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A followup from Andrew Tanenbaum
Andrew Tanenbaum has posted a second followup
commenting on the strange stuff coming out of the Alexis de Tocqueville
Institute. Worth a read. "Brown calculates that due to the creation
of Linux, Prentice Hall sold 500 fewer copies of my book, Operating
Systems: Design and Implementation, which at $100 [sic] per book cost them
almost $1 million. Reminds me of the kind of arithmetic used on the NASDAQ
prior to March 2000. If Brown can't multiply small positive integers
correctly, how much faith can we have in the rest of his reporting?"
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A followup from Andrew Tanenbaum Posted May 21, 2004 16:30 UTC (Fri) by vmlinuz (subscriber, #24) [Link] I think there are two very fair words to use to descibe Tanenbaum's behaviour around this issue - he's obviously, and proudly, both a gentleman and a scholar.
A followup from Andrew Tanenbaum Posted May 21, 2004 17:58 UTC (Fri) by jonabbey (guest, #2736) [Link] Here, here.
"I christen thee ... PR flop of the decade!" Posted May 21, 2004 17:04 UTC (Fri) by jre (guest, #2807) [Link] Prof. Tanenbaum has the following recommendation:When The Brown Book comes out, there will no doubt be a lot of publicity in the mainstream media. Any of you with contacts in the media are actively encouraged to point reporters to this page and my original statement to provide some balance.And this is from Brown's most important source! I cannot recall offhand any book with less auspicious circumstances surrounding its publication. My mental image is of a ship being launched, slipping out of the ways, and immediately turning belly-up.
Belly up? Posted May 21, 2004 18:21 UTC (Fri) by The_Pirate (guest, #21740) [Link] There is actually some precedence for that... The Royal ship "Wasa" in the harbour of Stockholm a few hundred years back... And a few years back the Danish navy managed to topple and sink one of our own subs while in dry dock... :)
Belly up? Posted May 21, 2004 18:55 UTC (Fri) by sjdg (guest, #5384) [Link] To sink a ship in *dry* dock could be regarded as an achievement :-)(yes, I know :-) Simon.
Belly up? Posted May 22, 2004 17:10 UTC (Sat) by fLameDogg (guest, #11305) [Link] "To sink a ship in *dry* dock could be regarded as an achievement :-)"I do believe the likes of McBride, Brown, & Co. could manage it :OD "(yes, I know :-)" <g>
A followup from Andrew Tanenbaum Posted May 21, 2004 19:34 UTC (Fri) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] Where is this comment in the summary from? It's not in the linked article. It doesnt give enough information to draw the conclusion that it supports. Sold 500 fewer copies of the book? Fewer than what? How many did they sell in total?
A followup from Andrew Tanenbaum Posted May 21, 2004 19:44 UTC (Fri) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link] The article has changed. Tanenbaum has a copy of the book already. He was making fun of their math. They apparently claimed that if he had sold 500 fewer books as a result of Linux then it cost the publishers $1,000,000.Later on in the original article he cracked a joke about that there were two major problems with the book and that hopefully they could count even though they couldn't multiple. I don't know why the article was changed. Perhaps the publishers asked him to change it.
A followup from Andrew Tanenbaum Posted May 21, 2004 19:57 UTC (Fri) by rcbixler (guest, #11917) [Link] It's clear that Tanenbaum made the point in his original rebuttal that Prentice Hall wasand is primarily in the business of publishing books. That is, they are not in the operating systems or even in the software business. Given that, I fail to see how Linux could have any measurable difference in their Tanenbaum book sales. People who use Linux generally use it because they want a production-quality operating system. People who buy Tanenbaum's book don't buy it for the operating system per se, but they buy it because they want to learn about operating systems. Tanenbaum reinforces that point when he says that he negotiated with Prentice Hall to make Minix available for free download. All in all, Tanenbaum has pretty well mooted Brown's point about "Linux being damaging to Prentice Hall's business."
A followup from Andrew Tanenbaum Posted May 21, 2004 23:37 UTC (Fri) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link] As you say, it's books versus operating systems (and Brown's math is still fubar). I'd just like to observe that even to whatever extent people might have bought Tannenbaum's book in order to get Minix as an end unto itself, they still aren't competing in the same market. Minix is, and always was, a toy built for expository purposes; Linux is, and long has been, a real, useful platform for getting work done. I know about Minix. Still have the original diskettes; ditto the separate (and pricey!) set for the compiler sources, so-called. It may have had value as a vehicle for demonstrating the art of microkernel design; as an operating system it was never running in the same race with Linux.Now, for sane people, the reason to buy Tannebaum's book is because he did a hell of fine job of explaining the design of a microkernel OS (much of which applies to non-microkernel systems as well, of course). For that, the genuine market of the book, I would have to suspect Linux had negligible or a positive effect. Negligible because if you wanted exposition, Linux wasn't in the running; perhaps positive because Linux may have awakenend an interest in the design of Unix-like operating systems and so increased the potential audience. I can't speak to that from my own experience: I was one of the fools who pursued Minix because it held out a hope of being Unix-like enough to be useful at a price I could consider affordable (Xenix, which I had used for some time at the office, was about as expensive as the PC hardware I then owned). After I came to my senses I went on to spend several happy years using OS/2 until Linux grew up enough to replace it.
A followup from Andrew Tanenbaum Posted May 21, 2004 20:28 UTC (Fri) by jre (guest, #2807) [Link] As it happens, the only part that was removed in version 1.2 is exactly the passage quoted by LWN. It seems innocuous enough, but I expect Prof. Tanenbaum thought it best to remove it so as to be consistent with his statement that "it is unethical to discuss publications still under embargo."
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