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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!deccrl!news.crl.dec.com!pa.dec.com!vixie From: vixie@PA.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) Message-ID: <9209252210.AA10552@cognition.PA.DEC.COM> Subject: [Re: Catch What They're Saying About Us...] Date: Fri, 25 Sep 92 15:10:24 -0700 X-Received: by usenet.pa.dec.com; id AA22219; Fri, 25 Sep 92 15:10:26 -0700 X-Received: by cognition.PA.DEC.COM; id AA10552; Fri, 25 Sep 92 15:10:25 -0700 X-To: comp.unix.bsd.usenet@usenet.pa.dec.com X-Mts: smtp Lines: 251 I did not recieve this article in netnews, but someone was kind enough to forward me a copy in e-mail. I know that 90% of you don't care about this discussion and don't want to hear about the politics of BSD any more; however, the other 10% still constitutes hundreds of people; so, for them, this response will be public. [Lynne] > [Of course. Any time Mr. Vixie starts off on a topic unrelated to the > thread discussed, he calls it an "open letter", instead of sending email. > However, my message was selectively edited by Mr. Vixie. As such, I have > not edited out the contents of this message for my response, to avoid > additional loss of context. LGJ] Declaring that my topic is unrelated to the current thread does not make it so, Lynne. I've got a dozen messages in my inbox thanking me for saying what I said; clearly I'm not alone in thinking that what I said is relevant to what you said. I will only include those parts of your article that I disagree with or need as supporting context for my comments here. If you feel that I am selectively quoting you in order to _lose_ context or to make it seem that you mean something you did not mean, please let me know. I have tried and will keep trying to quote you as fairly as possible, without including the entire previous conversation in each reply. > It is unfortunate that a person who I barely know and have no contact > with to speak of has chosen to use this positive challange to launch a > personal attack on me and 386BSD, using BSDi (which has not ever been a > part of this thread, as they are a proprietary system), as a kind of > battering ram. I guess that person is me, so I'll respond to this. Your challenge was not positive in my view, Lynne. I used your actions which have affected BSDi to outline the wider context of your generally hostile attitude toward anyone who has ever disagreed with you or failed to pay you the homage you seem to feel is your due. (You're pretty great but you aren't perfect.) I happen to think that Bill is one of the brightest people I have ever met, and I know that what he has done with 386BSD, and before that, what he did with Symmetrix, and before that, what he did with BSD 4.1C, were all things I could not have done. Bill knows that I admire his technical abilities. But that does not make it OK for you to respond-as-though-attacked whenever someone disagrees with you or calls some action of yours (or Bill's) into minor question. Nothing -- NOTHING! -- can excuse the kind of mud-slinging that have characterized your copyrights, release notices, public flames, and "disinformation" (your word, which I am borrowing) to the press. > While I have known for some time that Mr. Vixie is very close to Mr's > Bostic, Karels, McKusick, and Adams, and tends to agree with their views, I > have been dissuaded by others from responding to his earlier attacks in > netnews, with the reason given that he is going through severe personal > problems. I felt sorry for him, and I thought he would right himself > eventually. Several issues here. First, will the person who does not have personal problems please stand up? Send me mail, I'll count the replies and summarize them here, if there are any. Second, my affiliation with Mr's Bostic, Karels, et al were at the outset of the 386BSD debacle no stronger than my affiliation with Bill Jolitz. When I saw Bill in Colorado a few years ago I spent most of my free time talking to him rather than to any of the others you mention, since I knew Bill better than I knew any of the others. However, I will admit that with strong my public and private stance on the 386BSD debacle, I have become less close to Bill since the two of you seem to want this to be about "good guys" and "bad guys" and since I'm not "with you" I must be "against you". I don't live in a world that has only heroes and villians and fools in it. My world is a lot more complicated than that, and it is against your over- simplified (according to me) view of the world that I fight -- not against you and Bill personally. For the record, I believe that you and Bill are doing much more good than harm, even though your consistent response-as- though-attacked has overshadowed your magnificient contribution (386BSD). On the other hand I have yet to be lambasted by Mr's Bostic, Karels et al, for my public statements. As time goes by I gain sympathy for their position, if only because they don't flame me, but you do. > However, I do not feel I can continue allowing him to attack me and the > entire 386BSD community, nor use BSDi as a weapon in this regard. > Personal problems aside, his statements are inappropriate and must be > rectified. Will someone -- ANYONE -- who believes that my previous message (subtitled "an open letter to Lynne Jolitz") was an attack, please let me know this? So far the only feedback I've gotten is of the form "thank you for being a voice of sanity and moderation in this otherwise noisy discussion". If I really am a fang-toothed, blood-soaked monster out to cause harm to others, you would be doing me a favor by letting me know. Because right now the only people who think I am attacking Lynne and Bill are: Lynne and Bill. So to me this looks like subjective measurement error rather than an actual attack. Third-party verification would be most helpful. > In this case, many people in the press had been following this story for > some time, and were aware of the conflict-of-interest between CSRG and > BSDi, the arrangements for investments, the secret directors, and so forth > (as documented in BSDi's filings with the State of Virginia Board of > Corporations, and in information from the parties to the suits themselves). > Since this story was not looking black-and-white, they investigated still > further. They had no need to recourse to us, since sworn statements and > interviews were available in great amounts. Lynne, I know better. When I read the UNIGRAM article it was an almost exact reprint of the story you and Bill were telling at the time. There were statements buried in that article, presented as "facts", which you and Bill had asserted publically and in private e-mail to me, but which noone -- NOONE! -- else had ever presented in quite the same way. The "signature" of the UNIGRAM statements was unmistakably yours or Bill's. I did not fault you and Bill at that time; UNIGRAM's article was the worst kind of sloppy, yellow journalism. That they would have published that tripe at all is a bad reflection on them, not you. You and Bill just say what you think is true and whether you said it to UNIGRAM or whether they read your postings here is actually of little importance. However, once having taken an unmistakable "side" in this whole business and having pushed your version of events as "the one true interpretation", it really bothered the hell out of me to see you complaining about the "disinformation" being pushed by the Linux people. As I said before, what comes to mind is something about people who live in glass houses. > I recall that Orwell's "1984" used to be required reading. If having a free > press print the truth is "blood-thirsty and vindictive", then we are one > small step away from the slogans "Knowledge is Ignorance" and "Slavery is > Freedom". Lynne, some presses are more objective than others and some require more proof than others. I'm not, as I said above, complaining that you've talked to the press. I'm telling you that you CANNOT now complain when the same kind of so-called "disinformation" comes back around to you. Think of it as Karma. >[this is Lynne quoting me quoting her] >> Since I'm not one who likes to let disinformation be the order of the day, > > Again, this related to a few poorly substantiated comments regarding > 386BSD, hence the open competition challange. If Mr. Vixie had bothered > to include the rest of my sentence, it would have continued to state > that I propose an open competition between Linux and 386BSD, with the > goal of "bettering both systems". > > The statement synopsized above has nothing to do with either Mr. Vixie > or BSDi, but was instead selectively edited and used by Mr. Vixie to > continue his personal attack. That statement was me quoting the pot calling the kettle black, Lynne. > BSDi is a commercial system, with a small user base, and is proprietary, > licensed, and expensive. ....and stable, and complete, and supported, and documented. But we digress. >[vixie] >>Both will have a huge effect on the BSD universe. > > Well, I do know that 386BSD has had a considerable impact on the BSD > community. There has been more good work and more "new BSD stars" > arising in the last six months than had occurred in the previous six > years. That is absolutely true. 386BSD has been the biggest thing ever to hit BSD. I hope I've made it clear by making tapes for people and putting your bits up on Gatekeeper that I believe your release is a good thing and that it is helping to push the world in the direction I happen to want it to go. > I don't know about BSDi however. Everyone I talk to says that this firm > hasn't got a chance -- no reputable firm would finance them given what has > already occurred, and no commercial firm wants their product with all this > legal action flying back and forth. This was anticipated for many years, > and is no great surprise. "No" commercial firm? Want to bet money on that? (I have a copy here, which I use on my lap-top, because I needed something that would "just work". My employer believes that we are a "commercial firm", as far as I know -- but I don't speak for my employer; if you want the answer to that question, you can talk to our PR department.) > BSD is a university creation, and it has been very successful in its niche. > As I stated earlier, BSDi is irrelevent to the 386BSD customer base. That's not quite the way I see it. 386BSD will open a lot of eyes to what 386 boxes are actually capable of doing. You and Bill are probably helping MtXinu and BSDi and Interactive sell a very great number of commercial 386/486 licenses, just by being a "free sample" or "proof of concept". > Since this thread had nothing to do with BSDi or CSRG until Mr. Vixie > brought it up, I hope that the references to "enemies" will be > considered by readers to be just a creation of Mr. Vixie's mind, and > not the general view of the 386BSD user base. As you said in some text which I've omitted here for brevity, thinking is allowed. I think my use of the word "enemy" stands without explaination. > BSDi, on the other hand, is probably the most adversely impacted by > both 386BSD software activities and Careware charity activities. > > By taking 386BSD and twisting it their own proprietary and costly > product, BSDi cannot easily match the rapid growth and learning curve > which a freely available version allows. Also, since the systems have > diverged (and will continue to diverge), they cannot easily take > advantage of new work in 386BSD, unless they decide to appropriate > whole portions of the system. In this case, their much-touted > leading-edge firm appears like the tail wagging the dog. In addition, > even with a small paid staff, a single small company cannot compete > with the hundreds of thousands of users making changes and adding new > things to the system every day. Several things. (1) 386BSD helps BSDi with every free copy that gets installed somewhere. (2) BSD/386 is closer by far to 4.3-reno, Net-2, and 4.4 than is 386BSD, so claims of "twisting it" and "divergence" are somewhat misplaced -- 386BSD is the thing that looks divergent, to me. (3) if it were true that 386BSD were available without license, then it would be possible for BSDi to incorporate new 386BSD features into their releases, but it isn't, and they can't, so they don't and won't. (4) having 250,000 people working on an operating system does not make my laptop work more reliably; in fact, probably less so. > But this is again, irrelevent, as BSDi is not a freely available system. > They do not put their changes on the net, but instead hold them to > themselves closely. They have received many changes from CSRG (one and the > same with BSDi), but are not distributing them. They have even received > Chris Torek's sparc code, paid for by the taxpayers, which has not been > made available to others despite repeated requests, and are currently > attempting to make money off of it in the same manner in which they tried > to appropriate 386BSD. Hmmm. That's not how Chris explained it to *me*. But seriously, folks -- if BSDi had something that people wanted don't you think they'd be SELLING it? I don't know a thing about their internal controls, but I am betting that their releases contain everything they have that they think works well enough to be interesting to customers. In other words: "huh?" > As I look over again this entire message, I can only assume that this > diatribe against me and 386BSD is merely the desperate and jealous rantings > of a person who resents deeply the success that 386BSD has achieved, as > well as our personal honesty and commitment to this project. That is certainly a unique perspective. > Thank you for your patience with this long response. > > Lynne Jolitz. Ditto. -- Paul Vixie, DEC Network Systems Lab Palo Alto, California, USA "Don't be a rebel, or a conformist; <vixie@pa.dec.com> decwrl!vixie they're the same thing, anyway. Find <paul@vix.com> vixie!paul your own path, and stay on it." -me