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SubjectRe: Ken Thompson interview in IEEE Computer magazine (fwd)
On Tue, 4 May 1999, Alexander Viro wrote:

> Hrrrmp... You know, this guy is the author of UNIX. No kidding. I
> disagree with him (as if he cared), but at least some respect is in
> order here. Basic design of the system + many years of development are
> worth something. Linux is written from scratch, but we owe *lot* to
> Ken and Dennis. Not to mention anything else, without their work most
> likely history would look, well, ugly - Vomit Making System
> everywhere. And you can look at the state of FreeVMS project to
> evaluate the odds of getting any free system in that case (inherent
> ugliness of VMS misdesign aside).

I have to disagree with you on this. Respect is earned not automatically
given. He might be the father of UNIX but the first incarnations of UNIX
were ugly. and also, I would have thought that he would have at least
TRIED Linux himself, installing it, configurating it, and using it. There
is no substitute, especially with all his background & experience. I think
he has made a big mistake by basing decisions upon some
crippled/broken/badly configured Linux systems that he only used/saw. How
can I give him respect if he did that?

I also take issue about VMS. It's NOT that bad!! It's beautiful! If you
want to see a really broken operating system, I refer you to Windows NT,
but then you knew that didn't you?

> It's mostly unwarranted, pretty bitter and sad, but if there is
> somebody who deserves our respect at all then Ken *is* such man. No
> matter how strongly we disagree his opinion. We definitely owe him
> that much.

I'll concede on that point. But still...

Cheers,
Alex
--
"A mind opened by new ideas cannot return to its original limits"

http://www.tahallah.demon.co.uk


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