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Bob Metcalfe on Open Source, IPv6, IETF 438

Posted by CmdrTaco from the packets-and-pings-and-pontification-oh-my dept.
prostoalex writes "The inventor of Ethernet Bob Metcalfe is interviewed by AlwaysOn on current issues. Metcalfe is known for challenging commonly accepted wisdom and this time he's quite confrontational. On open source and operating systems: "If you look at Windows and Linux, both are based on 25-year-old technology. Windows is sort of a GUI version of the Mac's operating system, and Linux is of course Unix, which stems from 1968. These are both old clunkers. So the question is, Where are the new operating systems likely to come from?" On IPv6 adoption and IETF: "Back when you attended the IETF, you all looked down your noses at the ITU (or I guess it was called CCITT at the time)--the entrenched, corporately manipulated, corrupt, competent standards being embodied in IT. We were the IETF--the swashbuckling, institution-oriented, open people, the rebels. That's changed now. The Internet has arrived, and all of those people are now just like ITU: IETF has become the ITU.""
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Bob Metcalfe on Open Source, IPv6, IETF More

Bob Metcalfe on Open Source, IPv6, IETF

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  • Inconsistent Rant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XorNand ( 517466 ) * on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:20PM (#13114901)
    If you look at Windows and Linux, both are based on 25-year-old technology. Windows is sort of a GUI version of the Mac's operating system, and Linux is of course Unix, which stems from 1968. These are both old clunkers. So the question is, Where are the new operating systems likely to come from?
    I guess someone should tell automakers that they should reinvent a mode of transportation from scratch. That four wheels, an engine, and brake and throttle thing is so passé nowadays. Plumbers are going to be pretty upset to learn that using pipes to carry water is so several-centuries ago.

    There's no doubt that Mr. Metcalfe is quite bright and has contibuted greatly to the IT world, but I don't understand this rant. If he doesn't see the innovation, I guess he's never compared Slackware '96 to today's distros, or Windows 3.1 to WinXP. Apple certainly can't be ignored here either. Where are the new operating systems likely to come from? I'm going to take a wild guess, and say "probably from the OS's of today." They don't need to be completely rewritten every few years to count as progress. Even the emergence of UNIX itself was evolutionary, not revolutionary.

    It's also interesting that he clearly shows a lack of faith in the OSS community, but then digs at the IETF for evolving into elitist and monolithic organization. ::scatches head:: Reading through the article, he doesn't seem to be very consistant with his views.

    • Re:Inconsistent Rant (Score:5, Funny)

      by Qzukk ( 229616 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:28PM (#13114983) Journal
      he doesn't seem to be very consistant with his views.

      Actually, I think it's just the opposite. He's very consistent: "Everything sucks."

    • Re:Inconsistent Rant (Score:5, Funny)

      by OglinTatas ( 710589 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:33PM (#13115036)
      "I guess someone should tell automakers that they should reinvent a mode of transportation from scratch. That four wheels, an engine, and brake and throttle thing is so passé nowadays. "

      It's been done. The Segway.

      • Re:Inconsistent Rant (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @01:02PM (#13115325) Homepage
        Likewise, there was BeOS and Next, which were both good attempts to make new OS's, but fell flat because an OS is more than just a product - it's a platform, and platforms need a lot of inertia to survive - either from age, or from a big push from a lot of businesses. Next survived in OSX because Apple combined the innovation of Next with the Mac's inertia. BeOS had no such benefactor - it's still around as some small retail OS that nobody uses, and an opensource project with insufficient support.
        • First NeXT is not dead. It morged with the MacOS when Apple acquired NeXt (or the other way around).

          NeXT orignated from a fourth strand of UNIX (not ATT, not BSD, not Linux). Carnegie Mellon wrote a highly layered version of UNIX called the Mach microkernel. Conventional UNIX was sinking under weight of trying to do to much in the kernel.
      • Yea... The great Segway... As far as automobile alternatives, the Segway is silly. Interesting, but silly. I'll stick with a bicycle which doesn't need to be charged, is faster, has much further practical range, is *MUCH* lighter weight (a good road bike will not be much over 20 lbs), and can be bought new for a fraction of the cost or at a yard sale for a few bucks. This actually fits quite nicely with the original discussion, the Segway is revolutionary but not exactly useful. It is, in effect, made ou

    • Um, and so they should. The automobile is obsolete (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:55PM (#13115242)
      "I guess someone should tell automakers that they should reinvent a mode of transportation from scratch."

      Perhaps transport engineers rather than automakers. The automakers have a huge investment in the status quo. You don't need 4 wheels an engine, brakes, throttle or even a driver.

      Transport engineers have already designed and built transport systems which don't have any of the above. Starting from scratch in the 1950s they devised a transport system which optimises the mathematics of getting from A -> B. Yes there is mathematics which describe the performance of transport.

      It turns out that this is about as close to optimal [personalrapidtransit.com] as you're going to get with current technologies. Computer controlled, linear induction motors, a few rollers rather than wheels and only 16 moving parts. Non stop from A->B, no congestion, no traffic lights, no changing routes, no waiting on schedules.

      It's been independantly re-invented a few times over the last few decades but we've now got the computer technology to actually do it [skywebexpress.com].

      • Now that you've solved the technological problems, let us know when you find the political will to fund it and build it.

        I'm sure I'll still be driving a car then.
      • That's first one is a horribly designed website. But it's a pretty interesting idea; it'd certainly be a good idea for cities. Perhaps it could be run like the subway or other public transit systems currently are. I'd certainly like to see how a real public trial would work out.

        And hey, there's an article [wikipedia.org].

        --grendel drago
        • Current public transit is horribly undesirable.

          You basically have to subsidise it to around about 50% in order to persuade people to use it. The UK subsidises the rail system to the tune of around £4 billion a year (approx $7 billion). This is largely because all current public transit systems are designed to carry groups of people from A->B.

          • Groups of people means stopping at every station to pick up and let off passengers, which means very low average speed.
          • Groups of people mean schedules in

      • Re:Um, and so they should. The automobile is obsol (Score:4, Interesting)

        by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @02:04PM (#13115933) Homepage Journal
        The automakers have a huge investment in the status quo.

        Considering suppliers to the automotive industry, the jobs they provide, the petroleum products required to make them run, and that much freight moves by trucks, the investment by society as a whole is huge.

        Which is why it's going to be increasingly traumatic as the oil faucet slowly begins to close. Geopolitics surrounding petroleum is already traumatic enough now, thank you.

      • After reading the web site you sent out about the PRT I realized the prototype is in the back of parking lot 3 at raytheon's site in marlboro MA (where I worked for 3+ years) and I can tell you point blank the project died years ago.

        They can't even fire it up because the mice have chewed through most of the wiring. Rumor has it the last time they fired it up (5+ years ago) the PRT actually got stuck on the track and the people where left there for 2 hours while they tried to fix it.

        On a side note I act
    • Perhaps the answer to this question is the combination of communication and operating system technologies. Certainly operating systems are necessary, but if I'm looking for a file, I'm as likely to use Google as a local search function. If I'm writing a letter, very often it's an email rather than a document. Isn't the protocol now more necessary than the tool which accesses it. I could be using a tack hammer or a sledge hammer, but what is most important is whether I'm hanging a picture or smashing a Windo
    • > There's no doubt that Mr. Metcalfe is quite bright and has contibuted
      > greatly to the IT world, but I don't understand this rant.

      Well, he hasn't contributed much to IT other than rants in a long time. I guess once you get your name out there you create a platform for yourself to rant about other things you may know less about.

      Regarding new OSs, I think the time for new successful ones has passed. PCs have surpassed a critical mass worldwide where you can't just yank out its underpinnings every dec

    • Re:Inconsistent Rant (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Iriel ( 810009 )
      I noticed that Bob leaves a large hole in his attack on OSS. It is true in that most companies just want a shiny box and packaging with a guarantee that the vendor will fix everything without having to teach a class on it. However, just because software is OS doesn't mean it was sold by some college CS undergrad who forgot to spellcheck the readme.txt. Novell (for example) doesn't sell you a Novell enterprise desktop package for your business on an unlabeled Staples CD-R wth a note scribbled on the back.

      Co

  • Thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman@gmaiBLUEl.com minus berry> on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:21PM (#13114912) Homepage Journal
    Windows is sort of a GUI version of the Mac's operating system, and Linux is of course Unix, which stems from 1968. These are both old clunkers. So the question is, Where are the new operating systems likely to come from?

    I hate to break it to Mr. Metcalfe, but most entities lack the resources to do a ground up rewrite of a fully featured Operating System. Simply writing a functional OS isn't the hard part. It's just a platform upon which software will be built. There were hundreds of OSes written between 1960 and 1990. During the '90s, however, computing platforms began to stabalize. Software was written that had a greater than 5 year life span, Operating System began to stabalize on a few "standards" (namely Unix/Vax/CPM derivitives), and massive amounts of time and money were invested into developing these platforms. Now we're standing on the 10,000 ft high towers we call Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X(NextSTEP) and we're looking at how difficult it is to replicate the decades of work that has gone into these systems.

    Building a more powerful and "correct" system would mean throwing away software such as OpenOffice, Mozilla, Quickbooks, Photoshop, Acrobat, etc. Software that took decades to build! Thus any future solution based on cutting edge CompSci Technology must either bite the bullet and rewrite these complex apps (good luck) or build in a translation layer that allows them to continue working. Neither choice is very appealing.

    The "third road" that is currently being explored is the road of running Virtual Machines on top of today's existing infrastructure. Java, .NET, and Mono are examples of the market attempting to find a way to combine modern technology with the tech of yesterday. Unfortunately, the results are less than stellar. For example, instead of aligning Virtual Memory along object bounds (a natural fit that could be done without hardware support), these systems must contend with the existing 4K VM implementations. Instead of running the protected code in a flat heap (which CAN'T break the memory model!) these systems must contend with the memory indirection that operating systems throw their way. The results of this poor matchup between machine and software is a performance penalty, both real and perceived.

    The Virtual Memory swaps more than it should. Object files are not shared. Memory usage is 20% greater than a native program. So on and so forth.

    A lot of research has gone into mitigating these issues (with Sun producing some very impressive results!), but it doesn't change the fact that the machine and software are mismatched. That mismatch discourages companies from writing new applications in these managed environments, where they would be free from the bonds of traditional OS designs.

    My gut says that a rather major shift in how we use our computer will have to happen before we can truely replace the systems we have today.

    I'd like to point out that two major pieces of infrastructure were left out of the Internet when it was being built--largely because it was built by graduate students (and people like graduate students). They left out security and economics. So we have the spam problem (which can be traced directly to the lack of concern for security), and we have IP rules that are in flux because the Internet doesn't have the right tools for monetizing various activities. So we're busily trying to put security and economics into the Internet.

    In all honesty, the Internet never would have been as successful as it was if it wasn't for the freedom it provided. Many other networks offered these features, but they were eventually usurped by the Internet.

    Hindsight is 20/20. Had the BSD/ARPANET folks attempted to address these issues back when it was created (which would have been ludicrous given its Military intent), their solutions would have likely been wrong. Keep It Simple Stupid. It may not be the best solution, but it's the most effective solution.

    P.S. In case of Slashdotting, break glass [nyud.net]

    • Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:42PM (#13115113) Homepage
      During the '90s, however, computing platforms began to stabalize. Software was written that had a greater than 5 year life span

      Err I'd say that less systems written in the 90s lasted over 5 years than the big old monoliths of mainframes and COBOL, which developed in the 70s and 80s gave us Y2K.

      Long-life software wasn't new in the 90s, and the old stuff rarely runs on Unix or Windows....

    • Re:Thoughts (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ratta ( 760424 )
      You're surely right, but don't forget what Apple did with OS. They rewrote a major part of their OS, and now for them it is even easer to use Forefox, OpenOffice, etc. It was a really smart move.
    • *nix is a kernel in which different underlieing designs and applications can be easily added. That is why *nix survives.

      MVS, which was the original stable OS (not huge changes since the 60s) made it difficult to change out things (and very expensive).

      As to the VM world, yeah, that should introduce us to a load of new changes.
    • My gut says that a rather major shift in how we use our computer will have to happen before we can truely replace the systems we have today.

      At some point you have to accept the limitations of a simple system rather than throwing it all away for a complex system that meets your specific needs but no one else's. Virtual memory is a case in point. The 4k page model is simple and it works. Objects are all of different sizes, moreover, many have dynamic sizes, so that you would a much more complex model for vi
    • You know I really agree with what you are saying, but I also feel a bit the same as Mr. Metcalfe. I really don't mean this to come across as knocking Linux, but I do kind of feel an oportunity may have been missed.

      I guess my question is how often can a "new" OS come along and get traction? Was linux a "waste" of a new OS? Yes, linux is great. It certainly fills needs and has even pushed MS to improve its products. I guess I just kind of wonder "what could it have been"?

      As it began, it was trying to b

    • Re:Thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)

      by iwadasn ( 742362 )
      Good points all around, I'd like to just add a few things...

      First of all, a massive reimplementation is underway. Software is migrating to VMs at a fairly impressive pace. The only ones who seem to be holding out are the shrinkwrap vendors, but even then are starting to buckle. When Microsoft moves significant code to .NET (if it ever happens), the others may move as well.

      Already, custom coded apps are almost always writting in Java, or (shudder) VB and .NET. When this increases further, you can probably

  • Where? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by derEikopf ( 624124 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:22PM (#13114919)
    Where are the new operating systems likely to come from?

    They aren't going to come until we get past "old" technology like monitors, keyboards, and mice.

    • Re:Where? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      Basically, things are on hold pending an order-of-magnitude increase in computational power, pervasive wireless, voice recognition that works and several other things. As you say, there's no compelling reason to replace WIMP and everything that's grown up around it, if you still need to read passwords off the sticky under your keyboard before typing them into your big beige box.

  • PHBs, open source and commercial interests (Score:4, Insightful)

    by itsownreward ( 688406 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:22PM (#13114921)
    While talking about operating system innovation coming from companies rather than open source, Metcalfe said:
    "I'm thinking of investing in a company that sells software, and its competitors are open source. I've been speaking to the company's customers and asking them why they'd buy this software instead of just taking the open source. Their answer: 'We don't want to learn about the software, and we need it serviced and supported, so we're going to buy it from this company instead of taking it free from the open-source community.'"
    I work in a healthcare organization's IT department. We have vendors that go out of business or stop offering products we've come to depend on, but then offer an "upgrade" that will cause us to change our entire workflow. Therefore, we make sure we know our systems intimately so we don't get burned. We're largely a Microsoft shop, but I am slowly pushing a bit of open source in there. I guess there's truth in Mencken's saying, "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." I guess that goes for its laziness, too.

  • Clunkers? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:23PM (#13114927) Homepage
    Okay, while I'll agree that the technology and underlying philosophies of design are "old" in technology years, but for something to be an "old clunker" there should be a basis for comparison -- something that is NOT an old clunker. What is that something? Anyone have any examples?

    • Re:Clunkers? (Score:5, Informative)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman@gmaiBLUEl.com minus berry> on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:30PM (#13114996) Homepage Journal
      Mac OS X has one foot in the past (FreeBSD) and one foot in the future (Mach). Between the two of them, OS X is a bit more futuristic than its competitors. However, a machine that died before its time was the Symbolics LISP [wikipedia.org] machines. I've never had the opportunity to use one, but my understanding of these machines is that they never needed any of the "modern" processor or software concepts we use today, because the underlying software system (LISP) was incapable of creating the types of memory corruption we try to prevent even today. And if a program blew up, you could actually modify its memory image on the fly and continue its execution.

      On top of everything, the hardware architecture was much faster than contemporary computers due to its LISP oriented design. Apparently, a good portion of the LISP language was able to execute directly in the hardware!

      At least, that's how I understood it. Sadly, it didn't get much attention outside of academia. :-/

      • Re:Clunkers? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by CyricZ ( 887944 )
        Why the various Lisp machines did it not make it outside of academia? It is because most programmers simply cannot handle functional programming, even when using a non-pure functional, semi-imperative language such as Lisp. The pool of programmers capable of developing for such a system is quite limited, as as such they will cost far more to employ.

        Why should a company spend a massive amount of money on a Lisp-based (ie. at the hardware level) system and developers for it, when they can toss together a ver

        • Re:Clunkers? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by convolvatron ( 176505 )
          here you are wrong. did you ever use one? the symbolics was by far the most usable and productive machine at the time.

          its primary strength was exactly that you could toss together something pretty nice in basically no time at all.

          dont you think it might have something to do with marketing, barriers to entry, and culture? there is nothing fundamentally economic about the failure of symbolics (except the barrier to entry bit, the volume was so low that they were very expensive machines)
      • You do realize that Mach is 1980s technology, correct? Even stuff like today's Cocoa was mostly developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While Mac OS X is a fantastic system, it is hardly "futuristic", as you incorrectly claim.

        The thing with Mac OS X is that it does not have the cruft of other systems. Hardware wise, Apple is willing to force their consumers to eliminate the old (ie. floppy drives) and to proceed with the more modern (ie. FireWire). But the more modern technology is hardly futuristic.

      • Re:Clunkers? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by frankie ( 91710 )
        No, that would be one foot in the living past [freebsd.org] (FreeBSD) and one foot in the dead past [wikipedia.org] (Mach). Mach is considered a bad kernel design by both theorists and developers. The only reason Apple used it instead of a plain BSD kernel is Avie Tevanian and the NIH syndrome [wikipedia.org].
      • Functional languages such as LISP are certainly a thing I miss from my college years. Most developers have had imperative languages imposed on us by sheer day to day usage. But when you program under SCHEME, you sense deep underneath a powerful different way to tackle problems.

        One of the most beautiful things from this kind of languages is the ability to dynamically construct its own code. For instance, Postscript (yes, the thing printers use), which is also a funciontional language, does not have a switc

      • Lisp (Score:4, Interesting)

        by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @02:12PM (#13116036) Homepage Journal
        Indeed, Lisp does not suffer from the problems that cause the lion's share of security breaches today. At the same time, Lisp pioneered many concepts of modern programming languages (even if they weren't all invented on Lisp), and then some. Garbage collection, Lisp macros (which allow you to extend the syntax of the language), functional programming, and object-oriented programming are all common practice in Lisp, just to name a few. All of this (maybe not OO - I'm not sure if it had been invented yet) worked very nicely on Lisp machines, and I think they even had some sort of GUI, although it wasn't like the GUIs of today.

        Lisp machines failed mostly because Symbolics tried too hard to make money off them. They made them very expensive, so people bought cheaper hardware and lived without Lisp. In the meantime, they protected everything with patents and copyrights, and since Symbolics folded, nobody seems to have been able to re-create the technology.

        It is worth knowing that the GNU project was started pretty much as a direct reaction against the Symbolics affair. A certain hacker called Richard Stallman worked at Lisp Machines Inc., the other company that made Lisp machines, and was so upset about the abuse and destruction of this good system for the sake of commercial interests that he decided to build a system that would be Free and remain Free. Indeed, Lisp was mentioned as an official language for the GNU system (the other one being C), although few programs are written in it (Emacs and Sawfish come to mind).

        Lisp still survives as a language (I think it's the second oldest programming language), and the community seems to be reviving a bit, although many lispers seem to "make do" with languages like Ruby and Python, that have a somewhat lispy feel to them. And with projects like Movitz, maybe we will have lisp machines again someday.

        • Re:Lisp (Score:5, Informative)

          by mrdlinux ( 132182 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @02:41PM (#13116336)
          There were a number of Object Oriented systems written on top of Lisp; because Lisp allowed such flexibility in the language.

          Genera, unless I'm mistaken, was based on Zetalisp (LispMachine Lisp) with an object system named "Flavors", a message-passing system with mix-ins loosely based on Smalltalk. The GUI was written with this system, and the GUI itself was interesting because its introspective abilities closely mirrored that of the underlying language. The elements of the GUI were all objects that could be manipulated, selected, inspected. Even graphical and text output on the screen could be categorized into classes and later manipulated as objects. This became the basis for CLIM (Common Lisp Interface Manager).

          Unfortunately this style of GUI has fallen to the wayside in favor of the simpler but stupider Windows-style one. C and C++ do not have the flexibility that is required, in any case, for a dynamic GUI like that on the Lisp Machine. Look to Smalltalk, Squeak, Slate, or the reinvigorated CLIM projects (McCLIM, FreeCLIM) instead.

          Symbolics made bad business decisions, indeed. They still do exist, and even have the oldest .com name registered: symbolics.com. There is hope that someday all the thousands of man-hours of work on Genera will become unencumbered or re-released.

          Stallman helped popularize Emacs, along with the free software movement, which developed in parallel with the similar editors of the Lisp machines. The problem with Stallman is that he is incredibly stubborn (no kidding), and made mistakes early on that he was unwilling to fix. Hence FSF Emacs and even XEmacs is crippled as an editor, a language, and a platform, though people who only make simple use of it might not understand why.

          It is just as well that Lisp languished in FSF, because it sprouted elsewhere in the open source community, with no philosophical encumbrances which don't necessarily make sense in a dynamic environment like a Lisp.

          Over the last five years, I've seen quite a revival of Lisp. The regular programming crowd slowly accepts new ideas; they still insist on making the same mistakes that were already passed by Lisp programmers years ago. Ah well. My job is working on systems in Common Lisp, I am happy.

  • The new OS (Score:3, Informative)

    by pupeno ( 100437 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:24PM (#13114942) Homepage

    Everybody complains about Linux and Window and all the other operaitng systems about being old an obsolete but I see only a few putting effort in building new operating systems like what Slate [tunes.org] can become (in the long term) or what Movitz [common-lisp.net] is aiming.

    • Re:The new OS (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CDarklock ( 869868 )
      Building a new operating system takes a long time and a lot of money.

      Because Windows comes on pretty much every new PC, and Linux is readily available for download, you will probably never get that money back.

      OS/2 was a superior operating system to Windows 95, but people didn't buy it. They bought computers with Windows, or they installed Linux from cheap CDs (downloading it wasn't feasible at the time for most people). Now the superior O/S is being folded up and thrown away.

      So what about the hardware qu

      • Re:The new OS (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Golias ( 176380 )
        So what about the hardware question? NeXT was a superior operating system on superior hardware. First they stopped making the superior hardware, then they stopped making the superior O/S. Why? No money in it.

        Actually, they are still making a superior OS on superior hardware. They didn't go away, they took over Apple from within.

        I think it's one of the most fascinating stories of the last 20 years how Steve Jobs somehow managed to steal his old company back.

      • Re:The new OS (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShieldW0lf ( 601553 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @03:09PM (#13116642) Journal
        The open source community has some pipe dream that when you can't make money from software, you will contribute your software for free. What actually happens is people stop writing software so they can do something that makes money.

        That's such a load of bullshit. I take the free enterprise stack. I sell clients on my ability to develop software that will fix their problems using the free enterprise stack as a base. I discover that the free enterprise stack doesn't have some feature I could really use to more effectively service these clients. So I write the new feature. And I deliver a solution to them that works. Now I've got this new feature in the stack, I can't really sell it to anyone on its own, and if I don't roll it back into the main trunk, I'll have to maintain it if I ever wish to use it again. So I give it back to the community because it's in my best interest to do so. This is how the software gets contributed for free. One itch at a time. And you can spout off all your rhetoric about the "open source pipe dream", but that's all it is, spouting off. It exists, it progresses, it takes market share from the most powerful company on earth, and it appears to be gaining momentum. The existance of the thriving community is PROOF that you are wrong.
  • The problem with a new OS other than Windows or Linux is that most of the Open Source community is against Windows, and put all their effor into Linux in an attempt to take down MS market share. It would be nice to see a bunch of OSS developers get together and create a new exciting OS.

    • Re:New OS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:34PM (#13115042) Homepage
      Actually this is bs. The majority of us OSS folk are writing ***PORTABLE*** tools that work anywhere. This is why you see firefox on mac, win32, bsd, linux, beos, etc...

      This is why you see GCC on mac, win32, bsd, linux, beos, qnx, etc...

      This is ... and so on ...

      Only lame arrogant windows developers think that "linux using folk only write for linux".

      Heck some of the places my software has and is being used doesn't even have a proper OS [e.g. PS2 and Gamecube].

      On topic again, as the "inventor of ethernet"? What the fuck does that mean? It's not that impressive. I mean it's useful but so is sliced bread and we don't honour that guys name either! He did his part to make the world better. Groovy. Now step aside and stop milking something you did nearly a decade BEFORE I WAS BORN.

      Tom
    • Let's assume for a moment that your premise isn't totally wacked..

      I'm not sure I want an "exciting" OS. I just want my applications to work - I shouldn't even need to SEE the OS.

      Second, what exactly is wrong with Linux that can't possibly be fixed (requiring the entire thing to be scrapped?) What would be sooo great that you are willing to start out fresh with ZERO applications? Would it still run on the crufty PC architecture and interface with existing devices such as printers, scanners, hard drives, au

  • Oh the irony (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarthVeda ( 569302 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:25PM (#13114956)
    That a site called Always On has been slashdotted.

  • I'd get some better info if I were him (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:25PM (#13114958)
    Windows is sort of a GUI version of the Mac's operating system, and Linux is of course Unix, which stems from 1968.

    Huh?

    Since when has the Mac operating system not have a GUI or since when has Windows been more GUI like then the Mac OS.

    Also the Mac operating system has a heck of a lot more in common with both Linux and Unix than is does with Windows. In fact if you want to say anything about comparing GUIs, it would be far more accurate to say that the Mac operating system is a GUI version of unix and Windows is a GUI version of DOS.
    • Windows ceased to be a GUI version of DOS with NT and its descendants. Still, it's more accurate than saying Windows is a GUI version of MacOS - a statement that is either a typo or evidence that this guy isn't qualified to make any kind of comments on this subject, even if he did invent ethernet.
    • I could be wrong on this (if so, pleas be polite when correcting me) but I remember reading that the mac OS has only been Unix based since OSX. The transition from 9.x to X was the adoption of a modified BSD kernel (Darwin BSD actually). Before which, I don't believe the mac ever was a unix system.
  • Anybody has a mirror?

  • His comments on open source... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <(tom) (at) (thomasleecopeland.com)> on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:27PM (#13114973) Homepage
    ...are interesting:
    Because modern software corporations know how to align the interests of the people. They know how to motivate people. They know how to sustain themselves over a long period of time, whereas I'm suspicious about the motivational structure of an open-source community and wonder whether it's sustainable.
    That's an understandable suspicion. On the other hand, if you're using an open source product to help build your company, it's in your best interests to take some interest in that product and to help it develop. Then you're part of the community and you know how things are going.
    • Didn't we just hear about OS/2's final death?

      Didn't we just hear about NetWare's final death and the migration to Linux?

      Does the name "Stac" ring a bell?

      I have a whole cabinet at work filled with software that died or from companies that don't exist any more.

      He's looking at the few companies that have survived throughout the years and ignoring the 1000x other companies that have died and left their customers stranded.

      With Open Source, at the very worst, you'll still have the code and the right to hire
    • Because modern software corporations know how to align the interests of the people.

      I wonder whether or not he's worked for many modern software corporations.

  • Everyone so far is focusing on the Wondows/Linux/MAC comment, which is somewhat interesting, but not really his area of expertise.

    What is much more interesting is the comments about the IETF, which I agree, has been/is being turned into a facilitator for corporate agendas.

    Jerry
    http://www.cyvin.org/ [cyvin.org]

  • Before OSes can be innovative, languages must be (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cscalfani ( 222387 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:30PM (#13115002)
    Before we can ever hope to innovate the OS, we must first innovate software development, i.e. languages.

    All the language techniques that we use are rooted in old technologies. Its still just as hard to code today as ever, if not harder.

    I've been programming since 1980 and back then you wrote everything yourself. It was a lot of work but at least you controlled the quality of the system because you wrote it all.

    Today, systems are so complex (unnecessarily so), and the technology hasn't changed enough to keep up with the demand. We still write for loops like we always have.

    The spoon is a fine tool when all you dig are holes in ice cream but when you have to dig a trench in the ground, forget it.
    • How do you propose we right a loop. A good programming langage allows you to clearly express a logical process. The only other way to program if through a WYSIWYG type of interface that has wizards to handle complex things. These do exist, but only as upper layers to more fundamental programming languages.
    • Perhaps you find it harder to code today because you are forced to program at a higher level. Sure, in the 1980s implementing a hash table yourself was part of programming. And you'd get paid for reimplementing a very well-known and well-understood idea.

      But things have changed. Now the hash table is already implemented for you. As a programmer, you must devise systems that aren't so well known. You must now implement the unknown. That is called innovation. You find it "harder" to code today because we're a

  • 1337 (Score:3, Funny)

    by bellmounte ( 883810 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:30PM (#13115008) Homepage
    I think what he is hinting at is computers need to be based on the wonderful new technology known as leet speak. It would make them so much more efficient.

    Until then, I'm just going to go pwn sum nubs.
  • That's what happens with installed base, Bob.

  • Backwards thinking (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sugarmotor ( 621907 )
    Quoting Bob Metcalfe: [...] Private property is a great technology [...] This is backwards thinking, sloppy thinking, boring thinking. The big problem with the "private property" myth is that over time property accumulates in the control of few. This is a huge problem in the face of the goal of economic justice. What is Bob Metcalfe's answer to that?? His remarks about big corporations knowing "motivation of customers" and "motivation of employees" are completely misguided. On the side of the customers,
    • The big problem with the "private property" myth is that over time property accumulates in the control of few. This is a huge problem in the face of the goal of economic justice.

      Ok, so what's the solution? Not even a real-life solution (there aren't any), but what's your idealistic vision of life without private property? I call "economic justice" people owning what they earned. That's the very definition of modern society: property ownership. If you're suggesting that "economic justice" is taking awa

  • Old is better (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Neil Watson ( 60859 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:39PM (#13115091) Homepage
    While today's software is good I think some 'old' things from the past should be revived. We just don't make software like we used to. Large amounts of memory and CPU cycles have made us sloppy. Those people that designed software for a few kilobytes of RAM we smart.
    • "While today's software is good I think some 'old' things from the past should be revived. We just don't make software like we used to. Large amounts of memory and CPU cycles have made us sloppy. Those people that designed software for a few kilobytes of RAM we smart."

      I'm getting the feeling that this will turn into a discussion on the merits of bringing back HyperCard, player/missile graphic programming, and the joys of the SID chip design.

      There, I gave plenty of loving references in that to Apple, Commo

  • Nothing to see here, move along (Score:5, Funny)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:42PM (#13115115)
    He's just trolling. He has a pathological need to pop up every once in a while and say "You know I invented Ethernet, don't you?"
    • Exactly. It's not really an invention as a series of trivial algorithms glued together.

      Let's see, we need A to talk to B. We need a medium... mmm computers use electrons ... mmm a wire.

      Ok now we need to have a way of sending a message ... maybe in some form of an enveloppe... oh we should have a start sequence and stop sequence... oooh... and we could put a header on this message, no packet... better yet call it a frame.

      Ok now we can send data but we can't tell who... let's put a MAC address in the fra
    • "He's just trolling. He has a pathological need to pop up every once in a while and say "You know I invented Ethernet, don't you?""

      Maybe he feels like everyone's forgetting him, just like they do with Dre. :0

      Seriously, where's the love for Nolan Bushnell these days? All we hear about today is that Jobs fellow like he invented the yardstick of civilization: air conditioning.

  • GUI version of MacOS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MECC ( 8478 ) * on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:43PM (#13115130)
    "Windows is sort of a GUI version of the Mac's operating system"

    As opposed to the non-gui version of Mac's operating system....

  • Metcalfe - modern software corporations know how to align the interests of the people. They know how to motivate people. They know how to sustain themselves over a long period of time, whereas I'm suspicious about the motivational structure of an open-source community and wonder whether it's sustainable.

    Linux: 1991. Slack, April 1993. Debian, August 1993. How long until he would agree that it is sustainable? Is this [polarisventures.com] the same Polaris Ventures? It's a high tech VC. That explains his suspicion of the
  • The Internet has arrived, and all of those people are now just like ITU: IETF has become the ITU."

    Not a big shock... about 15 years ago, the two power centers in BC Politics were the NDP and the Social Credit Party.. The left wing was in the NDP who had power at the time, and the Socreds had pretty much lost favour as the reigning right-wing party (( yeah that belies their name, but having been decades in power, the right wing had taken them over )). Then an upstart Liberal party maaged to worm their way into the leaders debate and caught fire, becomming the official opposition.

    By the next election, the formeer Socred political machine had taken over the Liberal Party and kicked out it's leader. These are the people who now run the province.

    The problem with our political/media system is that the only people who tend to end up in positions of power are those who really want it (and are willing to do whatever it takes to get that power). Unfortunately, these are precisely the people you don't want in power.

  • The IETF is no longer an Engineering organization (Score:5, Informative)

    by wayne ( 1579 ) <wayne@schlitt.net> on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:51PM (#13115205) Homepage Journal
    I can't read the "always-on" story because it is slashdotted, but I'll comment on the IETF becoming the ITU.

    AMEN!

    As someone who has recent scars (SPF, MARID) [schlitt.net] from dealing with the IETF, it is clear to me that they are no longer an engineering organization, but rather a highly political one. No longer is there much concern about adopting patent encumbered technology into key Internet protocols (MS SenderID) [slashdot.org] like they used to object to things like the RSA patents.

    Instead, the IESG is actively working to push through this patented technology by shutting down the MARID WG so that they can advance the SenderID proposal without any public review. More over, the IESG has declared that it is ok for the SenderID spec to re-use SPF records in incompatible ways, that the SPF RFC must be held back until MS is ready ("to be fair to MS"), and the IESG is going to ignore the last 1.5 years of SPF deployment experience and start fresh with collecting data since MS has only recently started doing SenderID checking (again "to be fair to MS").

    The IETF needs to take the "E" out of their name and become the Internet Political Task Force.

  • Stay in the swamp (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:53PM (#13115231) Homepage Journal
    You invented ethernet. Even before that, you were THERE, and helped operate, the first big ARPANet demo for Congress. You founded 3Com. You wrote more Inforworld columns than a mere human like me could read. You are the Old Master, Yoda in the swamp.

    Don't spoil it now by being Dvorak. Please.

    Linux is only Unix on the outside. There's scarcely little code on the inside from 1992. And I believe there is none (zero, nada) from before 1975. I know this because I've looked at the early UNIX code at http://tuhs.org/ [tuhs.org] and what little survives is not found in Linux.

    Windows a copy of the Mac? In the sense that English is a copy of French, maybe [flames >/dev/null]. Some elements are the same, but how you do things with them is quite different.

    Asking what the new OS will be is asking the wrong question. Ask instead what new class of devices will need an OS, and the answer would follow from that. I say "would" because I'm not sure even that question is relevant.

  • This Doesn't Work (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:54PM (#13115241) Homepage Journal
    Metcalfe: Well, anonymity cannot be the rule. Anonymity has to be the exception. You should allow people to be anonymous if they want to, but the general rule shouldn't be anonymity, which is the present case. The source field of every packet in the Internet goes uninspected. You can cram anything you want into that and generate denial-of-service attacks (just to name one).

    If networks were configured so that the "general rule" is NOT to be anonymous, then there is no way you can guarantee true anonymity. The reason being that if someone wantred to be "anonymous", they would have to request that privlege from some kind of "anonymity broker" or... own their own network. And even then, with the ability to track the packets, the only guarantee of anonymity is not technical, but social. The owner of the network that the message originated from would have to be the barrier. And as we all know, the current political climates around the world will be unlikely to respect that anonymity if they decide that your activities are "illegal". If someone wants to send e-mail saying they hope that a certain politician gets assainated, in some locations, that would be "illegal". Even though it's really freedom of speech. So, I don't think his suggestion works because it's not true anonymity unless you are in a very powerful position. Every citizen (from beggar to king) should have access to anonymity.

    • Different "anonymity". (Score:5, Informative)

      by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @01:19PM (#13115497)
      Bob is talking about packets using faked source addresses.

      These are useless for anything other than a (D)DoS attack. They are useless because a connection cannot be established and no data can travel.

      It is easy to have personal anonymity, but still have the first upstream router check the source addresses to make sure they are legit. But it depends upon someone, somewhere being willing to /dev/null his logs on a continuing basis and both sides using encryption. As you said, this is not technical, but social.

      There is NO reason for the source address to not be confirmed by the upstream router.

      There are LOTS of reasons for personal anonymity to be maintained. And we can have personal anonymity even if we confirm the source addresses of packets.

  • Red Swingline (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dolly_Llama ( 267016 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:55PM (#13115243) Homepage
    How is the red swingline a symbol for IT? Cubicle farms, office bs in general i see, but how IT?

    Milton was entirely ineffectual. Do IT workers sympathize with him for being victimized or is the red swingline a passive finger to the man?

  • BeOS was innovative (Score:3, Insightful)

    by m50d ( 797211 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @12:55PM (#13115247) Homepage Journal
    Look where that got it. Until the apps demand innovation for what they want to do, we won't see innovation in the OS sphere. Dos programs were making GUIs and using the mouse before GUI operating systems became popular.

  • Christ on a bike... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by thewils ( 463314 )
    I can't even get drivers for my 64-bit Clunker. Do you think manufacturers would want to start supporting a raft of other OSes?
  • One thing that makes his case a little stronger:
    Windows was also greatly influenced under the skin by Dec VMS-the OS that was previously created by Cutler-the guy that later went to MS.

    That said:
    I agree with a previous poster that the emergence of good VM's is what really promises to break open OS development again. We already have decent commercial VM's(VMware) and Xen. When Xen supports Windows, there will be a VERY compelling case for larger installations to use it.

  • He's right. Operating system design is so stuck. Everything looks too much like UNIX, circa 1978. Where are the transaction processing operating systems? The secure microkernels? The systems that just don't crash, ever. All of those things have been done at least once.

    Here's a 1990 paper on Tandem system uptime. [microsoft.com] Unix/Linux data center users, read it and weep. They have systems with MTBFs in measured in years. Sometimes decades.

  • Where? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Wednesday July 20, 2005 @01:23PM (#13115546) Homepage
    Where are the new operating systems likely to come from?

    Where are the new wheels likely to come from? I mean the wheel was invented by the cave man and tires have been around since the 19th century. So who will make a better wheel?

    Maybe Unix is still around because back in 1968 those engineers got it right. Maybe there aren't any revolutionary OSes around the corner -- just evolutionary changes to the ones we have.

  • One Trick Pony (Score:2, Troll)

    by leoc ( 4746 )
    Metcalfe predicted in 1999 [infoworld.com] that Linux would disappear when Windows 2000 came out and referred to open source as "open sores". I see no more reason to take anything he says seriously now than I did back then.
  • I guess someone should tell automakers that they should reinvent a mode of transportation from scratch.

    If you could invent a vehicle that floated above the ground, used water as fuel, drove itself, and had a forcefield to prevent crashes and could make it under $1,000 then perhaps they should.

    Not that any of is possible in the 21st century, but I feel a problem of many engineers, coders, and thinkers get tunnel vision and think things have to be done just like they have been done before.

    I mean maybe sho

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