lug-bg: interview s Denis Ritchie w Linux Magazine

[lucho@xxxxxxx (Latchesar Ionkov)]

Hi,

Wchera sluchaino widiah che w Linux Magazine ima interview s Denis Ritchie,
i poneje mi e interesno da cheta mnenia na hora, koito ne sa swyrzani s open
source dvijenieto (mislia che te imat mnogo po-pravilen pogled v/u
situaciata), narushih praviloto si da ne kupuwam nikakwi OS oriented
spisania. 

Spazwaiki zakonite za avtorskoto pravo, ne moga da paste-na cialoto interview,
shte dam otkysi koito mi se storiha interesni. (pravopisnite greshki sa moi :)

lm == linux magazine
dmr == Denis Ritchie

[snip]

lm: Do you think that will be the legacy of Unix then?

dmr: Yes, I think it is. I suppose you have to take the phenomenon as a
whole, but if there's a single specific thing, Unix's legacy is the notion
that operating systems can be portable.

lm: What do you think the legacy of the open source movement will be?

dmr: That's an interesting question. In some sense, the open source idea is
a development model; it's not constrained to any particular technology,
technology approach, or flavor. But the historical fact is that it's been
very much steeped in the Unix-influenced technology. One could argue that
one of the weaknesses of Linux, to take a particular example, is that it is
derivative. And one of the snarky criticisms that people like to make about
Linux is that it's a 30-year-old operating system. And there's some truth in
that. Of course, I'm not sitting here arguing that point of view ...

lm: Do you see any truly innovative things coming out of the open source
world?

dmr: I really can't thing of anything off the top of my head. But on the
other hand, I'm not really that in touch with it.

lm: What about the GPL?

dmr: Well, the GPL is interesting. Actually, I didn't particularly like it in
a sense that, although I see the point, it's clearly a very rigid kind of
thing -- the regular GPL, not the LGPL.

[snip]

lm: Have you ever had the chance to meet Linus Torvalds?

dmr: Oh, yes.

lm: Do you think that his greatest strength is as a hacker of a project
manager?

dmr: Well, I guess I'd have to say that i must be as a project manager,
because I think that is the challenge. I think on of the interesting things
about the Linux phenomenon is that he has been able to keep some kind of
control over such an amazingly extended development environment. I'm
certainly glad that I didn't have to develop C in public, because you get
more suggestions than you really wan. Being in this nice, small group, you
can control that sort of thing. I honestly don't know the dynamics and the
details f the Linux kernel project. However, one of the knocks on Linux is
that it is undisciplined. But I think probably the fairer observation is
that it is amazingly disciplined, compared to what you would expect, given
the nature of the endeavor.

lm: Right. Have you ever looked at the Linux source code?

dmr: I haven't looked in a lot of detail. A year and a half ago or so, we
ported Inferno [a Bell Labs OS for appliances -Ed.] to it, and it was
somewhat of a pain. Somebody discovered a driver -- I guess -- some place in
the kernel that had some extremely stupid thing going on. It was about then
that Ken gave some interview, and he remarked that he didn't think very much
of the quality of the code.

lm: Do you agree with him?

dmr: Well, I haven't really looked at the code, so I really have nothing to
say except that [Ken] got enormous amounts of hate mail for being quoted.
Of course the quote was really out of context in any event. So not only do I
want to avoid that, but I also really had nothing to base this on one way of
the other. One thing I do see is that locally -- within 45 second radius of
my office, as opposed to other parts of Lucent -- people have picked up on
FreeBSD. I'm not sure exactly why. There are plenty of Linux fans in Lucent,
even though there's a fair amount of corporate pressure to use Windows.

[snip]

lm: Do you feel that way about Linux?

dmr: I don't really distinguish between Linux and things that are more or
less direct descendants of Unix. I think they're all the same at some level.
Often, people ask me, "Do you feel jealous about Linux being the big thing."
And the answer is no, for the same reason. I think they're are the same.

        Lucho
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