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Samizdat Sources

Many of the primary sources for AdTI's Samizdat have come out and rebutted the book. I'm counting here only the people who were contacted in Brown's "extensive interviews".

Here is the current status:

David Bloch, attorney

Explicitly is not speaking about Linux/Unix, only copyright law in general, but his remarks are recast to denigrate Prof Lions.

Eric Levenez

"My Unix chart is not a representation about copyright or patent," but AdTI uses it to imply Linux is a derived work from Unix.

Nikolai Bezroukov

Says that Linus did not write Linux by himself, but rather with help from other contributors. That's hardly news. His conclusions are not universally accepted.

Linus Torvalds

Only quoted, not interviewed by Brown. Torvalds says Brown did not even email him. Admits Linux was written by the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. If only Brown had asked in the first place!

Andrew Tanenbaum

Tells AdTI that Linux is "free of any Minix code", but they don't want to believe him. Reply to Brown, who he calls, kindly, "not the sharpest knife in the drawer". Brown says Tanenbaum is animated but tense, perhaps trying to imply Tanenbaum has something to hide. Replies again: he does not suffer fools like Brown gladly. Brown also seems to think Amsterdam is in Finland.

Petri Kutvonen, Helsinki University

Tells AdTI "I doubt if Linus ever did see a single line of original Unix code", but they don't want to believe him either.

Jason Kipnis from Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Tries to explain what "derived work" means in copyright law, but Brown doesn't seem to be listening.

Eric Raymond

Very unhappy at his words being twisted by Brown.

Ilkka Tuomi

Tuomi's paper on contributions to the kernel is cited to support Brown's theory that there is a conspiracy by Linus to not give credit to contributors from India and China. Brown doesn't name any such contributor. Tuomi says this is not a valid interpretation of his data, and gives four reasons why Brown is wrong.

Fred N. van Kempen

Tries to explain to AdTI the difference between (illegal) copyright infringement and (legal, ethical, normal) building on previous work. Well, anyone who knows anything about programming, especially the art of OS design and programming, knows one does not "invent" an OS. AdTI don't seem to understand this fundamental point.

Dennis Ritchie

Quoted out of context on the Lions book. Says the only interview was a brief email.

Richard Stallman

He did not create an operating system. He wrote a kernel. What Linus released in 1991 was not a mature kernel, it was barely a functioning kernel. It took a couple of more years for him to arrive at a kernel with functionality comparable with the kernel of Unix. Nonetheless, it is true he got Linux to work in an amazingly short time, much less time than the Hurd needed. My only comment on that is that he clearly a good programmer. Brown again chooses not to believe his well-informed primary source. Stallman says that Brown deliberately confuses his terms, and that Linus really wrote the kernel.

Dev Mazumdar

States perfectly ordinary and reasonable policies about corporate contributions to open projects. Brown seems to feel they he says something against Linus but I don't see why, and Brown doesn't say why he quotes Mazumdar.

Charles Mills, a due diligence consultant

Tells Brown that leakage of proprietary code into open projects is far less of a problem than open code being appropriated by proprietary projects. That seems to directly contradict Brown's thesis that corporate code leakage into Linux is common and a big problem. I don't know why he quotes Mills. It later turns out that AdTI didn't interview Mills and Jones at all, but rather lifted the text from a private bulletin board. The owner of the board describes this as extraordinarily shoddy journalism.

Henry Jones of Intersect Technology Consulting

I know and work with plenty of companies that permit such OSS participation during working hours... Smart companies allow talent to work on non-company projects (charity, civic, etc.). Smart companies are now developing robust OSS strategies processes, and staffing....Nobody's laughing at Richard Stallman any more. This also seems unremarkable. I don't understand why Brown quotes him. It certainly doesn't help Brown's case. As for Mills, the so-called interview was nothing of the kind.

David Banks

Oracle and other database suppliers face a growing threat from below: "open source" databases, which give customers a free or low-cost alternative to commercial products. Brown claims to be in favor of free markets, etc. But he sees giving customers a lower-cost option as a problem.

In summary: every primary source in Samizdat either contradicts Brown, is ignored or misinterpreted by Brown, or has later rebutted him. Not one person interviewed in the book has said they feel it correctly reports what they said. Not one person interviewed in the book agrees with its conclusions.

Bear in mind that AdTI says:

Brown's account is based on extensive interviews with more than two dozen leading technologists in the United States, Europe, and Australia, including Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, and Andrew Tanenbaum.

Some people were not interviewed at all. Other were not extensively interviewed, but asked only a couple of questions. And almost all of those interviewed think Brown is wrong, and many of them dislike his exceptionally shoddy journalism.

Sometimes when one is investigating a topic, some of the people interviewed might disagree with the thesis. But to have every single one feel that the researcher is either wrong or missing the point is quite an outstanding achievement. I would think any person interested in writing a serious book would at that point take a step back and check whether their thesis was really right. A less ethical person might select different sources to support their case. Microsoft/AdTI did not even bother to find sources who agreed with their outlandish theories — they just went to print anyhow.

posted Fri 11 Jun 2004 in /issues/adti | link

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