Linus on Linux, 20 Years In

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Posted by timothy on Thursday May 5, 2011 @08:20AM from the stop-being-so-ethical-please dept.

Radium_ writes "Along with the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Linux kernel, Linuxfr — a French-language Linux website — published an interview with Linus Torvalds. [Interview in English.] The creator of Linux answers questions about Linux kernel licensing, his contributions to the kernel development model and Linux in 2031."

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A really interesting quote from Linus by frostmages · 2011-05-05 08:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

A lot of other people think that the BSD license with its even more freedoms is a better license for them.
The creator of Linux thinks the BSD license is more free. Now we can stop the fighting. BSD license doesn't try to tell other people how they can use the code, GPL does. Who is more correct man to say it?
1. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by ivucica · 2011-05-05 08:28 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  BSD license is more free, but does not preserve the freedoms.
  Choice of license should depend on your goals. If one of them is philosophy, so be it. If one of them is business, so be it. I always pick the license that I feel best for a project.
2. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by lucian1900 · 2011-05-05 08:30 · Score: 2
  
  They both have restrictions. BSD is especially more restrictive than MIT. So much so that many people consider BSD to be weak copyleft.
  
  Also, Linus is well known for not being a FSF nut. Sane people in both camps have always been nice about the other camp.
3. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by omar.sahal · 2011-05-05 08:43 · Score: 2
  
  Besides I remember about a year ago (I think) Eric Raymond asking, do we need the GPL?. The debate around this was quite sane with many people looking rationally at all the licences, giving reasons for choosing one over another. Even the GNU people made fair points, in regards to protecting the labour of those who contributed to the code base. I think the community has moved on from irate arguments on freedom, this maybe because Stallman's (as important and influential as he is) view is balanced by others such as Torvalds.
4. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by migla · 2011-05-05 08:51 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Sane people in both camps have always been nice about the other camp.
  Yes. The description "bunch of masturbating monkeys" was meant in the nicest possible way. :)
  
  --
  Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
5. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by aristotle-dude · 2011-05-05 08:51 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  BSD license is more free, but does not preserve the freedoms.
  Choice of license should depend on your goals. If one of them is philosophy, so be it. If one of them is business, so be it. I always pick the license that I feel best for a project.
  It is more free but it does not preserve the freedoms? Who's freedoms? Stop it with the doublespeak/orwellian newspeak. Neither the BSD or GPL have anything to do with the end user. The end user does not give a rats arse about the source code, it's availability or what license it is under. The only people interested are third parties looking for an opportunity to contribute to the codebase and both licenses offer that freedom to those "developers". The BSD also offers the freedom to take that source, use it and incorporate it into a larger closed source product which implements the same standard as the original project.
  if you want to push a particular ideology represented by the GNU foundation then you would choose the GPL but if you are interested in pushing forward an open standard that can be implemented and integrated by anyone then you would choose the BSD. Part of the reason why TCP/IP became the standard for the internet is because the stack was release under the BSD license which meant that closed source software vendors could implement the same stack on their platform quickly without fear of viral licenses or contamination.
  
  --
  Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
6. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by Gilmoure · 2011-05-05 09:00 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  English is the result of Norman soldiers attempting to pick up Anglo-Saxon barmaids, and is no more legitimate than any of the other results.
  — H. Beam Piper
  
  --
  I drank what? -- Socrates
7. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by jedidiah · 2011-05-05 09:28 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Not at all.
  Just watch a Mad Max movie.
  The BSD is fine if you want some robber baron to exploit your work and lock you out of the end result. Otherwise, the GPL makes more sense. Despite of all of the noise from the BSD trolls, RMS did not create the GPL out of some deep seated need to overthrow capitalism. He created it because he started out with a more naieve approach to licensing and then had to deal with angry contributors when that first Robber Baron wannabe came along.
  The GPL was created to keep CONTRIBUTORS happy. It was created so that the guys doing the actual work, the coders, would not get upset when the next Apple or Microsoft came along.
  Guys like Linux have to deal with guys like Alan Cox.
  
  --
  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
8. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by MrEricSir · 2011-05-05 09:31 · Score: 2
  
  To be fair, computers are pretty stupid. If they were smart, I wouldn't have to spend all day programming the damn things.
  
  --
  There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
9. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by osu-neko · 2011-05-05 10:01 · Score: 2
  
  I hear this "does not preserve the freedoms" thing all the time from pro-GPL folks. It seems like they honestly believe that a commercial company can take existing GPL code, incorporate it into a product, and then magically the GPL code can no longer be used by open-source folks anymore.
  If this is what it seems like to you, it's clear that although you hear these people, you don't understand what they're saying.
  
  Sure, any contribution that the commercial entity made to the GPL'd code base won't be shared back. But they wrote the code, not you, and it should be the developers' prerogative on whether they wish to share any code with anyone. You still have the original source code anyway.
  That's precisely the point. It should be developers' prerogative. It's my prerogative to only share my code with people willing to share in return. The GPL enables that, and if you claim freedom is at all important, you should be glad that I'm free to make this choice, whereas other people may prefer a different choice (and use a BSD license as a consequence). Arguing that I should give up my freedom to share my code only with people I want so that others than share their code only with people they want (and I'm not one of them) is ridiculously hypocritical.
  
  --
  "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
10. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by ToasterMonkey · 2011-05-05 10:19 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I don't understand this.
  
  BSD license is more free, but does not preserve the freedoms.
  If somebody builds on your work and doesn't release it back to you, you don't lose anything. Effectively, there's no difference between that and if they had never even touched your stuff... which they wont do if they didn't want to have to share their changes with a GPL project anyway.
  So you're only retaining contributors that are OK with sharing anyway and you're excluding people who do not want to give their modifications away openly and for $free. My idea of freedom is not "here is a free widget, but you can't improve and sell it, you can only give it away" - WTF?
  This is strong-arming people into open source, just like the unnecessary association of $free with open. This isn't preservation, protection, nothing like that, it is attempting to SPREAD an ideal that has lately been starting to freak me out, and is counter intuitive to a healthy economy. There simply is no market demand for these ideals. GNU and FSF resort to this asshattery to attack a (once healthy) software market, forcing reimbursement for software development into areas that are unfeasible for small software businesses all for the sake of ideals that have zeeeeeeero demand in the marketplace. "Look at me, you can get a quick start on your project, for FREEE, there's just this uh, one string attached... you must support my agenda, mwahahahah! (evil Bowser laugh)"
  Look, nobody uses Ubuntu because it has source code available. They use it because it's $free. I know everyone here knows this... "well duh, it has to be $free or nobody would use it and open source wouldn't advance"
  Why doesn't creep out more people?
11. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by Microlith · 2011-05-05 11:18 · Score: 2
  
  My point is the idea that "the GPL protects freedom" is a load of BS. It's just another way to lock down code, it just "looks" free because they make the source available.
  Except that's a completely ignorant argument. The GPL protects the freedom of the source code and users who receive the code via a 3rd party. It's only BS to people who approach it with a fundamentally flawed understanding of what it's trying to achieve (or are resentful they can't jack the code.)
  
  Personally, I think you should be proud if any of your code is used by a commercial entity. It means your code is good. But I guess your moral grandstanding is more important than any sort of recognition.
  Well, if possibly unattributed, unpaid usage of your code is all you ask, many corporations will happily give that to you. Others have found that companies will happily use GPL'd code and contribute back. And many people think that maintaining an open base of software for computing is important, even moreso these days with extremely user-hostile platforms coming to the fore.
12. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by Kjella · 2011-05-05 11:19 · Score: 2
  
  The BSD also offers the freedom to take that source, use it and incorporate it into a larger closed source product which implements the same standard as the original project.
  Or arbitrarily change or extend it so there's no or flawed interoperability between the closed and open version. Or withhold bug fixes as a competitive advantage over the open version. The BSD license is great if everyone plays nice, but if someone wants to fuck you over you are all lubed up. If you really, really mean that you want nothing from them then choosing the BSD is fine, good for you. But if you start throwing hissy fits over asshattery when you specifically chose a license that allows it over one that doesn't, well you don't get much sympathy from me.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
13. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by DeadCatX2 · 2011-05-05 11:38 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You keep saying that word - freedom - but it does not mean what you think it means.
  The GPL is about asserting control over derivative works. It provides the illusion of freedom, but the source code is not actually free. If it was free, there wouldn't be any restrictions at all.
  To say "the GPL protects the freedom of the source code" also implies that if a commercial entity made a derivative work, somehow the original source code is no longer free. That is complete bullshit. The only purpose the GPL has is to control derivative works.
  If you want to use the GPL because it works for you, that's fine, go right ahead. But don't fool yourself into thinking that it has anything to do with freedom.
  
  --
  :(){ :|:& };:
14. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by Grishnakh · 2011-05-05 12:57 · Score: 2
  
  but if you are interested in pushing forward an open standard that can be implemented and integrated by anyone then you would choose the BSD. Part of the reason why TCP/IP became the standard for the internet is because the stack was release under the BSD license
  Exactly. This is the same reason that FreeBSD is now the most popular and predominant free operating system, powering a majority of internet servers, as well as devices ranging from mainframes to cellphones, and is increasingly popular in embedded applications of all kinds. Oh wait...
15. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by Grishnakh · 2011-05-05 13:03 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Look, nobody uses Ubuntu because it has source code available. They use it because it's $free.
  Yes, but many, many more people use FreeBSD and its siblings, partially because of the extra freedom of the BSD license, but mainly because so many contributors prefer the BSD license and its freedoms, and this has allowed the BSDs to progress and improve far, far more rapidly than Ubuntu or the other Linux distros. Because of this, Linux is on the verge of dying out completely.
16. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by savuporo · 2011-05-05 16:58 · Score: 2
  
  Look, nobody uses Ubuntu because it has source code available. They use it because it's $free.
  
  Actually, i use it because it has source available. I dont disagree with most of your post, i publish my code under MIT or BSD. But i do use Ubuntu because it
  a) mostly works
  b) has debian package management, with sources included
  
  which makes it a breeze to rebuild every package from the pristine sources in three simple shell commands. So i can ALWAYS, and i mean ALWAYS troubleshoot and get to the bottom of each and every problem. Even if im not able to solve it, i can at least understand what i am running into.
  
  This is from a coder, of course.
  
  --
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
17. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by bye · 2011-05-05 18:32 · Score: 2
  
  Here's where your logic fails:
  
  If somebody builds on your work and doesn't release it back to you, you don't lose anything.
  
  Of course you (the project) loses something: you lose an opportunity for the project to go forward.
  It's not a contradiction: you can increase freedom by removing the 'freedom to steal other people's work'.
  A "quid pro quo" license like the GPL is a bit like a voluntary insurance fee: if you find the project useful enough to extend it, and if you find that extension so useful that you redistribute it, you need to contribute it back to the original project which you found so useful.
  It's a bit like personal income taxes for immigrants: if you decide to migrate to and live in a country and reap the benefits of infrastructure and advanced civilization there (both socially and economically), then you are required to share back a small proportion of the profits you won from that deal.
  So the GPL is optimistic altruism with a guarantee of reciprocity built in. This can increase freedom by taking away the freedom to steal.
  If you do not like the conditions, you are not required to enter that deal.
18. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by migla · 2011-05-05 18:42 · Score: 2
  
  one string attached... you must support my agenda, mwahahahah! (evil Bowser laugh)"
  Yes there is an agenda. That agenda is Freedom(tm). Not the kind of capitalistic freedom of "you get to buy up as much of the world as you can afford and then fuck it up in order to enrich you even more, or the BSD kind of freedom (which does indeed give you quantitatively more freedom out of the box), where you have the freedom to make the source code un-free, but freedom as in "this code should be free now and distributed code that builds upon it should be free in the future as well.
  I have trouble thinking of a less evil evil agenda than that of Free software (however annoying and dogmatic zealots it often comes bundled with).
  
  --
  Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
19. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-05-05 18:52 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The BSD is fine if you want some robber baron to exploit your work and lock you out of the end result.
  
  What "work"? How do you "exploit" it? It's just bits. We all know that copying bits around is not wrong - after all, it's what TPB is all about, and we know they aren't wrong.
  In all seriousness, if you feel the urge to correct anyone who calls copyright infringement "stealing", then you probably shouldn't call people who take BSD code and use it in closed-source programs "robber barons". It's about the same level of wrong.
20. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-05-05 18:53 · Score: 2
  
  Really? Have you actually read the licences at all? They are clearly addressed to any user whatsoever, including the end user.
  They are only addressed to someone who would want to do something that is otherwise restricted by copyright (such as redistributing, or making a derived work). Mere use is not restricted by copyright, which is why neither GPL nor BSDL are of any relevance whatsoever to the end user.
21. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-05-05 18:58 · Score: 2
  
  Isn't that his point, though? GPL is not about freedom (as is often claimed); it's about sharing.
  This is perfectly fine, since both are needed in real world in varying proportions, which is why different people use different licenses for different things. It was not an anti-GPL rant. It's a rant about the misuse of the word "freedom" for something which is quite different, even if also important.
22. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by vegiVamp · 2011-05-05 20:51 · Score: 2
  
  "Strong-arming people into open source" ? You're exaggerating quite a bit, aren't you. Nobody is "strong-arming" anyone into open source.
  I write some code. That code can be useful to you for basing one of your projects off of. It seems reasonable that I'm recompensed for my work if you use it, doesn't it? The classic recompense is monetary, of course. If I don't want anything at all for my work, I can license it under BSD. If I CHOOSE (no, I'm not being strong-armed) to license my code under GPL, that's saying "the recompense I want from you for using my work, is that you freely offer your enhancements back to the community in turn".
  It is, for some people, an unusual form of recompense, but it is a valid one nonetheless. If you find that opening up the enhancements you plan to make is too much to pay for my work, then you simply do not "buy" it and write your own or find someone else who wants different recompense. Nobody is strong-arming you, either.
  Also, nothing stops me from offering multiple licences on my code. I can offer it to the public under the GPL, and if RandomCompany comes to me and says "we could save three years of development by using your stuff but don't want our stuff public" then I'm free to license the exact same code to them under a different license, against a difference compensation of our mutual agreement.
  The GPL also does not prevent anyone from *selling*, only from witholding the source code. You are right that there is not a major demand amongst end users for source code. You unfortunately fail to conclude that that means not many end users are willing to roll their own, so there is definitely a market for pre-built, easy-to-install software, regardless of the license it's under.
  
  --
  What a depressingly stupid machine.
23. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by Coren22 · 2011-05-06 00:47 · Score: 2
  
  If you are redistributing, or creating a derivative work (then distributing it), you are not the end user, you are a distributer. The person who runs the software is the end user.
  
  --
  APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
24. Re:A really interesting quote from Linus by Murdoc · 2011-05-06 03:38 · Score: 2
  
  This is the same debate as the old question of whether or not I am more free if there is no law saying that I can't kill you or not. Sure, if there is no such restriction of that freedom, it is more "free" for me, the first iteration, but I am taking away the freedom of others. This makes it less "free" in the bigger picture. Same thing with GPL/BSD: one gives more freedom initially by allowing you to take away the freedom of others. So I think that debating whether which is more "free" is philosophical at best, semantics at worst. The real, pragmatic question is which benefits society better? Well for that answer, look at the laws of most societies: they seem to agree that taking away some freedoms to protect others is generally a good idea. How much is of course a huge matter of debate, but without this we'd be down to some darwinian survival-of-the-ones-who-screw-others-over-the-most.
  
  --
  Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know. - M. King Hubbert
Big thank you to all the contributors by bl8n8r · 2011-05-05 08:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

To all the people who contributed Open Source projects over the last 20 years, a big THANKS. Can you imagine this landscape without open source software and alternatives to run it on like Linux and the *BSD variants? Most of the internet would would need downtime for reboot every night, and the cost incurred by your ISP for all the proprietary licensing would probably put the net out of reach for most common folks.

--
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
1. Re:Big thank you to all the contributors by Kjella · 2011-05-05 10:49 · Score: 2
  
  Most of the internet would would need downtime for reboot every night, and the cost incurred by your ISP for all the proprietary licensing would probably put the net out of reach for most common folks.
  Oh please. It's not like there wouldn't be competition or demand-driven innovation without open source. Either Microsoft would have fixed their shit anyway, proprietary Unix would have gotten cheaper, IBM's OS/2 would have succeeded or maybe even Apple would have stepped in. One way or the other the BSOD hell we had in the 90s was a children's disease that we'd outgrow.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A broken clock is right twice a day by $RANDOMLUSER · 2011-05-05 08:54 · Score: 2

So I guess the eternal

Are Linux users lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered commercial software? -- Matt Welsh

goes with this thread, then.

--
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
1. Re:A broken clock is right twice a day by Spyder · 2011-05-05 10:55 · Score: 2
  
  I resist the implication that commercial software is, in general, well engineered. I'm not going to claim that the "many eyes" concept always, or even usually, lives up to it's billing; but in several high profile projects the FOSS system has resulted in some of the highest quality and most widely deployed applications and services in world. The market challenge that many projects have represented have motivated vendors to improve in way they claimed were impossible.
  A very short list off the top of my head:
  Apache
  Mozilla
  OpenSSH
  Snort
  the collective GNU utilities
  Wireshark
  I apologize for feeding the trolls.
  
  --
  Spyder
Thanks To Contributors Past and Future by EXTomar · 2011-05-05 09:10 · Score: 2

I first started using Linux in 1994 in college. Like most college students with a ComSci class that involves coding homework, you are nominally provided university resources to create and compile code but like so many universities, those resources were very overloaded especially during peak and crunch times. I had a 368 which I used for playing games and writing papers but someone mentioned that they knew this thing called Linux that behaved a lot like the system we used except it wasn't so slow.
So thanks to those authors and contributors back then for making my homework go smoother and who knows how Linux will help years and decades into the future.
1. Re:Thanks To Contributors Past and Future by Hooya · 2011-05-05 09:18 · Score: 2
  
  I started in 1995 for exactly the same reason! I had a 486DX at the time - was all kinds of fun trying to get the modlines for X working..
2031? How about 2038? by adenied · 2011-05-05 09:11 · Score: 2

I don't really care what Linux is doing in 2031. I'm more concerned about 2038. Or rather, what it's not doing toward the end of January. On a serious note, how is Year 2038 being dealt with?
1. Re:2031? How about 2038? by klapaucjusz · 2011-05-05 09:25 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  IOn a serious note, how is Year 2038 being dealt with?
  64-bit arches are already not vulnerable, since time_t is 64 bits there.
  If there are any 32-bit arches left in 2038, we'll deal with them in the same way we dealt with the 2GB limitation for file size: by defining new 64-bit datatypes (time64_t, struct timespec64, etc.) and a set of new system calls (time64, gettimeofday64, etc.), and allowing the C headers to transparently map the old names to the new system calls (as with -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64).
  --jch
2. Re:2031? How about 2038? by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-05-05 19:06 · Score: 2
  
  64-bit arches are already not vulnerable, since time_t is 64 bits there.
  In memory, yes. What about all the filesystem data structures? Network protocols?
Linus also talked about 20-years of Linux... by sjvn · 2011-05-05 09:21 · Score: 2

in this interview
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/twenty-years-of-linux-according-to-linus-torvalds/8663
with yours truly.
Steven