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History will show that Theo was right in a manner similar to how Stalman was right: technically correct analysis and eerily accurate predictions, but lacking in
by dleslie 7y ago
History will show that Theo was right in a manner similar to how Stalman was right: technically correct analysis and eerily accurate predictions, but lacking in sufficient charisma to create more than a small following.
To some extent, you might say they are like Cassandra; speaking the truth but not believed or listened to.
- ur-whale 7y ago"lacking in charisma" sort of implies that they have too little, but still some and doesn't really account for how they actively piss off other technologists and push them away, however right they may be technically.
- tyingq 7y agoTannenbaum perhaps somewhere in the middle. Huge install base, but little noteriety.
- throwaway2048 7y agoMinix only has a "huge install base" because of Intel ME firmware junk. Its not really meaningful, because the firmware could be pretty much any arbitrary OS and it would make zero difference to any end user. Tannenbaum himself didnt even know about Intel using MINIX in their ME firmware until recently, so that should show you how much relevance it has.
- red_phone 7y agoThis is, at least in part, a result of MINIX using a highly permissive license. It’s easier to use an open source OS in relative secrecy if you aren’t required to release your modifications. And an organization with deep technical expertise like Intel would not likely need much assistance from the community for their implementation.
- ryacko 7y agoThey could still require redistributions to include a copyright notice. I think the real issue is that Intel might engage in product binning without changing the source code.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoI'm pretty they just forgot. MINIX is under a license that does actually still require a copyright notice, and I'm pretty sure that after the news came out about it being used, they went and fixed the fact that they'd apparently forgotten to include it.
- chithanh 7y ago> This is, at least in part, a result of MINIX using a highly permissive license. Not at all. MINIX was actually Intel's second choice, they tried first to fit Linux into their new x86 based ME. But the maintainers were uncooperative: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY4MzM https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY4MzM Intel then submitted similar patches to the MINIX kernel, which subsequently got accepted. https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/ https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/
- beatgammit 7y agoAnd this shows that the license really isn't that critical. Vendors don't like to maintain operating systems, so they have a vested interest in upstreaming their modifications. Why maintain something yourself if you can get someone else to do it? BSD licensed projects see plenty of contributions, they're just not as popular as Linux because of historical reasons. I and most BSD fans blame the AT&T lawsuit for BSD losing popularity and Linux gaining popularity. That being said, BSD is still quite popular, though somewhat niche. Companies not upstreaming code will happen regardless of the license. Plenty of companies maintain Linux change sets because they're not obligated to release them, but plenty more upstream their changes when not strictly necessary. It just depends on the value proposition of releasing improvements.
- hawski 7y agoBut with that in mind would Android count for Linux?
- morpheuskafka 7y agoYes, but it is significant that an industry leading company chose it over a RTOS or other embedded system for a high volume project.
- throwaway2048 7y agoWhy? Intel hasn't contributed anything to the project to my knowledge.
- beatgammit 7y agoI know they at least formally requested some changes, but I don't know if that means they contributed. I'm guessing they didn't want the public to know they were using it, likely because of the nature of IME.
- yellowapple 7y agoI'm still looking forward to the day when someone figures out how to install X11 on Intel ME, thus ushering in the Year of the MINIX Desktop rather instantaneously.
- mitchtbaum 7y agothe middle is kind of a funny territory appearances would say it's between two polar complements as some bridges extend beyond the scene, even from behind it reminds me of 'a message that discredits the medium that carries it' ~~ sun and moon watercolor painting, "Polar Complements" original watercolor painting, zentangle art, wall art, decor living room decor https://www.etsy.com/dk-en/listing/626399645/sun-and-moon-watercolor-painting-polar https://www.etsy.com/dk-en/listing/626399645/sun-and-moon-wa... https://imgur.com/2Te9EBF https://imgur.com/2Te9EBF https://imgur.com/XIWBmum https://imgur.com/XIWBmum ~~ (maybe to slow down thy downvotes: I don't intend for this comment to make a whole lot of sense to you, right at this moment.. hopefully you'll at least enjoy the painting...)
- knocte 7y ago> but lacking in sufficient charisma to create more than a small following. IMO it's not that Linus has more charisma than Theo, it's simply the network effect of one project over the other.
- dleslie 7y agoIt wasn't Linus; it was RedHat, SuSE, and the rest of the early commercial Linux endeavours.
- ggg3 7y agowhich makes the permissive BSD license even worse in hindsight. it allowed microsoft and apple to profit hugely while giving nothing back. and in the end GPL produced much better product that was used by the industry despite the less permissive license. ...and today we are making the exact same mistake with AGPL.
- knocte 7y agoRight, this is what I said.
- spacemanmatt 7y agoSeems like the history of science and technology is littered with crackpots (alchemists, egotists, etc) who made amazing discoveries.
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y agoThe difference is because of the license. GPL license (created by Stallman, btw) won over BSD license. The emergence of a GPL-licensed kernel was inevitable. If Linux didn't appear when it did, some other kernel would appear. Maybe folks would have more motivation to work on Hurd, and it would be the main kernel for everything now.
- proverbialbunny 7y agoWhy is that the case? Isn't the BSD license more relaxed? I would think companies like RedHat would have liked the BSD license more.
- ScottFree 7y agoDoes that apply here? The BSD guys chose security over speed, as is their mantra, but companies that run linux for profit prioritize speed and cost per computing unit over security. I think 'disable hyperthreading' would be a difficult sell even for Steve Jobs.
- x0x0 7y agoThis is why we need enormous fines for security breaches, and smaller fines just for not following best practices. Right now, only the people worried about paying more for performance, dev time, or security engineers are listened to. We need the legal teams inside companies to have something more substantial than possible negative publicity with which to motivate the CEO and CTO as a countervailing balance. Just like the majority of industries, we need real negative consequences for when we dump incompetent code out into the world. We've tried the "no consequences at all" plan for a long time and it's gotten us, well, continual data breaches via the easiest possible things to control. S3 buckets and databases open to the world. An inability to patch known CVEs in under 3 months (hi Equifax!).
- ebog 7y agoDon't know why you're comment is grayed, we absolutely need heavy monetary penalties for the worst kinds of data breaches. The abstract idea of a class action lawsuit isn't enough, even after the Equifax breach.
- washadjeffmad 7y agoIs there anything about how breaches are currently remediated that might contribute to better outcomes than if we adopted a higher and harsher penalty system? It seems like it might create some perverse incentives as the risk escalates.
- ebog 7y agoThat's true. I'm sure that the perverse incentive could be resolved with some system for self-reporting and fixing.
- draw_down 7y agoA corollary is that our field is not as coldly rational and technical as we'd like to think.
- voldacar 7y agoI think Stallman is more of a Tiresias
- rhaps0dy 7y agoHow so? I had to look Tiresias up on Wikipedia, a blind prophet, but I still don't see the connection. Would it be possible for you to please explain?
- lettucehead 7y agoTiresas' prophecies come true because of a poetic or literary recursion built into the Oedipus cycle or the Oresteia or whatever. (I'm AFK, where K means "my library.") So when the guy to whom Tiresias prophecies that said guy will commit patricide in fact kills his father, he does so because he tried to not kill his father, and in attempting to escape his destiny, inflicted it upon himself. Stallman's apocalyptic ravings have had their basic gist "come to pass," in this interpretation, because of the actions of the developer community or tech community or whatever, in the struggle to develop software, which software has spiraled beyond all reasonable control, even as the guy killed his father by trying not to do so. Thus this wise guy is hella Greek. And this parent poster is also a wise guy. And this patricide is about to become all-too-ironic, because throwing out one-liners of the parent's (post's) sort is a bleak literacy, which I have now killed. And literacy rises like a phoenix in my child post, and the guy who kills his father is blinded as punishment, and becomes a wandering seer himself. So there. TLDR is that prophecies are self-fulfilling. Tiresias is the OG self-fulfilling prophet.
- voldacar 7y agoThe analogy of Cassandra is inferior because: 1. Cassandra is usually at the center of attention, an object of desire to Agamemnon and his troops, an object of hatred and jealousy to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Tiresias isn't nearly as ostentatious, and mostly exists passively in the background, waiting until someone else asks his opinion on something. Tiresias gives off a kind of awkward vibe, much like Stallman, compared to Cassandra, who's totally a social butterfly. 2. Cassandra is cool and sexy, Tiresias is a blind old dude. Richard Stallman eats stuff off his foot and often looks like he hasn't showered since the last emacs release. 3. Cassandra's prophecies are very straightforward, Agamemnon and his buddies understand what she says and even listen to her to some degree, they just don't care enough to do anything. Tiresias is much more cryptic and is always derided until the denouement when it is revealed that he was right all along, just in a way that nobody else could have foreseen. Likewise, Stallman's insights into the future of our technological dystopia seem absurd and maniacal until they inevitably come true a few years later. I like your comment though =)
- enriquto 7y ago> History will show that Theo was right in a manner similar to how Stalman was right: technically correct analysis and eerily accurate predictions, but lacking in sufficient charisma Your assessment of charisma is foreign to me. I cannot imagine anybody who is more charismatic that these two men, theo and rms.
- alxlaz 7y agoLacking in charisma hardly describes a person like Theo de Raadt. I've never met the man, but I doubt that someone who lacks charisma could have lead a dedicated, opinionated team through more than 40 releases (counting OpenBSD releases alone!), over a period of almost 25 years now, a team which not only developed a sturdy (if equally opinionated) operating system but also a bunch of highly successful projects like, I dunno, Open-bloody-SSH. I mean, maybe it's not too much charisma but I'd be glad if I had only like 10% of that...
- riffraff 7y agothe same applies to Stallman, if you consider that the FSF has been running for 34 years. But I believe grandparent didn't mean they lack charisma, but that they didn't have enough to swerve the general public.
- cat199 7y agoI would posit that: impact = charisma * funding so .1 charisma score of some faceless tech exec * 1B in VC funding goes alot more than 2.0 charisma score * 50k of grasroots funding..
- yazaddaruvala 7y agolol, I enjoyed it, but you might consider citing any greek mythology when its obscure and easily confused with a database.
- yborg 7y agoThe story of Cassandra is one of the most well-known of the Greek myths and the allusion a standard rhetorical device in at least the English language. The fact that anyone would have confused the reference with a database in this context makes me sad for the state of 21st century humanities education.
- 3xblah 7y agodjb also comes to mind.