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Weblog:   Finding Ken Brown's Lies
Subject:   You miss his argument
Date:   2004-06-06 18:33:56
From:   kollivier
Response to: You miss his argument

Yes, but let me use a "Linux-friendly" site to make Ken Brown's point. The site says this: "Linux was created because the licensing requirements for Minix were horribly restrictive, as well as being for-profit." (URL: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?MinixOperatingSystem)


As far as I can tell in my research, MINIX was moved to the BSD license in 2000. The previous license, also from what I could determine, required licensing for any commercial usage. Thus, any code in Linux that may have come from MINIX could have been a violation of the licensing terms prior to the 2000 licensing change, and this is what Ken Brown is stipulating. (He's effectively saying that Tanenbaum knew there was a problem and tried to get the license changed *because of this*, to protect Linus.)


Is there any truth to this argument? I don't know, really, but no one has said "no" outright. They just keep slamming Ken Brown and saying he has no point, without really saying *why* his points are invalid. He as much as says that people like Tanenbaum aren't going to make his points for him - he's saying they're protecting Linus. The question is: could Linux being inspired by Minix have been a problem (i.e. is there actual code copied), and is it a problem that Linus simply ignored or never considered? I think people's tendency to be "vocal" about the Minix origins were probably because for a long time no one ever thought this was actually a problem. (i.e. most people didn't realize there were any licensing issues at all.)


What I'd like to see is a clear refutal, based on hard evidence, of Ken Brown's "facts", and the OSS community has stepped to the plate before, with SCO's FUD, even though they all knew it was FUD. That was because it was important to clearly show the lies and deception their arguments are based on. With Ken Brown, everyone's saying he doesn't have a point, but they skirt around the issue of whether or not Linus actually copied code from Minix. Heck, many people have called it Linux's "precursor". So where's the evidence that no IP rights were broken?

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  • You miss his argument
    2004-06-06 19:08:40  aristotle [Reply | View]

    How do you suppose this is to be "proven"? Ken Brown tasked someone with comparing the sources of Minix and some versions of Linux in order to have something to blather about in his screed. The guy came up empty. What more is left to say?
    • You miss his argument
      2004-06-07 08:36:49  kollivier [Reply | View]

      Thanks! Believe it or not, I had not seen that information and thus did not know it even existed.

      Now what would be great is if someone from the OSS community would *formally* respond to Ken Brown and show the evidence as to why he must insinuate things for which he provides no hard evidence. This information clearly puts egg on his face, and someone should most certainly make sure that Brown's "target audience" sees him with said egg on his face. ;-)

      This is particularly damaging to the credability of a researcher, and there won't be many who are willing to jump up and sacrifice their career to lie for a company, unless there's a TON of money involved. (And if that's the case, the company will most certainly not want to risk it on weak information like in this case.)
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