computers
tlambert | June 23, 2004Think tanks vs Open Source
The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute's attack on Linux is just the latest in a series of attacks on Open Source by think tanks:
Date
Think Tank
Author/Title
Extracts
Sep 19, 2002
Competitive Enterprise Institute
James DeLongSoftware Wars: Open Source And The New York Times
Writing aps without incorporating some operating system code is difficult, and those who want to engraft proprietary aps onto Linux are taking a legal risk.
Jan 31, 2003
Washington Legal Foundation
David S. EvansOpen-Source Software Poses Challenges for Legal and…
tlambert | June 18, 2004 The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute's attack on Linux gets taken apart in Lee Gomes' Wall Street Journal article:
An institute study issued last month ups the ante in Linux criticism. It tries to prove that Linux's Linus Torvalds has always been contemptuous of intellectual-property laws, starting with the very birth of Linux. The implication: Since Linux is tainted, potential users may one day find themselves in court. ...
If Mr. Torvalds had the larcenous heart of a software pirate, it would be very simple to prove. Linux, you'll recall, is totally…
tlambert | June 7, 2004 Ken Brown has a reply to the heavy criticism of his paper claiming that Linus Torvalds did not write Linux. ADTI introduce his reply like this:
Experts from Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds agree: a. they are much smarter than AdTI's Kenneth Brown, b. IBM is good, Microsoft is evil, and c. Brown's theory of how Linux was probably written is dead wrong. (Dog bites man.) Brown says their accounts are hopelessly shifting and contradictory -- not only against the historical record, but in recent weeks. (Man bites back.)
Unfortunately, Brown's reply…
tlambert | June 2, 2004John Quiggin has a heuristic to help detect outfits like The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute.
ADTI claimed that Ken Brown's attack on Linux was based on "extensive interviews" with "Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, and Andrew Tanenbaum". We already saw Tanenbaum's repudiation of Brown. Now Groklaw has Stallman's and Ritchie's. The one from Ritchie is particularly interesting because it lets us see the leading questions Brown was asking:
In my opinion, Linus Torvalds did NOT write Linux from scratch. What is you opinion? How much did he write? I talked to a Finnish programmer…
tlambert | May 28, 2004 Last year I wrote about how Tech Central Station was an astroturf operation, drafted by a public relations company to provide supposedly independent support for the PR companies clients. The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute (ADTI) is another astroturf operation.
As part of the Tobacco Settlement Agreement Philip Morris (PM) agreed to release millions of documents about their operations. These detail how ADTI was hired by PM to conduct a public relations campaign against the Clinton health plan in 1994. ADTI provided PM with regular progress reports to prove…
tlambert | May 28, 2004 This is a list of the documents that detail the astroturf campaign conducted by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute (ADTI) on behalf of Philip Morris (PM) against the Clinton health plan in 1994. They were obtained by a search for "fname: anti-tax" in the Philip Morris documents archive. ADTI's summary of their activities is here.
Doc id
Date
Description
Extract
2073011705
Feb 4
Note from Derek Crawford to David Nicoli about meetings with anti-tax groups on Feb 7
Mac Carey -- Alexis de Tocqueville Foundation 11 a.m. (their place)
2073011706
Feb 9
Cover note…