Linus not Linux, part IV
Posted on June 5, 2004
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 40 views |
Yesterday Ken Brown responded to all the criticisms levied towards Samizdat in Samizdat’s critics…
There’s a few choice pieces in this article, namely:
Linux is a leprosy; and is having a deleterious effect on the U.S. IT industry because it is steadily depreciating the value of the software industry sector. Software is also embedded in hardware, chips, printers and even consumer electronics. Should embedded software become ‘free’ too, it would be natural to conclude the value of hardware will spiral downward as well.
It’s that last line, that leap of logical fallacy that states any hardware using open-sourced software must by definition be worth less as a result, that gets me. I cannot think of a single reason, a single means by which the software running on a hardware platform could possibly impact the value of the hardware layer in an embedded device.
Free software may be free as in beer and speech but there’s nothing that says a distributor has to give the consumer access to the software. Locked away inside a device where the consumer can’t get at it? I can only see that as a win scenario for the vendor: they get to deliver free-as-in-beer software with the same access restrictions as they would have had they shipped proprietary software developed in-house. Except with few of the costs associated with proprietary software. How does that devalue the hardware again?
If someone else can think of how this might be, please let me in on it.
To me Brown’s response smacks of circumstantial evidence that SCO is behind this “study”. Critics of the paper have focused on it’s original attempts to discredit Linus as the true author of Linux and its attempt to prove that he stole source for it whereas Brown’s response now largely focuses on a strawman issue: “the Linux dev process has no real source-accountability process therefore how can we know that source wasn’t stolen?”
A subtle yet important shift in focus, that.
The report also seems to want to prove that Linux is derivitive of Minix, right down to stolen code. However the very developer of Minix disputes this but do they listen? Nope:
On his website, it seems now Tanenbaum is comparing the inventors of Unix, Dennis Ritchie, and Kenneth Thompson to Torvalds. This comparison if anything should demonstrate why AdTI was just not very convinced by the professor.
Why would you be convinced by the testimony of a man who develops operating systems as academic research projects for fun, who developed the very OS you purport was copied, and who then said “nope, wasn’t copied”. I mean, really, he certainly does lack credibility doesn’t he?
Yet Tanenbaum vehemently insists that Torvalds wrote Linux from scratch, which means from a blank computer screen to most people. No books, no resources, no notes — certainly not a line of source code to borrow from, or to be tempted to borrow from.
That such a patently absurd statement that its actually hard to believe it was written. Let’s use an analogy: I want to bake chocolate chip cookies - from scratch. Would anyone seriously doubt it was “from scratch” if I grabbed a cookbook, looked up a recipe, bought the ingredients, mixed them, and then baked? Hardly. Yet Brown would have us believe that as it pertains to operating systems “from scratch” implies developed in a clean room, sans network connection, sans prior art. Rubbish. Under those conditions writing something as trivial as Mine Sweeper would be inanely tough, fit only for the most devout code ascetic.
Meanwhile, an associate of mine asked Richard Stallman, who started with the Mach Kernel, why his GNU team could not build a kernel as fast as Torvalds.
One can only presume they’re referring to HURD, the development issues of which are the stuff of legend. I think most familiar with it’s development would argue the opposite position: if one man can develop the foundations of a kernel in a year, why hasn’t the GNU team managed to yet finish HURD? Google HURD for months of fun reading about the trials of development-by-consensus.
How much ‘inspiration’ did Linus get from Minix? AdTI argues clearly enough to credit the Prentice Hall product. Not in conversation either, but within the copyright and/or the credits files of the kernel. Quite noticeably, however, there is not one acknowledgement of Minix anywhere in the Linux kernel.
Again, more rubbish in the guise of an argument. In one fell swoop Brown attempts to distance himself from his accusations that Minix was stolen and now claims that it was the “inspiration”, and that because that’s never mentioned, that’s some form of nefarious treachery. What a crock. As every artist knows, no idea is original. Everything is derivitive to some degree or another but that doesn’t constitute theft. This sort of statement is just a hands-caught-in-cookie-jar “hey, look over there!” and “run away run away” attempt at deflection.
I like this statement:
Vrije University is a very cool place. AdTI encourages anyone that spends any time in Amsterdam to visit. At the good professor’s recommendation, AdTI spent a number of hours talking with Vrije university computer science faculty. They were great fun and extremely helpful. For that, we are also very grateful.
since the event was described by Tanenbaum, who works at the university, as:
…after he talked to me, he prowled the university halls buttonholing random students and asking them questions. Not exactly primary sources.
As Brown rhetorically asks in his post: “What is anybody suppose to believe?” I think in all cases I shall choose to believe the parties who’s integrity, methadology, and honesty are not being called into question by the entire open-source community.
Ultimately Brown’s response comes down to this: despite what everyone’s telling him, despite the catalogued, recorded evidence, despite corroborating testimony from the principles involved, he refuses to believe that Linux wasn’t directly based on stolen source code because… he just can’t believe it could be otherwise.
I think Eric Raymond summed it up best:
it is never wise to assume that genius programmers cannot do something because the incompetent or mediocre cannot.