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Man AdTI Hired to Compare Minix/Linux Found No Copied Code Thursday, May 27 2004 @ 05:01 PM EDT Andrew Tanenbaum has published the most remarkable email from the man hired by Ken Brown to do a line-by-line comparison of Minix and Linux, Alexey Toptygin, who summarizes his findings and posts them on the Internet: "Around the middle of April, I was contacted by a friend of mine who asked me if I wanted to do some code analysis on a consultancy basis for his boss, Ken Brown. I ended up doing about 10 hours of work, comparing early versions...

Ken Brown's forthcoming book, published by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, is embarrassingly mistitled Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' Of Open Source Code. No doubt you've heard of it by now, although more than likely you've only heard Andy Tanenbaum and others respond to it more than anything else. It's basically the world's largest troll, seasoned with more than a hint of flamebait. In the history of publishing there has never been a less scrupulous work than this book. It's a stinging insult to real books and genuine authors everywhere, harming the credibility of all of us who...

The copyright laws give an author exclusive rights to make derivative works. Creating a derivative work is a copyright infringement absent some license from the author -- or current copyright holder -- of the original work. Software is no different. Most of us are afraid of getting infected with a virus, whether it comes from a common cold or an attachment in our e-mail. Are open-source licenses viral in nature? Can they infect downstream users? The question is the subject of considerable debate. Companies refer to open-source software as "potentially viral software" in the end-user licenses that accompany their proprietary...

Linux represents the biggest threat that Microsoft has ever faced. No wonder IBM is spending billions to promote it. How is it that for eight months a team of up to a dozen IBM consultants has been toiling in the data centers and computer rooms of the Munich city government--free of charge? Having goaded Munich into embracing open-source software, IBM is helping it plan a migration of 14,000 computers off Microsoft Windows and onto the operating system known as Linux. Never mind that IBM doesn't sell Linux, which is distributed free. And never mind that Munich officials say they're not...

For those who don't know of it, slashdot.org is a "news for nerds" discussion site geared towards the Linux/open source community. The articles posted are mainly technically oriented although some regular news items get posted. The general tone is anti-capitalist, anti-Microsoft and anti-Bush, but there are a few posters who balance it out a bit. Most posters are left leaning, but the latest article shocked me with hundreds of extreme leftist comments. The topic, Michael Moore at Cannes. Cannes' Palme d'Or goes to Michael Moore As an example, one poster wrote: Even though I feel CNN is slanted to the...

IBM has asked the court for partial summary judgment, a declaration that IBM does not infringe SCO's copyrights by its Linux activities, in its Cross-Motion for Partial Summary Judgment on its Claim for Declaratory Judgment of Non-Infringement, telling the court that since SCO has been unable or unwilling for so long to show any infringing code, and shouldn't be allowed to now, they request the court to wrap this part of the case up and issue a declaration of noninfringement "with respect to IBM's Linux activities (the 'Tenth Counterclaim')." This is a cross motion, not just a motion, because, as...

Study says 100 million PCs to be replaced in 2004 By Dinesh C. Sharma CNET News.com May 20, 2004, 12:18 PM PT Nearly 100 million PCs are likely to be replaced this year, with 120 million being swapped out in 2005, according to data research firm Gartner released Thursday. The volume of replacements in the next two years will surpass the number of units replaced in the run-up to Y2K in 1998 and 1999, Gartner said. In 2004, replacement units will drive global shipments to 186.4 million--an increase of 13.6 percent over 2003. "Our first-quarter results suggest the...replacement cycle that...

The history of UNIX and its various children and grandchildren has been in the news recently as a result of a book from the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. Since I was involved in part of this history, I feel I have an obligation to set the record straight and correct some extremely serious errors. But first some background information. Ken Brown, President of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, contacted me in early March. He said he was writing a book on the history of UNIX and would like to interview me. Since I have written 15 books and have been...

Fedora Core 2 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. Fedora Core has expanded in this release to four binary ISO images and four source ISO images, and is available for both x86-64 and i386.

A study challenging the origins of Linux states that the open-source software frequently is taken or adapted from material owned by other companies and individuals. It also directly questions Linus Torvalds (news - web sites)' claim to be the inventor of Linux. The information is contained in a book by Kenneth Brown, president the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. Portions of the book will be released later this week. Brown conducted a comprehensive study on the source of open-source code, tracing the free-software movement over three decades, including interviews with some two-dozen principal developers of Linux, according to Gregory Fossedal, a...

Torvalds claim to "invent" Linux probably false, says new study Fri May 14, 5:49 PM ET Washington, DC (FeatureXpress) May 14, 2004 - Popular but controversial "open source" computer software, often contributed on a volunteer basis, is often taken or adapted without permission from material owned by other companies and individuals, a study by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution finds. Among other points, the study directly challenges Linus Torvalds (news - web sites)' claim to be the inventor of Linux (news - web sites). In one of the few extensive studies on the source of open source code, Kenneth Brown,...

Three interesting tidbits from two interviews with Darl McBride. First, there is this article [sub req'd] currently on the cover of Fortune magazine, and there is a second interview in the Spanish-language El Pais in April. First, from the El Pais interview, we learn that Darl went to Novell's Brainshare conference. Nobody recognized him. Apparently he slipped in after everyone settled into their seats and the program was beginning. He claims he almost asked Linus a question from the audience. He went, he says, because while you stay close to your friends, you want to stay closer to your enemies....

Thunder, a supercomputer recently installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is possibly the second-most powerful computing machine on the planet--and it was built by a company with about as many employees as a real estate office. California Digital, a 55-person company located on the outskirts of Silicon Valley, created Thunder from 1,024 four-processor Itanium 2 servers to perform a variety of tasks at the lab. Capable of churning 19.94 trillion operations per second, it would have ranked second in the Top 500 list of supercomputers published bi-annually by the University of Mannheim, the University of Tennessee and Lawrence Berkeley National...

Why The Markets Still Don't Trust Linux Linux has only recently begun to regain credibility in the financial markets since its speculative debut. However, its licensing model, hefty competition, and lack of maturity still worry investors. Companies such as Red Hat, long past its 1999 speculative highs, are slowly gaining ground while other Linux companies, such as Linspire, are planning initial public offerings. Is Linux finally becoming a viable alternative to proprietary operating systems, or is this rise simply a byproduct of a mini-tech bubble? The past and present of Linux in the markets The infamous Linux debut came from...

Gartner: Worms Jack Up the Total Cost of Windows May 5, 2004 (2:58 p.m. EST) By Gregg Keizer, TechWeb News Dealing with widespread worms like Sasser raises the cost of using Windows, a research analyst said Wednesday. Mark Nicolett, research director at Gartner, recommended that enterprises boost spending on patch management and intrusion prevention software to keep ahead of worms, which are appearing ever sooner after vulnerabilities in Windows are disclosed. This is part of the carrying cost of using Windows, said Nicolett. The cost of a Windows environment has gone up because enterprises have to install security patches very...

Microsoft's Australian MD Steve Vamos has revealed the latest line in its battle against Linux: Linux, it seems, is not open source. As the concept of open-source takes hold, not only with fanatical individuals but with governments across the world who like the idea of a freely accessible source code, Microsoft is attempting to drive a wedge between the idea of open source and the reality of Linux. Stressing that Linux is "not free", Vamos said open source is a development methodology that should not be confused with the commercial nature of Linux distributions. "Open source is not [solely] Linux,"...

"Developers who believe 'software should be free' cannot prevail against the U.S. Congress and voices of seven U.S. Supreme Court justices who believe that 'the motive of profit is the engine that ensures the progress of science,'" McBride said in an open letter recently. "Our system of copyright laws is built on the foundation of the U.S. Constitution." The SCO Group is amending its federal lawsuit against IBM (NYSE: IBM) , changing its legal tactics in the ongoing public drama over Linux software. But contrary to some reports in the press, the company didn't claim earlier in a letter that...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - In a sign that demand is growing for alternatives to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software, Red Hat Inc. will release a version of the Linux operating system and other programs tailored for desktop computers in corporations, universities and government agencies. Red Hat Desktop, announced Tuesday in London, will be targeted at organizations that are looking to upgrade their PCs but don't want or need all the features that ship with the latest version of Windows, said Matthew Szulik, Red Hat's chief executive."These organizations now, for the very first time, have an alternative to the historical Microsoft-desktop...

The open-source Linux operating system is just one of several choices for desktop computers, enterprise servers and other common implementations. Sometimes it is chosen, but often it is not. But at the high end of the computational power range -- in supercomputers built by national laboratories, NASA or the Defense Department from clusters of processors -- Linux is rapidly gaining ground on Unix as the operating system of choice.

Dear SBC Internet Services Member: This is an extremely important update to an e-mail SBC sent you 04/30/04 or 05/01/04. It is extremely important you read this message and take immediate action if you are using Windows NT, 2000, 2003 or XP. In addition to a computer worm referred to as Gaobot or Agobot, that is currently infecting computers across the Internet, there is now another computer worm, known as Sasser, that is spreading across the Internet, exploiting the same apparent security vulnerability in these Microsoft Windows operating systems. In response, we strongly urge you to immediately take the following...