Rick Hohensee
301-595-5804
[email protected]
Oct. 2, 2002
Mr. George Soros,
I believe your involvement in Transmeta is utterly in conflict with your
ideals of openness in a way that I don't believe you are aware of. The
reasons I believe this are highly technical, and somewhat subtle, and yet
quite striking subjectively. Microsoft, as represented by Paul Allen in
Transmeta, would surely spend a fortune to keep Linus Torvalds on a leash.
For technical reasons, I believe this is why Transmeta was created, and
the real potential of an open source software revolution has so far been
thereby prevented. Linux's success is mostly inevitable as PC hardware
became capable of running unix. Now it is being prevented from succeeding
further. I believe similar motives are at work at Red Hat Software, which
has many prominent members of the Linux clique on the dole. This would
help explain RHAT's historically bizarre IPO circus, and helps to explain
why RHAT doesn't really comprehend unix and thinks they are Microsoft.
They are Microsoft, who don't comprehend unix.
Linus Torvalds consistantly favors modifications to Linux that pursue a
server orientation. This invariably leads to tremendous added complexity.
This also does not directly threaten what Microsoft calls "the client",
i.e. the end-user's PC, i.e. Windows. A servers-only orientation is also a
tiny subset of the potential of a free unix. By far the greatest possible
benefit of a free unix (which is what Linux is) to individuals and markets
is in direct competition with Windows. One might legitimately argue
otherwise, but direct competition with Windows has almost completely been
avoided, which is very strange. This is what I attempted to do, and was
completely ostracized.
Whether Torvalds' love of unix's traditional server role is 100% genuine
or not, it is a terrible disservice, and is not what George Soros
preaches. The open source unix world, including GNU, prevents real
effective openness with bogus complexity. In most cases, the so-called
open source movement is as hostile to real innovation as Microsoft is.
Admittedly, I am exactly the disgruntled, bitter malcontent that would
raise such accusations. By the same token, such are the people that see
such things. I submit my technical works, and thier utter lack of
proliferation, for the interested reader to guage the validity of my
accusations, and whether my bitterness is sui generis or justified.
I have devised a preliminary compensation scheme for authors of
open source software based on the songwriter royalties model.
I am the first person ever to insert a Forth-like interpreter into
a Linux (or any unix) kernel. This is historic, and was met with a
few grunts in the Linux kernel mailing list. There have since been
one or two other in-kernel Forths.
I did the first syscalls-only linking library in Linux, libsys.a,
which I suspect may have sparked the embedded-Linux efforts.
I have devised the simplest means by far for a unix user to
customize thier directory structure, a very basic convenience.
I have written two better systems languages than C; osimplay and
H3sm.
Many other works in Linux, Forth-like languages, and
documentation.
At this point, what Linux might have been will not spring from Linus
Torvalds. It will therefor probably not spring from unix at all. The
parasites have overtaken Linux, just as they did with the Commodore Amiga;
they bought it and killed it. Microsoft and Intel absolutely had to kill
the Amiga due to it's tremendous superiority to the PC. They packed the
board, who then scuttled Commodore. This destructive parasitic process
does not have to continue indefinitely, however.
As an ancillary matter, but also pertinent to your investment in
Transmeta, note that the Crusoe chip's crucial low-power characteristics
are a pitiful joke compared to stack machines. I tried meekly to convey
this to Torvalds before Crusoe came out.
flames > /device/bitbucket
Rick Hohensee
http://linux01.gwdg.de/~rhohen
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/install/clienux/descriptive
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/install/clienux/interim/ABOUT
Rick A. Hohensee wrote:
> I have written two better systems languages than C; osimplay and
> H3sm.
Holy shit!
You happen to have a tigon3 driver in forth that will work? ;)
Ben, who is not under the influence of the Man, for what it's worth!
--
Ben Greear <[email protected]> <Ben_Greear AT excite.com>
President of Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com
ScryMUD: http://scry.wanfear.com http://scry.wanfear.com/~greear
> Admittedly, I am exactly the disgruntled, bitter malcontent that would
> raise such accusations. By the same token, such are the people that see
> such things. I submit my technical works, and thier utter lack of
> proliferation, for the interested reader to guage the validity of my
> accusations, and whether my bitterness is sui generis or justified.
> [...]
Trolls got chops!
ian
On 4 Oct 2002, Ian Soboroff wrote:
> > Admittedly, I am exactly the disgruntled, bitter malcontent that would
> > raise such accusations. By the same token, such are the people that see
> > such things. I submit my technical works, and thier utter lack of
> > proliferation, for the interested reader to guage the validity of my
> > accusations, and whether my bitterness is sui generis or justified.
> > [...]
>
> Trolls got chops!
> ian
Esay fix:
:0 W
* ^(((From):)|( )).*rickh@Capaccess\.org
/dev/null
--
Gerhard Mack
[email protected]
<>< As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing.
>Holy shit!
>
>You happen to have a tigon3 driver in forth that will work? ;)
>
>Ben, who is not under the influence of the Man, for what it's worth!
>
>--
osimplay is one of two truly modern assemblers, and is written in Bash.
H3sm is a Forth-like 3-stack machine. H3sm doesn't care how big an int is.
Rick HohenseeB
I'm not interested in disputing or evaluating any of the allegations raised in
your letter, I'll leave everyone to draw their own conclusions. However, I am
curious about the consequences of what you propose. In particular, your
remedies.
Let us assume that George Soros accepts your letter and withdraws funding from
Transmeta. What are the consequences for Linux and Microsoft?
Transmeta could easily collapse, thus throwing several prominent Linux
developers out into the job market. Worse, the resulting publicity about the
reasons would create a media circus that would be highly damaging to Linux as
a whole and the release of 2.6 in particular.
Microsoft is bound to capitalise on this and sieze the opportunity to try to
displace Linux from the server and enterprise (the very places it currently
feels the greatest heat from Linux). I don't claim it would succeed, but it
will certainly try.
The net effect of your proposal therefore would be to cause a stall in Linux
development and hand Microsoft an opportunity to capture the Server market and
the Enterprise. Is that really your aim?
If you really hold true to the principles of openness, why not instead ask
Soros for funding to create a company that will produce the OS you think Linux
should be and compete directly with Microsoft in "the client" arena? At least
that would be a positive remedy, intead of the wholly negative one you
propose. Perhaps it would even give you the opportunity to see at least one
of your works proliferate?
James Bottomley
On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, James Bottomley wrote:
> Is that really your aim?
+--------------+
| Don't feed |
| the trolls |
| |
| thank you |
+--------------+
| |
| |
| |
| |
....\ /....
cheers,
Rik
--
A: No.
Q: Should I include quotations after my reply?
http://www.surriel.com/ http://distro.conectiva.com/
> > > Admittedly, I am exactly the disgruntled, bitter malcontent that would
> > > raise such accusations. By the same token, such are the people that see
> > > such things. I submit my technical works, and thier utter lack of
> > > proliferation, for the interested reader to guage the validity of my
> > > accusations, and whether my bitterness is sui generis or justified.
> > > [...]
> >
> > Trolls got chops!
> > ian
>
> Esay fix:
>
> :0 W
> * ^(((From):)|( )).*rickh@Capaccess\.org
> /dev/null
Sorry if this is off topic, but what on earth was this all about anyway? Was it just trolling, or is their any truth in any of what he said? Somebody please explain...
John.
From: "Rick A. Hohensee" <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2002 01:34:51 -0400
this is pure comedy, so I'll happily feed the trolls
I have devised a preliminary compensation scheme for authors of
open source software based on the songwriter royalties model.
<sarcasm/>
Yes, let's use the music industry to model how we compensate people
for their works, they schemes have an excellent track record
</sarcasm>
On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, David S. Miller wrote:
> I have devised a preliminary compensation scheme for authors of
> open source software based on the songwriter royalties model.
>
> Yes, let's use the music industry to model how we compensate people
> for their works, they schemes have an excellent track record
Heh, you'd end up OWING money to the users, because of the
value of bugreports, paying for the download infrastructure
and rental of users' screen space ;)
Rik
--
Bravely reimplemented by the knights who say "NIH".
http://www.surriel.com/ http://distro.conectiva.com/
Spamtraps of the month: [email protected] [email protected]
>> I have devised a preliminary compensation scheme for authors
of
>> open source software based on the songwriter royalties model.
>>
>> Yes, let's use the music industry to model how we compensate people
>> for their works, they schemes have an excellent track record
>
>Heh, you'd end up OWING money to the users, because of the
>value of bugreports, paying for the download infrastructure
>and rental of users' screen space ;)
>
>Rik
Problems I'd love to have.
Rick Hohensee
davem ridiculed...
>this is pure comedy, so I'll happily feed the trolls
>
> I have devised a preliminary compensation scheme for authors of
> open source software based on the songwriter royalties model.
>
><sarcasm/>
>
>Yes, let's use the music industry to model how we compensate people
>for their works, they schemes have an excellent track record
>
></sarcasm>
>
>
You like comedy? How about the "GNU business model" ?
Rick Hohensee
reformatted a bit before replying ....
>
>I'm not interested in disputing or evaluating any of the allegations
>raised in your letter, I'll leave everyone to draw their own conclusions.
>However, I am curious about the consequences of what you propose. In
>particular, your remedies.
>
>Let us assume that George Soros accepts your letter and withdraws funding
>from Transmeta. What are the consequences for Linux and Microsoft?
>
I didn't explicitly suggest remedies, but you presume my drift correctly.
I prefer to leave the bulk of that to the interested public.
>Transmeta could easily collapse, thus throwing several prominent Linux
>developers out into the job market. Worse, the resulting publicity about
the
>reasons would create a media circus that would be highly damaging to
Linux as
>a whole and the release of 2.6 in particular.
>
And what would the overall adverse effect of that be? Linux has been
getting steadily less interesting since 1.2.13, and has done close to
nothing for the end-user. rtlinux is something of an exception. I'd have
that as the default kernel by now. rtlinux is clever, and historic, but
even that I suspect may be over-complex. I seem to recall an available NMI
even with rtlinux. Zimple.
>Microsoft is bound to capitalise on this and sieze the opportunity to try
to
>displace Linux from the server and enterprise (the very places it
currently
>feels the greatest heat from Linux). I don't claim it would succeed, but
it
>will certainly try.
>
>The net effect of your proposal therefore would be to cause a stall in
>Linux development and hand Microsoft an opportunity to capture the Server
>market and the Enterprise. Is that really your aim?
If Microsoft ever comes up with a real server OS, they surely won't have
the only one. There are *BSD, Plan 9, Linux, etc. And the as-yet unseen.
>
>If you really hold true to the principles of openness, why not instead ask
>Soros for funding to create a company that will produce the OS you think
>Linux should be and compete directly with Microsoft in "the client" arena?
>At least that would be a positive remedy, intead of the wholly negative
>one you propose. Perhaps it would even give you the opportunity to see at
>least one of your works proliferate?
I leave all that to Mr. Soros and similar. I am in fact quite sick of C
and everything-is-a-file at this point though. And hardware gets easier
every day.
> >James Bottomley > In private email a curious party noted that I have no
smoking gun. True. (Although I'm of the opinion that the scorn of DSFH is
at least a warm gun.) A George Soros will be able to see what's going on
without one, particularly with the George Soros view of Transmeta.
Good questions. I'm surprised at the generally mature response to this.
Thanks.
Rick Hohensee
> If Microsoft ever comes up with a real server OS, they surely won't have
> the only one. There are *BSD, Plan 9, Linux, etc. And the as-yet unseen.
I hate to 'feed the trolls', but Plan-9 is _not_ free-as-in-speech software, and has never been free-as-in-speech software. Please do not spread mis-information by implying that it is. Have you read the license agreement? It is nothing like the BSD or GNU licenses.
John.
A snippet of the Plan 9 license....
2.0 GRANT OF RIGHTS
2.1 Subject to the terms of this Agreement and to third party
intellectual property claims, Lucent grants to Licensee, a
royalty-free, nonexclusive, non-transferable, worldwide license to
use, reproduce, modify, execute, display, perform, distribute and
sublicense, the Original Software (with or without Modifications) in
Source Code form and/or Object Code form for commercial and/or
non-commercial purposes. This grant includes a nonexclusive and
non-transferable license under any patents which Lucent has a right to
license and which, but for this license, are unavoidably and
necessarily infringed by the execution of the inherent functionality
The Plan 9 License was modified to resemble the GPL around Jan 2000 or so,
as was Kermit. I posted to linux-kernel on the matter at the time. These
two events changed the open source landscape substantially.
Rick Hohensee
> A snippet of the Plan 9 license....
[snip]
That is, indeed, a quote from the current Plan 9 license.
You cut the paragraph a bit short though, and missed off the part that Richard Stallman argues excludes selling it for a profit, see:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html
infact, he makes a lot of valid comments on the current Plan 9 license, and concludes that it is not free software.
Whether you agree with Richard Stallman's definitions of free software and open source, is irrellevant. I certainly am _not_ saying that I do. The issues he raises, though, demonstrate that there are big differences between the Plan 9 license and the GPL and BSD licenses.
Don't get me wrong, I like Plan 9, but you are spreading mis-information, by continuing to imply that it is free in the same way as Linux is free.
You can find the _whole_ Plan 9 license here:
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/license.html
> The Plan 9 License was modified to resemble the GPL around Jan 2000 or so,
> as was Kermit. I posted to linux-kernel on the matter at the time. These
> two events changed the open source landscape substantially.
I don't argue that. Plan 9 is open source software. What I am saying is that the license differs from the GPL and BSD licenses in a number of ways. Comparing it to Linux, BSD, Atheos, OpenVMS, etc, etc, is comparing Apples to Oranges.
John.
>I don't argue that. Plan 9 is open source software. What I am saying is
>that
>the license differs from the GPL and BSD licenses in a number of ways.
>Comparing it to Linux, BSD, Atheos, OpenVMS, etc, etc, is comparing
Apples >to
>Oranges.
>
>John.
Stallman wants a monopoly on freedom. The change from the previous Plan 9
license clearly shows that they intend to liberalize it substantially. I
feel that my characterization is more accurate than yours, and not just on
this matter. Worst case, it's apples and pears.
Rick Hohenseee