Allow me to use this response to reply also to the others in this thread
who have asked why United Devices does not release the source code to the
agent software. After addressing this more general question, I'll try to
respond to your other, more specific, statements.
If you are asking why the THINK code is not available...
The primary reason that United Devices does not release the source code to
the THINK application is because it is not our code to release. The THINK
application is the brainchild of Keith Davies of Treweren Consultants Ltd.
and has been developed with the possibility of being released as a commercial
product. In acknowledgement of the non-profit motives of the
Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project and in return for the valuable
feedback provided by such a massive deployment, Treweren has allowed the use
of their code for this project.
If you are asking why none of the code is available...
Perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of this issue is the
opecodeauth
white paper written by distributed.net's Jeff Lawson (also a United Devices employee). As most are aware,
distributed.net only releases 99% of its code, and withholds the critical
protocol and buffer format code as a supplement to the security of the system.
Until someone solves the dilemma of trusting work performed by an untrusted
machine, obscurity will always be a desirable component of any internet-based
distributed computing effort.
In the absence of open source, United Devices is relying on other factors to
influence the internet community to trust its motives. In the general sense,
we hope that the combined SETI@home and distributed.net pedigree might encourage
you to trust that we're doing things the right way. In the more specific sense
of the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project, we trust that the
endorsement and support of our partners speaks volumes on the integrity of
this project.
The bottom line is, there are a great number of indicators which you should use
to evaluate the integrity and sincerity of an organization, for-profit or not.
While open source is a virtually unassailable endorsement, it is not the only
tool at your disposal as you try to detect if UD is trying to do something
illicit. Heck, perhaps
it's naive of me, but I like to think that my presence and attention in this
forum (and my leet, low user ID #) supplement UD's image in some small, geeky,
inconsequential way.
As to your rephrasing of today's exchange on slashdot, I must
respectfully disagree. Michael's comments in the article body were far
more inflammatory than your simple condensation indicates. Moreover, there was
no justification or corroboration for the claims that UD was poised to violate
the trust and agreements contained in the description of the project as provided
by both Intel and United Devices. The license on the UD software is nothing
noteworthy, and is the normal fare for any organization trying to conduct
business with the benefit of legal input. I think it's quite clear that
Michael's opinion of the project existed prior to his creative and
conspiratorial interpretation of the license agreement.
I also think that my response can be more accurately summarized as "No, no, UD
can certainly be trusted because it has done nothing to invoke suspicion.
Moreover, its founders and core staff have established a respectable reputation
and history in the net community, and within slashdot as well, both in the form
of distributed.net and SETI@home. If you're going to accuse United Devices of
ill intent, you should be prepared to back those accusations with something
more substantive than 'it is possible that they are bad'".
You may feel that my response did "little or nothing to address [the questions
raised]", but I would argue that my previous response, as well as this one, not to mention the FAQ and information published in relation to this project have
provided considerably more supporting evidence and information that we've seen
provided by michael to substantiate his accusations in this article. It's hard
to provide less support than the "none" that he was satisfied with providing.
Thanks for the opportunity to respond, and for the lucid response to my earlier
post.
Actually, Intel and United Devices do promise exactly that. If you download the agent from the Intel site, it will only participate in the Think cancer app. The FAQ explains this.
United Devices is a seperate company from the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit distributed.net. However, United Devices hired en masse the core developers from distributed.net in November of last year.
In this way, the two are entwined and interrelated. United Devices' heritage is both distributed.net, as well as SETI@home. United Devices' CTO is Dr. David Anderson, the founder of the SETI@home project.
There will always be a need for noncommercial distributed computing, and distributed.net will continue to push in that direction. However, there is a demand for commercial distributed computing, and United Devices is well-poised to contribute to that enterprise.
It is, however, reprehensible to accuse a company of bait-and-switch tactics when there is no such activity taking place, and two minutes of research reading the site in question explains this fact.
The only unethical behavior I see is Michael's disregard for journalistic integrity in his choice to accuse Intel, United Devices, Oxford University, and the National Foundation for Cancer Research of dishonesty without even attempting to support his claims.
Full disclosure: I'm a United Device employee, a SETI@home enthusiast, distributed computing
fanatic, and co-founding board member of distributed.net.
This is certainly an unfortunate editorial, mainly because it's being presented as news.
The suspicions and accusations are quite unwarranted. At least now I know why my original
submission of this news, with facts instead of rantings, was rejected this morning.
I'm not sure if Michael's bile is targeted at Intel (for their "disgusting" website?) or at
United Devices.
I doubt he's upset at Oxford University or the National Foundation
for Cancer Research, he's certainly thrown them into the mix as well.
The UD/Intel project is a genuine, noble attempt to cure cancer, and to try to
spin it as anything else is a misrepresentation of the facts.
If you download the UD agent from the Intel site,
your cycles will only be used on the Think application. United Devices will not
claim any cycles or bandwidth on your machine for any commercial tasks.
Users may, at their option, choose to participate in
United Devices commercial tasks, and in return they'll be elgible for whatever compensation
and remuneration that commercial work brings with it. There are a variety of promotions at
present, although none that I'm aware of involve beads. The way I see it, getting paid for
a resource I'd otherwise waste is a good deal, no matter what the compensation. Sure beats
the alternative.
The speculation about UD's motives for participating in this project are also quite sketchy.
I would have hoped that the SETI@home and distributed.net heritage might have given United
Devices the benefit of the doubt here, but in case that's not sufficient there are a number
of plausible and compelling reasons why United Devices might wish to participate in finding
the cure for cancer that don't involve the conspiracy and speculation offered by slashdot.
We anticipate this project quickly growing to become the largest distributed computing
project ever. As wildly popular as SETI@home and distributed.net have been, the number
of people whose lives have been affected by cancer is daunting. For United Devices, this
represents an ideal proof of concept and validation of distributed computing technology.
Intel's arguable misuse of the phrase "peer-to-peer" is, while technically inaccurate,
certainly with common usage. United Devices was present, along with all the other
commercial distributed computing companies, at the recent O'Reilly Peer to Peer
conference where CmdrTaco and Hemos spoke. The "P2P space" is broadly defined at present,
mainly because nobody's quite sure how all these quasi-related technologies will take hold
in the coming months. Bundled together with Napster, Mojo Nation, Freenet, and even the
groove.net folks isn't all that bad a place to be. Regardless, calling this project "P2P"
is certainly acceptable current usage of the term. I have no idea how it qualifies as
"disgusting".
If you choose not to read the documentation, it's still quite safe to assume that "all this
client does is work on curing cancer" because that's indeed what it does. We (at United
Devices) hope that some people will choose to also work on other United Devices projects,
commercial or not, but we benefit greatly regardless.
I can assure you, the United Devices agent will never download kiddie porn or get you in
trouble with the FBI. I feel silly having to explain this, though. I mean, honestly.
Is it possible that someone was genuinely worried that this might be the case?
As for the rest, I'll let Oxford University's reputation as an honorable and worthy
organization and the National Foundation for Cancer Research's endorsement speak for
themselves. Oh, that and the fact that Oxford has stated that they'll be making the results
of the research available to anyone who wants it.
The problem is that this assumes that all content is copyrighted in the first place
A pretty safe assumption to make, since it's an accurate rephrasing of how copyright works. If you create a song or a piece of code, it is copyrighted and you "own" the rights to dictate its use. Unless you specifically place it into the public domain, your copyright allows you to license that material as you see fit.
I must admit, though, I do not understand your assertion that the proposal makes any inferences regarding the longevity of copyrights.
Yes, but RMS says many things which make for great soundbytes and mantras but fail to withstand the scrutiny of logical interpretation.
I'm going with my observations here -- The GPL seeks to control the distribution of covered code, and cannot do that without the power of copyright. Eliminating copyright won't magically destroy the proprietary software world. If anything, history indicates that a lack of copyright protection for software makes the world a lot less convienent and useful for users.
So how, exactly, would destroying copyright be a "win" for the proponents of the GPL? They'd lose their ability to protect their code as they choose and gain nothing that they do not already have.
It seems worthwhile to point out the often-neglected RFC1876 which is an established method of using DNS LOC records to accomplish this sort of thing on a voluntary basis.
The DNS LOC (location) resource record is designed to make this data available. Using the distributed nature of the Domain Name System, it allows individual organizations to manage their own latitude and longitude information (including the use of deliberately imprecise data when needed for security reasons), while making the data available to all who need it without requiring a single point of failure hosting a large database of location information.
RFC1876 has been long-championed by these guys. If you're a DNS admin, please consider joining the movement! It's fun and useful to list your LOC.
Why is it that all the people in this thread defending what Stallman said and damning Microsoft have clearly never actually used Kerberos in their lives and certainly have no practical experience with Win2K/MIT Kerb interoperability.
I couldn't give a good god damn less what you may or may not vaguely recall reading when this was a hotly-debated issue on slashdot several months ago.
My actual experience trumps your fuzzy recollections every day of the week.
For what it's worth:
There is no click-through anything on the microsoft kerb interoperability documentation. Perhaps there was at one time, probably the result of a misguided lawyer, but it's not there now and hasn't been there for a long time. For whatever reason, Microsoft has apparantly realized that their previous position was untenable and they're doing the right thing now.
MIT Kerberos and Win2K's kerb implementation are 100% interoperable
Microsoft's use of the vendor auth space in the kerb spec is RFC-compliant and their use of the space in the protocol is exactly the type of use that the protocol was designed to support
There's nothing preventing a Win2K client from authenticating against an MIT Kerb realm instead of a Win2K domain server. I know this because I'm currently logged into an MIT realm in exactly the way you describe is impossible. (or, rather, that you "can't remember which" but sort of recall people saying)
*IF* you decide to use *someone elses* code, the GPL requires you keep the code free
No, this isn't accurate. More accurately stated: *IF* you decide to use *someone elses* code, the GPL requires you to make *your* code as available as the original (GPL'd) code.
The GPL obviously doesn't concern itself with keeping the original code available, since there's no way for a coder to make the original GPL'd code unavailable simply by using it.
The teeth of the GPL sink deeply into the potential future work of other programmers, not the covered code.
If someone were to take your GPL'd code and refuse to share their changes, they are not imprisoning software you gave freely. They are not allowing you access to software that you wrote, and software that some would argue you have no right to dictate the license for. After all, they wrote it (the changes), not you.
I'd argue that if you want to prevent people from using your code in this way (which is what the GPL is designed to do) then you aren't giving freely. You're giving conditionally, and those conditions are spelled out in the restrictions of the GPL.
So, I guess, no, we're not clear yet.
Re:You get what you pay for...
on
DSL Woes
·
· Score: 2
For what it's worth... It still costs $100+ for a dedicated 28.8 connection. I was paying $150/month for my dedicated 33.6 connect and/28 subnet right up until the day I moved to Austin in November. (Now I'm blisfully happy with my $90/month 144kbps IDSL from speakeasy.net)
Slashdot Mirror
If you are asking why the THINK code is not available...
The primary reason that United Devices does not release the source code to the THINK application is because it is not our code to release. The THINK application is the brainchild of Keith Davies of Treweren Consultants Ltd. and has been developed with the possibility of being released as a commercial product. In acknowledgement of the non-profit motives of the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project and in return for the valuable feedback provided by such a massive deployment, Treweren has allowed the use of their code for this project.
If you are asking why none of the code is available...
Perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of this issue is the opecodeauth white paper written by distributed.net's Jeff Lawson (also a United Devices employee). As most are aware, distributed.net only releases 99% of its code, and withholds the critical protocol and buffer format code as a supplement to the security of the system. Until someone solves the dilemma of trusting work performed by an untrusted machine, obscurity will always be a desirable component of any internet-based distributed computing effort.
In the absence of open source, United Devices is relying on other factors to influence the internet community to trust its motives. In the general sense, we hope that the combined SETI@home and distributed.net pedigree might encourage you to trust that we're doing things the right way. In the more specific sense of the Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project, we trust that the endorsement and support of our partners speaks volumes on the integrity of this project.
The bottom line is, there are a great number of indicators which you should use to evaluate the integrity and sincerity of an organization, for-profit or not. While open source is a virtually unassailable endorsement, it is not the only tool at your disposal as you try to detect if UD is trying to do something illicit. Heck, perhaps it's naive of me, but I like to think that my presence and attention in this forum (and my leet, low user ID #) supplement UD's image in some small, geeky, inconsequential way.
As to your rephrasing of today's exchange on slashdot, I must respectfully disagree. Michael's comments in the article body were far more inflammatory than your simple condensation indicates. Moreover, there was no justification or corroboration for the claims that UD was poised to violate the trust and agreements contained in the description of the project as provided by both Intel and United Devices. The license on the UD software is nothing noteworthy, and is the normal fare for any organization trying to conduct business with the benefit of legal input. I think it's quite clear that Michael's opinion of the project existed prior to his creative and conspiratorial interpretation of the license agreement.
I also think that my response can be more accurately summarized as "No, no, UD can certainly be trusted because it has done nothing to invoke suspicion. Moreover, its founders and core staff have established a respectable reputation and history in the net community, and within slashdot as well, both in the form of distributed.net and SETI@home. If you're going to accuse United Devices of ill intent, you should be prepared to back those accusations with something more substantive than 'it is possible that they are bad'".
You may feel that my response did "little or nothing to address [the questions raised]", but I would argue that my previous response, as well as this one, not to mention the FAQ and information published in relation to this project have provided considerably more supporting evidence and information that we've seen provided by michael to substantiate his accusations in this article. It's hard to provide less support than the "none" that he was satisfied with providing.
Thanks for the opportunity to respond, and for the lucid response to my earlier post.
See the very first line of my post, that begins "Full Disclosure..."
Actually, Intel and United Devices do promise exactly that. If you download the agent from the Intel site, it will only participate in the Think cancer app. The FAQ explains this.
In this way, the two are entwined and interrelated. United Devices' heritage is both distributed.net, as well as SETI@home. United Devices' CTO is Dr. David Anderson, the founder of the SETI@home project.
There will always be a need for noncommercial distributed computing, and distributed.net will continue to push in that direction. However, there is a demand for commercial distributed computing, and United Devices is well-poised to contribute to that enterprise.
The only unethical behavior I see is Michael's disregard for journalistic integrity in his choice to accuse Intel, United Devices, Oxford University, and the National Foundation for Cancer Research of dishonesty without even attempting to support his claims.
This is certainly an unfortunate editorial, mainly because it's being presented as news. The suspicions and accusations are quite unwarranted. At least now I know why my original submission of this news, with facts instead of rantings, was rejected this morning.
I'm not sure if Michael's bile is targeted at Intel (for their "disgusting" website?) or at United Devices. I doubt he's upset at Oxford University or the National Foundation for Cancer Research, he's certainly thrown them into the mix as well.
The UD/Intel project is a genuine, noble attempt to cure cancer, and to try to spin it as anything else is a misrepresentation of the facts.
If you download the UD agent from the Intel site, your cycles will only be used on the Think application. United Devices will not claim any cycles or bandwidth on your machine for any commercial tasks. Users may, at their option, choose to participate in United Devices commercial tasks, and in return they'll be elgible for whatever compensation and remuneration that commercial work brings with it. There are a variety of promotions at present, although none that I'm aware of involve beads. The way I see it, getting paid for a resource I'd otherwise waste is a good deal, no matter what the compensation. Sure beats the alternative.
The speculation about UD's motives for participating in this project are also quite sketchy. I would have hoped that the SETI@home and distributed.net heritage might have given United Devices the benefit of the doubt here, but in case that's not sufficient there are a number of plausible and compelling reasons why United Devices might wish to participate in finding the cure for cancer that don't involve the conspiracy and speculation offered by slashdot.
We anticipate this project quickly growing to become the largest distributed computing project ever. As wildly popular as SETI@home and distributed.net have been, the number of people whose lives have been affected by cancer is daunting. For United Devices, this represents an ideal proof of concept and validation of distributed computing technology.
Intel's arguable misuse of the phrase "peer-to-peer" is, while technically inaccurate, certainly with common usage. United Devices was present, along with all the other commercial distributed computing companies, at the recent O'Reilly Peer to Peer conference where CmdrTaco and Hemos spoke. The "P2P space" is broadly defined at present, mainly because nobody's quite sure how all these quasi-related technologies will take hold in the coming months. Bundled together with Napster, Mojo Nation, Freenet, and even the groove.net folks isn't all that bad a place to be. Regardless, calling this project "P2P" is certainly acceptable current usage of the term. I have no idea how it qualifies as "disgusting".
If you choose not to read the documentation, it's still quite safe to assume that "all this client does is work on curing cancer" because that's indeed what it does. We (at United Devices) hope that some people will choose to also work on other United Devices projects, commercial or not, but we benefit greatly regardless.
I can assure you, the United Devices agent will never download kiddie porn or get you in trouble with the FBI. I feel silly having to explain this, though. I mean, honestly. Is it possible that someone was genuinely worried that this might be the case? As for the rest, I'll let Oxford University's reputation as an honorable and worthy organization and the National Foundation for Cancer Research's endorsement speak for themselves. Oh, that and the fact that Oxford has stated that they'll be making the results of the research available to anyone who wants it.
What an embarassment for slashdot.
A pretty safe assumption to make, since it's an accurate rephrasing of how copyright works. If you create a song or a piece of code, it is copyrighted and you "own" the rights to dictate its use. Unless you specifically place it into the public domain, your copyright allows you to license that material as you see fit.
I must admit, though, I do not understand your assertion that the proposal makes any inferences regarding the longevity of copyrights.
I'm going with my observations here -- The GPL seeks to control the distribution of covered code, and cannot do that without the power of copyright. Eliminating copyright won't magically destroy the proprietary software world. If anything, history indicates that a lack of copyright protection for software makes the world a lot less convienent and useful for users.
So how, exactly, would destroying copyright be a "win" for the proponents of the GPL? They'd lose their ability to protect their code as they choose and gain nothing that they do not already have.
The DNS LOC (location) resource record is designed to make this data available. Using the distributed nature of the Domain Name System, it allows individual organizations to manage their own latitude and longitude information (including the use of deliberately imprecise data when needed for security reasons), while making the data available to all who need it without requiring a single point of failure hosting a large database of location information.
RFC1876 has been long-championed by these guys. If you're a DNS admin, please consider joining the movement! It's fun and useful to list your LOC.
I couldn't give a good god damn less what you may or may not vaguely recall reading when this was a hotly-debated issue on slashdot several months ago.
My actual experience trumps your fuzzy recollections every day of the week.
For what it's worth:
Unless (s)he wants to link the code (s)he has written with GPL'd code, in which case (s)he doesn't get to choose the license.
Unless (s)he wants to use code which is GPL'd as a component of the code (s)he writes, in which case (s)he doesn't get to choose the license.
s/They are not allowing you access to software that you wrote/They are not allowing you access to software that they wrote/
No, this isn't accurate. More accurately stated: *IF* you decide to use *someone elses* code, the GPL requires you to make *your* code as available as the original (GPL'd) code.
The GPL obviously doesn't concern itself with keeping the original code available, since there's no way for a coder to make the original GPL'd code unavailable simply by using it.
The teeth of the GPL sink deeply into the potential future work of other programmers, not the covered code.
If someone were to take your GPL'd code and refuse to share their changes, they are not imprisoning software you gave freely. They are not allowing you access to software that you wrote, and software that some would argue you have no right to dictate the license for. After all, they wrote it (the changes), not you.
I'd argue that if you want to prevent people from using your code in this way (which is what the GPL is designed to do) then you aren't giving freely. You're giving conditionally, and those conditions are spelled out in the restrictions of the GPL.
So, I guess, no, we're not clear yet.
For what it's worth... It still costs $100+ for a dedicated 28.8 connection. I was paying $150/month for my dedicated 33.6 connect and /28 subnet right up until the day I moved to Austin in November. (Now I'm blisfully happy with my $90/month 144kbps IDSL from speakeasy.net)