Tanenbaum Rebuts Ken Brown

Stephan Schulz writes "Andrew Tanenbaum has rebutted Ken Brown's reply to his original comments on the (in)famous AdTI report on Linux's origin. It's quite entertaining, and leaves little doubt (well, even less than before) that Brown is conciously twisting the truth. Choice excerpt: 'I'm pretty animated all the time. But I only get tense when people try to put words in my mouth. After half an hour of repeatedly answering the question "Could Linus have written the Linux kernel by himself?" in the affirmative, I was getting a bit irritated. ... People who know me would probably confirm that I do not suffer fools gladly.' I'd add that being called 'the good Professor' repeatedly would have me exploding in no time..."

Rebuttal to the rebuttal..

[the_rajah (749499)]

So I guess this is the rebuttal to the rebuttal of the first rebuttal.. :-) Well done Andrew Tanenbaum!

Why doesn't KB just cut his losses and slink away before he's made a greater fool of, if that's possible. I suspect that his check has cleared the bank by now.

"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain

Re:Rebuttal to the rebuttal..

[captain_craptacular (580116)]

Why doesn't KB just cut his losses and slink away before he's made a greater fool of, if that's possible.

Are you kidding? He's trying to sell a book, it's 100% in his best interest to stay in the spotlight as long as possible no matter what that takes. Who's the greater fool, KB with his million dollars in book revenue or the people who laugh at him on /. all day, confident in their superiority.

Re:Rebuttal to the rebuttal..

[peeping_Thomist (66678)]

Who's the greater fool, KB with his million dollars in book revenue

It's being published through a vanity press, not a real publisher.

Re:Rebuttal to the rebuttal..

[inode_buddha (576844)]

Not true - as mentioned elswhere here and on Groklaw, it's being published by a "vanity" press, which means no huge advances, royalties, or anything. He'll be lucky to break even on the publishing costs.

Re:Rebuttal to the rebuttal..

[ron_ivi (607351)]

Don't people think he was hired (i.e. paid) to do this political lobbying?

Re:Rebuttal to the rebuttal..

[Maestro4k (707634)]

• Are you kidding? He's trying to sell a book, it's 100% in his best interest to stay in the spotlight as long as possible no matter what that takes. Who's the greater fool, KB with his million dollars in book revenue or the people who laugh at him on /. all day, confident in their superiority.

Personally I think KB may turn out to be the bigger fool in the end. We can conspire about why he's so driven to his (repeatedly refuted) belief that Linus couldn't have written Linux without ripping someone else's code off all day, but the fact remains that KB's own consultants have contradicted him! Frankly I would suspect continuing to go to print with such a claim (even though it's his opinions, accusing someone of theft when your own research (e.g. consultants repots) have told you your opinion is wrong will probably not pass freedom of speech muster. KB may find himself on the wrong (and losing) end of a libel suit once his book is published. I doubt he'll have much left from his proceeds even after the legal battle's over, whomever wins.

Yes I could be wrong, but there is so much out there already refuting, disproving, contradicting everything that we know KB's got in his book so far that I just can't see HOW it couldn't be considered anything but libel when it goes to print at this point. I also hope Linus follows up on it, I'm sure there are plenty of folks willing to help support a Linus vs. KB libel suit out there.

If KB's really doing this because MS is paying him and/or his institute to do it, I sure hope he got a good price for completely and utterly destroying himself.

Even the mainstream press

[CaptainZapp (182233)]

Even one of the two grand old ladies [nzz.ch] of the German speaking press (the other one can be found here [faz.de] stops just an inch short of labeling him a laughable fraud [nzz.ch] (in German) in their last Friday IT and Media section.

The fishs [altavista.com] translation (which is pretty hillarious in itself) can be found here [altavista.com].

Re:Rebuttal to the rebuttal..

[milgr (726027)]

As long as KB keeps Tanenbaum responding, he is getting free publicity. Contraversy is frequently used to obtain free press, and boost sales.

Re:Rebuttal to the rebuttal..

[Frizzle Fry (149026)]

Why doesn't KB just cut his losses and slink away before he's made a greater fool of

Because there is a world outside of slashdot. Yes, everyone here is going to snicker and roll their eyes about how this guy is obviously an idiot since he questions linus, the gpl, linux, etc., but there are people in the rest of the world who actually will consider what he has to say. Maybe he doesn't care if the crowd here thinks he's a fool? Maybe that's not who he is writing for?

Re:Rebuttal to the rebuttal..

[runlvl0 (198575)]

everyone here is going to snicker and roll their eyes about how this guy is obviously an idiot since he questions linus, the gpl, linux, etc.

That's not the point. Questioning is good: did Linus really write Linux is a perfectly acceptable question. Is the GPL good and (seperate question) enforcable is a good question. It only becomes foolish when, having gone to your sources [cs.vu.nl] and gotten your answers [linuxinsider.com], you still cling to your asinine premise. [adti.net]

Cutting losses

[Rei (128717)]

No, I think it's time that *Linus* cuts his losses and slinks away. I mean, seriously, look at what Brown brought to the table this time: "In a recent ZDNet interview(6), he denies having the Lions notes. This is also unbelievable to AdTI."

It's time that Linus fold. Brown clearly has him by the teeth and isn't going to let go until Linux admits what has been so clearly proven to us. Linus must reveal his theft of code from Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny immediately.

I suggest that Brown establish a team in cooperation with the United Nations called UNOPUS (United Nations Office for the Prevention of Un-proprietary of Software), with the goal of getting Linus to turn over precisely where he stole his code from. Linus must immediately grant them access to his house at all times, as well as pay their salaries. He must provide an errorless full and complete accounting of his coding activities dating back to the 1980s; any contradictions found should be used as an excuse to sieze his property and jail him.

His past activities show that we have no reason to trust that Linus's interests are legitimate. His failure to hand over where he stole his code from is further evidence of his guilt; if he would simply hand it over, the penalties would be much less severe. Linus is a threat to our way of life and must be stopped.

Brown should then, if Linus refuses to state where he stole his code from, Brown should give him a 48 hours ultimatum to hand over the rights of Linux to SCO, or face retribution.

This week

[Mz6 (741941)]

As I have said before... [slashdot.org] Welcome back to this weeks episode!

Last week we found out that Ken Brown was pregnant with Linus' love child, but this week may hold new meaning to their relationship. Will the relationship last? Or will it crumble to nothing before the masses. And find out who Ken may have been caught cheating with!

Tune in next week to find out!

Sue?

[JohnGrahamCumming (684871)]

At what point do Tanenbaum and Torvalds decide the Brown is slandering or libelling them and actually sue for damages. Reading through Ken Brown's response to Tanenbaum I get the feeling that he's getting close to breaking the law against these two people.

John.

Worse to come

[peeping_Thomist (66678)]

Others have made this point, but it's true: there's plenty worse than this to come. There are very powerful forces that are threatened by the development of Linux, and they will fight to the death. Hired character assassins are just the beginning.

Soap

[Kid Zero (4866)]

...and people wonder why I don't watch soap operas anymore. Who needs them with stuff like this in real life!

Selective Comprehension

[xerph (229015)]

After half an hour of repeatedly answering the question "Could Linus have written the Linux kernel by himself?" in the affirmative, I was getting a bit irritated.

Its always been interesting that when somebody (or a group of people) don't want to hear a certain answer, it often goes in one ear and out the other just in time for another "listener" to ask the same basic question phrased slightly differently in hopes of obtaining a reply closer to the desired view. It seems that many times the media in general has this practice almost molded into an art.

Re:Selective Comprehension

[csbruce (39509)]

Its always been interesting that when somebody (or a group of people) don't want to hear a certain answer, it often goes in one ear and out the other just in time for another "listener" to ask the same basic question phrased slightly differently in hopes of obtaining a reply closer to the desired view.

I really don't understand why he bothered to interview experts. If we assume for one second that Brown isn't a complete idiot, he should have realized that the experts would tell him the truth and then might get a bit uppity when he twisted their words to fit his own agenda. He might also have guessed that they would know how to use that 'inner-net thingy'.

Really, he should have interviewed 'experts' like Rob Enderle or Laura Didio. He wouldn't have had to twist their words and they might have come up with even more creative insults than Brown himself. I guess this a proof by contradiction that Brown is a complete idiot.

And AdTI uses ESR comments to shoot at Linus

[gsfprez (27403)]

http://www.adti.net/samizdat/open.contradictions.h tml [adti.net] references an ESR quote from Cathedral.

Of course - i'm not sure they're aware that Minix isn't exactly Solaris-level UNIX that Linux is approaching rapidly...

Where the idea that the go-cart of Linux 0.1 - which borrowed the ideas of 4 wheels, axles, steering wheel and brakes from Ford cars - is the same thing as stealing Fords from the lot remains to be still explained by AdTI.

Re:And AdTI uses ESR comments to shoot at Linus

[Shimmer (3036)]

Here's the damning part of the ESR quote:

Linus Torvalds, for example, didn't actually try to write Linux from scratch. Instead, he started by reusing code and ideas from Minix, a tiny Unix-like operating system for PC clones. Eventually all the Minix code went away or was completely rewritten -- but while it was there, it provided scaffolding for the infant that would eventually become Linux.

I think that ESR is simply wrong about this. The analysis of Linux v0.1 (commissioned by AdTI itself) found no code taken from Minix.

Re:And AdTI uses ESR comments to shoot at Linus

[timeOday (582209)]

This whole argument over whether Linus could possibly have written Linux reminds me of a quote from Bill Joy [salon.com]

If I had to rewrite Unix from scratch, I could do it in a summer, easily," says Joy. "And it would be much better. A much, much better job. The ideas are old."

The article, by the way, is very interesting if you've forgotten or never read it. It's about BSDs legal coming of age, or path to freedom, or whatever you want to call it. By comparison Linux seems almost cleanroom.

Re:And AdTI uses ESR comments to shoot at Linus

[steveha (103154)]

I hope ESR didn't mean to say that Linus lifted actual code from Minix. But it is absolutely true that Linus used Minux as a "scaffolding".

Linux is now self-hosting: you can use a Linux system to edit Linux sources and compile them. Before Linux was self-hosting, Linus used a Minix host. I don't think the original 0.1 kernel was self-hosting yet.

steveha

Critique of Ken Brown's response (Op-Ed)

[anandpur (303114)]

Critique of Ken Brown's response [kuro5hin.org]

Get our own "institution"

[YetAnotherName (168064)]

I wonder if the companies that have a stake in Linux like RedHat, IBM, and so forth would be willing to pony up the dough to create our own illustrious-sounding "institution" complete with a European-sounding name that could "create reports and advice to policymakers and government" that would instead be backed by the truth. Or at least the truth as we see it and not the way Micro$oft does.

I like our truth more, admittedly.

For a good laugh...

[KJACK98 (623902)]

For an even funnier laugh, I recommend reading this one Is Brown Really the Father of Samizdat? - A Parody by Justin Moore [groklaw.net] to counter the Fake Research [adti.net], hmm did I mention about their Fake Research [adti.net]?

Favorite quote from article

[SealTit (606480)]

"'Linux is a leprosy; ...'

This statement is not grammatically, politically, or factually correct."

Is it just me, or does Professor Tanenbaum really seem like the man lately?

Re:Favorite quote from article

[HeghmoH (13204)]

With all respect to Dr. Tanenbaum, it's not hard to look good when responding to someone as stupid as Ken Brown.

A Formal "Response" to Ken Brown?

[kollivier (449524)]

I think it's about time everyone got together and created one polished and solid response to Ken Brown's lies and insinuations. We've heard from Andrew Tanenbaum, ESR, RMS, Linus, etc., but what I would like to see is a formal and official response to the AdTI book that is being published, tearing up its insinuations point-for-point, in a way that his own target audience (i.e. "decision makers") couldn't ignore. Particularly, I think it needs to be made clear that even his *own* research on how Minix influenced Linux code showed no code "theft".

The people that KB is targetting just aren't going to "stay tuned" for the latest back and forth between KB and OSS advocate X. They need to have all the evidence presented to them clearly and concisely, and I think it needs to be from all the major players in the OSS community. I think this will *strongly* discourage people like KB from spouting lies and deception, as they know they will be called on it, at the expense of any journalistic integrity they may have had. And the more obvious it becomes that this is (likely solicited) FUD, the more the whole exercise will backfire on those that hoped to benefit from it.

Better way to settle this

[Greyfox (87712)]

Lock Torvalds, Tanenbaum and Brown in a room with 3 bricks, and don't open the door until only one person is left standing.

And yes, my money would be on Linus. He probably knows that Finnish kung-fu...

Writing an OS isn't hard.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Every year at the University of Waterloo the Computer Engineering and Computer Science students personally build their own operating systems (including documentation) in less than four months. This is done without any prior knowledge of how OSes work and without being taught C.

I'm sure many universities and colleges around the world do the same. Perhaps Ken Brown should investigate them as well.

http://www.ece.uwaterloo.ca/~ece354/ [uwaterloo.ca]

http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs452/ [uwaterloo.ca]

US Corporations get on *everybody's* nerves

[GillBates0 (664202)]

And even if open source weren't in the best interest of U.S. corporations, where is it written that all activities everywhere in the world must be done with the interests of U.S. corporations as their primary goal?

Agree 100% with him there. For some reason US corporations take it for granted that all countries/entities everywhere exist merely to pander to their interests. To this end, they are fucking not only with the citizens of the US, but with people everywhere.

The Patent on Basmati rice [flonnet.com] (a US corporation obtained a patent on Basmati Rice, which's been grown in India for thousands of years), and even the war on Iraq [cnn.com] (the Halliburton/Cheney/Iraq_Reconstruction_contract connection) are just a couple of examples of what they're up to.

Tanenbaum is a good writer

[doombob (717921)]

Has anyone else noticed how eloquent and concise Tanenbaum's responses have been? I have many of the books he has written from when I was in school (and I enjoyed them all), but here he seems to take on an amazing writing persona. It's good to see him in top shape. Not to mention that he's so funny. There should be a book written about all of this.

Oh, it gets better!

[cLive ;-) (132299)]

Go to the Alexis de Tocqueville [adti.net] home page, then click "Mission" link at top left, then click "Accomplishments".

I couldn't have summed it up better myself :)

Oh, I note on their home page that you can submit a study idea to them. How about a study into why Ken Brown is an incompetent researcher?

cLive ;-)

Re:Oh, it gets better!

[cardshark2001 (444650)]

That is just too funny. Any bets how long it takes them to fix it? I keep getting this picture in my mind of the Seinfeld with Kramer and his little person friend, wearing the same shirt, and the little person says "We'll look like idiots!"

Sure, sure, I think we get it by now

[PCM2 (4486)]

The thing that's started to bother me, though: Is Ken Brown just a corrupt shill who is arguing a fallaceous premise in order to make a lot of money for his corporate backers (presumably Microsoft)? Or does he actually believe his own assertions?

I mean, he sounds quite vehement in his reply to Mr. Tanenbaum. So, I wonder ... when somebody handed him a bunch of money to do his Linux report, what happened, exactly? Did he yawn, scratch his belly and say, "Oh goodie, that'll keep me in spare parts for my Rolls for a while"? Or did he seriously, actually, pop another Paxil, pound his fist on the table and say, "Linux?! Those bastards! By God and all the apostles of Jesus, this is a cause I can get behind!"

nazis

[happyfrogcow (708359)]

Is anyone else hoping that AdTI mentions Hitler or the Nazis so that this discussion can be officially over?

Brown is out of touch

[MarkGriz (520778)]

"The United States is the home of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an internationally respected agency ..."

Is the USPTO is even *nationally* respected any longer?

Measured Response

[geomon (78680)]

Many of the recent Slashdot comments regarding the ADTI President Ken Brown's defense [adti.net] of his controversial tome noted that his principle audience was not the Linux community, or even the IT industry. His target audience is the policy-makers in Washington D.C. How is that group informed about issues surrounding open source in general and the Linux kernel specifically? One 'trade' publication, FCW Media Group [fcw.com], "produces information resources that help government IT buyers... form an integrated information system to help them purchase, build and manage technology in government." They are 'our' target audience in defending the concept of software libre, in advancing open protocols and other standards, and in correcting FUD. The May 3rd online issue provides one [fcw.com] such opportunity to advance Linux in government research.

Nothing stops the flow of FUD like well-positioned information.

The Ken Brown-ism that Kills me

[grendelkhan (168481)]

"Hybrid source code" is a phrase coined by former Tocqueville Chairman Gregory Fossedal. The term refers to any product with a license that attempts to mix free and proprietary source code at the same time.

Would this be like taking a free TCP/IP stack [freebsd.org] and mixing it into a proprietary OS? [microsoft.com]

The best, most devasting line

[Rick Zeman (15628)]

I don't see why it is plausible for Canadian students to produce 16,000 lines a year but not plausible for Finnish students to produce 10,000 lines a year. It is just as cold in Finland as in Canada so programmers are never tempted to go outside.

wow

[humankind (704050)]

Torvalds story because the comparisons were too unbelievable. For us to accept Tanenbaum's argument, Linus Torvalds at 21, with one year of C programming, was Doug Comer, an accomplished computer scientist, or smarter than the Coherent team, and of course a better programmer than the good professor too."

Huh? I learned more in high school from a single computer science teacher than I did in four years of college. Some of my college CSCI professors were the biggest idiots I ever encountered, and easily 5-10 years behind-the-times. I often corrected test questions.

I am beginning to believe that most of these mean-spirited, burned-out baby boomers blew away a lot of their youth getting wasted or something, and resent anyone who pursued more productive ends. While it might not seem common, young people can be incredibly bright and productive. Linus' accomplishments at that age are actually not atypical IMO, among young people who have decent priorities and focus.

I was programming for a Fortune 500 company when I was 13 years old. Before I got out of high school I wrote the billing system for a major public utility. Hell, I once got a contract to write a book on C programming for the web and at the time, I actually had about a month's worth of C programming, and none of it was web-related. I ended up taking a "crash course" in programming and writing that portion of the book within a few months and it still holds up today. When I was younger, I did a lot of computer consulting and I'd often accept teaching/consulting gigs on subjects I was unfamiliar with, but I'd bone up the night before and pull it off with nobody being the wiser. 10,000+ lines of code in a year? Try 10,000 lines of code in a few days.

It really bothers me when people who don't have faith in their own abilities suggest others, such as Linus, are incapable of operating beyond the boundaries of their own mundane self-expectations.

Homework in my undergad compiler class

[Get Behind the Mule (61986)]

My undergraduate compiler class had only one homework assignment: write a compiler by the end of the semester. That gave us four months time. We got the grammar for an Algol-like language to be compiled, which was relatively standard and simple (but it did have runtime allocation of arrays, IIRC). And the work was spaced out over the course of the semester -- first we did the lexer, then the parser, then the code generator. But that was basically it, you got four months, go write the compiler or flunk, chump. (We had to write it in C.)

Not an easy assignment by any stretch, but we all got it done. I was an undergrad junior at the time, and there were juniors, seniors and grad students in the class as well. Don't ask me about the sleepless nights during the last week before the due date, I still remember it all too well.

Writing an OS is even harder than writing a compiler by an order of magnitude, and getting that done within a year may very well be too much for your average undergrad. But it's not the kind of thing that a young programmer couldn't possibly do if he's talented, hard-working and has a little experience. Ken Brown's suggestion that it just can't possibly be, which is a weak argument in any case, has no force at all.

AdTI logic

[Ken Brown (786167)]

Linux 0.1 was totally different to Minix. Everyone I interviewed said Linus wrote Linux 0.1 himself. But Microsoft is paying me a lot of money to say otherwise. I love money, and don't care what I have to do to get it. Microsoft even gave me a copy of the same script Darl McBride is using. It's a literary masterpiece, and totally not derived from any other work ever. Look for the AdTI Review of Books, coming out soon. P.S. Anyone else notice how I didn't accuse Dennis Ritchie of remembering anything about Multics when he worked on Unix? That's because a friend of a friend of mine owns UNIX, and they would be upset if I slandered its provenance.

10,000 lines of code in a year

[LWATCDR (28044)]

I was shocked to see that Linux 0.1 was only around 10,000 lines of code. Could one programmer write that! You bet they could. I have wrote a 14,000 line application in less than three months. Linux could have easily written the kernel in a year. So what if he was only 21? That just means that he is right out of or close to being out of school and hopfuly full of the latest and greatest ideas. I hate to say this because I hate RMS's GNU/LINUX rants but the truth is Linus wrote the kernel he did not have to write all the untilities or the compiler. Those came from the GNU project.

Torvalds is a Composer

[catdevnull (531283)]

Torvald's early kernels were very small and not extensive (and not too stable either). From the beginning, he's invited (publicly) the hacker community to contribute. The kernel grew and it became an open source project from the beginning. The organic growth of the kernel came from lots of people and was MANAGED by one person. Alot of the ground work had already been done by MINIX so, as a "novice programmer," Linus didn't have to re-invent the wheel-he used the structure of MINIX as a template and hacked it from there.

It's like a composer using the sonata form--the notes are different but the form is the form.

To extend the metaphor, the form has actually grown from simple tune to a full symphonic work as the motif began to grow and other musicians' contributed with different textures, sounds, and rhythms.

Aaron Copland's "Apalachian Spring" features an old "Shaker" tune called "The Gift To Be Simple." Copland didn't write the tune, but he did adapt the work into a larger polyphonic structure with variations and formal development. (It was a ballet score for a small ensemble then a full symphonic suite).

I suggest that Linus took Minix and did the same. Only Linus's symphony contains a bit of jazz improv by the use of extemporaneous solos from the contributing musicians in his orchestra under the baton of the conductor/composer.

I fail to see why Ken Brown feels a need to call out Linus as some sort of phoney. Maybe he can write about how Copland ripped off all those poor backward hillbillies in the Apalachians.

Re:Haven't We...

[by Anonymous Coward]

No. That was the rebutal. This is the rebutal to the rebutal of the rebutal. Do try to keep up.

Re:This may be.

[by Anonymous Coward]

A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is leaning against the
headboard smoking a cigarette, with a satisfied smile on its face.

The egg, looking a bit p*ssed off, grabs the sheet, rolls over, and says,
"Well, I guess we finally answered THAT question!"

Re:Tennis anyone?

[Oliver Wendell Jones (158103)]

But Pong is based on Tennis... surely noone could have written Pong without violating the intellectual property belonging to the makers of Tennis?

Re:Tennis anyone?

[Oliver Wendell Jones (158103)]

Raise your right hand over your head and keep it there.
Good.
Now raise your left hand over your head and keep it there.

Now, the next time I tell a joke that goes over your head, try and grab ahold of it....

Re:Good professor?

[spurious cowherd (104353)]

"Can I have 'Condescending' for $1000 please Alex"?

Re:SCO then Brown...we may need to exaimine OS

[geomon (78680)]

"How will open source user's be assured that they won't be pulled into court because of some actual or alleged stolen code?"

How will closed source user's be assured that they won't be pulled into court because of some actual or alleged stolen code?

Why should open source shoulder all of the doubt?