[Discuss] Mom! Linus is kicking me!

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-07-16 09:00-0700 pw wrote:

> B. E. Irwin wrote:
>> On Sat, 14 Jul 2007, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
>> 
>>> On 2007-07-13 20:36-0700 pw wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Linus Torvalds Calls GPLv3 authors 'hypocrites'.
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/07/linux_creator_c.html 
>>>> 
>>>> Can't we all just get along!
>>> 
>>> Don't believe all the flame-bait you read at information week.  Wish I
>>> hadn't given them the hit.  If you look at the original post
>>> (http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/20/223) the comments by Linus are fairly
>>> innocuous although IMO unclearly argued.
>> 
>> Here's an article that shows how misleading the orginal InformationWeek
>> (maybe this rag should be called MisleadingWeek instead!) article is:
>> 
>> Misleading InformationWeek GPLv3 article
>> http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/misleading_informationweek_gplv3_article 
>> .
>> 
>> Barbara
>
>
> It's all pretty yellow journalism.
> You're quoting 'www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs'. Not exactly an 
> *unbiased* source of information.
>
> What I find interesting is how biased technology articles always are,
> from a journalism standpoint.

I don't think any human communication is without bias of some sort (except
my own, of course :-) ) so an accusation of bias is meaningless. That said,
there are some really excellent blogs out there which link to the original
sources. To take one really good example of this, I am sure Pamela Jones
would be the first to tell you she is biased, but at the groklaw blog she
gives access to all the legal sources for why she has come to her
conclusions, and there are lots of lawyers that have been attracted to her
blog to comment on any points where she may be in error.  Her coverage of
the SCO cases has consistently been head and shoulders above the coverage
given by the traditional media. To get back to the original example here,
there is no question the InformationWeek article deliberately distorted what
Linus said by selective quoting from old e-mails (before GVPLv3 even came
out) and especially by not giving references to those e-mails. I think it
was great that freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs called them on that
distortion.  Sure freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs is biased, but it leads to
the truth (what Linus actually said historically in context) in any case.

For what it is worth here is my prediction of what is going to happen with
the Linux kernel and GVPLv2 versus GVPLv3.  The fraction of the kernel that
is licensed "GVPLv2 or later" versus "GVPLv2 only" will grow, but so long as
one key part is still "only", then the license for the kernel as a whole
will continue to be effectively "only" for quite a long while and perhaps
even indefinitely. However, if the day ever occurs that Linux developers are
personally impacted by patents or Tivioization of their development
platforms, then there will be a month of enormous activity (much like when
Linux shifted from bitkeeper to git) and when the dust settles the kernel
will be GVPLv3.  So in a sense you could say that GVPLv3 is already
protecting the kernel because they do have the capability to switch to it if
they ever need it.  Such a switch would be difficult but not impossible;
they would have to track down everyone with a copyright, and rewrite bits
and pieces for those who could not be contacted or who wanted to keep their
contribution "only".  Furthermore, they don't have to deal with very many
old contributions; there is a huge flux of change in Linux kernels so most
of the code has been written in the last few years. Somewhat ironically, the
tracking down part has been made much easier by the SCO cases which has
encouraged Linux developers to keep careful track of all contributions.


> The problem with blogs as journalism is that there is no editor
> searching each paragraph with a jaundiced eye to ensure balance.
> Then again nobody ever accused most media of being balanced
> either. Just consider the Asper family regarding balance at their
> newpapers [shiver].

My opinion is that most traditional media have been completely captured by
their advertisers (i.e., big business) and owners (usually some big-business
conglomerate).  So I pay little attention to traditional media any more.
Blogs have many faults, but they do represent a variety of opinion rather
than just what big business wants us to think.  I also pay little attention
to blogs (or fake blogs by traditional media) which do not link to original
sources.  On the other hand, I do pay attention to blogs such as groklaw
which do link to original sources.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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