactly what they are, as long as it takes go give them their rightful punishment.
And it's not only Microsoft. By far. MS looks like a joke in the light of criminal giants like Monsanto & the rest chemical industry, the defense industry, RIAA/MPAA, etc. But still, they are close followers.
Inform yourself, before you mod this comment. *Really* inform yourself. There are many lists out there about what Microsoft did.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Dave Cutler didn't architect VMS. Dave was one of the developers.
Dave Cutler was most certainly an architect of VMS:
In April 1975, DIGITAL began a hardware project, code named Star, to design on a 32-bit virtual address extension to its PDP-11. In June 1975, Dave together with Dick Hustvedt, and Peter Lippman were appointed the technical project leaders for the software project, code-named Starlet, to develop a totally new operating system for the Star family of processors. These two projects were tightly integrated from the beginning. The three technical leaders of the Starlet project together with three technical leaders of the Star project formed the "Blue Ribbon Committee" at DIGITAL who produced the fifth design evolution for the programs. The design featured simplifications to the memory management and process scheduling schemes of the earlier proposals and the architecture was accepted. The Star and Starlet projects culminated in the development of the VAX-11/780 superminicomputer and the VAX/VMS operating system, respectively.
DIGITAL began working on RISC technology in 1986 and Cutler, who was then working in DEC's DECWest facility in Bellevue, Washington, was elected to head Prism, a project to develop the company's RISC machine. Its operating system, code named Mica, would embody the next generation of design principles and have a compatibility layer for UNIX and VMS.
Dave took what he learned at D.E.C. and "brought it over to Microsoft."
Yes. He changed employers. Just like millions of people do every day. Just like you probably have several times.
Microsoft wooed him over, paid him extra, and got W/NT (note the letters are one higher than VMS).
I note that you're an idiot.
FACT: Microsoft's W/NT used concepts and code from DEC VMS
Of course the concepts are similar - they were designed by the same person. What evidence do you have that VMS code was used by Microsoft ?
Microsoft elected to pay DEC instead of defend in court and maybe lose the right to use the stolen code
Thousands of lawsuits are settled out of court. What's your point ?
The truth IS out there as anyone who reads the interwebs will see.
Should be pretty simple for you to provide some evidence then.
NT was about as much like VMS as Linux is like OS/2 Warp.
The architectures of VMS and NT are very, very similar.
Which is neither surprising nor damning, given the same person was one of the main designers of both.
Believe it or not, Microsoft has done a lot to make the computing world better.
Anybody remember color monitors before Windows? It seemed like everybody used a different standard. You had to pick your hardware based on what your software supported. And not all software supported all hardware. Same with printers.
Whatever you may say about Windows, at least it set a standard.
And yes...I am often annoyed/angered/disappointed by some of Microsoft's policies. I often humorously threaten to "quit programming, move to Idaho, and raise potatoes" as a result of Microsoft decisions. My latest sore spot is their decision to lock out hobbyists from kernel mode driver development. Sometimes, a kernel mode driver is the only way to solve a problem.
No, it's a lie that not even Torvalds believes.
In 2005 Torvalds chose the politics of siding with Bitkeeper proprietor Larry McVoy over fellow coder Andrew Tridgell when Tridgell dared to write an interoperating program that was compatible with Bitkeeper API. Tridgell had figured out that by telneting to a Bitkeeper repository server and typing "help" he could get a list of relevant commands. Torvalds took McVoy's side saying Tridgell "screwed people over" blaming Tridgell for somehow causing McVoy to no longer allow Torvalds to use the proprietary software source code manager (as opposed to recognizing that as McVoy's choice as it was). Torvalds' arguments against software freedom come off badly for multiple reasons including how often Linux kernel hackers leverage their software freedom to continue improving that kernel. In this case where Microsoft contributes Linux code, it seems prudent to consider if a self-declared enemy of FLOSS would contribute a trojan horse to a prominent program. But this is not a consideration one can take if one views code only in terms of code quality and developmental efficiency. Given how much proprietary software is in Torvalds' fork of the Linux kernel (I'm sure the Linux-libre project can tell you all the details) it seems clear that Torvalds is not as concerned with licenses as the /. quote would indicate. Nor is Torvalds apparently concerned with his users' freedom to know what code is in that fork of Linux.
The phrase "technology over politics" is also a naive position to take: it tries to frame technology and politics as non-overlapping things. In the real world no collaboration is free of politics, that includes technological collaboration. The reason the open source movement exists is because its founders wanted to break away from the older free software movement over a disagreement on politics. The open source movement argues for a technocratic developmental method aimed primarily at benefiting businesses, while the free software movement fights for social solidarity, community, and specific freedoms for all computer users.
Generally, Torvalds gets way more press than he deserves on politics. His views on the proper approach to solving certain problems with the Linux kernel might be well worth one's time to understand and abide by (particularly if one wishes to get their code into his fork of the Linux kernel). But his views in computer-related politics are so often wrong (either in framing the issue or in the side he takes) one wonders why anyone would bother to give him such heed.
Digital Citizen
A troll is when you say something you don't believe, in order to elicit a desired response. I'm saying something true, and I'm being modded Troll by someone who disagrees with me. I didn't even have to advocate murder this time :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Linux is AIDS, Apple is gay and *BSD is the product of a retarded offspring of fat monkeys having buttsex with a fishsquirrel. Don't get me started on how much i hate intel and amd.
I don't claim to know what happened in your previous discussions, but I would venture to guess that people stated that Holland was Socialist not because of their social freedoms, but because of your 6%/19% VAT, your income tax that goes as high as 52%, and your "wealth tax".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Netherlands
I think there are two separate things: rational dislike of Microsoft, and irrational hatred of Microsoft. Bot exist, and are distinct - and you will see both on /. I think that Torvalds, as the figurehead for Linux, hears more of the foaming irrational hatred than, perhaps, you do, and is responding to that. There are people who have suggested rejecting Microsoft's OSS contribution purely on the grounds that they are from Microsoft - that is the hatred side. The dislikers would accept any good quality, proprely licenced code - as Torvalds has done.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
"... foaming irrational hatred..."
That makes sense. However, it is only one thought deep. Carry the analysis to the next level: What is Microsoft doing that causes many people to dislike the company, and is so intense that some people become irrational?
Remember, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia became irrational, also, during a famous anti-trust case against Microsoft. He violated "... the Code of Conduct for US Judges.[13]".
Why did a United States District Court Judge become irrational? Perhaps because of numerous continued abuses by Microsoft. Some examples, drawn from the Wikipedia article:
"In the videotaped demonstration of what Microsoft vice president James Allchin's stated to be a seamless segment filmed on one PC, the plaintiff noticed that some icons mysteriously disappear and reappear on the PC's desktop, suggesting that the effects might have been falsified.[6]"
Another example: "Brad Chase, a Microsoft vice president, verified the government's tape and conceded that Microsoft's own tape was falsified.[8]"
Another example: "When the judge ordered Microsoft to offer a version of Windows which did not include Internet Explorer, Microsoft responded that the company would offer manufacturers a choice: one version of Windows that was obsolete, or another that did not work properly."
There are many, many, many examples of Microsoft being abusive during that trial, and before and after.
This is a fact: When presented with repeated abuses, some people will be pushed beyond their ability to be rational, and will become irrational. Mr. Torvalds apparently did not carry his analysis deeply enough to realize that a common social effect will not be lessened by him speaking in an overly simplified manner, a manner that considers the results, but ignores the stimulus.
What is the effect of Mr. Torvalds apparently giving the subject a shallow analysis? As I said, I think the effect is to publicize dislike of Microsoft, not to stop it.
Very unfortunately, it seems to me that Mr. Torvalds also again established himself as socially shallow, and therefore again made it more difficult for him to lead. I am very sympathetic to his position, in which it is extraordinarily difficult for him to do all that is required of him. But Mr. Torvalds made his life more difficult by his statements, and the world should not want that, because the world needs his leadership.
Will Microsoft, because of continued abuses, once again succeed in overloading and partly neutralizing someone who is interested in counteracting those abuses, and providing the world an alternative?