LinuxInsider Talkback

Re: Tanenbaum Disputes Conclusions of Controversial Report
Posted by: Lisa Stapleton 2004-11-26 07:14:55

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Renowned computer scientist Andrew "Andy" Tanenbaum said he doesn't believe the conclusions of a draft report on the origins and legality of open-source software, particularly the allegation that Linus Torvalds didn't write Linux, as is commonly believed, but copied much of it from Minix, a Unix-like operating system that Tanenbaum wrote. Tanenbaum -- who is closely associated with many operating-system luminaries -- vehemently disputes author Kenneth Brown's allegation that Linus couldn't possibly be the writer of the original Linux kernel.

Re: Tanenbaum Disputes Conclusions of Controversial Report
Posted by: zzyvko 2004-11-26 19:46:44 In reply to: Lisa Stapleton

I have known of several cases where a complete operating system (and good one!) was written and debugged by a single individual back in the early 60s. And the challenge, then, was far greater than today when much of the work can be done in higher level languages. I wrote one myself ("PROBIT") which ran on a CAI mini computer for over 6 years in many DoD installations. At the time, Computer Automation only had an assembler which was so poor I had to rewrite it (but I did have help for that). PROBIT was a real-time, on-line communications control system which actually used two single-cpu computers tied together on a common, 2 MB core memory each machine monitoring the other for failures (a 'fail-soft' system).
So I don't doubt that an individual with the dedication, know how and patience could write an OS for any micro, today!

Re: Tanenbaum Disputes Conclusions of Controversial Report
Posted by: Kagehi 2004-11-26 10:18:35 In reply to: Lisa Stapleton

> "Increase the US Patent and Trademark Office budget to property [sic]
> support the anticipated growth in intellectual property filings by the
> public as a result of the 'open source' program at colleges and
> universities."
>
Umm.. How exactly do you patent something and keep it open??? And just what exactly constitutes an 'open' system, which would differ from the GPL? Just curious, because that sounds a lot more like the bullshit MS babble about shared source than anything open source. Tanenbaum is right, this guy has to be a SCO troll. But I do agree that the Patent Office needs more funding, so they can hire enough people to avoid the insane screw ups and bullshit patents they are already mistakenly giving out like candy at a Christmas parade.