May 2004

The Tide of FUD

by Peter H. Salus

Alexis de Tocqueville observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.

So there's a painful irony when we're forced to recognize the validity of de Tocqueville's remark in a May press release from the head of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, Ken Brown.

In fact, Brown has agitated me sufficiently to devote time and space to trying to counter the FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt — that is being propagated.

Brown released a "study" in which it is "revealed" that Linus Torvalds did not "invent" Linux, which says Brown, has "questionable" roots.

Of course, Ken Brown doesn't go into detail — this whole thing is a teaser for a "book he is writing on open source software and operating systems." As "excerpts" are promised for 20 May, this article may be a preface to a detailed commentary.

[It may be worth noting that the de Tocqueville Institution is, at least in part, funded by Microsoft.]

It's actually quite easy to question Brown's assertions. But most important, one has to realize at the very outset that I don't think Linus has ever claimed to "invent" anything. (Nor am I sure that either Dennis Ritchie or Ken Thompson ever claimed to have "invented" Unix — their 1983 Turing Award was for "the development and implementation of the UNIX operating system.")

Moreover, the roots of Linux are far from "questionable."

Knowledge builds on previous knowledge.

Operating systems build on one another. My personal feeling is that it is relatively pointless to try to go back much more than four decades. But even then, at the point where IBM had transitioned from the 701 to the 704 and was moving from the 709 to the 7090, the first transistorized computer, it is clear that the big development was time sharing.