New Unix Implementation Turns 30

Thirty years ago, rms wrote: "Free Unix! Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix), and give it away free to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed." And thus began the revolution. Thirty years after posting the initial announcement, it's hard to find someone who hasn't interacted with Free Software at some point, even if they didn't realize it. To celebrate, the FSF is holding an anniversary celebration and hackathon this weekend at MIT.

To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including on-line and hardcopy documentation.

GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix. We will make all improvements that are convenient, based on our experience with other operating systems. In particular, we plan to have longer filenames, file version numbers, a crashproof file system, filename completion perhaps, terminal-independent display support, and eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen. Both C and Lisp will be available as system programming languages. We will have network software based on MIT's chaosnet protocol, far superior to UUCP. We may also have something compatible with UUCP.

Who Am I?

I am Richard Stallman, inventor of the original much-imitated EMACS editor, now at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. I have worked extensively on compilers, editors, debuggers, command interpreters, the Incompatible Timesharing System and the Lisp Machine operating system. I pioneered terminal-independent display support in ITS. In addition I have implemented one crashproof file system and two window systems for Lisp machines.

Why I Must Write GNU

I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.

So that I can continue to use computers without violating my principles, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.

How You Can Contribute

I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and money. I'm asking individuals for donations of programs and work.

One computer manufacturer has already offered to provide a machine. But we could use more. One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run on them at an early date. The machine had better be able to operate in a residential area, and not require sophisticated cooling or power.

Individual programmers can contribute by writing a compatible duplicate of some Unix utility and giving it to me. For most projects, such part-time distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the independently-written parts would not work together. But for the particular task of replacing Unix, this problem is absent. Most interface specifications are fixed by Unix compatibility. If each contribution works with the rest of Unix, it will probably work with the rest of GNU.

If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few people full or part time. The salary won't be high, but I'm looking for people for whom knowing they are helping humanity is as important as money. I view this as a way of enabling dedicated people to devote their full energies to working on GNU by sparing them the need to make a living in another way.

For more information, contact me.
Arpanet mail:

• RMS@MIT-MC.ARPA

Usenet:

• ...!mit-eddie!RMS@OZ
• ...!mit-vax!RMS@OZ

Comments

Megalomanic

[CurryCamel]

"Ima gonna write a new unix". That's One Huge Task. Weird thing is - he pulled it off. Hats off to RMS. And thanks.

Re:Megalomanic

[Squiddie]

That's the power of autism.

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

"Ima gonna write a new unix". That's One Huge Task.

It was a much smaller task at the time.

It's worth remembering that Unix got its start as more or less as a fun project - there wasn't a plan to conquer the world.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird thing is - he pulled it off.

Please tell me what UNIX re-implementation he pulled off. Hurd? That's been a non-starter for years. Linux? That's not UNIX and also not written by RMS.

This sounds to me like celebrating 30 years of preaching and failure.

Re:Megalomanic

[DeKO]

Good troll, sir. Try removing everything except /boot, see how much your computer can do.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't. Not to the extend that Linus did.

Re:Megalomanic

[poet]

No. He didn't. Was he a part of it? Absolutely but GNU has never produced a usable unix or unix like operating system and it certainly wasn't RMS it was hundreds of thousands of free software and open source developers.

Ask yourself, "What software projects does RMS devote his time too?". To my knowledge, not many if any. He is a great advocate and he has done many things for our community but he did not complete what he set out to do.

Re:Megalomanic

[BitZtream]

No, he didn't.

He took years to write emacs and help from others.

Oh, you didn't mean emacs... you meant hurd ... again, he didn't do it alone and I'd argue he didn't pull it off any better than my half assed OS I cobbled together during my more bored years, which also depends on the work of others to be usable.

Re:Megalomanic

[cyborg_zx]

Don't need money, don't need fame,
Don't need no credit card to ride this train,
It's strong and it's sudden, it can be cruel sometimes,
But it might just change your life,
That's the power of Austim.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

That still doesn't change the fact that RMS did not re-implement UNIX as the summary suggests. UNIX user-space utilities are useful, yes, but are not UNIX in themselves.

Re:Megalomanic

[jbolden]

At this point none. Originally Emacs. Which was very important to the 1980s and early 1990s free software movement. I think he was heavily involved with the early movements for GCC like the debugger and its ability to handle multiple languages especially COBOL.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

"It's worth remembering that Unix got its start as more or less as a fun project - there wasn't a plan to conquer the world."

I'm not sure if you actually believe that or it is more trolling. In case you really believe it, feel free to stand corrected. Unix was a very serious project funded by a monopoly (at the time) called AT&T - specifically AT&T's Bell Labs, and the C language was literally invented by Kerhnigan and Ritchie just so they could develop it. The goal was certainly not to have fun. You don't write a proposal and ask a company like AT&T to spend millions to have fun.

Furthermore, 30 years ago was 1983, meaning that Unix had been around for about 13 years already, and had already forked into BSD Unix and AT&T System V. It was already quite huge by that time.

Re:Megalomanic

[Tyler Durden]

Linux is just as much of a Unix kernel as he intended to build.

But really, for any reasonable definition of the term, Linux is essentially a Unix kernel.

Re:Megalomanic

[aardvarkjoe]

Ask yourself, "What software projects does RMS devote his time too?". To my knowledge, not many if any. He is a great advocate and he has done many things for our community but he did not complete what he set out to do.

Although to my understanding that's true today, he was largely responsible for several important projects, including emacs and gcc. The GNU project never achieved all of its goals, but his software contributions are integral to the free Unix(-like) operating systems of today.

Re: Megalomanic

[SpaghettiPattern]

You think Linux would have come this soon without GNU? Do you think early versions of Linux could have done without GanU? Do you really think one guy will write a FULL os on his own? All programs, all docs, distro etc...
Any huge achievement is a term work. Some members will be better. Some will get more exposure. Some will be awarded more. But in the end a team or community does it together.
I take my hat off to rms and to all contributors. Without you guys I'd probably be still at the mercy of businesses with undisclosed agendas.

Re:Megalomanic

[gcore]

Didn't RMS want GNU to have a microkernel?

Re:Megalomanic

[Skiron]

AS I said on here before - if it wasn't for GCC (or the Gnu C compiler as it was then) written by RMS, then Linus couldn't have even started doing his stuff with linux.

RMS is the seed of *all* the free open source code/projects available now (and in the future). He is GOD and well done to him and his principles.

Re:Megalomanic

[interval1066]

It's worth remembering that Unix got its start as more or less as a fun project...

You mean GNU, not "unix", right? "Unix" began as one man's (Dennis M Ritchie) cry in the dark about how stupid his school's operating system (Multic's) was.

Re:Megalomanic

[Stormbringer]

Are you saying he should have released it under an Autistic License?

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

I have also pointed out that GCC was was quintessential to the Open Source movement. That is completely besides the point, since the claim was that he succeeded in implementing a complete OS called GNU. He is definitely not GOD by any stretch of the imagination, and he definitely did not succeed in his original goal.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing they didn't pull off was Hurd... Because it turns out writing a kernel is hard. They pulled off essentially everything else.

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

"It's worth remembering that Unix got its start as more or less as a fun project - there wasn't a plan to conquer the world."

I'm not sure if you actually believe that or it is more trolling. In case you really believe it, feel free to stand corrected

Unix was a very serious project funded by a monopoly (at the time) called AT&T - specifically AT&T's Bell Labs, and the C language was literally invented by Kerhnigan and Ritchie just so they could develop it. The goal was certainly not to have fun.

You didn't get much right in your reply, in fact much of it is backwards. Allow me to correct you. They originally requested a computer to write an operating system, but that was denied. They then bootlegged a computer, wrote a game, and hacked on an operating system without it being an official project, and eventually got buy-in to buy a computer to build a text processing system, not an operating system. Unix was already in existence by the time they were allowed to purchase a computer for the text processing system. (I will also note that as a monopoly they were under very tight restrictions about what they could do with Unix in terms of sales.) From the above paper:

Throughout 1969 we (mainly Ossanna, Thompson, Ritchie) lobbied intensively for the purchase of a medium-scale machine for which we promised to write an operating system; the machines we suggested were the DEC PDP-10 and the SDS (later Xerox) Sigma 7. The effort was frustrating, because our proposals were never clearly and finally turned down, but yet were certainly never accepted. Several times it seemed we were very near success. The final blow to this effort came when we presented an exquisitely complicated proposal, designed to minimize financial outlay, that involved some outright purchase, some third-party lease, and a plan to turn in a DEC KA-10 processor on the soon-to-be-announced and more capable KI-10. The proposal was rejected, and rumor soon had it that W. O. Baker (then vice-president of Research) had reacted to it with the comment `Bell Laboratories just doesn't do business this way!' ....

Also during 1969, Thompson developed the game of `Space Travel.' First written on Multics, then transliterated into Fortran for GECOS (the operating system for the GE, later Honeywell, 635), it was nothing less than a simulation of the movement of the major bodies of the Solar System, with the player guiding a ship here and there, observing the scenery, and attempting to land on the various planets and moons. The GECOS version was unsatisfactory in two important respects: first, the display of the state of the game was jerky and hard to control because one had to type commands at it, and second, a game cost about $75 for CPU time on the big computer. It did not take long, therefore, for Thompson to find a little-used PDP-7 computer with an excellent display processor; the whole system was used as a Graphic-II terminal. He and I rewrote Space Travel to run on this machine. The undertaking was more ambitious than it might seem; because we disdained all existing software, we had to write a floating-point arithmetic package, the pointwise specification of the graphic characters for the display, and a debugging subsystem that continuously displayed the contents of typed-in locations in a corner of the screen. All this was written in assembly language for a cross-assembler that ran under GECOS and produced paper tapes to be carried to the PDP-7. ...

Space Travel, though it made a very attractive game, served mainly as an introduction to the clumsy technology of preparing programs for the PDP-7. Soon Thompson began implementing the paper file system (perhaps `chalk file system' would be more accurate) that had been designed earlier. A file system without a way to e

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

Your history is a bit off.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

I figured you were just trolling as usual. Everything I wrote came directly from sources.

"You didn't get much right in your reply"

The funny thing is, you just directly contradicted the very thing you so stupidly wrote originally in your effort to try to make me look bad. Evidently you think nobody is smart enough to figure out what a moron you really are.

Re:Megalomanic

[unixisc]

GPAL - GNU Public Autistic License

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

Everything I quoted is directly from the sources. Go read it, you'll be better for it. You didn't get much of that right, at all.

I don't really have to do much of anything to make you look bad to anyone knowledgeable, but your snark is very appealing to the uninformed.

Re: Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true people! There were no C compilers before gcc -- sure, the C language was created back in the earliest days of UNIX, but there was no compiler -- if you wanted your C code compiled, you had to mail it to Dennis Ritchie and, when he got around to it, he'd compile it by hand (with pencil, paper, and an opcodes list) then send you a tape with the resulting object code -- by the time Linus was ready to start his kernel, Ritchie was so swamped there'd be no way to get a project of that magnitude compiled! (Good thing Andrew Tanenbaum got in early having Ritchie compile the first version of ACK, so he had his own compiler for MINIX, huh?) There definitely wasn't any compiler, and particularly not a portable C compiler, being shipped with either AT&T or Berkeley UNIX.

TL;DR: shut up, you miserable mushbrain. RMS's worst enemy isn't the people who (whether out of ignorance, malice, or an honest disagreement of the relative importance of kernel and userland) refuse to acknowledge the presence of some GNU in GNU/Linux, but ignorant louts like you loudly giving him too much credit, which feeds the "arrogant jackass who demands credit for everything whether he did it or not" meme.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

"It's worth remembering that Unix got its start as more or less as a fun project "

Go ahead and link to the source for your original claim :-)

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

Unofficial bootleg project with no support from the company after their project request was rejected. Wrote space game and developed project they wanted to do, not as a work requirement. It's in the paper.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, I'm not smart enough to figure out he's a moron...cuz to me...he juz whipped yo azz!

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, I'm not smart enough to figure out he's a moron...

That appears to be correct. You should try reading the paper and look for the indicated points.

Re:Megalomanic

[poet]

At this point none. Originally Emacs. Which was very important to the 1980s and early 1990s free software movement. I think he was heavily involved with the early movements for GCC like the debugger and its ability to handle multiple languages especially COBOL.

Yes he was involved in GCC and of course Emacs. I am not suggesting in anyway that his contributions weren't valuable. Just as his contributions today are valuable. What I am saying is it wasn't "he" who accomplished all of this. It was a huge army of people who prescribed to similar ideals as RMS.

My previous post got marked as Troll is actually kind of surprising since I wasn't bashing RMS in anyway. I just was trying to keep the record straight. If you look at the history of his two greatest (known) feats, Emacs and GCC I think you will see that they both truly started to progress once he wasn't involved as much and focused more on what he is really good at, which is espousing his ideas.

JD

Re:Megalomanic

[dfghjk]

But Stallman didn't "pull the Linux kernel off"; he accomplished little of what he said he'd do. Fortunately we have others to do the work for which Stallman can take credit.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting sidelight was that the pdp11 tended to rub the inadequacy of basing languages on the "computer word" in everyone's noses. Minicomputers prior to it all had words, and bytes were just sets of bits within words. The pdp11 addressed bytes, and in particular I/O operations often behaved differently if
a device register was addressed as a word or as a byte. Thus the BCPL use that worked ok (B was a variant) on other boxes was clearly inadequate
and the need for something like the C language (whose operations look a lot like the pdp11 processor handbook - apart from useless garbage like the
MARK instruction). The defining of the C language was more or less a foregone conclusion once a pdp11 was in the picture.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr Zero__Kelvin, I think you are out of ammo. Please shoot outside of the screen to reload.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Good troll, sir. Try removing /boot, see how much your computer can do.

Re: Megalomanic

[dfghjk]

Adoption would have happened sooner if it weren't for an AT&T lawsuit only it wouldn't have been Linux, it would have been BSD. So yes, absolutely.

BSD was far more advanced and would have remained so, all without GNU. There was demand and interest PLUS a mature non-GNU codebase. There was a legal cloud over it that didn't resolve until Linux gain sufficient momentum. Without lawsuit troubles, GNU and Linux would likely have never existed AND we'd be better off.

Listing RMS as first among "all contributors" is an insult to all contributors. RMS hasn't been a contributor for a long, long time. His "contributions" are politics, increasing license restrictions, and renaming other people's products to give himself glory.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Outside observer here. Zero Kelvin, you're an ass.

Re:Megalomanic

[zidium]

No, your's is.

Re: Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

There are versions of Debian that use the Hurd instead of the linux kernal. There have been for a number of years. Hurd is not as robust or supported as linux but it does exist and run.

Re: Megalomanic

[unixisc]

Debian's HURD is pretty recent, and still not a fully functional port. I'd imagine that it's even more behind than kFreeBSD

Re: Megalomanic

[meta-monkey]

It takes everybody.

""I got thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, an' mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when one mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own way, kickin' an' draggin' an' fightin'. Fella like that bust the holi-ness. But when they're all workin' together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang—that's right, that's holy."
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath"

Re:Megalomanic

[Hognoxious]

I think he was heavily involved with the early movements for GCC like the debugger and its ability to handle multiple languages especially COBOL.

The rotten rotten ROTTEN bastard!

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

A better way of putting it would be to say RMS wrote everything save for a functional kernel.

Re: Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are from the Church of GNU/OpenBSD ? I herewith declare you and apostate and urge all my fellow Church of GNU/FreeBSD believers to wage Jihad against you ! In the name of the Prophet Richard (peace be forever on his shadow and his sacred words, etc etc) !

Written in year 29 after the NSA singularity.

Re:Megalomanic

[lightBearer]

I believe the interesting part of that article was this:

Space Travel, though it made a very attractive game, served mainly as an introduction to the clumsy technology of preparing programs for the PDP-7. Soon Thompson began implementing the paper file system (perhaps `chalk file system' would be more accurate) that had been designed earlier. A file system without a way to exercise it is a sterile proposition, so he proceeded to flesh it out with the other requirements for a working operating system, in particular the notion of processes. Then came a small set of user-level utilities: the means to copy, print, delete, and edit files, and of course a simple command interpreter (shell). Up to this time all the programs were written using GECOS and files were transferred to the PDP-7 on paper tape; but once an assembler was completed the system was able to support itself. Although it was not until well into 1970 that Brian Kernighan suggested the name `Unix,' in a somewhat treacherous pun on `Multics,' the operating system we know today was born.

...this came after descriptions of how the original authors tried to get permission from Bell Labs to construct this thing. Instead, they built it on discarded hardware. This origin was not exactly company sanctioned.

Re: Megalomanic

[unixisc]

Even RMS doesn't label the BSDs as being GNU. That FAQ is a bit dated, since further down, it refers to GNU/kNetBSD, but that project has been dead and GNU/kFreeBSD has replaced it.

Re:Megalomanic

[Tyler Durden]

True. But whether or not the kernel is a microkernel has nothing to do with whether or not it is a Unix kernel.

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

This paper should clear up some confusion.

Re:Megalomanic

[pscottdv]

In what way did he not "pull it off"? He never said he was going to do it alone. Right in the post he asks for lots of help. His goal was to have a free operating system and that's what he got.

If you mean that he didn't pull it off in precisely the order he announced he would, I guess that would be correct.

Re:Megalomanic

[Dogtanian]

That still doesn't change the fact that RMS did not re-implement UNIX as the summary suggests. UNIX user-space utilities are useful, yes, but are not UNIX in themselves.

It's a shame that the borderline trollish aspects of your original post distracted from the legitimate point it *did* make- that RMS and the GNU project were *not* responsible for the most popular GPL kernel (i.e. Linux).

On the other hand, they kicked off the whole thing and were responsible for a *significant* proportion of the utilities that make that kernel into a proper OS. And it's quite possible- if not probable- that had Stallman not created and popularised the GPL that Linux would never have been released under anything resembling the GPL. (It's worth remembering that early versions of Linux had a noncommercial-use-only license; according to Wikipedia "Torvalds has described licensing Linux under the GPL as the "best thing I ever did." ".)

Would people have been so willing to contribute to Linux under the original license terms? Would it have ever taken off?

So, to reverse Stallman's usual bugbear, it's not just GNU, it's, er... Linux/GNU. But ultimately, beyond who gets credit for what, that's not that big a deal- RMS and the GNU project didn't write it, but they certainly do deserve the credit for creating the GPL it's licensed under, something which probably benefited Linux as much as Linux benefited GNU and free software in general. Stallman himself acknowledges that Linux meets the need for a free kernel and that finishing Hurd is no longer essential. (Ironically, I'm guessing that the success of Linux probably attracted developers who might otherwise have worked on the Hurd).

So it's a win-win situation; beyond the very worthwhile software that the GNU project created, its popularisation of the GPL encouraged a whole lot more- including Linux.

Re:Megalomanic

[greenfruitsalad]

actually, he had his fingers in all the things that make my operating system feel like unix. e.g.: see the credits/changelog for coreutils

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

That would be true if RMS wrote everything, which is so far from the truth it is ridiculous.

Re:Megalomanic

[oldmac31310]

I think maybe you mean dyslexia judging by your spelling...

Re:Megalomanic

[serviscope_minor]

The GNU project never achieved all of its goals,

The original goal of the GNU project was to create a Free as in speech unix like operating system.

I think it succeeded admirably.

Re:Megalomanic

[serviscope_minor]

If by "little" you mean everything but the kernel, and the license and the whole movement around it, the sure, little.

Without RMS, Linux would not have existed.

The Linux kernel provided the last piece of RMS's puzzle: a Free as in speech unix.

He created that movement and it delivered. In fact it delivered so well that it has pretty much replaced all proprietary unices.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats lysdexia to you!

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you really believe it, feel free to stand corrected [bell-labs.com]. Unix was a very serious project funded by a monopoly (at the time) called AT&T - specifically AT&T's Bell Labs

Huh? The source you link to shows clearly that Unix got started because AT&T/Bell Labs didn't fund it. Unless you're just counting Thompson's and Ritchie's salaries. They weren't being paid to create Unix specifically. I guess it's only a "fun project" if you do it in your spare time for no pay?

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

That's weird, because it confused the hell out of you when I first posted it.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

You evidently don't understand how Bell Labs worked. Everything they did was funded by AT&T. You are confusing the idea that they wouldn't buy a specific very costly computer with the idea that it wasn't funded by a company. If AT&T hadn't funded it, then it wouldn't have happened. I have enjoyed most of the work I have done in my very long career. That doesn't mean I did it "just for fun", nor does it mean that the companies who paid me to do it didn't fund it.

Re:Megalomanic

[nurb432]

Did he? Id say he never completed his goal.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

It was 100% company sanctioned actually. You actually pointed that out, but don't get that yet. If it wasn't sanctioned then they would have been told to stop doing what they were doing. It happens all the time that a company doesn't approve a budget and says "you can do it, but you have to do it without spending so much money" AT&T Bell Labs is a research facility. Kernighan and Ritchie were Bell Labs computer scientists. They did research, and everything they did was funded by Bell Labs.

The important part that you seem to be glossing over is this: Space Travel, though it made a very attractive game, served mainly as an introduction to the clumsy technology of preparing programs for the PDP-7.

They wrote a game, yes, but it wasn't for fun. Saying that is like saying that IBM's Big Blue was just a project for fun.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

Posting as an AC when you are clearly "cold fjord" does not qualify you as an "outside observer"

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

It's not in the paper. They had support from the company. You are just a troll trying to spin the idea that a company who doesn't give a team every dollar they request is somehow not funding the project because you can't admit you are wrong.. If they didn't have support from the company they would have been fired, rather than Ritchie going on to become a Bell Labs fellow.

Re:Megalomanic

[Guy Harris]

Unix was a very serious project funded by a monopoly (at the time) called AT&T - specifically AT&T's Bell Labs

Well, they weren't that interested in funding it at the start; to quote Mr. Ritchie:

Actually, it is perfectly obvious in retrospect (and should have been at the time) that we were asking the Labs to spend too much money on too few people with too vague a plan. Moreover, I am quite sure that at that time operating systems were not, for our management, an attractive area in which to support work. They were in the process of extricating themselves not only from an operating system development effort that had failed, but from running the local Computation Center. Thus it may have seemed that buying a machine such as we suggested might lead on the one hand to yet another Multics, or on the other, if we produced something useful, to yet another Comp Center for them to be responsible for.

They may have been willing to let some of their researchers spend some of their company time on personal projects, but it wasn't as if AT&T were starting a major official project to develop an OS. So it's a question of the level of the support. From what Ritchie said, it appears to have been a bit of a skunkworks project at the beginning, although, at some point, AT&T management Took Notice and started putting more money into it (especially after it became an OS supporting many significant applications inside AT&T).

and the C language was literally invented by Kerhnigan and Ritchie just so they could develop it.

The reference doesn't directly address that, although when it says

Thus, in 1971, work began on what was to become the C language [14]. The story of the language developments from BCPL through B to C is told elsewhere [15], and need not be repeated here. Perhaps the most important watershed occurred during 1973, when the operating system kernel was rewritten in C. It was at this point that the system assumed its modern form; the most far-reaching change was the introduction of multi-programming. There were few externally-visible changes, but the internal structure of the system became much more rational and general. The success of this effort convinced us that C was useful as a nearly universal tool for systems programming, instead of just a toy for simple applications.

that seems to indicate that C was used as a language for "simple applications" prior to its use as an implementation language for Unix.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I guess I don't understand how they worked, if the way they got things done was evidently by saying 'no' to project proposals. :-P

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

They had support from the company after they started the project on their own. I guess it's just lucky for AT&T's future Unix business that instead of simply giving up, they decided to do it anyway with the resources they had. Remember, we're not talking about how Unix developed later; it allowed them to pursue some ideas they had in the area of operating system design, but it started simply as a way to play 'Space Travel.' Sounds like fun was the motivation to me.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

That perfectly matches!

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, he didn't write Linux. He just wrote the rest of the tools that made it so with the writing of the Linux kernel, there was a userland already put together to get it off the ground (and onto most webservers across the world, among other things).

Hurd...well...fair enough. But the idea that the entire rest of the GNU project is nothing without a usable GNU kernel is entirely flawed. As the last 30 years has shown.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It's called Hurd, and it's been in development for 25+ years. Word on the street has it that any day now, it may even support such exotic hardware as sound cards.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal was certainly not to have fun. You don't write a proposal and ask a company like AT&T to spend millions to have fun.

Actually, people did have fun. My friend is writing a book about one particular employee of Bell Labs who made it a part of his job to do stuff like solve hardware problems for famous musicians because music == audio ~= telephony. One thing about Bell Labs was that because it was so well-funded, the company was willing to pay for R&D of the kind that would make Google in its early boom years look like they were miserly. The missed lesson for modern corporations is that kind of spending on R&D paid off quite well.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

His school? AT&T Bell Labs High School? I'm sorry to have to be the one to break this to you, but you don't know what you're talking about.

This is not an insult, it's an education.

Multics (look it up) had already failed before they started working on UNIX.

From Wikipedia:

Initial planning and development for Multics started in 1964. Originally it was a cooperative project led by MIT (with Fernando Corbató) along with General Electric and Bell Labs. Bell Labs pulled out in 1969, and in 1970 GE's computer business including Multics was taken over by Honeywell.

Multics was conceived as a commercial product for GE, and became one for Honeywell, but not a very successful one. Due to its many novel and valuable ideas, Multics had a significant impact in the computer field even though it was derided by some critics at the time.[4]

and...

Bell Labs pulled out of the project in 1969; some of the people who had worked on it there went on to create the Unix system. Multics development continued at MIT and General Electric.

Bell Labs, man, not a school. Ritchie worked there, it had nothing to do with his school. Whether or not it's historically accurate, it's easy to imagine Ritchie and friends gathered around a barbecue, beers in hand, watching burgers grilling in the late 60's, the weather cooling off, and the men had been part of the Multics project, silently, each remembering the fateful moment yesterday, Friday, when they were informed that AT&T was officially OUT&T of the Multics project, meaning they had nothing to work on; they start, mildly inebriated from the beers they've all already consumed, to stammer slurred expressions of what REALLY went wrong.

RITCHIE: It wash too bloated, I tell ya. That wash itshts biggesht problem. If we coulda shtopped it from being sho bloated...

THOMPSON: No, no, no. Shtorage ish gettin bigger an cheaper all the time. Time. Why, in a few yearsh, you'll be able to buy hundresh... no, WAIT... thoushandsh of bytesh of memory for lesh than a thoushand dollarsh! (Hic) It jusht didn't have enough power!

RITCHIE: Bloating ish bad for operating shyshtemsh. We shoulda putit ona diet. (Burp)

KERNIGHAN: I'm shorry, I love you guysh but yer both wrong ash... ash wrong. It wash lacking in shtandardishash... shtandarishash... ishashion. If every program didena had itsh own way of doing ev... ev.e... everyshing, it woulda bin fine.

RITCHIE: Shomone should jusht shtart over, from the begin (hic) begin (hic) beginn...ing. Jusht tosh out all the old shit, and shtart over.

THOMPSON: We'll make it better! New Multicsh will be betterer than old Multicsh. It'll be shmaller.

KERNIGHAN: It'll be shtandardi... shtand... everything will work the shame way. One shtandard input, one output. Period.

RITCHIE: YESH! I'll do thingsh quick, shpit out a shtandard output... (hic)

THOMPSON: And it will get the HELL out of the way! YESH! I agree, we should ashk AT&T to let ush usshe one of the PDP machinesh w have laying around at work, we'll program on that, and it will be aweshome! But we can't call it Multicsh. No one will want it. We should have a shorter name for it, shomething that will tell everyone it'sh new and hip and shleek!

KERNIGHAN: We'll call it iOSh! We'll put an "i" in front of everything sho people will know it'sh cool.

RITCHIE: No, that shoundsh fucking shtupid. Let's call it "UNICSH!"

KERNIGHAN: It'sh not shtupid, UNICKSH is stupid, it shoundsh too much like Multicsh.

RITCHIE: Fine, we'll put an Xsh in the name. UNIXSH. What do y'think of that?

THOMPSON: That shoundsh like a fine idea, can't wait to get to work on that.

RITCHIE: Me TOO!

Anyway, it was more Ken Thompson's baby, Ritchie did do development work on it, most notably porting it to different machines. Your history is kinda jacked up, perhaps read before you post? (BTW, to all those people who say, "Wikipedia is unreliable because anyone can edit it," you are free to check the sources. I don't have time to myself in this case, but they're there.)

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Bazillion years later and Slashdot is still full of morons.

The first Linux kernel was written in 80386 assembler. Go look at the original source, and next time think before you start spreading incorrect bullshit. Linux Moron!

Re: Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS doesn't rename other people's products to give himself glory. He's asking for credit for his GNU OS that everything else is based upon. He says that Linux is the next significant contribution to the (GNU+Linux) system so therefore it also demand equal crediting rights.

Re:Megalomanic

[aynoknman]

Dyslexics of the World -- Untie!

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

If they didn't have support from the company they would have been fired, rather than Ritchie going on to become a Bell Labs fellow.

They had support for their research, but as far as the Unix project goes, they got NO support. Why you don't understand that is anybody's guess.

They told AT&T what they needed to pursue their OS goals, and AT&T said 'no.' They did it anyway. If that counts as "support" for Unix, then sure, having jobs was a big boost.

Re: Megalomanic

[SpaghettiPattern]

I agree that perhaps without the lawsuit BSD would have been further ahead. But you cannot deny the impact the GPL has had. GPL plays the license game in order to make game fairer. The BSD license has very little restrictions and would be the better option in a fairer, utopian world.

IMHO RMS has earned his place to come first in the list of contributors. He initiated the free (as in libre) software movement and continues to back it up. The easier route for a guy of his "caliber" would have been to go commercial and to cash in huge amounts of money in the last 30+ years. He refrained from that. How many others can say that?

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS is the seed of *all* the free open source code/projects available now (and in the future).

Not BSD. Not X11. Not Apache. None of those are GPL.

Re: Megalomanic

[marcello_dl]

> Without lawsuit troubles, GNU and Linux would likely have never existed AND we'd be better off.

Why all the whine? BSD was way more successful than GNU, and you can reap the benefits of the "complete freedom of the developer" model, today -> buy a mac, comrade consumer.

Re:Megalomanic

[unixisc]

So if a project creates a liberated, but unusable (be it uninstallable/unworkable outside a VM) software, then it's succeeded admirably in its goals? (I'm talking about HURD now, not Linux)

Re: Megalomanic

[Carewolf]

Huh? Mac is less BSD than Linux is GNU. That it is BSD is mostly a myth, it is based on Mach which they acquired from NeXT when they bought back Jobs.

Re:Megalomanic

[TheRaven64]

I'm neither cold fjord nor the AC, but you are entirely wrong. The current project that I work on is headed by Peter Neumann (one of the architects of MULTICS), and so I have a fairly good understanding of the environment that led to the creation of UNIX from conversations with someone who was there at the time. Pretty much everything that cold fjord said is correct. They got an old computer that no one else wanted and hacked up an OS in their own spare time. They didn't aim to take over the world - they just wanted something that had the bits of MULTICS that they liked (Peter has some frank opinions on their choices here) that they could use.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

2nd outside observer here, different from the first. The AC is right. You are an ass but more importantly, you're a troll. A troll who goes around labeling people you disagree with as trolls. I can't really think of a worse kind. I think this is why Linux is perfect for you. A system for assholes by assholes.

Re:Megalomanic

[marcello_dl]

I guess that many other projects should have spawned thanks to autism, if what you imply were true. It did not happen. Maybe they all end up commenting on slashdot, instead.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

It definitely did not start as a way to play Space Travel. If you read the link it is quite explicit about this: "Space Travel, though it made a very attractive game, served mainly as an introduction to the clumsy technology of preparing programs for the PDP-7"

That states quite clearly that the primary purpose of developing the game was not to play a game.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Actually, people did have fun."

I never said "they were all miserable, and hated their jobs, and nobody had any fun." Again, that was not the goal of the project.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

They didn't say no to developing software. They said no to the purchase of a computer. Why you don't understand that is anybody's guess.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

You evidently didn't read what he wrote, because his claim was that they did it for fun.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

Well, I stand corrected by a guy who clearly isn't a troll at all! ROTFLMAO.

Re:Megalomanic

[serviscope_minor]

[snip irrelevant stuff]

I'm talking about HURD now, not Linux

Why? The goal was to create a Free as in speech OS, not to create the Hurd. When Linux came into existence as GPL he declared it as the final piece in the puzzle and relegated Hurd to essentially a side project.

Re:Megalomanic

[TheRaven64]

Yup. And he's right...

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

The only person that is confused here is you, and anyone that actually believes the nonsense you're posting in multiple places in the thread starting with my original post. That paper isn't news to me, I first read it long ago. I haven't seen any reason to believe that you have ever read it at all despite the fact that you link to it. You keep getting basic facts about the history of the development of Unix wrong despite the presence of the facts in the paper. You got the history of the development of the C language wrong. You keep making spurious claims consistent with your incorrect belief that Unix started as an officially approved project when the truth is that it didn't. There was no approved Unix project when they started writing it. So the only thing "weird" going on here is that you won't acknowledge that you are wrong despite the evidence against you in the paper you link to. One might suspect that you are tolling, or simply too stubborn to admit when you are wrong.

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

They said "no" to their operating system project, part of which was purchasing a computer.

... I am quite sure that at that time operating systems were not, for our management, an attractive area in which to support work. They were in the process of extricating themselves not only from an operating system development effort that had failed, but from running the local Computation Center. --- Dennis M. Ritchie

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

Big Blue was an officially sanctioned project at IBM with considerable corporate support. Unix was not in the same position. There was no approved project. Claiming that Unix development at the start was funded by Bell Labs puts Unix in the same category as eating lunch or going to the restroom - something that salaried employees do in between the approved projects that you are actually paying them to do.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't hurt yourself down there. When you get back up, make sure that you put your A back in the right place, which isn't above your shoulders.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

I must have missed the part where he said you were an idiot.

Re: Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Mac is less BSD than Linux is GNU. That it is BSD is mostly a myth, it is based on Mach which they acquired from NeXT when they bought back Jobs.

Mac OS X is as much BSD as any modern BSD-variant. As much as Solaris, SunOS, IRIX, etc. Any criterion you can use for saying it's not applies just as much to other modern BSDs. None of them runs the original BSD kernel.

Did you know that Mach with its BSD layer was designed as a drop-in replacement for the BSD kernel? If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

Re:Megalomanic

[TheRaven64]

Wow, really high standard of debate you have there. You appear to have no idea of how things work in research labs (industrial or academic). Did you attend university?

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

No. You can't possibly be telling me that it was done in a research lab, where scientist do actual work and get paid. Didn't you hear? It was just for fun! They weren't paid by anyone! Nobody funded it! The goal was to have fun! If they were scientists at AT&T's Bell Labs then you and your ignorant buddy couldn'tpossibly be correct, but you told me he was, so I know you aren't now claiming it was done by paid professionals as part of actual computer research, right? I mean, you couldn't possibly be that stupid, could you?

Re:Megalomanic

[Shirley Marquez]

The GNU project did not succeed at internally creating a full Unix-like OS. Notably, their kernel effort, HURD, took a very long time and has not achieved significant real world acceptance.

But... the free/libre software culture that GNU created DID create a full Unix-like OS. A lot of the code came directly from GNU and GNU-sponsored efforts (emacs, gcc, bison, bash...); other code came from outside efforts that were inspired by the free software ethos. As the definition of what a Unix-like OS included expanded, GNU continued to contribute with projects like GTK and GNOME, and other people pitched in with Apache, Firefox, Thunderbird, all the P scripting languages, OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and many many more things.

So... hats off to GNU and the FSF. Without free software, our world of computing would be a very different place. The world owes them a huge debt.

Re:Megalomanic

[TheRaven64]

Okay, since you've obviously never even visited a research lab, let alone worked in one, let me give you a brief overview of how it works:

There are funded projects and there are resources. Some resources are allocated to a specific project and some are not. Typically, the ones allocated to a project can be used for other things if that project doesn't need them, but it gets priority. There's usually a fair amount of unused infrastructure that can be used for unofficial projects if no one else needs it.

In a well-run research lab (of which Bell Labs and Xerox PARC in this era are archetypes), there is no strict accounting of time to projects. People are expected to work on some things as part of big ongoing projects, but they have a lot of free time to devote to other things that they consider fun and interesting. This is done because the people running the lab know that these spare-time projects are how you get the seeds of the next iteration of big projects. The same is true in most research labs, including most universities, which is why I suspect that you've never been to university, as you'd have encountered this concept before.

UNIX was such a project. It was not part of any funded project at Bell Labs and was done by a few guys for fun. It then grew and was used in some funded projects (troff was the product of one such project), but wasn't officially backed by AT&T until long after it was created.

There is a distinction between funding a project and paying an individual's salary. The small group that worked on UNIX (well, UNICS back then, in one of Peter's characteristic puns - it was renamed UNIX later when it had multi-user support) had their salaries paid by Bell Labs, but they were being paid to work on other things. Their work on UNIX was not backed by management and was not funded. They had no resources allocated to the UNIX project, they used whatever they could scrounge. I've done similar things with machines a few generations old to build infrastructure for fun projects and occasionally these go on to become funded projects.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

I didn't read your whole post. Ignoring for a minute the ridiculous condecension, let's cut to the chase:

Was it Kernighan & Ritchie Unix or AT&T Unix?

"UNIX was such a project. It was not part of any funded project at Bell Labs and was done by a few guys for fun."

Shut the fuck up with the fun already. It was done for research, and you are an idiot. Period.

Re:Megalomanic

[wonkey_monkey]

Hats off to RMS

Only if he keeps his socks on.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

> Again, that was not the goal of the project.

Fine, replace "fun" with "try out some ideas," "prove a point," or "for the hell of it" and it amounts to the same thing. Nailing down the motive for its creation isn't nearly as important as you're making it out to be. Now will you PLEASE shut up about it?

Re:Megalomanic

[unixisc]

Simply b'cos Linux was not a part of the GNU Project. So had Linux never been made, the GNU project would have gone nowhere, thanks to HURD. Unless they decided to ride the coattails of one of the BSDs instead.

You are welcome to call the other stuff irrelevant, but if the ultimate package that is made does not work, then how is it a success?

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

Thanks for finally admitting you were wrong, even if you couldn't admit that it was paid research. It took you long enough.

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

You must have misread his post since he admitted no such thing. If you want to call it "paid research" it was "paid research" in the same sense that potty breaks and lunch breaks are paid research. There was no approved project for them to do it. If you want to claim there is, then show me the citation. I've already quoted where their project was denied.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

No. I didn't miss your post.

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

First, it wasn't my post. Second, I wrote "misread" not "miss". But that mistake of yours might explain a lot....

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

Once again, I didn't miss your post, and thanks for finally admitting you were wrong.

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

Your first post was wrong, and you haven't managed to get it right since. In fact, you just keep digging. Multiple people have told you you're wrong. So far you are stuck at "potty break" funding. Sorry, but no. I'm right. It's tough for you to admit, but that's the breaks. Too bad for you.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

So far, you have said it over and over, despite proving me right on numerous occasions, and posting as AC on numerous occasions. One other account, almost certainly a sockpuppet account, made similar stupid statements. But it's all good now. You don't have to fret anymore. As I said, I respect you for finally manning up and admitting you were wrong, and I accept your apology, so no no worries!

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

AT&T didn't treat Unix as a commercial product that they tried to sell until about 1982-83. That was a consequence of their monopoly status. By then Unix had existed for about 13-14 years.

The first couple of versions of Unix didn't even have a copyright notice in the source, a consequence of the way it started, i.e. not an official, supported, approved project. The first version of Unix with a copyright in the sources was version 3, which shows a Bell Telephone Labs copyright notice, not an AT&T notice.

So, I'm afraid you're stuck. It wasn't developed as a product as you claim. The C language wasn't developed to create it as you claim, Unix was created first. The people that wrote it did it because they wanted to do it, not because it was an assigned project. They had no official support to do it. The only funding they had when they created it was the same funding that they had to eat lunch and take bathroom breaks.

You didn't get much of anything right about its history. I have no reason to believe you have ever even read the paper you posted the link to.

But at least you make up for that by abusive posts and trolling.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

Don't feel so bad about being wrong. You don't have to keep finding new and different ways to point it out. As I said, I accept your apology.

Re:Megalomanic

[cold fjord]

As I said, I respect you for finally manning up and admitting you were wrong, and I accept your apology, so no no worries!

In your dreams, but not in the real world. Just so you're clear: I'm right. You are wrong. I've never apologized since I have nothing to apologize for. You claiming that I apologized is a lie and a fantasy of yours, it never happened. It is, at best, a lie you tell yourself so you don't have to face up to your incompetence in dealing with Unix history. I think this should be clear, unless you continue to have problems with dyslexia that conveniently crop up when you want to imagine something else being said to protect your ego. Having your respect isn't something I worry about.

Re:Megalomanic

[Zero__Kelvin]

So to recap your claim: In 1983, when the GNU project started, Unix was a small project developed by hobbyists for fun and it was all a game. Nobody got paid to develop it. AT&T didn't pay for it to be developed, and didn't own the rights to it or sell it to anyone. Well, I for one certainly learned something new! It seems like you have a lot of editing to do on Wikipedia though. You'd better stop trolling and get started!

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that in ZK's world, you can't do research for fun, and your company "supports" everything you work on just by paying your salary.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

And you seem to think they were pursuing a way to prepare programs for the PDP-7 as their primary goal. It wasn't.

Re:Megalomanic

[serviscope_minor]

how is it a success?

Because a complete free-as-in-speech unix system now exists.

That was the goal.

That has been achived.

If you fail to understand that, you're thick.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

..had Linux never been made, the GNU project would have gone nowhere, thanks to HURD.

But Linux was made, and the GNU project went somewhere as a result. It went everywhere.

You are welcome to call the other stuff irrelevant, but if the ultimate package that is made does not work, then how is it a success?

It's a success because Linux runs on everything, and the GNU userland and tools are usually along for the ride. You can run GNU commands on Macs, Windows, etc. It is pretty much universal.

Re:Megalomanic

[jon3k]

And if wasn't for AT&T, RMS wouldn't have anything to copy. Come no, these are absurd arguments. RMS didn't rewrite Unix. Period. He did his best to rip it off as closely as possible. And I'm incredibly thankful he did. But he didn't rewrite Unix, he wrote a compiler toolchain and the userland tools. That is not Unix. It's a part of it.

Re: Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why Apple contributes quite a bit of code up-stream. They must just do it for S&Gs.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, it's only free public speech, it does not have freedom for private speech.

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS didn't rewrite Unix. Period. He did his best to rip it off as closely as possible.

"I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU" - sounds like that was his plan from the start. And he didn't say he'd do it all by himself. So what's your point?

Re:Megalomanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does. You can modify any GPL'd work and use it yourself without ever showing anyone the changes.

Of course, you can't distribute that derived work unless you make the source public... but then that would be "public speech," wouldn't it?

Re:Megalomanic

[zidium]

Wait! I'm confused as hell, too!

30 years on

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is that kernel, eh?

Re:30 years on

[Stormwatch]

That bit's been hard to get right, but some Finnish guy cobbled up something you can use while they finish this.

Re:30 years on

[Anonymous Coward]

HURD ain't done 'til Linux won't run!

Re:30 years on

[KiloByte]

HURD ain't done 'til Linux won't run!

As Hurd can't run on any semi-modern machine anymore (lacking small details like SATA or USB support), you actually need Linux (/Windows/OSX/Solaris) to host a VM...

Re:30 years on

[UnknowingFool]

Bah! It'll never work I tells you. Nobody will use what that Finnish has built. :)

Re:30 years on

[93 Escort Wagon]

"anymore"?

Re:30 years on

[TheloniousCoward]

These things take time. But when it *does* show up, I hope it will be something professional like Linux.

Re:30 years on

[CanHasDIY]

Right - the machines Hurd will run on are not "semi-modern" anymore.

Re:30 years on

[mwvdlee]

Oh, It'll probably work somewhat, but it's a far fetch from the microkernel it should be. ;)

Re:30 years on

[Anonymous Coward]

Go away, Tanenbaum!

Re:30 years on

[unixisc]

That bit's been HURD to get right, but some Finnish guy cobbled up something you can use while they finish this.

FTFY

Re:30 years on

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually ran Hurd on some machines experimentally back in the late 90's or so. It did run on hardware at one time, but it was very alpha-level. I was an OS geek at the time, so sue me. Plan 9 was another thing I was booting up back then, and it was much more interesting. I had a 3-physical-machine Plan 9 network (cpu, filesystem, and terminal machines). The well of awesome ideas from Plan 9 is not yet exhausted... some were ported to Linux eventually, but some remain elusive and desirable.

Re:30 years on

[unixisc]

Not to mention, it still doesn't support 64-bit. I thought that microkernels were supposed to be easier to port to multiple architectures.

Re:30 years on

[Nimey]

There's probably two people who still care about developing Hurd and they must have other projects.

Re:30 years on

[Anonymous Coward]

HURD is far from Finnish...

And nothing of value was gained

[Anonymous Coward]

That is all.

Re:And nothing of value was gained

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, GNU does a pretty good job of being better than POSIX. For instance, GNU find -print0 | xargs -0

So at least that much value was gained.

Re:And nothing of value was gained

[ebno-10db]

Back when I was using Solaris, standard procedure (and not just for me) was to install all the GNU utilities and put them in the path ahead of the Sun stuff.

Re:And nothing of value was gained

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that GNU/Linux thing really hasn't gone anywhere. Oh, wait...

Re:And nothing of value was gained

[Anonymous Coward]

And that when solaris comes with AT&T and BSD userland! You wuss, you.

Me, I happen to prefer a *BSD and occasionally stumble upon some k1dd13's cr4p c0d3 that assumes all the world is his 1337n0x and won't run anywhere else -- sometimes not even on fellow 1337n0x machines. So no, it's not automatic panacea.

In fact, currently using a dual-headed busybox-shelled machine, and the combination of having to do that because otherwise flash won't run (and I happen to need it, worse luck), the trouble with "modern websites" vs. the browser with that flash support ("HTML5" isn't even out yet but is busily re-kindling widespread browser incompatability all over again), and the years-old-very-noticeable-yet-still-not-fixed keyboard and mouse bugs under Xorg xinerama, simply reinforce that all software sucks. Given the differences in resources thrown at the various projects, though, the most noticeable problems are also the least excusable.

But back to this here thing. In sheer zeal, arrogant assumption, and taking over the world-ness, the luser community is actually doing its level best to be as bad as their sworn enemy, you know, that really big software company with a streak for being deliberately incompatible with anyone else, even if they claim otherwise. Maybe it's because they're really gnu and linux. Twice the fun, eh.

Re:And nothing of value was gained

[unixisc]

How about GNU itself - GNU userland over GNU HURD?

Re:And nothing of value was gained

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that GNU/Linux thing really hasn't gone anywhere. Oh, wait...

the OP never said it hasn't gone anywhere, I believe they are questioning the value of Unix/Posix. Sometimes I wonder if another 10 years out wouldn't have yielded a better OS. Either way unless someone has the guts (and luck) to start over with something that is a must have OS with a completely fresh design, we have what we're stuck with.

Re:And nothing of value was gained

[jayrulez]

http://genode.org/

Raise a glass to you, RMS

[dkleinsc]

I was actually planning on installing Debian tonight on a spare box, completely unaware of this anniversary. Now I pretty much have to do it.

Re:Raise a glass to you, RMS

[KiloByte]

So here's a port for you to run.

Re:Raise a glass to you, RMS

[spike_gran]

He may not have accomplished everything he set out to do, but, he certainly accomplished a great deal.

And while RMS and GNU alone didn't succeed at creating a free software OS and development stack, they got the ball rolling, and it exists now.

Re:Raise a glass to you, RMS

[unixisc]

Not trolling here, but wanted to point out - RMS discourages the use of Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, Canonical, Mandriva, Centos, Arch or anything else you may have heard (not HURD) of. Instead, he wants you to use things like gNewSense, Trisquel, Musix, or a handful of distros that use what he labels 'Libre-Linux'. One thing I'll give him credit for - dropping the misleading use of the term 'free software' and having a convoluted discussion about beer & speech.

Re:Raise a glass to you, RMS

[dfghjk]

Except for BSD which came before, so they got the ball rolling that was rolling already.

It's directly analogous to claiming that Gnome got the ball rolling on a GUI for X since you dismiss anything that came before that wasn't GNU.

Re:Raise a glass to you, RMS

[Darinbob]

BSD wasn't a free software OS for a long time. It included significant parts of licensed AT&T code and you could not get BSD without also having a Unix license. Even for those programs implemented originally as part of BSD you still needed a license to get access to the source code and sys admins would have it locked up tight. Even a CS student at a university might need special permission and a project to get access. Things opened up tremendously after AT&T code was scrubbed out, but that was after GNU started.

Re:Raise a glass to you, RMS

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly. The main difference being the definition of the term "free". As we all know RMS has a very different idea than the BSD folk about "free".

RMS defined his version of "free" which resulted in the GPL, and he set out to built "free" software and garner support and contributions for his ideas. A couple of years later a certain Finnish guy decided he liked this definition of free and decided to contribute. We all know the result.

We may joke about HURD still not being there, GNU never actually being finished etc, that is true in a way, but on the deeper, more important level it was an astounding success. The mere fact that we call the tangible result Linux instead of HURD is completely irrelevant compared to the success and proliferation of the underlying "free software" philosophy.
In this sense Linux is HURD.

Re:Raise a glass to you, RMS

[jones_supa]

I wonder if RMS could actually push his agenda more efficiently if he wasn't so pedantic about everything. For example, if you let slip in a little bit of evil (non-free software), such as closed-source GPU drivers or Adobe Flash, and you will still get more users to the rest of the OS which is all free software. That being said, we should be cautious about things like Unity's Dash plugins which send your searches online, unnecessarily introducing malicious features to free software.

RMS has said that freedom is more important than innovation. In practice this means that he prefers software which is more clunky or does not implement all the features than a non-free alternative. This is one area where I don't agree at all. I'm just a "shit working is #1 priority" guy.

Re:Raise a glass to you, RMS

[Anonymous Coward]

> Except for BSD which came before, so they got the ball rolling that was rolling already.

BSD wouldn't run on a PC, so it wasn't very useful to small developers and home users. Before 386BSD, your choices for desktop Unix were to buy an expensive workstation, run Xenix, or run Coherent, and none of those could be described as 'free' in any sense.

Re:Raise a glass to you, RMS

[unixisc]

I think that ESR is evidence that RMS could have pushed his agenda had he not been so obsessively pedantic. After all, ESR's message doesn't materially differ from RMS, except that the OSI allows companies flexibility in what they can disallow w/ sources under their umbrella. But the most important part of ESR's message is that open source produces better software. While that message is legitimately debatable, it's at least an approach that's capable of winning support.

RMS' statement is precisely why the software liberation fanatics are considered loons. In short, if you make freely available all the source code of a program that doesn't work, then it's a success in his eyes. I know that people can argue that as a result, 'anyone can fix it', but until somebody does, no sane person would consider it a success. It would be one thing if they were to say that making it open would be the first step towards fixing it (like w/ Netscape), but that's completely different from saying that making it open automatically fixes the problem. It only fixes the problem if there are people who work on it, and successfully complete it.

Where can I get this?

[moonwatcher2001]

> Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix), and give it away free to everyone who can use it.
and
>To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things

He started working on it 30 years ago so it must be available somewhere. Where can I get the GNU kernel? What hardware does it run on?

Re:Where can I get this?

[morcego]

For what it's worth:

http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/

Re:Where can I get this?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/hurd-i386/current/

Re:Where can I get this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the Hurd.

Re:Where can I get this?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are actually 2 gnu kernels at the moment. https://gnu.org/software/linux-libre/ is a version of linux purged of all non-free "blobs" which supports much the same hardware as linux does aside from more limited wifi, and https://gnu.org/software/hurd is the more idealistic microkernel which you'll just want to run in a vm.

Re:Where can I get this?

[TheloniousCoward]

"One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run on them at an early date." So, exactly how many PDP-11's have *you* donated?...

Re:Where can I get this?

[AliasMarlowe]

"One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run on them at an early date." So, exactly how many PDP-11's have *you* donated?...

Every single one that I owned... I was equally generous with all of my VAXen and other minicomputers.

Re:Where can I get this?

[armanox]

Nope still one. Linux kernel IS NOT GNU, even if it is 'blessed' by them.

Re:Where can I get this?

[93 Escort Wagon]

The GNU kernel - for people who think Linux is just too damn user friendly!

Re:Where can I get this?

[girlintraining]

"One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run on them at an early date." So, exactly how many PDP-11's have *you* donated?...

None. GCC already supported compiling for the PDP-11. It has since March, 2002 according to the patch notes for GCC. Which, let's be honest -- getting hardware support into the compiler a mere 5 years after the line was discontinued is remarkably fast for the GNU project.

I'm still waiting for the day they include a warning when you derp a sizeof(x) into your code, when you really wanted a sizeof(*x) , something Visual Studio will happily warn me about when compiling something. Of course, gcc does what the code tells it to and reports the bytelength of a pointer variable (how useful!) without complaint, whereas Visual Studio will happily explode my system, then run screaming out of the hole with toilet paper stuck to its foot yelling "Why did you use that win32 call when, although we didn't bother putting it in the documentation, it was depreciated 8 years ago and replaced with seven other similar-sounding functions, equally badly documented and not backwards-compatable!" ...

So credit where credit is due: GCC will let you shoot your own foot without complaint, but it's a bit slow on the feature list. Whereas the big-time Windows compiler... it's got all the latest features, warnings, etc., but when you merely go for shooting your own foot, it instead blows your whole leg off, then drops a bomb on your head while muttering something about upgrading to the latest .NET and dll versions...

Re:Where can I get this?

[pesho]

Yeah, what have RMS and GNU ever done for us.

Re:Where can I get this?

[Anonymous Coward]

HURD doesn't use the Linux kernel.....

Re:Where can I get this?

[armanox]

His first option was the Linux kernel.

Re:Where can I get this?

[TheloniousCoward]

Well, it sure is nice to hear that my PDP-11 can run GCC. But when will I be able to run a "complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU" on it?

I'm beginning to get the idea that Mr. Stallman - remarkable though his accomplishments are - somehow can't push the hardest part of the job over the Finnish line. Then again, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie successfully created the Unix system and its programming language from scratch, but I don't think either one of them ever wrote a software license or a text editor. Hats off to Mr. Stallman!

Re:Where can I get this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google GNU/Emacs for the complete operating system.

Re:Where can I get this?

[serviscope_minor]

So credit where credit is due: GCC will let you shoot your own foot without complaint, but it's a bit slow on the feature list. Whereas the big-time Windows compiler... it's got all the latest features,

Wait what? Compared to gcc, VS has all the features?

Which planet do you hail from?

GCC has complete C99 support, VS doesn't.
GCC has complete C++11 support, VS doesn't.
GCC has a more complete support of C++14 than VS.

gcc is a far, far more up to date compiler than visual studio.

[*]I'm going to keep calling it FORTRAN for ever. suck it.

Re:Where can I get this?

[gilboad]

/* OT side note */
Actually, GCC's performance under windows *greatly* depends on the type of code being executed.
E.g. We (my company) uses GCC under both Linux and Windows, even though we support VC 2K5/8.
At least in our case, GCC (mingw-64) was ~10-20% faster than VC 2K5 and has far, far, far, broader features list (E.g. Very partial macro support, no in-line assembly, 'managed' version of CRT functions, etc)
Plus, can build the Windows binaries on our Linux build systems (a major plus) using Fedora's extensive MinGW support.

Per subject at hand, if you raise the warning level to the maximum (-Wall) and remove a couple of noise factors (-Wno-multichar), at least in my view, GCC tends to be far more informative than VC 2K5 - which in turn, tends to throw a lot of unused variable and deprecated use of CRT function warning, but nothing really major.

- Gilboa

Re:Where can I get this?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/depreciate

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

PROTIP: You were looking for http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/deprecate

So near, and yet so far...

Re:Where can I get this?

[unixisc]

In fact, if they can get emacs running on HURD, they may well have all they need. Just make sure emacs includes functions like web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations & so on....

Re:Where can I get this? Here!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/

Today

[girlintraining]

"Free Unix! Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix), and give it away free to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed."

If someone said that today, he'd be promptly sued by SCO, dragged into dark cavernous courtrooms filled with patent trolls, accused by the government of being a terrorist, and laughed at by the mainstream community of UNIX-like OS users, such as the ones reading this post; Absent Linux, we'd all be warring over which was better -- Macintosh or Windows. Both have UNIX buried in their guts.

My point is that RMS' achievement, organizing people into a cohesive political movement loosely termed 'open source', probably couldn't happen today. It is therefore particularly important that he did so thirty years ago, before the global international business and government communities were aware of the potential impact of his activities.

There are fewer and fewer like him every year -- old schoolers who grew up with the fervent belief that the internet, computers, all this digital technology, could empower, enlighten, and educate millions. And then set about proving just that. These days... the majority of people are content to watch Youtube videos of cats, and try not to see any potential beyond immediate gratification and entertainment. It's sad that the hacker ethic has become in such short supply, even within this community. Back then, nobody would think any less of you for going off on your own to reinvent the wheel... your peers thought, at worst, that it might be good practice for you. Today, it's a face full of rage and religious views if you even suggest things may not be as good as they could be.

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

>Absent Linux, we'd all be warring over which was better -- Macintosh or Windows.

Really? What about the BSDs? Since I'm using those, I think they'd be in the argument for lots of folks who like Unix and open source software.

Re:Today

[mark-t]

Absent Linux, there'd still be FreeBSD.

Re:Today

[girlintraining]

RMS has nothing to do with "open source". Sad that to this day trolls and idiots keep intentionally attributing it to him, in order to misinform. Do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up.

He was the principle author of the GNU GPL, the first real open source license. The entire open source movement is based on licensing; That's how open source is defined -- by licensing terms. And RMS was the first to come up with a license that captured this essential quality and formalized it. Richard Stallman wants to use the term "free software" instead of "open source", but that doesn't make me a troll for using a different term for it than he does.

A pity so many Anonymous Cowards love replying to me with a casual "STFU" and claim I know nothing, it's off topic, etc., and people believe them. Further proof of the sad, sad state slashdot has descended into... that an informed and long-time contributor to the community gets mod-bombed while the trolls get up-modded.

Re:Today

[jedidiah]

> RMS has nothing to do with "open source".

"open source" is primarily just corporate friendly branding for Free Software. It's primarily a marketing job to accentuate the pragmatic benefits of Free Software over the political motivations RMS might tend to focus on.

Re:Today

[ebno-10db]

And OpenBSD, and NetBSD, and what other flavors do they have this week?

Re:Today

[BitZtream]

"open source" is primarily just corporate friendly branding for Free Software

No, not even a little fucking bit.

The corporate version of 'open' is ENTIRELY different than 'Free Software' be pretty much any definition you can find. Stallman and cult of GNU like to warp open source into something it isn't. They try to co-opt the term into meaning something it isn't and then bitch about people not doing it their way.

Open source means you can see the source. Period. It does NOT mean you can do anything with the source. It does not mean the software is 'free', in fact it could be under the most restrictive license terms on the planet and still be open source. For the right fee, Windows is open source. And yes, open source has not a god damn thing to do with what it takes to gain access to the source, such as paying for it.

Open in the real world doesn't have anything at all to do with Stallman, GNU or the FSFs view of copyleft.

H264 is open for example, as are the mpeg standards, my every definition that matters to a company trying to get something done, they are open standards. According to Stallman and the FSF they are evil bastards that need to die a horrible death because OMG NOT REQUIRES LICENSE FEES.

Do not taint open source by even associating it with 'free' software, it is no such thing.

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman and cult of GNU like to warp open source into something it isn't. They try to co-opt the term into meaning something it isn't and then bitch about people not doing it their way.

Really? Are you seriously trying to insinuate that the FSF took the idea from OSI and changed it to fit their own interests? How does the world look where you live, with time going backwards and all? Is it painful to go to the bathroom?

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS has some controversy, but I do remember in the early 1990s what was out there, UNIX-wise.

You had XENIX, ULTRIX, IRIX, A/UX, AIX PS/2, AIX/370, Dell UNIX, SunOS, and many other flavors. Almost none came with source, and if they did (Mt. Xinu was the only BSD that did), you had to get a special license for SVR4 programs.

If you wanted header files and libraries, pay up. C compiler? Better have that cash for the flexlm key. C++? Pony up a couple grand.

Had it not been for RMS and gcc, access to a C compiler would have been the bottleneck for most world software development.

Before 1991 and Jolitz and Linus inventions, if you were a college student and wanted to see a "#" prompt on a computer, good luck unless your blackhat skillz were good. Even just getting a "$" prompt (or a "%" prompt if you were a novice) took some doing as one had to be at a big university.

After 386BSD (not to be confused with Mt Xinu BSD-386) and Linux, a lot changed. Arguably, this allowed hardware and software to be less of what one had to concern themselves with, versus what application was being run. Had it not been for gcc, neither Linux, nor 386BSD would have been possible, because of EULA and copyright restrictions.

It is scary how much times have changed. Today, one did decide to go off and write a new OS, one might find themselves on the wrong side of the law because it didn't have a hardware-enforced DRM stack, or that "terrorists" might be able to use it. The irony of it all... In the mid 1990s, I remember a lot of improvements done on the SMP part of the Linux kernel by the the Iran University of Science and Technology. This wasn't even something that one would worry about, as back then, if you were on the Net, there was some respect [1]. These days, just the mention of that would get people screaming about terrorism and backdoors.

Of course, there was encouragement, especially if one had a reasonable effort going and mentioned it on USENET groups. You did have the occasional detractor, but generally writing something, anything was encouraged. Now, with the shills and trolls out there, one almost has to write something in a vacuum, release it, and expect consequences for the action like it was a crime.

[1]: At the time the buffoons were on the warez BBS systems bragging about their new US Robotics HST modems... well, until September came rolling around each year, and the wave of college freshmen came in only to get housebroken or access yanked by the sysadmins.

Re:Today

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Much less than linux.

Re:Today

[dfghjk]

"He was the principle author of the GNU GPL [gnu.org], the first real open source license."

I'd love to see the creative definition of "real open source license" for which that is true. There were open source licenses before the FSF existed.

Re:Today

[Bill_the_Engineer]

He was the principle author of the GNU GPL [gnu.org], the first real open source license.

Actually BSD licensed was published before GPLv1. 4.3BSD-Tahoe was released in 1988. A full year before RMS release his first GPL program.

Re:Today

[girlintraining]

Actually BSD licensed was published before GPLv1. 4.3BSD-Tahoe was released in 1988. A full year before RMS release his first GPL program.

The BSD license allows someone to make changes and not return them to the community. The GPL created a community where contributions and advancements to various designs couldn't be taken away from the public, trivially modified, and then sold at a profit. Ergo, I stand by what I say: GPL was the first "open source" license. Though there are, admittedly, many versions of it, all of which claim to be the One True definition; Such is the nature of religion, er, I mean, programming.

Re:Today

[unixisc]

Essentially, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Although OpenBSD came from NetBSD, it outgrew it and is one of the big 2 there. Otherwise, the overwhelming majority of BSD distros are FreeBSD derivatives.

Re:Today

[meta-monkey]

I have no idea what you're talking about. There are more and more of us every day. Especially since PRISM pulled the masks off Apple and Google (the malevolence of Windows was established in Genesis).

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

that an informed and long-time contributor to the community gets mod-bombed while the trolls get up-modded.

You are opinionated and frequently technically and even factually wrong. Seniority or a self-sense of grandeur doesn't trump reality.

Re:Today

[Hognoxious]

Considerably fewer.

Ignorant fucking oik.

Re:Today

[Darinbob]

Except that RMS said "Unix compatible". He wasn't going to make a copy. The look-and-feel lawsuits that arose in the intervening years mostly fizzled out or went nowhere.

Re:Today

[Darinbob]

The first public release of GNU Emacs was March 20, 1985, with the first widely distributed version available later that year (15.34).

Re:Today

[unixisc]

The BSD license that you are describing does satisfy the definition of 'open source', as defined by OSI, the SIG that defines the standard. So if that license preceded the GPL, then that would be the first open source license. What you are talking about is 'copyleft', and GPL is a copyleft license, while BSD isn't. In fact, even 'libre software' doesn't have to be copyleft - copyleft is a separate attribute that some liberated licenses have, and some don't.

Re:Today

[magic maverick]

I sucked a lot of cock to get where I am. I only want to be the best that I can.
My mouth is stained I can't complain. I keep on rinsing it again and again.

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

A pity so many Anonymous Cowards love replying to me with a casual "STFU" and claim I know nothing, it's off topic, etc., and people believe them. Further proof of the sad, sad state slashdot has descended into... that an informed and long-time contributor to the community gets mod-bombed while the trolls get up-modded.

To be fair, you often post things that are wrong, or at least not entirely correct, and look like you decided to speed-read wikipedia before posting instead of limiting your "insightful" comments to things you know best.

Re:Today

[ilguido]

Before the GPL there was the GNU Emacs General Public License: http://www.free-soft.org/gpl_history/emacs_gpl.html .
A bit of history of the first open source license: http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html .

Re:Today

[ilguido]

The 1988 BSD license is not OSI approved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bsd_license .

Re:Today

[ilguido]

For the lolz.

Re:Today

[Guy Harris]

Absent Linux, we'd all be warring over which was better -- Macintosh or Windows. Both have UNIX buried in their guts.

With a heck of a lot more buried in the former than in the latter. (At this point, I'm not sure there's much left in the latter; for example, as far as I know, the Internet protocol stack is not BSD-based, even if the command-line FTP client is.)

Re:Today

[jonwil]

+1 on GCC being important.
There are still platforms where GCC is the only supported compiler. And many more platforms (embedded ones in particular) where the choice is GCC or a proprietary $$$ compiler from the system vendor.

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

A License exclusively specific to one program only?

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

And OSI is founded in 1998

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically xBSD is a REAL UNIX and as such is beyond the scope, especially because BSD-based UNIXes were commercially available 30 years ago.

Re:Today

[sharklasers]

These days... the majority of people are content to watch Youtube videos of cats, and try not to see any potential beyond immediate gratification and entertainment.

Sorry for being direct, but SO THE FUCK WHAT. Does it really bother you that people spend their time on YouTube watching cats (which are cute, big deal) or enjoying the benefits of immediate gratification and entertainment? Humans have enough bullshit to deal with in the world - it's folly to criticize people for not want to hack once they come home from a hard day at work and would instead prefer more immediate forms of gratification.

I make stuff at work. I like my work. But I don't bring my work home much at all (if at all) because downtime is so, so damn important. The hacker ethic is almost gone because there's no reward for personal hacking anymore. Do it at a job you enjoy and get paid for it.

Re:Today

[jones_supa]

Excellent comment.

Re:Today

[ilguido]

And the 1988 MIT license is among the OSI approved licences: http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical . The oldest OSI approved GPL license is the 1991 GPL 2.0, the oldest OSI approved BSD license is the 1998 3-clause BSD license. The older BSD licenses are not among the OSI approved ones, because they are clusterfucks, not because there was no OSI at the time.

Re:Today

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I knew Emacs was released in 1985, but I didn't consider it because it was specific to Emacs.

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the years the ratio of teenagers on slashdot to non-teenagers has gone up. There's your reason.

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL - I will force you to be free against your will
BSD - I will let you be free, it's your choice

One is free, the other is pseudo-free.

Re:Today

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does the GPL force anyone to do anything?

All it does is put some conditions on what you can do if you choose to distribute. You don't have any rights to the source code by default, only what the license grants you. What you want is the right to distribute other people's work on your own terms. Fine, if they choose to give it to you (not fine otherwise).

Let's Get Him Laid!

[Anonymous Coward]

The man deserves a good shag! I'm willing to contribute, how about you?

Captcha reads: nobleman

I'm not sure I could go that far, but I am flattered.

Re:Let's Get Him Laid!

[Gavagai80]

I admire your brave offer to have sex with RMS, and wish you the best of luck. Suggest you bring a nose clip and blindfold. Don't think anyone will be joining you though, I'm sure not.

More than 30 years of free software

[moonwatcher2001]

I had the source code to Adventure The Colossal Cave in 1981. There were already several versions floating around.

Re:More than 30 years of free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, duh. RMS didn't invent free software, and he's never claimed that he did.
But GNU and the GPL brought it back to prominence in an era when it was seriously threatened.

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

New Unix Implementation Turns 30

It's not very new then, is it?
More like middle age now.

Re:Hmm...

[mark-t]

I think it's supposed to be a play on words. GNU --> New....

?

Maybe?

Contrary to popular belief

[BitZtream]

Stallman did not invent open source, nor start 'the revolution'. It was there before him. It wasn't his idea. While he has contributed much to open source, he has also personally harmed it more than just about anyone I can think of. His religion may appear great at first glance, but it is, just like pretty much every religion, warped into his personal agenda and crusade against everyone who doesn't agree with him in entirety.

His behavior in public forums and disrespect for others around him is a good example of you should ignore him.

I suspect, the same sort of vigor will be unleashed against this comment. -5 disagree after all.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[StormReaver]

His behavior in public forums and disrespect for others around him is a good example of [why] you should ignore him.

His consistent accuracy in predicting the consequences of disregarding Freedom is a great example of why you should listen to him.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman did not invent open source, nor start 'the revolution'. It was there before him. It wasn't his idea. While he has contributed much to open source, he has also personally harmed it more than just about anyone I can think of. His religion may appear great at first glance, but it is, just like pretty much every religion, warped into his personal agenda and crusade against everyone who doesn't agree with him in entirety.

If you actually knew anything about Stallman you would know that he absolutely hates the term "open source". In fact, the term "open source" was coined as an alternative to "free software" because of people like you who found his Free Software movement too 'idealogical' and 'religious'. It was explicitly designed to appeal to suits who wanted to get involved with Linux but were put off by the rhetoric of freedom, and wanted something that sounded more compatible with absurd share option packages in the stock-market bubble of the late 1990's.

His behavior in public forums and disrespect for others around him is a good example of you should ignore him.

Yes, he comes across as a nut-case, and maybe he is. But a nut-case who accomplishes things is more significant than a regular guy who has all the right opinions but who actually does nothing.

I suspect, the same sort of vigor will be unleashed against this comment. -5 disagree after all.

Ah yes, the famous "Haters' gonna hate" pre-emptive strike to encourage people with mod points to spend them on you so they can prove to themselves how open-minded they are.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You need a reality check. That you disagree with the terms of his license is no reason to denigrate the man or his accomplishments. The GNU legacy of software (where would OSS be today without the heydays of gcc and glibc, prior to the modern alternatives? And those are just the tip of the iceberg..) pretty much speaks for itself. As for his personal, public behavior: meh. Lots of smart influential people are also crazy and unpersonable. Deal with it, it's what we do as a society.

The crux of your disagreement, I suspect, is the GPL license itself. It's your couching of the argument in religious terms that gives away the core of your position. There are legitimate, rational reasons to choose one open source license over another, the most common choices being GPL or a BSD-variant. Then there are unreasonable attacks, mostly aimed at the GPL. It's unfortunate that the legal system of copyrights and patents on software warrants all this complexity in the first place, but the GPL serves a legitimate purpose. Let me rephrase the purpose of the GPL in terms that perhaps you'll understand, as contrasted to (some variant of) BSD:

When an author writes software, by default it is his alone. He can choose who he licenses the software to on what terms. By publishing source code openly under a BSD license, the author effectively says "I basically give this to the world as public domain, except I don't want to go unnamed. When you use/modify my software, I expect you to copy my name and this legal notice with it. Other than that, I don't care what you do with it. Solve world hunger, kill babies, make millions while I toil in poverty, whatever, just use it". By choosing the GPL when publishing source code openly, the author makes a very different statement that goes something like this: "I believe in free software, and I really want everyone to be able to use my software for whatever. The exception here is I don't want someone to co-opt and extend my software, converting it to hidden proprietary software in the process that is lorded over other people. If you want to write private commercial software that goes against the grain of open source, you do it yourself or steal BSD code, but don't use my code. I wrote this for the community of free software persons only"

Choosing the GPL is choosing not to be taken advantage of. Remember Microsoft being late to the TCP/IP and Internet game? Microsoft was a joke compared *nix in the mid 90s, with only Trumpet Winsock as a hacky TCP stack you could install as third-party, horrible software. Then they suddenly caught up and put an IP stack in MS Windows and regained their footing. Did they hire a hundred engineers to work night and day inventing their own TCP stack? No, they took the BSD-licensed TCP stack from BSD Unix and merely ported it onto their kernel. The BSD guys *gave MS the internet*. If that software had been GPL licensed, that wouldn't have been possible. It might have taken Microsoft additional *years* to catch up, and would have harmed their market share greatly. The entire world might have turned out differently. Maybe we'd never had had to endure things like MSIE and IIS unleashed on the world. Maybe Macs would've taken off instead of floundering in that era. Maybe MS would've ported their window system to a BSD or Linux kernel and libc. Who the hell knows. But I choose the GPL when *I* write software because I don't want my contribution to the world to be co-opted by a malicious company like Microsoft to gain competitive advantage.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[dfghjk]

Anyone who believes this isn't qualified to participate in a discussion of it.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[Anonymous Coward]

>In fact, the term "open source" was coined as an alternative to "free software" because of people like you who found his Free Software movement too 'idealogical' and 'religious'.

More accurately, "open source" was coined to describe the item in question, relating to openness and source code, whereas "free software" is vague on both counts, where the average person associates free=gratis and software=binaries.

That some people continue to use "free software" in lieu of a much more succinct and self-explanatory phrase, *also* has the side effect of marking them as religious ideologues.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[dfghjk]

"Ah yes, the famous "Haters' gonna hate" pre-emptive strike to encourage people with mod points to spend them on you so they can prove to themselves how open-minded they are."

How is that any different than the tribalism that dominates moderation? People will mod it down for the wrong reasons and they will mod it up for the wrong reasons. Not the OP's fault.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[foma84]

harmed it more than just about anyone I can think of

If you added "in the open source community" I could have considered your point.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[Anonymous Coward]

so the Burston-Marsteller Brigade is here tonight, paid by Dollarsoft from their corrupt, monopolist, abusive business ?

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[Darinbob]

RMS started his free software stance because of the harm he saw that occured with Emacs and he wanted to prevent similar future harm. He didn't just come up with this out of the blue or for no reason.

The existing Unix port of Emacs from James Gosling has been shared, and Stallman and others had been modifying that to improve it to become the first GNU Emacs (such as adding a real Lisp instead of MockLisp as well as making it behave more like older Emacs). Then Gosling put a copyright on his Emacs and sold it to Unipress. Unipress then told Stallman to stop distributing his own Emacs because it now contained copyrighted code. So a marathon hacking session was done to rip out all the older code to sanitize it. And that was the impetus for the GPL.

Ie, older code for a product that had been customarily shared (no one person "invented" emacs, it was a highly collaborative and incremental product). Then one port of it was sold to a company and all the shared code that existed prior to that sale was now tainted and could not be distributed. This directly led to the core principle of the GPL that existing free code could not be made un-free. Also a very big reason why most people do not want people to release any source code that comes without a license included.

I'm not even a big fan of the GPL myself but I respect it. Maybe Stallman seems too idealistic or too paranoid to some people but the reasons for his stance are clear and reasonable.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[serviscope_minor]

Stallman did not invent open source,

He'd never claim to.

nor start 'the revolution'.

He did start hte free software revolution however.

he has also personally harmed it more than just about anyone I can think of.

So, probably the majority of internet servers worldwide run on largely GNU systems and somehow RMS has cause more harm?

Free Software is doing just fine, and RMS has done a great deal. The combination of writing code, activism, chansing funding and general berating means I now have access to the best unix ever made and it doesn't even have a single line of Unix (TM) code in it.

His religion may appear great at first glance, but it is, just like pretty much every religion, warped into his personal agenda and crusade against everyone who doesn't agree with him in entirety.

Ah I see. We're now back to "make up random shit about RMS day".

You'd have much more credibility if you focussed on what RMS actually does, not what noisy people on the internet claim he does.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[RazorSharp]

The deification of this man is getting ridiculous. While I agree he's made some important contributions, those contributions are becoming significantly dated. More recently he's done nothing but tarnish the reputation of those involved in free software projects, and if the community as a whole would have followed his lead it would be nothing but an insignificant niche. His complete inability to compromise has rendered him pretty useless to the open source community at this point. In the last ten years IBM has done more positive things for open source than Stallman -- who would have seen that coming 30 years ago?

When I explain open source to someone who doesn't know much about it I talk about IBM, Google, Apple, Canonical, Red Hat, LibreOffice, etc. Practical applications that demonstrate utility. No one cares about abstract ideologies preached by some crackpot hippie. It doesn't matter if Stallman can code well or not because he can't work well with others, he's too uncompromising, and the 'pure libre' systems he runs have no value to 99% of computer users.

Basically, I totally agree with you.

Oh, and before anyone brings this up, Emacs sucks. I don't care what my dad says. Old fucker.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[Anonymous Coward]

That some people continue to use "free software" in lieu of a much more succinct and self-explanatory phrase, *also* has the side effect of marking them as religious ideologues.

You cannot use one "in lieu" of the other because they mean very different things. Free software is defined by four specific rules that are intended ensure the freedom of software writers and users. I'm not going to repeat them here, because they are just one Google query away from you and and you can inform yourself.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[umafuckit]

His consistent accuracy in predicting the consequences of disregarding Freedom is a great example of why you should listen to him.

And if you want to listen to him, here is the instruction manual on how to do so: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers-public/2011-October/007647.html

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[Anonymous Coward]

What an excellent rebuttal of his argument. I hope to see more in the future.

Re:Contrary to popular belief

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you sleazy businesspeople just go to the next brothel and leave us alone, while we churn out one more million of GNU-based telephones ?

Talk shit to whores.

Re:I can get Free Food!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, clicking a link sure is hard.

Earlier free software

[lpress]

Not to take away from GNU, but it was not the first freely exchanged open source software. In the batch processing days, every IBM branch office had a file cabinet full of shared software and organizations like SHARE did what the name suggests. Share was formed in 1955 and is still going.

Re:Earlier free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Who claimed anything of such? Why are so many of the comments so full of uninformed people making absurd claims about Open Source? The term was invented by Eric Raymond and others as a marketing strategy in 1998, to make it appealing to companies that didn't want to go as far as to include the freedom requirements.

Software has been freely charged since its conception, RMS always make sure to point this out. All he did was to realize the practice of sharing software freely was in danger, and created rules that developers could attach to their source code to make sure its free distribution and usage would never be endangered.

Re:Earlier free software

[Darinbob]

Strongly agree here. No one had formally licensed software as sharable code before this that I can think of. There were certainly some informal license wordings of course.

So what...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Hurd isn't what he'd hope it would be. RMS started an idea that has been a significant force in software engineering: Open Source. His ideas also made us all realize that our data is, well, our data and that software shouldn't allow a corporation to keep it hostage.

I know that his ideas made me realize my worth as a programmer. My worth is in my knowledge and not in the product I produce. He made me realize value as someone who can manipulate software is worth more than the software I produce or modify.

People can argue all they want about whether rms is a genius, a fraud or something in between. I know that he is an inspiration for me.

RMS is a bad ass

[sl4shd0rk]

Only guy to survive a ninja attack. While *in bed* nonetheless.

Re:RMS is a bad ass

[tokiko]

This is a reference to: http://xkcd.com/225/

But then, if RMS did sleep with a samurai sword, I'm sure he would have gone after them for their taunt mentioning "open source" instead of "free software."

Re:RMS is a bad ass

[CauseBy]

For those who don't know.

Huh?

[spudnic]

Never hurd of it.

Thanks, Richard!

[Anonymous Coward]

The subject says it all...

And I'm just delighted...

[gwolf]

To see that the kind of discussion (and the depth of it, and the arguments raised, and all that yada-yada) are *so* similar to what I read for GNU's 20th anniversary. Or for the 15th anniversary. New kids learn our beloved traditions and repeat our same flames as if they were chanting ancient mantrams.

Now, get off my lawn!

Give it away free to everyone who can use it.

[Anonymous Coward]

So did that means he charged for people who couldn't use it?

"any reasonable definition"

[tlambert]

Linux is just as much of a Unix kernel as he intended to build.

But really, for any reasonable definition of the term, Linux is essentially a Unix kernel.

"any reasonable definition" - you mean like passing the VSX, VSC, VRTS test suites with no errors so that they could legally used the UNIX trademark?

Unbelievable!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just unbelievable what he wrote. Wow, great job, Richard. You're incredible.

So..

[Daemonik]

RMS is still using that Communist slave labor built laptop but refuses to touch commercial software, right? Stay classy, you bearded troll person you!

Re:So..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he should be using Empire Technology - made from chips of Iraqi bones and drops of Chilean blood.

Re:So..

[serviscope_minor]

RMS is still using that Communist slave labor built laptop

As opposed to all the other computers out there?

Is there a single one that wouldn't qualify?

Or are you one of those extremists who insists that unless everything is perfectyou should do nothing at all?

GNU was and is great stuff, but some preceded it

[Anonymous Coward]

The DECUS symposium tapes had by this time been sharing software widely, generally in source, for 6 years by 1983. There were many other free exchanges around also (remember the Usenix tapes, anyone? though those were not I think available to just anyone - you were supposed to have I believe an ATT
license, which as I recall cost $40,000 unless you were a school. The DECUS materials were free (you supplied tape to someone on the tree to get
copies made). They did not attempt to rewrite entire OSs much (there were a few interesting prototype bits though) but did get involved heavily in developing
and distributing utilities, compilers, network stacks, games, and so on. The Gnu project started as I recall with Emacs and got around to replacing kernel
last. The revolution got started though by many, not only RMS.
    Those old collections should be better known, since they have much in them that can still be useful as prior art when the old patent troll comes around. There
were for example a number of networks before the Internet, using other protocols, but on which some commerce was done.

Writing kernels

[unixisc]

Writing a kernel ain't hard - Linus did it. Writing a microkernel ain't hard - Tannenbaum did it. The reason Hurd wasn't pulled off was that they kept changing the microkernels that they wanted to work w/ - L4, Viengoos and Coyotos - before reverting to Mach. Essentially, Hurd was one of the worst managed projects - if at all managed

In fact, since much of the work in HURD was about writing daemons that used the kernel services, they would have done well to have taken any of the available microkernels - Amoeba or Minix - and then built around those. At that time, those things were small enough that making microkernels would have been easier.

Re:Writing kernels

[Anonymous Coward]

Writing a kernel ain't hard - Linus did it. Writing a microkernel ain't hard - Tannenbaum did it.

If one person can do something, another can too. Does not mean that it isn't hard.

Re:Writing kernels

[unixisc]

The GP was rationalizing HURD not being complete 30 years later, and that's what I was pointing out. If Linux could be written, if Minix could be written and then re-written as a microkernel, if Mach could be written, there is no reason that HURD should have taken this long. The reason it did - as I pointed out - was them being all over the place, trying microkernel after microkernel.

Yeah, writing OSs is hard. However, given that so many have been successfully written, there is no reason that HURD too could not have been.

Where's my Empire, file version numbers etc.?

[magic maverick]

I want Empire!
Actually, what I really want is built in support for file version numbers (á la VMS presumably). Is that too much to ask?

I don't want to have to run some experimental file system that hasn't got support in the kernel. I want to run something mainstream, supported, and useful. But with versioning. Maybe EXT5 (if brfs doesn't do it) could have it...

Re:Where's my Empire, file version numbers etc.?

[VortexCortex]

Shit, man. I want some of the crack you're smoking too! Hell, while we're at it:

I want intermediary .o files to be cross platform, and linkable across platforms.
I want these intermediary files to be distributed instead of executables.
I wast the format of the intermediary files to be executable within a software virtual machine.
I want to use said feature to enable compiled and object code to run together seamlessly.
I want plugins to thus be sandboxed, with the option to link them into binaries transparent to the application if I trust the source.
I want applications to be linked into binaries at install time, thus providing cross platform distribution without "JIT" overhead of other bytecode.

In other words, I want to write my own damn operating system. So that's what I'm doing.

Re:Where's my Empire, file version numbers etc.?

[magic maverick]

Versioning was in the Incompatible Timesharing System, it was in OpenVMS, and it was one of the things that rms said he wanted ("...file version numbers, a crashproof file system..."). It's not too much to ask.

Re:GNU was and is great stuff, but some preceded i

[Anonymous Coward]

All software was free in the beginning, no revolution, all evolution. Software was only included under copyright in 78 or around that time... RMS's genius is seeing the value in that and his tenacity of doing what was called impossible. Read the RMS books, he's a saint and a genius.

http://shop.fsf.org/product/book_bundle/

Perfect timing

[Hognoxious]

Perfect timing, three months and three days before the year of linux on the desktop.

What does the multic own?

[Hognoxious]

And his punctuation.

Re:What does the multic own?

[cold fjord]

Respect. ;D

Open source vs Liberated Software

[unixisc]

I happen to agree w/ ESR, but one thing RMS can be praised for - not trying to do w/ 'Open Source' what they tried doing w/ 'Linux'. Initially, they used the retarded term 'Free Software' and later, morphed it to 'Software Freedom'. (Both misleading, since the first can imply price=$0.00 software, while the latter implies the freedom of software creators to do anything, including placing restrictions, which isn't what RMS means). 'Libre' software was better, although use of the English term 'Liberated' would have been more accurate.

But the reason ESR came up w/ the term 'Open Source' was that the 'Free Software' brand carried w/ it a perception of being militantly anti-business, much bolstered by Stallman's own activism, which was and is infra Left in both business and politics. As a result, companies were not willing to endorse such a philosophy that carried such baggage. ESR recognized that, and came up w/ this term 'Open Source' where he highlighted all the advantages that companies stood to gain by allowing their source code to be shared with business partners, customers and so on. If it weren't for ESR rebranding the philosophy as Open Source and focusing on good development methodology, things like Linux would never have found widespread adaptation across the market.

The best case for that is what's happening w/ GPL3. Although the RMS' Leftist views were always known, there were ways around it in GPL2. But in GPL3, w/ clauses like the Anti-Tivoization clause and the Patent Indemnity clauses, companies that previously were fine w/ using GPL now put a ban on it. That's why you see moves like GCC to LLVM/Clang, GNU to Busybox, and more parts of GNU being replaced by non-GNU equivalents licensed under BSD. In fact, the smarter vendors dual license their products under both BSDL and GPL3, so that users could use it under either license depending on their needs or wants.

I didn't know you cared

[Hognoxious]

Further proof of the sad, sad state slashdot has descended into... that an informed and long-time contributor to the community gets mod-bombed

Awww. Don't worry, I'm used to it by now.

When is the last time he released any code?

[whatthef*ck]

This question is not meant as flamebait. I wonder that every time his name is brought up. I could be wrong, but I'm not aware of any significant piece of software he's developed since the ones that that he's well known for, that were written before the turn of the century.

Re:When is the last time he released any code?

[Tetetrasaurus]

Yes, why do we ever mention Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs either? Unless you have proof of a changelog to a major project within the last 24 hours, you are irrelevant and you have no legacy or point of any kind.

Troll.

yeah that's great

[Anonymous Coward]

how can i get this microsoft compiler to build my android project?

M$ without Ballmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey guys! I heard that after Ballmer's gone, M$ is switching Windoze to the Linux kernel! Finally, the year of £inux on the desktop.

Good to see the old bang-path

[Gothmolly]

These kids these days with their simple email addresses, don't know the fun of UUCP style mail, or having email addresses on both the Internet and BIT (Because It's There)Net.

It's Research

[billstewart]

They were in the Research part of Bell Labs, back when both of those existed. There was a lot of slack to do interesting and not-immediately-business-related research there, though if you wanted to buy expensive equipment, you did need to get support for a real budget.

Re:It's Research

[Zero__Kelvin]

I still don't think you are getting this. Maybe I'm wrong, but you just explicitly reinforced my point and presented as if it was a counterpoint. Do you get that, or did you actually think you contradicted my statements: The goal was not to have fun - it was research, as you said - and it was funded by AT&T Bell Labs. The fact that they didn't approve a huge budget for it doesn't change those facts.

Re:It's Research

[cold fjord]

The only way that it could be said that the development of Unix was funded would be to put it in the same category as eating lunch or using the restroom - it was something that salaried employees in between the things that you were actually paying for them to do in approved projects. There was no approved project for Unix when they were writing it. So you are in fact wrong.

Misrepresenting RMS is unfair.

[jbn-o]

"I've seen articles that call me "The father of open source". Now what use is it to be talked about if I'm associated with the wrong views! So I sent a letter to the editor saying, "If I'm the father of open source it was conceived through artificial insemination using stolen sperm without my knowledge or consent"." —Richard Stallman, August 5, 2013, New York City University, New York City, USA

I believe he'd be the first to point out to you that you are misattributing the movement he started (as he frequently mentions in his talks such as this one around 58m25s including being talked about with the wrong views at around 1h). RMS wrote the GPL and started the GNU Project so that users could live in freedom enjoying the freedoms to run, share, and modify computer software; the very freedoms that the open source movement was formed to never bring up so the open source proponents could pursue mere technical practicality (a term he describes well around 57m10s) and talk about "licensing terms" as you describe—free of ethical issues. The way you put it makes the two movements seem like some insigificant name difference for no particular reason, but that's completely untrue. Giving the wrong philosophical views credit happens elsewhre too and correcting this misapprehension is the basis for giving GNU a share of the credit when discussing a GNU/Linux system.

Careful speech and well-explained distinctions are among rms's hallmarks—he speaks and writes with a precision not often found these days. The GNU Project has helpfully collected a list of terms to avoid, terms people often speak or write without understanding how their own thoughts could be pure nonsense or clear misstatement. It behooves people describing him and his work to get these terms right. After all, it's only fair that one not misrepresent his views when describing him.

Perhaps you'd benefit from watching a few of his speeches so you can better understand what he says and thinks, then perhaps you won't make the errors you made in your post.