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 From : Sergey Lentsov                       2:4615/71.10   22 Mar 2001  18:11:50
 To : All
 Subject : URL: http://lwn.net/2001/0322/letters.php3
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 Letters to the editor
 
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    March 22, 2001
    
    
 Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 19:02:56 -0800
 From: bryanh@giraffe-data.com (Bryan Henderson)
 To: letters@lwn.net
 Subject: What is Linux?
 
 You bring up the issue of just what is a Linux distribution.  You
 conclude that it's fuzzy, but seem sure of one thing:  It must have a
 Linux kernel.  I can't see a classification of operating systems that
 include the Linux kernel as being very useful.  In fact, 90% of the
 times I read "Linux," the statement is not at all dependent on the
 system running a Linux kernel.
 
 Replacing the Linux kernel with Hurd or the Solaris kernel makes about
 as much difference in the overall system as replacing the Apache web
 server or KDE desktop (or X Window System).
 
 I don't know why Linus allowed his name "Linux" to be used to refer to
 entire operating systems, while at the same time also being the name
 of the kernel he distributes, but by far the most widespread use of
 the name now is for the class of systems, not the kernel.  If Linus
 decides to limit the use of the name to systems that include a Linux
 kernel, we should respect that (and in many cases will be legally
 forced to), but then we should get a new term for the general class of
 systems that we know today as "Linux."  I think Stallman would donate
 something with "GNU" in the name.
 
 --
 Bryan Henderson                                    Phone 415-505-3367
 San Jose, California
 
    
 Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 10:21:40 -0600
 From: John Palkovic <palkovic@pobox.com>
 To: lwn@lwn.net
 Subject: re: XFree86 4.0.3 - time to dump version 3.x ?
 
 I run Debian GNU/Linux and xfree86 on powerpc hardware. Non i386
 hardware is not well-supported. Does lwn.net assume that everyone
 running linux is on intel hardware? We who are not have a different
 perspective.
 
 I tried upgrading to X 4.02 last week. I think I had to power-cycle my
 machine 4 or 5 times. I lost count. It was locking up. I ended up
 restoring /, /var, and /usr from a backup to get back to a stable
 configuration. My linux box is sitting behind a firewall on a home
 lan. So I'll stay with xf 3.3.6 for now, thanks. It works and my box
 is nice and stable.
 
 Sincerely,
 
 -John Palkovic
 
 --
 "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
 certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
 -- Bertrand Russell
 
    
 Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 12:59:18 -0500 (EST)
 From: Joe Klemmer <klemmerj@webtrek.com>
 To: <letters@lwn.net>
 Subject: "Harlan Ellison vs. the right to code" and "Perl Literacy"
         I read this article with a bit of amusement.  A number of years
 ago the Sci-Fi cable channel had a show "Sci-Fi Buzz" on which Harlan had
 a 5 minute rant segment on which he would spew venom on whatever topic he
 felt like, though usually with some kind of SF bent.  Half the time I
 agreed with him and the other half I thought he was a total brick-head.
 I remember one where he blasted every 'Net user as being completely devoid
 of any intelligence or even habits of personal hygiene.  But I digress...
 
         The point of his statement "This presents interesting issues
 regarding the responsibility for the release of software which effectively
 pollutes the intellectual property environment" is one that we all should
 take a good, hard look at.  Just the idea that software is in some way
 different than any other tool for information distribution is one that
 seems to becoming more prevalent of late.  Napster being the highest
 profile case of this but there's more issues, like the DMCA and
 IP/Copyrights, that need to be fought off.  The phone company is not
 legally responsible for illegal acts done by users of their system (i.e.
 threatening calls, drug sales, etc.).  Software developers should have no
 less protection.
 
         On a smaller side issue; the little blurb about 99.99% of high
 school seniors not being able to read perl was, IMO, not something worth
 publishing.  Perl is a good thing and and all but not being fluent in it
 is in no way going to make US high school seniors "painfully unprepared
 for life after graduation."  In the grand scheme of things (and even in
 the world of software development) perl is a very little blip on the
 radar.  When it comes to software development C/C++ and COBOL are more
 important programming languages to be fluent in for working on any new
 software development project (I won't even mention the maintenance side of
 things where COBOL has more code in existing systems than all other
 languages combined).  Better that high school seniors be fluent in English
 and software development fundamentals than any specific language.
 Expecting high school seniors to be fluent in perl is on par with
 expecting them to be fluent in Japanizes.
 
 - ---
 If I actually _could_ spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
    
 From: mschwarz@alienmystery.planetmercury.net
 Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 12:37:31 -0600 (CST)
 To: letters@lwn.net
 Subject: Ol' Uncle Harlan
 
 I am a deep admirer of Harlan Ellison.  Anyone who can create as much art
 (and good art too boot) and still find time to stir every hornet's nest he
 can find (always in the name of the integrity of the creator's rights,
 mind) is someone far more worthy of admiration than any pop star or sports
 hero.
 
 What LWN finds ominous, I find familiar.  We have been through this before
 with copiers and VCRs.  Harlan is not to be denigrated for attacking
 Gnutella.  He is availing himself of his legal rights to bring suit in
 court.  The question to be settled is not the right to code, but the right
 to steal creative works.  There can be no doubt that the copier and the
 VCR can be used to facilitate theft of creative works.  The question that
 was settled in those cases was that there were substantial legal uses of
 those devices that outweighed the potential for criminal use.  That's why
 you can still buy copiers and VCRs.  That doesn't make it legal to pirate
 books or movies with them.
 
 Harlan (and his lawyers and co-plaintiffs) is asking a court to decide the
 same question of Gnutella.  Now, if you want to defend gnutella, I suggest
 that you stop accusing Harlan Ellison of trying to gag programming, and
 start making legal use of Gnutella to copy files you have a right to
 copy.  Start using to set up web server mirrors and so forth, so there is
 a body of legal use to point to in court.
 
 If, as I suspect, the primary use Gnutella is criminal copyright
 infringement, then Harlan and company have every right to use the courts
 to block its use.  I think too many users of Free Software think it means
 the disappearence of author's ownership and rights.  Nothing could be
 further from the truth.  Free Software is a redfinition of how the author
 is compensated for his or her creative effort.  He gets paid in kind with
 the free use of others source code.  Harlan is quote right to draw a
 distinction between this and, for example, fiction.  A work of art is sui
 generis, and quite different from an algorithm.  Certainly a program may
 be artfully expressed, but it is not a purely aesthetic construct.  It is,
 at leat in part, a practical contrivance.  And the value the GPL places on
 the author's work is the practical value.  It says "I'm giving you this
 practical thing, and in return, I expect any new practical thing you make
 from it to be available to me, and to anyone else."
 
 I must agree with Harlan that this concept doesn't extend to the signle
 solitary work of art.  The *ability* copy does not confer the *right* to
 copy; neither should Stallman's invention of the GPL be construed as an
 implicit right to the same priviledges with a non-GPL'ed piece of code.
 
 Both Ellison and Stallman are arguing that it is the creator's rights that
 must be respected.  The copying of copyrighted works of art is an attack
 on the same social order that upholds the GPL.  Only a child thinks
 everything is "Mine!  Mine!  Mine!"
 
 --
 Michael A. Schwarz
 mschwarz@sherbtel.net
    
 Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 23:36:15 +0000
 From: Pete Birkinshaw <pete@binary-ape.org>
 To: letters@lwn.net
 Subject: ESR on Socialism
 
 I respect ESR a great deal for the marvelous work he has done for Open
 Source Software, but his claim that
 
 "Under socialism, if you do not choose to "cooperate", you will be
 oppressed, imprisoned, and quite possibly killed."
 
 is bizarre. Most of the developed world is frequently governed by
 "Socialists", yet I can't remember them being any more oppressive to
 their citizens than the USA is. Is he really grouping the governments of
 Canada, Europe, Australia and so on with Stalinist states? If he is,
 how?
 
 Totalitarian, oppressive states are nasty whatever their political
 alignment. Mr Raymond should try to see the difference between liberal,
 christian-democratic parties and communist dictatorships.
 
 In all fairness, Thomas Hood and Andrew Pimlott made the same basic
 error, but they aren't as high profile. ESR's views on Open Source
 Software deserve to be heard. If he continues to make silly, extremist
 statements like that, then most people outside the USA will think he's
 crazy, and that will hurt the OSS movement he works so hard to promote.
 
 Is Linux "socialist"?  No. It's based on a gift economy. ESR's right
 about that.
 Pete Birkinshaw
 
    
 From: Christian Hellon <xian@lisardcage.fsnet.co.uk>
 Subject: free software and politics
 To: letters@lwn.net
 Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 13:24:17 +0000 (GMT+00:00)
 
 Oh, dear, what a tizz about one little word. Thomas Hood
 writes a letter offering an opinion on the political
 character of a particular social movement - admittedly,
 not a commonly-shared opinion - and suddenly half your
 letters page is devoted to a mass apoplexia.
 
 The usual suspects figure, of course; Eric Raymond libels
 a goodly number of European states with his broad
 statement:
 
    Under socialism, if you do not choose to
    "cooperate", you will be oppressed, imprisoned, and
    quite possibly killed.
 
 Hmm. The USA is a capitalist democracy, and has the death
 penalty. Sweden is a pretty good example of a socialist
 democracy, and doesn't. Where is one more likely to be
 "imprisoned and ... killed", exactly?
 
 P James writes:
 
    But when you publicly defame someone, as Mr. Hood did,
    he ought to at least provide some proof of his opinion.
 
 This gets to the heart of the matter. Over in the UK (in
 fact, in most of Europe) socialism isn't a dirty word,
 and any attempt to claim that saying someone is a
 socialist is somehow defamatory would be laughed out of
 most serious arenas (except possibly John Smith House,
 but that's a minor detail). Not to mention that socialism,
 communism and anarchism are all very distinct, with quite
 separate historical roots and very little sympathy for
 each other.
 
 But this confusion over where in the political spectrum
 the whole free software movement lies would appear to
 indicate that we seem to have something genuinely
 revolutionary on our hands, which indeed we do - as Eric
 Raymond points out in CatB, we've rectified the tragedy of
 the commons; a commonwealth of software now exists, and
 rather than being taken from, every time it is used it is
 added to. More than this, we've created an entirely free
 market; it's capitalism without the capital. Every player
 can compete on equal entry terms, for there is no scope
 for monopolisation of any kind. The only determinant to
 how well you do is how good you are. Isn't this what Ayn
 Rand was on about for pretty much the entirety of "Atlas
 Shrugged"?
 
 And yet, there are some distinctly anti-capitalistic
 overtones to the whole business. As capital (also known as
 property) has effectively ceased to exist, so the concept
 of "ownership" has been undermined. Everyone knows Linus
 is "the guy who wrote Linux", but which of us would be
 brave enough to claim that he, or Alan Cox, or any of the
 other developers "own" their code? Certainly in this
 society, ownership dictates a certain level of rights, but
 adopting the GPL as a licence amounts to a voluntary
 rescindment of many, if not all of those. The right to
 future control over the product, for example - Linus can't
 withdraw his code from the GPL, only his continued
 efforts. Nobody can. So we end up with a protected
 commonwealth - a deeply left-wing ideal, whichever hue you
 prefer. And since we've managed it without state support
 (one could even say "despite state opposition", given what
 copyright law was intended to do), it could be argued that
 it's closer to anarchism than to anything else.
 
 Hence all the ideological arguments - it's a genuinely
 confusing position. I come off well from it, because it
 reflects my own confusion. :-) But at the end of the day,
 it's just software; it makes computers work better, but it
 doesn't solve any pressing social concerns. Could someone
 please figure out a way to apply it to growing wheat?
 --
 the desk lisard is at reply@lisardcage.fsnet.co.uk
 "i don't know why i'm crying, am i suspended in gaffa?"
 ____________________________________________________________
 Freeserve - get your free ISP service including web-mail at:
 www.freeserve.co.uk
    
 Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2001 17:14:59 +0000 (GMT)
 From: Jonathan Riddell <jr050@jriddell.org>
 To: letters@lwn.net
 Subject: Eric Raymond's LTE
 
 I would like to thank Thomas Hood for his recent letter on free software
 and socialism.  He made some good and reasoned arguments.  What he didn't
 do was accuse his targets of being murderers, as Eric Raymond did in his
 reply - a more shallow and un-thought out argument would be hard to find.
 
 Clearly American schools are doing a poor job of teaching a balanced
 criticism of all political ideologies.  If you can't "cooperate" under
 pure capitalism then you'll struggle to survive. A person who is, say,
 physically disabled in a socialist country will receive fair state help.
 
 As for Eric Raymond, he has lost all my support for anything "open
 source", from now on it's free software all the way for me.
 
 Jonathan Riddell
 Bridge of Allan, Scotland
 jr@jriddell.org
 [16]http://www.jriddell.org
 ________________________________________________________
 1 Allanvale Road   |   jr@jriddell.org
 Bridge of Allan    |   [17]http://www.jriddell.org
 FK9 4NU Scotland   |   01786833048
    
 Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 16:20:13 -0500
 From: "Steve Mercer" <mercer@nortelnetworks.com>
 To: metanews@metagroup.com
 Subject: re: Commentary: Microsoft co-opts open source approach
 
 >From [18]http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-5067896-0.html
 
 Some comments...
 
 >However, the agreement does not allow customers to modify or customize the
 >code, and Microsoft anticipates that problems or bugs that customers may
 >find in Windows will be reported to Microsoft for resolution through normal
 >support channels.
 
 [snip]
 
 >The advantage of providing Windows source code is that Microsoft enlists tens
 >of thousands of software professionals in 1,000 or more of its biggest
 >and best customers to help it test its key operating systems in their unique
 >environments. This will create a flood of bug fixes, improvements and
 >extensions that will flow back to Microsoft to improve those products.
 
  How can bug fixes be developed, when the code is legally read only?
 Personally, I'd be hard pressed to accept any bug fixes provided to me
 that were, legally, untestable by the writer.
 
  Further, there's more to bug fixing than simply perusing code. Whole
 classes of bugs, such as store tramplers and race conditions, are almost
 impossible to see via perusal only.
 
 >In our opinion, the Windows source code will inevitably end up on
 >the Web--within six months or less--where thousands more hackers will start
 >working on it, exposing weaknesses. This will help Microsoft improve its
 >products further until they are bulletproof.
 
   The motivations - and ability - to create these fixes goes down
 drastically when the source of the code is a black hole for fixes,
 and the code is illegal to modify. Sun has tried opening code
 through limited NDAs, and it seems to have fizzled into obscurity
 as a model upon which to cornerstone technology development.
 
   It's much like how openness works in crypto circles. No one will
 bother with cryptanalysis of a cipher that is developed in secret,
 because it can't be systematically analyzed for weakness. The benefits
 to cracking a particular cipher challenge contribute nothing in terms
 of verifying the cipher's strength, thus, to the cryptanalyst, there
 is little worth in doing the work. Similarly, offering read only access
 to code, and preventing programmers from making thier own improvements
 to the code, essentially removes any incentive for a programmer to peruse
 the software at all, as, like cryptanalysts analyze ciphers, programmers
 want to write code. There's little benefit to a programmer to find a bug,
 only to send a report to Microsoft. They could be doing other projects
 that will allow them to write the fixes here and now.
 
   So that thousands might be scores, maybe hundreds, and that flow of
 bug fixes might be a trickle, and none of which would really be
 worthwhile to Microsoft.
 
   It is my suspicion that Microsoft will, in future, see that this
 model is not as benefical to the code quality as expected, and cite this
 as a failure of the open source concept, and not its own implementation
 of it. Which is sad, as they already have Sun's example to work from.
 --
 Stephen Mercer <mercer@nortelnetworks.com>, Optical Design (613) 765-3214
 
    
    
                                                                          
    
    [19]Eklektix, Inc. Linux powered! Copyright Л 2001 [20]Eklektix, Inc.,
    all rights reserved
    Linux (R) is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
 
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   14. http://lwn.net/2001/0315/letters.php3
   15. mailto:letters@lwn.net
   16. http://www.jriddell.org/
   17. http://www.jriddell.org/
   18. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-5067896-0.html
   19. http://www.eklektix.com/
   20. http://www.eklektix.com/
 
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