It’s hard to imagine that Linus Torvalds could have launched Linux without directly using earlier OS work, according to a report that has become controversial even before its scheduled publication Thursday.
Is Torvalds really the father of Linux?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The Register has a wonderful article about this mess. Every so often I worry that The Register is going soft, going mainstream. Then they publish something like this:
http://www.theregister.com/2004/05/20/tanenbaum_on_adti_brown/
They also link to what appears to be a blog by Andrew Tanenbaum, author of Minix, trying to correct the distortions of Brown’s book:
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/
Both are interesting and funny reads, but also a little scary. They demonstrate the ease with which corporations can spread slander, and get away with it.
In the book “Just For Fun” by Linux Torvalds and David Diamond [ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0066620732/qid=108508… ], I believe he claimed to use Minux to do the initial development until he had something he could work with.
Does it even matter if he is not the Father? He still was the driving force behind it!
While the divinity of Linus may be open to debate, the fact that he was the original author of linux is really a pointless argument at this point.
Even if Linus did simply copy Minix for the first version (which judging from the flamewar between Torvalds and Tannebaum on OS design is pretty unlikely) how much of that original piece of software is still there in 2.6? Is there any piece of the original Linux left in Linux?
How Linus began coding a POSIX-compatible monolithic kernel is well-documented history.
That he got the help of a small group of very talented people initially, and then was joined by more and more programmers worldwide, is also documented history.
Linus himself says clearly that he didn’t start from scratch, and Linux didn’t happen out of thin air: the concepts and the specs for what he wanted to do were there, among other sources in Minix, Xinu, the BSD code, the POSIX specs.
So, if there is controversy, it’s more probably due to the author of the “report” making some wild assertions.
Oh, and BTW, Linux is name of the kernel. The GNU/Linux OS is made up of a kernel, a compiler suite (gcc), a C library (glibc), and hundreds of GPLed packages, among other things the X Window system, etc…
Thanks for those links. They are both excellent reads. In particular, this quote from Tenembaum’s website is quite funny:
Thus, of course, Linus didn’t sit down in a vacuum and suddenly type in the Linux source code. He had my book, was running MINIX, and undoubtedly knew the history (since it is in my book). But the code was his. The proof of this is that he messed the design up. MINIX is a nice, modular microkernel system, with the memory manager and file system running as user-space processes. This makes the system cleaner and more reliable than a big monolithic kernel and easier to debug and maintain, at a small price in performance, although even on a 4.77 MHz 8088 it booted in maybe 5 seconds (vs. a minute for Windows on hardware 500 times faster). An example of commercially successful microkernel is QNX. Instead of writing a new file system and a new memory manager, which would have been easy, Linus rewrote the whole thing as a big monolithic kernel, complete with inline assembly code 🙁 . The first version of Linux was like a time machine. It went back to a system worse than what he already had on his desk. Of course, he was just a kid and didn’t know better (although if he had paid better attention in class he should have), but producing a system that was fundamentally different from the base he started with seems pretty good proof that it was a redesign.
<sarcasm>
It is great to see Microsoft using its resourses and time in this way to defeat Linux.
</sarcasm>
Linus is the creator of Linux. Period.
Here’s what Andy Tanenbaum, the creator of MINIX, has to say about his interview with Ken Brown:
http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~skylar/slashdotted/who_wrote_linux.html
He wasn’t favorably impressed with Brown, who hadn’t done his homework and knows next to nothing about the development of UNIX and the ability or lack thereof for one person to write a UNIX-like OS all by himself. Tannenbaum notes that Brown seemed more interested in proving that Torvalds had to have stolen something from someone than in learning any useful information. He also notes that Brown was very evasive about just who was funding this “report”.
How can one man, even if very gifted, write a Unix-like OS? He was only a university student, how can Linus compare to a team of talented engineers getting paid full-time to work on Unix?
…for Brown I hope.
Tanenbaum seems like a very admirable guy. I think it lends more to his position that he still criticised linux, and Linus for its design. It shows that he isn’t just a fanboy defending himself and “his people” but someone with an independent opinion.
Brown clearly doesn’t know what Tanenbaum meant, because he didn’t do ANY real research. What he said about Linux using Minix as a platform, is just like Brown using windows to write his article, yet it doesn’t contain any windows source code in it(yeah its not quite the same, but you get the point).
The fact that Linus designed linux very differently from Minix is a certain amount of proof right there.
Also remember that linux 1.0 wasn’t all that big or impressive. It really wasn’t impossible at all for 1 guy.
afaik, linux is a totally different design to minix. sure, linus did write some patches for minix before he started out on his own but so what. linux is a monolithic kernel, minix is a micro kernel. anyway, linus has put his source code out there so everyone could see it and modify it. it’s free (as in speech) and it has many contributors so there’s little point, let alone truth, to this story.
“A Microsoft spokesman confirmed that Microsoft provides funding to the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution.”
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:LrrM-OWH3n0J:www.wired.com/new…
linux/0,1411,52973,00.html+Alexis+de+Tocqueville+Institution+Microsof
t&hl=en
Mr. Tanenbaum started arguing with Linus over and over and
over again, (since 1991 ’till now)
about microkernel vs monolithic kernel
about which system (Minix/Linux) was superior
about how to bake a cake (could be, not ?)
and plenty of other silly things …
<sigh>
What’s his point anyway ?
Read Michael Wassil’s link to Any Tanenbaum’s site. He states that “By the time Linus started, five people had independently implemented the UNIX kernel.”
He also talks about personally knowing the engineers at Bell Labs that wrote UNIX. This guy has a lot of credibility, and his story is very informative.
“How can one man, even if very gifted, write a Unix-like OS? He was only a university student, how can Linus compare to a team of talented engineers getting paid full-time to work on Unix?”
The GPL, the GNU tool chain, and the internet.
There is an extended discussion on Slashdot (http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/04/05/20/1240256.shtml?ti…), where much of the discussion focuses on monolithic, vs. micro, vs. exokernels. The upshot of the discussion:
1) Monolithic kernels are faster and perhaps more secure.
2) Microkernels are just as fast and more secure.
3) Exokernels are hot, hot, hot!
4) Tannenbaum and Torvalds had a falling out over the issue.
As for “Anonymous'” question concerning one man writing a Unix like OS, Tannenbaum addresses that directly. He says it was done, not once, but six times before Torvalds did it. Brown’s inability to understand this was one of the reasons Tannenbaun concluded that Brown “was not one of the sharpest of knives.”
More information on Ken Brown & AdTI FUD (courtesy of original sources and searchers)
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=b6920e1.040…
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=108254&cid=9203839
http://linuxinsider.com/story/33873.html (ofcourse it comes from linuxinsider.com…)
It is interesting this person was already doing this in end 2002. There wasn’t any SCO suit back then, so it is interesting as to who they are related to. Ofcourse, i have my own personal conspiracy list with only 1 company in it…
2 general ?law threads
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040517002423242
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040520021144762
The VU servers are heavily attacked by /. readers. Mirrors:
http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~skylar/slashdotted/who_wrote_linux.html
http://www.os2.dhs.org/~skylar/slashdotted/who_wrote_linux.html
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=108254&threshold=1&c…
Seems to me there has to be a fair amount of assembler as a foundation to Linux where exactly did that come from?
There are differences between Linux, GNU & GPL, and I’d like people to notice this. Linux is a kernel, there are some programs coded by the GNU project, and some programs are published under the GPL liscense. There are differences between the three things, and you should be aware of these differences.
This is just my opinion.
PS. Linus is still my god.
“How can one man, even if very gifted, write a Unix-like OS? He was only a university student, how can Linus compare to a team of talented engineers getting paid full-time to work on Unix?”
Short answer: some people is very smart.
Slightly longer answer:
Read “Just for Fun” or “Rebel Code” (I recommend more the second) and you’ll find out. And of course remember he was “standing on the shoulders of giants”, or whatever is the say…
In fairness to him, he just has an academic disagreement with Linus, that’s all. When reading the infamous “flamewar” between Tanenbaum and Linus that happened in 92, Tanenbaum was the more “gentlemanly” of the two. Linus was the one who plain insulted Tanenbaum, although he later apologised.
The thing that gets me is the morons who wage holy wars over a silly thing like an OS. The actual people behind these projects, whether it’s KDE and GNOME devs or Linux and BSD devs, don’t care much for flamewars, they rightly care for improving their respective projects.
It’s usually the people that know less are the ones who spout off the most. I guess the saying “Empty vessels make the most noise.” holds some validity here…
How can one man, even if very gifted, write a Unix-like OS?
Yeah, I hear you, man – there’s no way that Kurt Skauen guy wrote all of AtheOS on his own!
</use of words expressing something other than their literal intention>
“Brown clearly doesn’t know what Tanenbaum meant, because he didn’t do ANY real research.”
Wait! If he didn’t do any research at all, why did he contacted AST then (AST addresses this in his article)? He must have had a reason for contacting AST, not mr. Cox, mr. RMS, mr. de Icaza, mr. Torvalds — who also have knowledge about this subject. I think he did little research and i think the person just doesn’t understand a lot of this because he isn’t technically inclined plus he didn’t understand why mr. AST “does not like” Linux. LinuxInsider, following its funded tradition, ofcourse quotes very selective giving libel a whole new dimension.
How could the author of SkyOS, even if very gifted, ever write a complete operating system that supports multithreading, SMP and a GUI entirely on his own, even without a reference design? Well, I don’t know, but he did.
And how could Dennis Richie & co, even if very gifted, ever write a complete operating system, including compiler, in the stone-age of computing, even without a reference design?
And then you wonder how Linus could make an OS, based on existing open standards, and using MINIX as reference design?
this study is very improtant in few aspects. there is this Kingston guy saying ok linus is not father of linux who cares? & that stuff well dude i lot of pople care. here we go back to fundamentals. what is open source?? it is about openness, about sharing codes, being free, trust. remeber open source is not about just community it is a lifestyle. however if this report is true (which i think is) it may well shake the whole foundation of open source comunity. there are also ppl saying that linus is our god & all that crap well ppl your god has failed. just imagine what if he has used unix code intially what does this mean?? now u understand the importance??? & if still not then go back & keep moaning like u ppl always do
“however if this report is true (which i think is) it may well shake the whole foundation of open source comunity. there are also ppl saying that linus is our god & all that crap well ppl your god has failed. just imagine what if he has used unix code intially what does this mean?? now u understand the importance??? & if still not then go back & keep moaning like u ppl always do”
the report is a lie and you have done nothing to substantiate it.
If parts of Linux sourcecode were copied from non-Free code (which, in contrast to what your believe, i do not believe) i would switch to Debian GNU/KNetBSD, Debian GNU/KFreeBSD, Debian GNU/HURD, Debian GNU/Linux-with-no-non-Free-copied-code or whatever other software is there. Really, the FLOSS world doesn’t collapse because of one of the many kernels stops to exist or has to be heavily modified.
“however if this report is true (which i think is)”
Do you still believe this to be true after you took Andrew Tanenbaum’s article, Linus’ article, and the other articles about Ken Brown & AdTI in account?
“there are also ppl saying that linus is our god & all that crap well ppl your god has failed.”
No no no. Their [not mine] god has failed according to your belief. Minor, important difference.
“If parts of Linux sourcecode were copied from non-Free code (which, in contrast to what your believe, i do not believe) i would switch to Debian GNU/KNetBSD, Debian GNU/KFreeBSD, Debian GNU/HURD, Debian GNU/Linux-with-no-non-Free-copied-code or whatever other software is there. Really, the FLOSS world doesn’t collapse because of one of the many kernels stops to exist or has to be heavily modified”
dude you can switch to any system of your choice no problem. however i was saying that this indeed will make a difference.
“Debian GNU/Linux-with-no-non-Free-copied-code”
thats funny i am saying imagine what if the source code has been used in early versions of linux kernal. (remeber xp still has some os/2 files . & don’t even get me started on that) & i am not even saying that linux should be banned & that. no linux is gr8 & it should flurish.
“Do you still believe this to be true after you took Andrew Tanenbaum’s article, Linus’ article, and the other articles about Ken Brown & AdTI in account? ”
yah like linus is going to say hey ppl remeber that kernal i wrote yes i coppied it. NO! plls say whatever they want. microsoft also says that IE is a secure browser (joke of the decade) as far as other ppl goes who knows may be true may be false. or he might have copied it from anyother source.
“No no no. Their [not mine] god has failed according to your belief”
yes this is accrding to my belife. ppl say linux is better than windows do they speak with everyone in mind?? NO! they say what they belive in.
p.s.: just a thought imagine something like this happening with WinXP just imagine how much work Egunia would have to do in reading & moderating down the comments. & at that time no one would have said who cares about it. all that matters is that it is in past. this is my question to all those ppl who have cared to read this much just ask this question to your self “Would you have defended Windows just the way u r defending linux??” don’t answer just calm down & think
“the report is a lie and you have done nothing to substantiate it.”
what am i suppose to do you think??? if i have had a proof woudn’t i have posted it to osnews??????? don’t you think????????at all???
this is just my opinion & if you don’t like it don’t read it.
This is just too funny! I see at least one poster to this article has found that this Ken Brown joker has been spreading FUD about Linux since 2002. I see that other posters are actually taking this FUD seriously(!) There is only one point we really need to pay attention to here:
The ‘foundation’ which originally published this unresearched pig slop, is funded by Microsoft. Big surprise there. The SCO debacle obviously is not working, so now Microsoft has resorted to even worse tactics in an attempt to discredit Linux in the marketplace, even to the point of attacking Linus himself. Were the Linux lineage, since it’s inception, not so well documented, this latest Microsoft FUD attempt would not appear to be as amateur and juvenile as it actually is. The fact that Microsoft would stoop to this level in order to keep Linux at bay, speaks worlds about the corporate mindset of Microsoft. I mean, if the public has not bought the SCO lies, why believe the public will now buy Ken Brown’s lies? Does Microsoft ever learn?
Microsoft perceieves Linux to be an extreme threat to its business, thus these latest tactics. As much as we may have argued back and forth in this forum as to whether Linux is “ready for the desktop” or not, Microsoft must surely think it is, or very close to being ready, else it would not be putting so much effort into it’s anti-Linux FUD machine.
according to the “study” one person can’t make an operating system.
I call bullshit he has never read OSNews, and Sky OS.
Sky OS the dream of just one Person.
ha ha i can’t belive you are actually saying this. microsoft won’t play such creppy games. common guys get a life
How can one man, even if very gifted, write a Unix-like OS? He was only a university student, how can Linus compare to a team of talented engineers getting paid full-time to work on Unix?
Greetings, AdTI intern!
But assuming you’re not astroturfing; have you ever seen one of the early Linux versions? They sucked big time. Not something I could do, but well within the grasp of a bright CS major who got his Master’s at 21.
Implementing the bare-basic functionality of a POSIX-compliant monolithic kernel is not an insurmountable challenge for someone with a solid CS background. Making it useful is a big challenge, which is where Linus’s real genius came in. What separated Linux from any number of other small-time Unices was his open approach to the development process. Because he accepted patches from basically anyone, unlike Stallman or Tanenbaum or the BSD team, Linux grew fast.
But really, take a look at the 0.x kernels. They were frickin’ awful.
It is clear that “aditya’s” comments were made with no knowledge of Tannenbaum’s page. While he defends his view as “just my opinion,” by failing to address Tannenbaum’s points, the opinion isn’t worth much. I would encourage “aditya” to read Tannenbaum, and then defend Brown. I’m sure “aditya” could do a very good job, were he/she to do so.
I’ll close on Torvalds’ alleged divinity: As a Christian, it’s hard to support the notion that Torvalds is divine, or even semi-divine. I’d settle for a reasonably gifted programmer who could work with others (flame-fest with Tannenbaum notwithstanding), and who has a sense of humor (http://www.linuxworld.com/story/44851.htm).
“thats funny i am saying imagine what if the source code has been used in early versions of linux kernal. (remeber xp still has some os/2 files . & don’t even get me started on that) & i am not even saying that linux should be banned & that. no linux is gr8 & it should flurish.”
That’s right, but the premise itself is weak given it isn’t back-upped with facts that it is to be considered “likely”. However, since i have a wild imagination, i putted some other options as alternatives to back up the statement: “if Linux does, it doesn’t necessarily lead to FLOSS dying automagically” (rephrased).
“dude […]”
Please don’t assume gender on the Internet. It is discriminating.
“[…] you can switch to any system of your choice no problem. however i was saying that this indeed will make a difference.”
No, “[…] […] would make a difference.”
Will implies it will happen between now and “some time”. Would implies “if it were true“. Will is based on certainity; belief is not. Therefore when we are basing a statement on belief, we use “would”.
“yes this is accrding to my belife. ppl say linux is better than windows do they speak with everyone in mind?? NO! they say what they belive in.”
When they say so, they provide arguments for that. Some don’t*, those are generally ignored. Some post weak arguments*, those are bashed away. The good arguments provide a good, in-depth discussion. You however, fail to state any arguments. What you do is stating your belief the article to be true and stating some what-if’s (aka FUD). Nothing more than that.
Given that, and your failure to provide arguments in addition to this article on which your belief is formed while i provide several sources (== arguments) which put doubt in the credibility and integrity of Ken Brown and AdTI which you chose to ignore i define you as “troll”. I’m done with you btw. The honor was mine. Bye.
[* doesn’t mean you should lower yourself to that same level.]
“ha ha i can’t belive you are actually saying this. microsoft won’t play such creppy games. common guys get a life”
Reading and comprehension pays. It is no secret that Microsoft funds ADTI. It is no secret that Ken Brown will write and publish whatever his corporate taskmasters have paid him to say. A little research goes along way. But, as in the SCO case, we pay astroturfers such as yourself no mind, as the Linux revolution rolls forward.
“How can one man, even if very gifted, write a Unix-like OS? He was only a university student, how can Linus compare to a team of talented engineers getting paid full-time to work on Unix?”
Remember that Linux is only the Kernel. Remember that a UNIX kernel is very small. When i started working on Unix, the kernel was smaller that vi ! (1985 – M6000 processor)
Study shows that Jesus not the father of Christianity!
By Mr Brown
Lindon, Utah
I have conducted an independant survey that claims that Jesus Christ was not the father of Christianity. After interviewing a leading expert in the field, Lou Cypher, I have concluded that Jesus couldn’t be the driving force behind the infamous religion, because HE DIED before it ever started!
Other research I am conducting disputes that black is the absence of color, and that fish swim rather than “fly” through the water.
“The ‘foundation’ which originally published this unresearched pig slop, is funded by Microsoft. Big surprise there. The SCO debacle obviously is not working, so now Microsoft has resorted to even worse tactics in an attempt to discredit Linux in the marketplace, even to the point of attacking Linus himself. Were the Linux lineage, since it’s inception, not so well documented, this latest Microsoft FUD attempt would not appear to be as amateur and juvenile as it actually is. The fact that Microsoft would stoop to this level in order to keep Linux at bay, speaks worlds about the corporate mindset of Microsoft. I mean, if the public has not bought the SCO lies, why believe the public will now buy Ken Brown’s lies? Does Microsoft ever learn?”
I’m getting a lil’ fed up with this stealth sponsored stuff. It makes me wondering wether is some kind of website/wiki/blog/database which contains information about sponsored investigations (by ie. Microsoft or SCO) which were either debunked or contain information about the contract, the money involved, the reasons, etc.
Tanenbaum’s account of the interview makes this thing even more bizarre.
I guess this Brown fellow is so clueless that he believes that Linus invented Gnome, KDE, GCC, and the other thousands of utilities that go along with a kernel.
In any case, if you read “Just for fun”, you’ll know that before Linus released the code, linux was basically some task-switching, vitual consoles, and a terminal dialer. In fact, IIRC, the whole reason he started linux was so he could learn about x86 and to have a terminal dialer for his university.
“Reading and comprehension pays. It is no secret that Microsoft funds ADTI. It is no secret that Ken Brown will write and publish whatever his corporate taskmasters have paid him to say. […]”
If i accept this premise to be true, how many people who read the article know or investigate this? How many people who have power (ie. over deciding what OS their company is gonna run) do know or investigate this?
Misinformation is not by all people regarded or known as misinformation. The percentage and influence is still there, in which extend is what i’d wish to know, but such information isn’t available to me.
There have been several interesting investigations on how humans believe certain things or how marketing works. If you repeat something often and more often, it’ll be accepted as true by people in the end while if not argumented well it could still be technically a fallacy. Another one is how humanity behave like sheep: i read one investigation where one person actually believed X were true while 4 others said X were false. In 1 of 5 times, the person said s/he believed X were false too, while actually s/he thought X were true before the others claimed it were false.
“It makes me wondering wether is some kind of website/wiki/blog/database which contains information about sponsored investigations (by ie. Microsoft or SCO)”
http://www.newsforge.com/business/02/10/25/056218.shtml?tid=19
According to Media Transparency (http://www.mediatransparency.org/), “Microsoft Corporation has provided financial support to AdTI.”
This article goes further to provide examples of previous information that AtDI has published:
“Just to show you how credible AdTI’s research is, a 1994 AdTI paper entitled “Science, Economics, and Environmental Policy: A Critical Examination” is often held up as a supreme example of “junk science” used by tobacco companies and anti-environmentalists in their attempts to alter public policy in their favor.”
Now, even I, as a smoker, can see through this ‘smokescreen.” Now what were you saying earlier about Microsoft, SCO & stealth campaigns???
Hmm Mediatransparancy didn’t have much information about Microsoft.
Here’s a few other interesting posts:
“tried and failed for 30 years to build UNIX-like systems”
Authored by: jfw25 on Thursday, May 20 2004 @ 07:53 AM EDT
This is provably false. And AT&T supplied the proof.
In the 1980s, I worked at a company named Charles River Data Systems,
which manufactured 68020-based computers with an operating system
named UNOS. UNOS was the first non-AT&T operating system to pass the
System V Verification Suite, in order to be certified by AT&T as UNIX
compatible. UNOS originated as an experiment by someone who wanted to
play around with “eventcounts”, a code synchronization mechanism
invented
by people at MIT. (Windows NT uses eventcounts also, it turns out.) UNOS
shared a lot of overall similarities to UNIX, as the implementors were all
familiar with UNIX, but it definitely wasn’t (originally) UNIX; the SVVS effort
required substantial additions and changes to UNOS.
Within a few months of UNOS passing the SVVS, another realtime operating
system (named LynxOS, if I recall) also passed the SVVS. So there are at least
two commercial counterexamples to this piece of nonsense.
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=200405200211447…
Writing a kernel – every semester at Carnegie Mellon
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 20 2004 @ 07:57 AM EDT
One of the Computer Science courses at Carnegie Mellon is 15-412: Operating Systems. In this course, you write a shell, a kernel, and a file system. The work is done in pairs. You don’t write for real hardware, but rather an emulator – the idea is that real hardware is poorly documented, buggy, and frequently has strange issues that require a lot of work to solve. The purpose of the course is to understand the concepts.
An overview of the kernel project
Writing a kernel isn’t very hard. Writing a _good_ kernel that is fast, reliable, scalable, etc. etc. is. The first linux kernel sucked. It’s taken a _long_ time for it to stop sucking.
Anybody who questions how one person could do an operating system on their own must first look at what the OS actually was. The userland stuff – utility functions, shells, etc. were all from the GNU project. Linus didn’t have to do them.
Ignoring the bad faith on the part of the book author, it’s important to understand that one person did _not_ do what we know now as Linux. One person did the kernel, in its first version. A kernel alone is useless.
I think the distinction between what Linus did entirely alone, and what Linux now is, is a very critical one. The claim, “one person alone couldn’t write that”, sounds plausible if you don’t know what “that” is referring to.
On a side note, at one point a company hired away all of the MIT AI Lab’s LISP development people except for Richard Stallman. They kept adding features to their version of LISP. RMS, personally, also kept adding features. Feature for feature, for two years, he personally matched their _team_. One person can do a lot, if they’re good.
A bit of background.
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=200405200211447…
Tanenbaum Responds: Linus Wrote Linux, ADTI’s Ken Brown Doesn’t Have a Clue and Should Apologize
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 20 2004 @ 08:21 AM EDT
“‘I want all of your readers to ask themselves, in the history of
computing, has anyone else ever written an operating system who never was a
licensee, didn’t have operating system experience, and didn’t have the source
code? How did he develop so much code in just six months? Everyone else has
taken years to develop operating systems…. Linus perpetuated the lie [that he
is the inventor of the Linux kernel], and I have a problem with this smarmy
attitude.'”
CTSS, IBSYS, OS360 & friends (IBM)
Exec8 (Univac)
GECOS (GE)
RT11/RSX11/VMS11/LINC8/TOPS (DEC)
?? (CDC, Seymor Cray)
Multics (academic then Honeywell)
CP/M (Digital Research, Gary Kildall)
Virtually every O/S in existence today started out as the
effort of a very small team. Above is a list I can
enumerate in 5 minute at 7 O-Clock in the morning before
my first cup of coffee.
The question is: Will this book sell any copies?
Another being: Why would a publisher expose themselves to
liability (obviously not having read the book, or any details other than what I
see here, would they be exposing themselves to a slander action)?
-W
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=200405200211447…
Canopy’s finger prints detected #2
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 20 2004 @ 08:42 AM EDT
When this story first came up, I guess Canopy were behind the book (my original post is repeated below).
I believe this http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/ pretty much confirms it.
At this point I was still thinking he might be a spy from SCO, but if he was, SCO was not getting its money’s worth.
Even the over generous Mr AT suspected something was up.
A spy? I think a better analogy is the Wendy Goldman Rohm book in the Caldera v Microsoft case (see below)
AST: Is SCO one of them? Is this about the SCO lawsuit?
KB: We have multiple funding sources
AST: Is Microsoft one of them?
KB: We have multiple funding sources
Okay, he hasn’t denied it. We would take that either way, so it ain’t definitive.
Brown flew over to Amsterdam to interview me on 23 March 2004. Apparently I was the only reason for his coming to Europe
He was extremely evasive about why he was there and who was funding him. He just kept saying he was just writing a book about the history of UNIX. I asked him what he thought of Peter Salus’ book, A Quarter Century of UNIX. He’d never heard of it!
Authors (except super rich folks like Stephen King) do not usually make expensive flights to do 1 interview, especially without doing any research before hand.
Now Ken Brown shows up and begins asking questions. I quickly determined that he didn’t know a thing about the history of UNIX, had never heard of the Salus book, and knew nothing about BSD and the AT&T lawsuit. I started to tell him the history, but he stopped me and said he was more interested in the legal aspects.
He’s interested in the “legal aspects” but doesn’t know about the history, or even the basic legal history?
He was confused about patents, copyrights, and trademarks.
Doesn’t that sound like Darl’s like reasoning, and SCO’s in general?
Finally, Brown began to focus sharply. He kept asking, in different forms, how one person could write an operating system all by himself. He simply didn’t believe that was possible.
Again this is a SCO argument.
SCO’s arguments boil down to (all have been used in court filings):
(1) There must be an infringement because Linux has similar concepts to UNIX.
(2) There must be an infringement because Linux advanced “too fast”.
(3) There must be an infringement because SCO feels that there are insufficient screen mechanism in open source for copyright, trade secrets and patents.
Repeat of previous post follows…
CANOPY’S FINGERPRINTS
During the 1998 Caldera v Microsoft trial, there was another book:
“Microsoft File: The Secret Case Against Bill Gates.” by Wendy Goldman
Rohm
ISBN 0-8129-2716-8
This book came out during the trial and was extremely damaging (in a PR way) to
Microsoft.
People that Rohm is known to have extensively talked to (she has quotes from
private meetings at Novell and WordPerfect for example), are, or very close to:
1. Duff Thompson (then Chief counsel Word Perfect, then at Novell — today on
SCO board!)
2. Dan Campbell (then CFO Word Perfect, then at Novell — today on SCO board!)
3. Ray Noorda (then former CEO of Novell — today owner of Canopy)
4. David Boies (then a DOJ lawyer — today a SCO lawyer!)
Regarding numbers 1, 2, and 3. In Rohm’s book we even get to discovery which
flights Thompson and Campbell took. What they said to each other at certain
meetings. We get to read Noorda’s gibberish poems. How this is relevant to the
theme of Rohm’s book, I do not know. But it certainly reads like people 1, 2
and 3 were major sources, and perhaps a big egogistical.
Next go back and read the news archive for 1998.
Microsoft were very upset when Rohm’s book came out. There is even speculation
that her book was part of the reason they settled.
Why were Microsoft upset? Because all sorts of confidential information (e.g.
depositions etc.) that they had given Caldera in discovery, … just happened to
be in Rohm’s book.
Microsoft wanted to find out who Rohm’s sources were. Rohm refused to tell them
her sources, but she did half-heartedly deny Caldera was the source (even if you
believe her, of course that leaves open Canopy for example).
This new book, follows the same pattern. The press release is even similar!
(Maybe CNET could track over some changes in Word and find some hidden info in
there?)
The other two big clues that the book was SCO inspired:
– “intellectual prooperty rights” in the press release. Not
copyright, not patents, not trade secrets, but the same vague Darlism
– “unix operating system”. The only companies that believes that unix
is an operating system and not a standard, or family of operating systemS, are
Canopy and SCO. Even Sun and Microsoft don’t agree with Canopy/SCO on this.
– the concept that “unix operating system” is a single piece of
software that can be owned outright by one entity is in the press release. it
isn’t explicitly stated by it’s implied. Again even Sun and MS do not agree —
they know that some versions contain their code, for example, and even have
received considerable royalties on the basis of that code.
– (weaker) there are a couple of sentences in there that look to me like they
were written by Darl and Kevin. Read carefully you can see what I mean.
MICROSOFT INVOLVEMENT?
It is not impossible that MS may have tipped off SCO/Caldera to talk to these
ADTI people, or helped them make a connection, or even fund the report
But the source material, at least in the press release, matches SCO/Caldera’s
take on things — not Microsoft’s
And it matches Canopy/Caldera’s past history, surprisingly closely, even right
down to the people involved.
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=200405200211447…
In the same thread, someone says:
The only connection I see is that ADTi and SCO both
receive money, directly, from Microsoft; ADTi in funding,
and SCO in licenses, as well as indirectly through baystar
referrals, etc.
See, that is exactly what i mean. I want to draw these structures too, and i know there’s more out there. Keywords: Rob Enderle from eWeek, Laura DiDio from LinuxInsider…
are there any os’s that use exokernel design?
“An OS is complicated, therefore it could not be fathered by one man” is the basic gist of it. What about SkyOS? That’s far more complex than the linux kernel in the mid 90s and is mostly the work of one man.
Anonymous: i read some IBM VM and Plan9 used similar principles to it. Maybe you find more info from here: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExoKernel
More investigation done by Justin Orndorff pointed out here
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=200405200211447…
There’s a few interesting links to public investigation done by this AdTI person.
Here is the URL for Linus own story of the first year.
http://www.sslug.dk/artikler/linux_history_1.html
And here is the story of the discussions with Tannenbaum.
http://www.sslug.dk/artikler/Linux_is_obsolete.txt
To me it clearly shows that one of Linus babies is the kernel.
both Andrew Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds deserve a lot of respect from all of us ignorant comp sci rookies. But one has to wonder how ignorant they must appear to Gods like Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.
“How can one man, even if very gifted, write a Unix-like OS?”
Heh, this is pretty funny in light of the fact that the initial version of **Unix itself** was pretty much the work of one man, Ken Thompson. The engineering teams came later. He of course had Multics to build on, which in turn built on previous operating systems…. None of this occurs in a vacuum, it’s all built on principles developed in previous work.
The statements as made about it being impossible to develope this system/kernel by a student are totally underwhelming.
Does this imply that there is no such thing as an original thought, that all thoughts must be based on previous thoughts? In that case he must have stolen the idea of stolen ideas?????
I guess that there must be no new inventions possible so the patent office should just close down.
This is a blatent attempt by the author to dismiss or cloud Linus T. efforts in developing the kernel and Linux in an effort to somehow to elevate himself to a higher and more noble position.
Guess what, I’m not buying it………
He’s spreading FUD and trying to bring Linus down into the MUD…….. so that makes him a MUDDER FUDDER, right???
With the tremendous advances Linux in general has made over the last few years, the dike has sprung a leak, and no force can stop the progress of this kernel/OS………
Reguardless of the claim of compromised roots (which I don’t know about or even care) the co-operative writing/modification of the code is so tremendously coordinated and administered and checked and verified that it has to be considered truly amazing.
It’s going to take a whole lot more that opinionated drivel to discourage the enlightened masses from continuing steadfastly on the progression of this work.
I applaude the hard-working coders/engineers on their progress and look forward to each new distrubition release.
I don’t like the Microsoft ideas of all the trackers and locking the OS into the CPU#/hardware recognition/registration scheme. I can live with the Family/household type license (I have about 20 computers) or the ” FREE ” licenses.
I have purchase practically every version of MS OS, but I have also purchase various versions of RedHat, ManDrake, Xandros, Libranet, and am a Lifetime Member with Linspire ( LindowsOS).
I will never purchase another MS product.
I look forward to the day that I will be MS free and that my total amount of money spent on Operating Systems will reflect more money towards Linux Distros than Windows.
Long live Linus!!!! ( Klaus Knopper, too)
The Floodgates are Opening!!!!!!
Prepare to swim, or get swept away…….
“How can one man, even if very gifted, write a Unix-like OS?”
This quote is so funny on so many levels. The first version of the Linux kernel is like 10,000 lines of code, all based on an established design and implemented in a very straight-forward manner (eg: none of the portability abstractions existed until a long time later). It is quite easy to see how one bright programmer could have done that. There are tons of other examples: NewOS, SkyOS, AtheOS, etc. UNIX is a fundementally simple design (that’s why it doesn’t suck). Its not unthinkable for one person to implement it. Indeed, the sheer beauty of it is that one person can hold all its salient points in mind at once, something that simply cannot be said for many other OSs.
Looks like Microsoft propaganda machine against linux is in full swing.
than just mud slinging. Really can’t wait for their desktop domination to end. I’ve been waiting since 1995 when I discovered the POS Windows 95 was and how they had mislead the computing world over what Windows 95 actually was.
Every OS released since then has been more of the same. Hyped ideas and concepts and the same old code with a prettier interface. Sure they tried to make an effort with NT kernel based OS’s but all the garbage they had to take accross from the Win9x familiy in the name of backwards compatability destroyed what could have been a fresh start for them. At least Apple was able to do the transition properly but it has taken them quite some years to get from Mac Classic to an upto speed version of OS-X.
NEXT.
ADTI accepts money from Microsoft, but Brown refuses to say how much. “We don’t talk about money with anybody … but we’ll accept money from anybody,” he said.
That says all that needs to be said.
When Toyota wanted to build their first elite car, the Lexus LS400, they bought various luxury vehicles and reverse engineered them. That doesn’t make a current Lexus a Mercedes, BMW or Jaguar.
Maybe Linus did originally reverse engineer Minix…tough titty. The 2.6 kernal doesn’t contain Minix code.
This FUD pure and simple. MS knows it is in very serious shit and is panicking. It is like spreading rumours that workers from a rival brewer piss in their beer.
Well, this study is closely tied to MS, so maybe we should ask ourselves: what does MS stand to gain by showing that Linux isn’t Torvalds’ “invention”?
Ideas?
I think people like Brown can be very ignorant. First of all he knew nothing of the history of Unix based OSes…As the Creator of MINIX, Second of all he just assumed that one man could not create an OS…. You would be amazed at some of the projects I have seen people do in my CS department at school. We are constantly coming up with new innovative ideas…. I my self ever thought of developing a Minix based OS just for fun. But I did some research and I need to focus more on school projects and theories than Re-inventing the wheel. But it still would be fun to try. And I see why Linus wanted to do it. I have the same interest as he did 10 years before me… I am offended that some one like brown could know nothing of the history and just point finders…. It is a terrible, terrible world were someone can just make up junk and post it like it is fact. Brown should be drug into the street and have his career taken from him. That’s just my 2 cents….
I ment to say….
“As the Creator of MINIX, verified that Brown knew nothing that he was talking about.”
Insted of
“As the Creator of MINIX,”