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Historical Unix, Open Source Legal Battles, and John Lions
Invicta{HOG} was the ffirst to write us about today's new Salon piece. It covers the first legal battle open source faced, quite some time ago, John Lions and a look into the history of Unix. It's a pleasant read.
IMHO this is why FSF needs to start coming out of their proverbial well and start a legal defense fund for Free Software, in particular, the GPL. So far it seems to me (correct me if I'm wrong) that FSF only cares about defending the GPL when the software involved is owned by the FSF, like GCC, Emacs, etc.. We need a legal defense fund for free software in general, not just for FSF products! Otherwise all it takes is one piece of obscure GPL'd software (that FSF doesn't care about) being abused by some company/person, and the court overturning the GPL -- and everything will collapse.
Disclaimer: IANAL.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
It sounds like your dislike for the term "open source" might be coloring your views, but I'd like to understand your position better. Please expound!
PS: A friend of mine noted:
Fuck Slashdot
but you diminish it with the rest of your post.
then Open Source is not young at all.Firstly, if, as you say,
Secondly, it may appear in the title of the article as "Open Source", but in the text it is "open source", and without the capitals this is what this story is about - the openness of source code, not the OSS movement.
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E_NOSIG
Remember that if the courts decide that the GPL is so much toilet paper, the consequence is that distributors have no right to distribute code at all, since it's only the GPL would grant them that right. It's pretty much a fail-safe license: there's simply no legal route by which someone could distribute GPL'd code as if it placed no obligations on them unless the court returns a seriously perverse verdict.
You're mistaken about Common Law. It's possible you're thinking of trademark law; this isn't trademark law.
--
Xenu loves you!
I must disagree that "open source" is nothing more than a marketing term for "free software." It may be that to you, but it's more than that to many people.
Neither open source nor free software have much to do with either money or law, IMO. Free software maintains it is a moral imperative to open sources because information shouldn't be property, while open source just says software works better and develops faster if you do. You can honestly believe in the efficacy of sharing sources without believing it has anything to do with morality. To provide an umbrella that includes such people is more than mere marketing.
Yes, the GPL has never been tested in court. So what? That argues against there being much reason to write cute articles to prepare legal positions that probably will never be necessary.
You really can't throw out things like "widespread abuse" and call for the overturn of the GPL and open source before it's too late without backing up your argument. I am not aware of any abuses.
If you don't like the GPL and Open Source, why do you think you have a right to the labors of those who do, and wish to voluntarily pool their own efforts together? Do you believe in nationalization of all intellectual property or just that of groups you disagree with? In actual fact, if the GPL fails, it should fail safe, that is, all GPL software will become undistributable without permission from all copyright holders. Is that what you want?
It was an interesting historical article that barely mentioned either free software or open source.
ISBN: 1573980137
Price: $29.95
Ships: usually 2-3 days
ISBN: 1573980137
I think I'll make a suggestion to the Christmas elf :-)
==================================
neophase
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neophase
I attended a Usenix LISA conference about a year ago. The Lions book had just been released, and there was a table in the vendor area with copies for sale. I picked up a copy and started looking through it ... trying to decide whether to buy it then or wait until later, when I happened to notice that the person standing next to me was having a pretty interesting conversation with the booksellers. Checked his badge ... Dennis Richie! I'd no idea beforehand that he was on the program. Of course, I couldn't think of a thing to say. I settled on asking him nicely to autograph my copy (he did, nicely.)
:-)
Feel free to moderate this tripe down
I'm not sure why the reponses to this article have devolved into a flamewar over the GPL, since this article was about John Lions, not the GPL.
I had never heard of John Lions before this article, but he sounds like he was an intelligent and wise man, and I wish I had had the chance to have him as a teacher. It's good to learn the history of the movement to open the source to the people, and fascinating to hear source code discussed and dissected like literature. These are the types of intelligent conversation that I wish I saw more of here, instead of petty bickering.
Thanks, John, and I hope to read your book soon.
is the total LACK of comments about this article. Its like the Linux camp could give a damn about Unix history.
*walks away stroking greying beard, mumbling about kids, and how people who don't understand Unix are doomed to repeat it*
SCO will sell "personal use" licenses of the Unix release 6 code if you actually want to run the same code that the esteemed Mr. Lions talks about.
You then either have to buy a PDP-11 or find an emulator.....
There was a reference to Western Electric trying to supress the Lions Book. I never heard of them having anything to do with the OS. What was their stake in Version 6 or 7?
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This is not my sandwich.
I think that one of the most significant things about Lions's work is that it's a commentary on a complete kernel. Works like Bach's seminal Design of the Unix Operating System notwithstanding, there are no follow-the-code examples of a real OS out there today; modern Unices like Linux and BSD are far too complex to just sit down with and start understanding the deep mysteries of OS construction. Of those two, I'd prefer BSD for its more cohesive design, but even then, you're looking at twenty or a hundred times the code of the original Version [67] kernels. A 1990s Unix contains deep kernel hacks that make sense only in implementing advanced networking, scheduling, and virtual memory contexts; the study of these should be postponed until after the fundamentals are mastered. In contrast, there are wristwatches that could run V6; on a Palm Pilot or an embedded 386SX/20 system, V6 would scream compared to the now incredibly bloated 2.2.x Linuces.
I think the Lions book and a running system on top of it would be a tremendously Good Thing for a burgeoning Linus Torvalds or Alan Cox.
--
This is not my sandwich.
I think this is interesting. The article was written in such a way that it offended no one (not that SOME people didn't find a reason to find something offensive anyway). It seems that slashdotters in general aren't interesting in entering into dialogue that doesn't involve confrontation.
Well, to prove my point, I shall point out how confrontational my post is!
The main thing I want to say, however, is good job on the article, I truly enjoyed it.
mark
(Was kestrel, but damned if I can get my password)
Here's me doing my Keeanu impression: Whoah.
It seems like I'll have to read Salon on a
regular basis now; good writing and interesting
material. And it's about something we all should
care about. Aaahh...
(And guys 'n gals - stop flaming eachother every
time there is mention of the three-letter acronym
described as open sores!)
Lessee, yes, I still do have my nth-generation photocopy. The front page of the Commentary (and the source listing) says,
"The UNIX Software System was written by K. Thompson and D. Ritchie of Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ. It has been made available to the University of New South Wales under a licence from the Western Electric Company.
This document may contain information covered by one or more licences, copyrights and non-disclosure agreements. Circulation of this document is restricted to holders of a licence for the UNIX Software System from Western Electric. All other circulation or reproduction is prohibited.
J. Lions
Department of Computer Science
The University of New South Wales
C Copyright 1977 J. Lions"
I have a postscript version of the book, which I
think was made from the original nroff file. Is it legal for me to redistribute this?
-Erik
Actually, I believe the FSF does have a legal defense fund and is looking for somewhere to test the GPL in court, but the opportunity hasn't presented itself.
The problem is that the FSF can't legally sue unless they own the product they are sueing over. But my understanding is that if there were a willing author out there with a meritous case, then they would be willing to underwrite the lawsuit.
- Historical Unix, Open Source Legal Battles, and John Lions: 28 comments
- Interview with The Mind Behind Aibo: 50 comments
- Napster Attacks Open Source Clone: 112 comments
So we find that a story that was rushed and (repeadedly) flamed for being incorrect ends up having more commentary than two stories which seem fairly interesting, but non-controversial. I really would hope that Slashdot isn't starting to pander to the lowest common denominator like television does. I try to have more faith in the people here.-Denor
Ever wonder why there's an Objective-C compiler as part of gcc? It's because RMS was willing to spank Steve Jobs and the next guys for not releasing the code for it. Next wasn't willing to try and defend themselves in court, and so in the end gcc-objc became a standard part of gcc.
The FSF does chase down suspected non-compliance with the terms of the GPL, and is willing to take it to court. It's just that most companies aren't willing to try to defend a violation of the GPL in court, because it's not defensible.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
Now that was a neat article. Poignant, even.
/. readers. Almost no posts on the subject, and half of them are stupid drivel about "turning teenage girls to stone." Has the entire user base been overrun with twelve year olds fantasising about older girls? Pathetic.
While I've got a copy of Lion's commentary on order, I still wish I'd been able to get a copy from the 'bootleg' days. Getting one of his original two-volume sets would be incredibly cool, but maybe a bit less personal since I didn't know who Lion was until after Unix 7 came out.
How many people here truly appreciate how important this work is, I wonder. I mean, an ENTIRE OS to read through and discover, and with commentary to boot. It's pretty cool, folks.
Of course, this seems to go right over the heads of way too many
Just rambling folks. Nothing of importance to read here.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I was fortunate - no, privileged - to have been taught by John Lions, and to have learnt about operating system theory using these notes in 1977. He probably has as much to do with the success of Unix, and establishing the intellectual freedom that inspired those who followed (Torvalds, Raymond, Stallman) as the other Unix pioneers. We owe him a great deal.
My only regret - I sold my copies of his notes in 1978.
Good code is as important to keep as good literature. Sure, it looses some of it context, and can be somewhat obscure to read, but with the right commentary, it is priceless.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Reprinting Unix source and providing a commentary on it was very much in the spirit of the times, and reflected to the credit of Dr. Lions.
It's also interesting that that was the public discussion of what was agreed to be Bell's intellectual property: v7 contained several improvements that were publically suggested by the Lions book. A win for both parties.
Finally, it's an existance proof that one need not take up the religious position that one's source code must be kept secret. In more modern times, it's an existance proof that it not be free in the Gnu sense to be worth publishing.
--dave (an author of a "free source" book) c-b
davecb@spamcop.net
When I attended the University of New South Wales I had John Lions for a couple of subjects including that where we learn't from the UNIX source code using the version 6 books talked about. Of the subjects I took, that subject was by far probably the most interesting. I am not sure if I still have the books and will be most disgusted with myself now if I did indeed throw them out in my last big cleanup earlier this year. One of the aspects of John Lions class which I found to be most unique was his manner of doing assesments. We were encouraged to write our own notes against the source code and the commentary and then we had a number of tests during the session where we could take the books including our extra notes we had scribbled onto the books into the exams. At the end of the test you could actually choose not to submit your answers if you felt you hadn't done well. Instead you could choose to sit a second different test the following week covering roughly the same material. You could also sit the second test even if you submitted the first in which case the results from both tests were averaged. This way if you didn't end up going well in the first you could sit the second and thus had a chance to improve your mark. For myself I was always happy with my first try and didn't sit the second test, but the whole concept I feel did encourage people to study the source code even harder when they realised they hadn't gone well in the first test. I was dismayed a year or so later when I heard that he had abandonded this assesment style and instead relied mostly on end of session exams and programming assignments. Anyway, when I get home now I will have search out my copies of the source code and the commentary. I dearly hope I still have them as I didn't realise what had gone on in regards to them. Two volumes that will be treasured if I do but still have them.
I think we're reaching an interesting point here. Language of course was invented to communicate, and computer languages are called languages for a good reason - they are how we communicate in a deep way both with our computers and with other programmers who help maintain and develop our code. Before C (which came along with UNIX and made things like Lions' book possible) there were machine or assembly languages, which were too close to the machine to be very useable by humans. Or there were abominations like Fortran and Cobol, which generally insulted the intelligence of both the machines and the humans. C and later derivatives like Perl and Java somehow elegantly capture the essence of both machine and human ways of "thinking", and allow deep communication of meaning in relatively concise fashion. Just like a real language.
And this goes to the crux of the definition of open source itself. Binary executables are pure machine language, essentially unusable by humans, but since they contain the full "content" of a program (at least for a particular piece of hardware/configuration etc) why can't we just write good decompilers to convert machine code to source code? Maybe if our artificial intelligence efforts succeed eventually that will be possible, but until then the results of such machine translations are many times worse than the snarls babelfish and its ilk get into translating human languages... Things like variable names, the choice of loop or switch constructs, object-oriented constructs, even regular expression syntax are generally carefully chosen by the programmer for human readability and verifiability of the correctness of the instructions that the machine will carry out. What we're doing is really a new, and very interesting, form of literature... food for thought I hope!
Energy: time to change the picture.
I got copies of the Lions books when I was working at The Rand Corporation, the first commercial licensee of UNIX. We did a lot of userland stuff, some of which is still around (like MH). However, we were equally active in kernel-whacking, and invented things equivalent to named pipes, extremely buffed-up disk drivers, and a truckload of networking code.
The Lions books were a godsend. I'd learned UNIX by reading the source to Version 5 back at the U. of Illinois at Chicago Circle. Version 5 had no comments, except for one or two in the assembly-language assist, locore.s. Version 6 had comments! Wonderful! But the Lions books were a huge help in keeping us on track, and filled in an awful lot of background.
My originals remain at Rand. There's always the samizdat copies, but it's nice that they're in print again.
I never got to meet John Lions, but he was a huge help, at least to our corner of the early UNIX world.
Mike O'Brien
> but since they contain the full "content" of a program (at least for a particular piece of hardware/configuration etc) why can't we just write good decompilers to convert machine code to source code?
Because the binary program IS NOT the full content.
Descriptive variable names just become numbers. Arrays become pointer walks. Not to mention code optimization.
THAT is the problem. The compiler has striped away the usefull [symbolic] information.
How is the de-compiler going to distinguishing between a pointer to a pointer and an array of poitners? etc.
IAAP (I am a programmer)
Cheers
After carefully reading the article (usually I read only the comments), all I can say is wow, well done. This post is to add a small voice that the small number of comments is not an indicator of lack of interest. Any of the inside history of how Un*x has managed to survive and even thrive is, I think, of great interest to us all.
I don't disagree that decompilation can't be done. Heck, us humans do it, so it is possible. ;-)
The questions is, can we get a machine to re-engineer a binary program and turn it back into something semi-readable, faster than it is to just have a person reverse engineer it.
Do-able? Technically.
Usable? Not really. Well not yet at least.
> I've looked at "decompiled" binary code - it's usually pretty horrific, but sometimes quite instructive.
Have you looked at compiled Delphi and Visual Basic code. Horrific to say the least.
Cheers