Rick Moen

I spent way too much time perusing the pages of Byte. I won't say "wasted" because I never felt that. One thing I wished I could find was one particular "Stop Bit" that I recall to this day. Among my favorite phrases was > Hardware Salespeople catch rabbits, paint them gray, and sell them as desktop elephants. I just found it on page 412 of the September, 1989. While searching for the author, Peter C. Olsen, I found that this has been transcribed (fittingly) and posted here. http://linuxmafia.com/pub/humour/hunting-an-elephant.html Where you are Mr. Olsen, thank you so much for this insightful and entertaining commentary.

> won't work on such a processor; Eh, I think SSH clients for OS8 existed. http://www.heilancoo.net/MacCVSClient/MacCVSClientDoc/ssh-classic.html http://linuxmafia.com/ssh/macos.html

The linked essay[1] is worth reading. I had no idea that sex testing was so complicated - it explained to me a lot about why sex-testing for (usually) women's sport isn't as simple as I'd assumed. [1] http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html

I was pointed to an interesting article about that very topic the other day: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html "In particular, in 1967, Polish sprinting champion Ewa Kłobukowska was disqualified (and banned from professional sports!) for being (probably) XXY on the basis of failing the Barr body test, as was Spain's hurdler Maria José Martínez Patino for being XY (CAIS) in the 1980s. Worse, during preparations for the 1968 Grenoble Winter Games, Austrian skier Erika Shinegger was genetically tested, determined to be XY (probably CAIS), and disqualified. This was a great shock to all three women, who were raised female and had no reason to think otherwise. (Erika subsequently did have a sex change, and is now Erik. Maria's competitive eligibility was reinstated in 1988. Ewa retired, married, and gave birth to a son.)"

It is possible to make a legal argument that a Linux-specific device driver is in fact derivative of the Linux kernel code that it interacts with. If said argument is made, then no matter what the author of said code says, it may actually be forced to be GPL v2. I am not a lawyer, and I have no real idea how likely said argument is to hold up in an actual court. It also seems unlikely that anyone would actually file a lawsuit about this sort of stuff. But if you want to be as careful as you can be, you won't go wrong if you use the GPL v2 on principle for a Linux device driver. On this topic it is worth noting that Linus Torvalds has stated different seeming opinions at different times. In general as more and more of the Linux kernel has been made available to loadable modules, he's become less and less inclined towards the argument that they are not derivative works. See http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.html for a comparison of his views at two points in time. (I don't know his current views.)

"How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" by Eric S. Raymond and Rick Moen is from before AI but still seems relevant. (HTTP) http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/smart-questions.html https://archive.ph/duRkf

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html discusses some of the genetic anomalies that are possible and coincidentally how they've been handled by the IOC.

Related: "Fear of Forking" by Rick Moen http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/forking.html

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.html Linus said it was okay long ago; that's as close to official as one can get. Later his views became more nuanced, but still largely authorize binary-only drivers. It may still be legally problematic (as there are many contributors who may be able to make a claim); but 28 years of policy precedent make such an attempt at enforcement difficult. There's all the EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL infrastructure for this exact reason.

Abandoning your copyright to a work does not place it in the public domain. It just makes it abandoned property, which then becomes owned by the first person to take ownership of it (barring further complications in the applicable jurisdictions abandoned property laws, or pre-existing claims by others such as the former owner's heirs or assigns). http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Licensing_and_Law/public-domain.html

The Linux kernel has explicit rules for the cases where it allows it: An explicit license exception for the syscall interface, stating that calling it from userspace is freely allowed: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tre… And modules, e.g. drivers, have various statements from Linus on how they're not necessarily considered derived works of the kernel/linked to the kernel, e.g. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.html or http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0312.0/0670.html

In the case of Linux, Linus has a public position [1] that: * A kernel module is run by the kernel, not incorporated in it, * A kernel module only uses LGPL interfaces, so full GPL compliance shouldn't be necessary, * Binary modules should be legal (though he doesn't like them), and * Projects (like filesystems developed for other platforms) with their own life outside of Linux shouldn't be required to re-license if they clearly weren't based on Linux. I know Linus doesn't represent all kernel developers, but his opinion should carry a lot of weight. The SFConservancy is just practicing GPL overreach here, and is rattling a saber in hopes that Oracle blinks. Ubuntu has been distributing NVidia binary kernel modules for years and this hasn't resulted in a lawsuit, so it seems like an empty threat. [1] http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.html

Well then he already won 17 years ago when MSFT released NetShow player for Linux and some flavours of Unix. http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/apps/netshow_linux.html

Here's a much better link.. someone collected various emails from Linus on loadable modules: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.html

Depend which you want to listen to. If you want to listen to what lawyers think (fsf), then there is a GPL violation( https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NonfreeDriverKernelLinux). If you want to listen to kernel hackers, (such as Linus Torvalds), then he doesn't say if it is, or isn't a violation. Rather, he says that developers has a right to write non-free drivers to the kernel using modules (http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.html). So... what does that mean? Im not a lawyer, but it looks to me as an GPL violation which has been given permission to exist by one of the kernel developers. That it is the project leader that gives permission does lower the risk that any individual kernel developer will suddenly go out and start suing companies for GPL violations, even if they has a legal right to do so under copyright.

> The kernel developers and the FSF have always claimed that loadable modules (like the exFat driver) are "derived works"... Not true [1]. 1. See e.g. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.html.

Humans have more than just two sex categories http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html

This used to be called "Who is not on LiveJournal[1]" http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/winolj.html Notes: 1. An interesting story itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveJournal

Hackerspace in San Francisco: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/NoiseBridge List of some user group meetings in the Bay Area: http://linuxmafia.com/bale/

Don't use a debugger - think when something doesn't work. The feedback you get by thinking about your own code teaches you much faster than anything you get with compile/run/debug cycle. "I think that without a debugger, you don't get into that mindset where you know how it behaves, and then you fix it from there. " http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/linus-im-a-bastard-speech.html

My guidelines: If your email is short, very clear, acknowledges that the recipient is likely to be busy, and only requires a short answer, usually you will be answered with 30 minutes of it being read, or never. If it's long, unclear, rambling and makes no effort to demonstrate that you are in effect asking a favor, or if the reply requires thought and detail, then a week, or never. Ask yourself: what have I done to motivate the person to answer this email? Also, read this: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/smart-questions.html Don't take all of it literally - pick, choose, and use common sense.

Linus once said that debuggers are for sissies. I knew he would regret saying that sometime. Here is another of his rants against debuggers. Just substitute 'kernel debugger' by 'simple chipset debugging facilities' (whatever that means) in that email and basically he has his response for why Intel isn't adding it. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/linus-im-a-bastard-speech.html Intel engineers are saying, 'simple chipset debugging facilities' are for sissies!

WAFS sounds like it borrows a lot the research done 20 years ago by the Sprite group. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Filesystems/filesystems-metadata.html http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Research/Projects/CS/sprite/retrospective… Ousterhout's LFS paper is from 1991 and according to Wikipedia NetApp wasn't founded until 1992.

It will certainly do that. Previous attempts at this (the Olympics did genetic tests from the 1960's through the 1990's, other organizations have done similar tests into the present) always did wind up discovering cis women raised as women from birth, with female presenting genitalia, who failed whatever genetic tests they were doing. In fact, I'm not aware of any genetic testing program ever catching any deliberate cheating, only people who were raised from birth as women. The very first example of this, (1), Dora/Heinrich Ratjen (2) seems to have been an intersex person who was definitely raised as a girl from birth who was a bit confused about what their body was doing. But all the way back in the 1950's when their 1936 Olympics became a big deal, we have lurid tales in the English language media of deliberate cheating that don't seem to have been supported by anything that Dora/Heinrich ever did. 1: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Ratjen

> So I've not been able to find any easy way to create an Ubuntu 8.04 container on modern Ubuntu Interesting. I posted a comment here a few months ago where I went through this process so that I could run Amarok 1.4. I used 8.10. Here's is a rough howto... Step 1: Find an Ubuntu 8.10 ISO and mount it: curl http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/8.04.0/ubuntu-8.04.4-desktop-a… sudo mount -o loop ubuntu-8.04-desktop-amd64.iso /mnt/hardy Step 2: Unqsquash the filesystem: sudo apt-get install -y squashfs-tools sudo unsquashfs -f -d /tmp/unsquashfs /mnt/hardy/casper/filesystem.squashfs Step 3: Import the tarball into a Docker image: sudo tar -C /tmp/unsquashfs -c . | docker import - ubuntu/hardy Step 4: Run interactively and install Amarok: docker run -it --entrypoint=/bin/bash ubuntu/hardy Step 5: Edit the apt repos, replacing the original address with "old-releases.ubuntu.com" sudo sed -i 's/archive.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' sources.list sudo sed -i 's/security.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' sources.list Step 6: Upgrade the system (well, as much as you can upgrade Ubuntu Hardy!) sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y -q Step 7: (You're on your own here...) Set up your user and install the WordPerfect 8! Looks like the old wp8 stuff is here: http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/apps/ but there's definitely gonna be some incantations you have to do to get it working, `ldd this` and `apt-get install that`. Step 8: Capture the…

Although I realize the table and most of the article is primarily concerned with 32-bit CPUs, it's unfortunate that the article fails to mention 64-bit DEC Alpha, which was the second architecture after i386 supported by Linux. And unlike i386 it's still supported. When the article says > Linux was first written as a desktop system for IBM PC compatibles, and was eventually ported to almost every other desktop platform available in the 1990s, including a lot of the early Unix workstations across all architectures. Because of the juxtaposition with the subsequent platform table, I think a lot of people might be misled into think that both 64-bit CPUs and 64-bit Linux was late to the game. But 64-bit Linux existed as a first-class environment before it supported any other 32-bit architectures like MIPS, PowerPC, or SPARC; before Linux gained any commercial attention (DEC notwithstanding); and AFAIU before there was any kind of serious commitment to syscall ABI stability. GCC supported "long long" on 32-bit architectures since at least 1989, before Linux even existed.[1] I think some Unix environments supported 64-bit off_t on 32-bit architectures before Linux was ever ported to Alpha, and possibly before Linux existed. In any event, using long long for off_t was a done deal by January 1995 at the first Large File Summit (LFS) meeting. The first two slides at https://web.archive.org/web/20000903063117/http://ftp.sas.com/standard… suggest using…

Yup. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html