brainwagon

Holy crap. It isn’t often that I get a chance to read something as high in drivel as Ken Brown’s rebuttal to Andy Tanenbaum’s critique of Brown’s Samizdat, an as yet unreleased critique of the Linux operating system, Linus himself, and open source software in general. If you haven’t read Andy’s comments on Brown, by all means go and do so, otherwise the rest of this rant might not mean as much to you. I’ll wait till you are done.

Pretty amazing, huh? But Brown’s rebuttal is even more amazing. I thought I’d take a few minutes and pick apart a few points for the gratification of myself and what two or three readers this weblog might have.

The first egregiously erroneous paragraph is the following:

While hybrid software appears to be the same as open source, it isn’t. Hybrid source code can never be true intellectual property. The actual purpose of hybrid source is to nullify its value as private property, which makes the hybrid source model significantly different from true open source. Noone can ever truly accrue any value from owning hybrid source software, because everybody (and anybody) has the rights to every line of improvement in it. Worse, many argue that if hybrid source is used the wrong way, it can make other source code hybrid source as well.

The term hybrid sourcecode is basically code for “software licensed under the GPL”. One wonders why Brown didn’t just say so, rather than inventing this particular phrase. What is truly mystifying about this is how much it asserts without any proof, evidence, or even argument. To assert that “noone can ever truly accrue any value from owning hybrid source software” is silly. Certainly all the users of Linux would claim that they have received something of value. Companies which support and develop GPL’ed software such as IBM and Red Hat would claim that they are receiving something of value in exchange for their development dollars. Companies which use GPL’ed software to help run their businesses, serve information on the internet, develop new embedded projects and serve their customers would claim that they are receiving something of value. What is true is that companies which do not use or add value to GPL’ed software do not profit from it, but that’s hardly surprising.

Brown also attempts to claim that somehow GPL’ed software is an insidious virus that can make other software open source as well. This is a common claim, but one which is equally absurd. If you don’t want your software to be encumbered by the restrictions of the GPL, then you just don’t include any GPL’ed software in your product. That’s simple enough. If Brown would like to claim that wide adoption of GPL’ed software makes such inclusion mandatory, I can only counter with the observation that companies such as Microsoft have been burdening the software industry with similar problems for the last two decades, and he hasn’t seen fit to comment on that.

The hybrid source model negatively impacts the intellectual property model for all software, and inevitably the entire IT economy. As long as the value of the IT economy is dependent on the preservation of intellectual property, it is counterproductive for the U.S. government to invest in Linux.

What remains unsaid in this is that not everyone in the IT world thinks that current intellectual property rights have a positive benefit on the industry as a whole. There is considerable evidence that patents actually stifle innovation and help to establish uncompetitive monopolies. The arguments by the League of Programming Freedom are at least arguments, containing observations and theoretical models which demonstrate that software patents can have a negative impact on the IT sector. All we have here is the assurance of Ken Brown, who is frankly a shill for concerns who have most benefitted from wielding this monopoly power.

The disturbing reality is that the hybrid source model depends heavily upon sponging talent from U.S. corporations and/or U.S. proprietary software.

Since all contributions to works under the GPL are purely voluntary, one wonders just Brown could possibly be referring to? How
can any work on GPL’ed software “sponge” talent from any other sector, unless it is with the willing partiticipation of talented individuals who want to contribute to the commons?

Brown does make at least one reasonable point: that currently source code can be checked into the Linux tree which has not been audited to make sure that it is not encumbered by other licenses. That is arguably true, but the simple fact is that everyone can check the code to see if that is the case, and raise unholy hell if code is copied from other sources. The recent case of SCO should serve as a sterling example: SCO examined the source code to Linux and found what they believed to be code which was their intellectual property. They then exercised their rights to sue, and brought suit against companies like IBM for misappropriation of their intellectual property. That SCO appears to have been merely litigious bastards and in fact had no reason for complaint is perhaps beside the point: the point being that SCO could detect and bring suit against companies for illegally using their intellectual property.

Brown’s argument would perhaps be stronger if we didn’t have so many instances of companies improperly using GPL’ed software in violation of their licence agreement. Consider Busybox, a nifty little set of utilities that form the basis of many embedded Linux products. They keep a Hall of Shame page for companies which have illegally used Busybox in their commercial products in violation of the GPL. It would appear that companies can be a far greater harm to the owners of GPL software than vice versa.

Brown then launches into four questions:

Question #1 Is it likely that a student (Linus Torvalds) with no operating systems experience, a non-Unix licensee, without any use of Minix or Unix source code, could build a functioning kernel in six months — whereas it took you (Tanenbaum) three years to build Minix?

Of course Professor Tanenbaum took three years to write Minix, but he was simultaneously working on a book and performing whatever other professional duties he had, so the time difference isn’t nearly as great as Brown would have you believe. Anyone who has had any experience in computer programming will tell you that highly motivated and talented individuals can turn out seemingly miraculous amounts of code in fairly short order. It isn’t common, to be sure, but neither is it unheard of. What should also be noted is that Brown hasn’t presented any evidence that Linus didn’t do what he described. Not one. If this code was written by someone else, then who are the authors? Why do they not step up and take credit for their contributions to the early Linux kernel? The most obvious answer would be simply that there are none.

Issue #2

Why do accounts continually assert that Torvalds “wrote Linux from scratch”?

Because evidence suggests that is precisely what he did. Linus didn’t “invent” Unix, he copied it in a way which is entirely within the law: by writing his own version. Brown again can present no evidence which even suggests that Linus copied code from other sources. He merely asserts that he personally believes he must have done so. This argument is generally referred to as a “fallacy of personal incredulity”, and is far from convincing.

As for the Lions notes, I of course have a copy now. You can get one from Amazon. But I was heavily involved in operating systems research during the early 1980s, and I didn’t have a copy of these as a student. It is not inconceivable to me that Linus wouldn’t have had a copy. But if Linus did copy code from the Version 6 of Unix that is documented in the Lions book, then where is the code?. Brown could merely buy a copy of the book, look at the archived source code of early Linux versions, and point to where Linus copied code. Brown has not done so, and we might fairly conclude that the reason is simply that no such evidence exists. Even the consultant hired by Brown admits that he can find no evidence of copying. Why does Brown not believe his own consultant?

Question #3 If Linux was based on Minix, doesn’t it owe rights, attribution to Prentice Hall? Does it owe attribution or rights to anyone else?

Curiously, Brown follows this up with an entirely reasonable question: “How much inspiration did Linus get from Minix?” The answer is, I suspect “quite a lot”. But inspiration isn’t intellectual property. Inspiration isn’t protected by patent or copyright law. Whether Linus was inspired from Minix, or from Version 7 Unix, it hardly matters: Brown has presented no evidence to suggest that he broke any laws or license agreements to write Linux in the first place.

Brown would like to make a claim that Linux stole many ideas from Minix, but the fact is that even Tanenbaum doesn’t believe that happened. If it had, Linux would have had a microkernel architecture instead of its classic monolithic form. But again, ideas aren’t protected by copyright or patent, so even had he done so, it would still remain to be proven that Linus violated intellectual property laws.

I am left wondering whether Brown’s writings amount to libel. If I were Linus, I’d be fairly irate that such an ill conceived, poorly researched and inherently erroneous fabrication were besmirching my good name. I suspect we haven’t heard the last of this exchange.