[LUGSB] Linux 2.6.0

Vinay Pai vinay at cs.sunysb.edu
Sun Dec 21 01:24:10 EST 2003 

I've been using it since 2.5.39 or somethingand haven't had much trouble
with it. Becuse I've been following the unstable line for so long
unfortunately I missed out on the excitement from 2.6.0.


On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, John Magrini wrote:

> Anyone have any success with it yet? I've been trying to get it to
> compile for ppc but its error after error. slooowly but surely ill get
> this thing going. Maybe then I'll update you on any bonuses. I myself
> was looking forward to the preemptive kernel. Im trying the gentoo
> flavor now opposed to kernel.org release.
>
> magrini
>
> _______________________________________________
> lugsb mailing list
> lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu
> http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/mailman/listinfo/lugsb
>
>From magrini at optonline.net Sun Dec 21 16:31:19 2003
Received: from mta11.srv.hcvlny.cv.net (mta11.srv.hcvlny.cv.net
	[167.206.5.86])hBLLVJU7010296
	for <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>; Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:31:19 -0500
Received: from optonline.net (ool-18ba51de.dyn.optonline.net [24.186.81.222])
 by mta11.srv.hcvlny.cv.net
 (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.2 HotFix 1.16 (built May 14 2003))
 with ESMTP id <0HQ900CD6L5J9T at mta11.srv.hcvlny.cv.net> for
 lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu; Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:32:08 -0500 (EST)
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:32:54 -0500
From: John Magrini <magrini at optonline.net>
To: lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu
Message-id: <3FE61186.2050507 at optonline.net>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5a (20031216)
Subject: [LUGSB] relevant link about msft and these surveys
X-BeenThere: lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1
Precedence: list
Reply-To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
List-Id: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/mailman/listinfo/lugsb>,
	<mailto:lugsb-request at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <http://lists.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/pipermail/lugsb>
List-Post: <mailto:lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
List-Help: <mailto:lugsb-request at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/mailman/listinfo/lugsb>,
	<mailto:lugsb-request at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:31:19 -0000

http://www.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=03/12/21/1546240
>From jhover at ic.sunysb.edu Mon Dec 22 00:58:56 2003
Received: from mta3.srv.hcvlny.cv.net (mta3.srv.hcvlny.cv.net [167.206.5.69])
	hBM5wuU7030023
	for <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>; Mon, 22 Dec 2003 00:58:56 -0500
Received: from ic.sunysb.edu (ool-18b891bc.dyn.optonline.net [24.184.145.188])
 by mta3.srv.hcvlny.cv.net
 (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.2 HotFix 1.16 (built May 14 2003))
 with ESMTP id <0HQA00MH88N94X at mta3.srv.hcvlny.cv.net> for
 lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu; Mon, 22 Dec 2003 00:59:33 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 00:59:44 -0500
From: "John R. Hover" <jhover at ic.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Re: [LUGSB] What makes Linux great?
In-reply-to: 
	<DDE1793D7266AD488BB4F5E8D38EACB80454F7DB at WIN-MSG-10.wingroup.windeploy.ntdev.microsoft.com>
To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
Message-id: <3FE68850.4010307 at ic.sunysb.edu>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031205
 Thunderbird/0.4
References: 
	<DDE1793D7266AD488BB4F5E8D38EACB80454F7DB at WIN-MSG-10.wingroup.windeploy.ntdev.microsoft.com>
X-BeenThere: lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1
Precedence: list
Reply-To: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
List-Id: Linux Users Group at Stony Brook <lugsb.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/mailman/listinfo/lugsb>,
	<mailto:lugsb-request at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <http://lists.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/pipermail/lugsb>
List-Post: <mailto:lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu>
List-Help: <mailto:lugsb-request at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/mailman/listinfo/lugsb>,
	<mailto:lugsb-request at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 05:58:56 -0000

I've been admonished that my earlier post was over the top, and that I 
shouldn't have brought Mr. Surkan personally into the discussion--that 
doing so was an attack. My aim was not to assert that Mr . Surkan is a 
bad person, or to engage in a personal attack. It was an effort to 
encourage self-reflection and an examination of the consequences of 
one's actions. My apologies for the usenet-style hyperbole, I should 
have toned it down a bit.

It's also been suggested that there may be reasons to think that in some 
sense these inquires and surveys reflect a recognition by MS on some 
level that they must begin to compete honestly. If that's true then Mr. 
Surkan could indeed be asking a more-or-less honest question, and 
perhaps we can give him a limited benefit of the doubt.

In the spirit of friendly discussion, I'll go ahead and post my answers 
to Mr. Surkan's inquiry, with the observation that it would be almost 
impossible for MS to implement my suggestions, even partially, without 
*actually* changing their corporate culture and genuinely relinquishing 
control over the market:

If you want to help your customers and improve your software:

1. Publicly and in a legally binding way renounce illegal 
anti-competitive behavior.  The board of directors should assemble a new 
top management team and public relations group that has made a public 
promise to maintain the highest ethical standards in the future. 
Establish an _independent_ review organization that has access to all 
internal decisionmaking and information with a mandate to report 
violations to the authorities. Spin off the applications and services 
divisions into their own corporations, splitting stock 3-ways to current 
shareholders. If your products are really good enough on their own 
merits to survive in the marketplace, they'll do fine. In fact, the 
applications division could become even more profitable if allowed to 
become platform-blind.

	This move would reassure your corporate customers that you no longer 
intend to use your dominant OS market position to engage in 
anti-competitive behavior that has hurt them in the past and will hurt 
them in the future.

2. Interoperability, UNIX and otherwise:
	Publish all data formats, protocols, and API's, e.g. Active Directory, 
CIFS/SMB, Office formats, NTFS, multimedia codecs, etc.

That way customers can use MS software in the way the best suits their 
needs and existing infrastructure.

3. Take legally binding steps to relinquish exclusive rights to anything 
related to interoperability, e.g. Office file formats, multimedia 
codecs, etc, and to offer free, non-descriminatory use of any patents MS 
may hold or be granted.

That way customers know they can always get to their data, and that you 
can't revoke the right to continue developing and using any 
interoperability technology.

4. Publicly and in a legally binding way renounce the use of restrictive 
licensing (both for OEMs, and end users) in the sale of any Microsoft 
software. For example, establish a universal volume-discount price list 
for all OEMs with no further restrictions. Allow vendors to customize 
systems as they please, with any software they please. Explicitly affirm 
the first-sale ownership of all MS products, i.e. If I get Windows with 
a system and I don't use it, I can sell it to someone else, or transfer 
it to another machine I own.  And place no restrictions on publishing 
benchmarks and other  test results.

That way customers can be sure they're getting a fair deal on any 
system, and they can buy systems customized to suit their needs.

5. Open source all code and permit vendors and OEMs to create custom 
distributions. This will allow all your customers to be absolutely 
assured of their security, since they may choose a trusted vendor to 
compile the code, or compile it themselves. (Note that I am NOT 
suggesting the unreasonable demand that you make your products 
non-proprietary. Pirating would still be a copyright violation, and you 
still get paid for each copy.) Establish a public and transparent patch 
acceptance and integration process for your software, and affirm the 
right of customers to apply non-official patches in-house to their 
systems if they choose.

That way customers will have complete control over their systems, 
software, and data. The Chinese and Indian governments are two obvious 
major markets this would effect, although it's probably too late to stop 
the Chinese from focussing on Linux for their national infrastructure.

...

Anyway, you get the idea. They all boil down to: 1. Give up illegal 
competitive advantage and promise to not do it in the future; and prove 
it by making the change legally permanent and irrevocable. 2. Give 
control back to your customers over their systems , software, and data.

Incidentally, these two items summarize for me “what makes Linux great”. 
Because it isn't owned by anyone, no one can use it to control or 
exploit me, either as a user or a developer. Open source/GPL gives me 
complete control over my systems and software, reassures me that no one 
can take control in the future, and creates a healthy, diverse software 
ecology that contributes to security, interoperability, and copious 
community support.

If Microsoft made a clear break with the past, and made legally binding 
changes to prove it, I would be happy to go back to using MS software 
wherever I thought it was the best practical/technological fit to my or 
my client's needs. And the funny thing is that I think that these 
changes would result in a great improvement in MS software technical 
quality and greatly strengthen Microsoft's long-term business viability.

Given how unlikely these changes seem to me, I still encourage my fellow 
club members to carefully consider their feedback in posts and surveys 
in the absence of a clear explanation of exactly how their feedback will 
be used. I remain skeptical that MS is really seeking information on how 
to improve their software, and I don't think they are interested in 
serving Linux users. I think they are studying the open source movement 
to find a way to adopt the appearance of being more 'open' while 
avoiding the substance of openness, all in order to minimize Linux as a 
competitor. But perhaps in the process of doing this they may slip and 
actually give back some power to their users. We can only hope so.

---

BTW, this story has now hit the wires and there is lots of interesting 
commentary:
http://www.newsforge.com/os/03/12/21/1546240.shtml?tid=11&tid=2&tid=82&tid=94

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/12/21/1655257.shtml?tid=106&tid=109&tid=185&tid=187

Michael Surkan wrote:
> I am a program manager at Microsoft doing some research around how we
> can improve our operating systems. My goal is to help us identify
> capabilities, improvements, and features that Microsoft should be
> focusing on to help our customers over the next 5 years or so.
> 
> I am particularly interested in hearing from Linux users, and get their
> input about what they feel should be the priorities. In particular, I
> would like to better understand what it is that makes Linux and Open
> Source solutions so useful for you.
> 
> If you would be willing to take a survey I have put together, please
> write me at lnq at microsoft.com.
> 
> Thanks,
> Michael Surkan
> 
> P.S. I did confirm with Mark Dragothat it was ok to post this note.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> lugsb mailing list
> lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu
> http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/mailman/listinfo/lugsb

More information about the lugsb mailing list