In fact, the linux kernel has been continously being replaced by something better: why do you think we had so many versions: 1.0, 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6 ?
In many of those changes, several sub-systems were completely replaced with entire new implementations.
If the system was just a copy, it would simply be a copy of some implementation and it wouldn't had been re-written so many times.
If you look at the Linux system as a whole, you might not notice many innovations: It's just a Unix/Posix implementation, but doesn't everybody keep talking about standards, intereoperability and application portability ?
Posix it's a standard and Linux just adhered to it. In order to be compliant it has to provide the same APIs and thats the reason it doesn't look much innovative at first sight.
However, if you look at the implementation of many subsystems, you will find many innovations and you will continue to see much more as time passes.
Right now Linux is like a laboratory workbench: there are people all over the world researching in operating systems and they are using Linux as their base systems instead of starting from scratch. We don't need to keep reinventing the weel everyday.
I think in the future you will see most innovations appear in Linux first and then get ported to other systems, until Linux finnaly takes over the world.
It seems that you are working in some inovative features.
I hope that in the way, you fill some patents about your work (even if you don't agree with software patents), because we are going to need it in the upcoming patent fight against Microsoft.
If it takes 24 hours to look at the problem, find a solution, change the code and make it available on the web site, then they are admiting that they aren't fully testing the patches before releasing it... Where's the quality assurance ?
I don't think this time the consequences would be so important because, as far as I know, the pieces of code SCO claims to own, are located in parts of the Linux Kernel that almost nobody uses, like JFS and NUMA.
No, because we can compile that specific source code using the same compilers used to compile OLD SCO software versions and compare the binary files to find matching patterns.
We can also disassemble the binary files found the old SCO versions and see if the assembly code has any chance of being co-related to the source code in question.
That way, even if we cannot see the source code form the OLD SCO versions, at least we can check it it's using the same algorithms and the same sequences of logic code.
Because if WINE was an emulator, we could argue that the software is indeed running on windows, on top of a WINE virtual machine.
In that case, we could say the the physical computer running Linux and WINE is a high level computer and Windows is running on top of that computer.
There is nothing strange in this situation if you notice that most peripherals and controller chips have it's own builtin software (firmware) and even microprocessors are running on top of it's own internal microcode/nanocode software.
I don't think MS will go out of business in the near times, but as any other empire, one day it will vanish in the air. However, the first step before MS starts loosing marketshae is loosing mindshare and it's articles like this that make people start thinking that MS isn't a safe bet. Right now MS is the market leader and most people just follow the leader: many people making purchase decisions just buy MS products because it's the market leader and it has an invencible reputation, even if their products are inferior to the competition. As a mather of fact, many people just buy MS products and don't even look for alternative solutions. However, this kind of articles are the first wave of change. Change the way as people perceive MS and IT market. It changes the invencible perception about MS as more and more people start beleiving that the day when MS will desapear is geting each time more closer...
I've been a user of the X Window System since the earlier X10 days.
I still remember the transition from X10 to X11. However, version 11 is almost 15 years old and we never saw any version 12 (not that I beleive version numbering is any important).
Although I saw some nice extensions being added to the X protocol, there are many parts of the X window system that are now obsolete.
For instance the standard X11 font rendering system looks like it has been kept in the stone age (only recently the Xft extension solved part of the problem).
I really like the network transparency of X and the client-server model, because of all it's advantages and, if you look at it in detail, you will be surprised that it doesn't impose any performance penalty: because of the way the X protocol is implemented, commands are queued by the client and are sent to the server in batches, in order to minimize client/server context switching.
However, in the last 12 years we have seen the graphics hardware improove a lotm but the core X system didn't improove almost anything.
Now we have hardware capable of displaying full motion video, hardware video decompressing, anti-aliasing, alhpa-blending and transparency, 3D, etc.
Meanwhile, X got some extensions to support some of these features, but there are no "standard" APIs and the evolution has been very slow.
X is great, and many of the complaints about X that I regularly read here in/. are completely wrong, but we have to change a lot of things in the way the X window system is being developed and coordinated, in order to adapt to the future.
I'm certain all Iraqui people will love the freedom brought by the american army, maybe except:
Except the the civilian Iraquis killed by the American Army during the war.
and the civilian Iraquis injured during the war.
and the civilian population killed by the lack of aliments and medical supplies.
and the iraquis that already died because of the sanctions.
and the iraquis that will die in the future because of the unexploded american amunitions left in the fields
and all the iraqui children that will dye in the future victims of cancer due the depleted uranium used in the american ammonitions.
and the families and friends of all above.
Otherwise, all the remaining Iraquis left alive will love democracy and freedom.
I just expect the vast majority of Iraqui people don't vote for extremist leaders right in the first free elections.
Looking at the current Iraq demographics and the meadle east social movements, I think we might risk having an elected government in Iraq worst than the present one.
At least we are starting to know who are our enemies: SCO and SUN are showing their faces.
I don't think SCO has a chance:
1 - First, IBM has too many patents to counter-sue SCO.
2 - Second, I think most the stuff that IBM has been bringing to Linux, like their journaling file-system and LVM is very recent software, that was develloped by IBM staff and not derived from the ancient Sys-V.
3 - Even if we have to remove the parts developed by IBM from the current Linux kernels, we would still have sevaral alternative implementations.
4 - Evern if SCO has patents that cover some parts of the Linux kernel, they (SCO) have also been distributing Linux under the GPL. Consequently, they have offered permition for everybody use it.
5 - SCO can also be sued for using the Linux trademark: remember Linus owns the Linux trademark.
Finally, this shouldn't be a major concern to the open source community, becvause even if we couldn't use the Linux kernel, we could allways move to HURD or a BSD kernel.
For most aplications, users wouldn't see almost any change.
BSD has already had a batle in court and won.
Slashdot Mirror
In many of those changes, several sub-systems were completely replaced with entire new implementations.
If the system was just a copy, it would simply be a copy of some implementation and it wouldn't had been re-written so many times.
If you look at the Linux system as a whole, you might not notice many innovations: It's just a Unix/Posix implementation, but doesn't everybody keep talking about standards, intereoperability and application portability ?
Posix it's a standard and Linux just adhered to it. In order to be compliant it has to provide the same APIs and thats the reason it doesn't look much innovative at first sight.
However, if you look at the implementation of many subsystems, you will find many innovations and you will continue to see much more as time passes.
Right now Linux is like a laboratory workbench: there are people all over the world researching in operating systems and they are using Linux as their base systems instead of starting from scratch. We don't need to keep reinventing the weel everyday.
I think in the future you will see most innovations appear in Linux first and then get ported to other systems, until Linux finnaly takes over the world.
Hei, Dillon
It seems that you are working in some
inovative features.
I hope that in the way, you fill some patents
about your work (even if you don't agree with
software patents), because we are going to
need it in the upcoming patent fight against
Microsoft.
If it takes 24 hours to look at the problem, find a solution, change the code and make it available on the web site, then they are admiting that they aren't fully testing the patches before releasing it...
Where's the quality assurance ?
I don't think this time the consequences would be so important because, as far as I know, the pieces of code SCO claims to own, are located in parts of the Linux Kernel that almost nobody uses, like JFS and NUMA.
No, because we can compile that specific source code
using the same compilers used to compile OLD
SCO software versions and compare the binary files
to find matching patterns.
We can also disassemble the binary files found the
old SCO versions and see if the assembly code has
any chance of being co-related to the source code in question.
That way, even if we cannot see the source code
form the OLD SCO versions, at least we can check
it it's using the same algorithms and the same sequences of logic code.
costumers, this is good news.
Just tell them that you are evaluating Linux
and Open Source software and you will get
an extra discout...
Because if WINE was an emulator, we could argue that the software is indeed running on windows, on top of a WINE virtual machine.
In that case, we could say the the physical computer running Linux and WINE is a high level computer and Windows is running on top of that computer.
There is nothing strange in this situation if you notice that most peripherals and controller chips have it's own builtin software (firmware) and even microprocessors are running on top of it's own internal microcode/nanocode software.
I don't think MS will go out of business in the near times, but as any other empire, one day it will vanish in the air.
However, the first step before MS starts loosing marketshae is loosing mindshare and it's articles
like this that make people start thinking that MS isn't a safe bet.
Right now MS is the market leader and most people just follow the leader: many people making purchase decisions just buy MS products because it's the market leader and it has an invencible reputation, even if their products are inferior to the competition.
As a mather of fact, many people just buy MS products and don't even look for alternative solutions.
However, this kind of articles are the first wave of change. Change the way as people perceive MS and IT market. It changes the invencible perception about MS as more and more people start beleiving that the day when MS will desapear is geting each time more closer...
This can also be used to improove the power of
military laser weapons.
Regarding civilian aplications, this can also
improove the eficiency of cutting laser machines.
I still remember the transition from X10 to X11.
However, version 11 is almost 15 years old and we
never saw any version 12 (not that I beleive version numbering is any important).
Although I saw some nice extensions being added to the X protocol, there are many parts of the X window system that are now obsolete.
For instance the standard X11 font rendering system looks like it has been kept in the stone age (only recently the Xft extension solved part of the problem).
I really like the network transparency of X and the client-server model, because of all it's advantages and, if you look at it in detail, you will be surprised that it doesn't impose any performance penalty: because of the way the X protocol is implemented, commands are queued by the client and are sent to the server in batches, in order to minimize client/server context switching.
However, in the last 12 years we have seen the graphics hardware improove a lotm but the core X system didn't improove almost anything.
Now we have hardware capable of displaying full motion video, hardware video decompressing, anti-aliasing, alhpa-blending and transparency, 3D, etc.
Meanwhile, X got some extensions to support some of these features, but there are no "standard" APIs and the evolution has been very slow.
X is great, and many of the complaints about X that I regularly read here in
Yes, you are right: that's exactly why they will love the freedom.
American Army during the war.
Otherwise, all the remaining Iraquis left alive will love democracy and freedom.
I just expect the vast majority of Iraqui people don't vote for extremist leaders right in the first free elections.
Looking at the current Iraq demographics and the meadle east social movements, I think we might risk having an elected government in Iraq worst than the present one.
They are just interested in having some sort of encription system and then have laws to protect it.
It just doesn't mather if the technical aspects of the encription methods are strong or weak.
They just want to have laws to be able to go after anybody suspect of breaking the encription systems.
My advice to all the people doing research on ecription and security is this: just be very carefull..
Each day, I see the world getting each time more dependent on technologies, our lives are each time
more influenced by it.
That's why it's so important to have open standards and open source software: we don't want to have a single entity controling our lives.
I don't think SCO has a chance:
1 - First, IBM has too many patents to counter-sue SCO.
2 - Second, I think most the stuff that IBM has been bringing to Linux, like their journaling file-system and LVM is very recent software, that was develloped by IBM staff and not derived from the ancient Sys-V.
3 - Even if we have to remove the parts developed by IBM from the current Linux kernels, we would still have sevaral alternative implementations.
4 - Evern if SCO has patents that cover some parts of the Linux kernel, they (SCO) have also been distributing Linux under the GPL. Consequently, they have offered permition for everybody use it.
5 - SCO can also be sued for using the Linux trademark: remember Linus owns the Linux trademark.
Finally, this shouldn't be a major concern to the open source community, becvause even if we couldn't use the Linux kernel, we could allways move to HURD or a BSD kernel.
For most aplications, users wouldn't see almost any change.
BSD has already had a batle in court and won.
In the end, we will be stronger than now.