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Concept
Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' of Open Source Code
Summary
Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' of Open Source Code is a 2004 report by Kenneth Brown. The report suggests that the Linux kernel may have been created or distributed illegally and that open-source software may be generally subject to such abuses.
The report states that the Linux kernel was written using copied source code from Minix and other resources acquired improperly or possibly illegally by Linus Torvalds. It also suggests that one can never be certain of the origins of open source code, so similar misuse of copyrighted code may exist for other open-source projects. Finally, it asserts that the GNU General Public License is bad for the economy.
The book was greeted with widespread rejection by the technical world and was repudiated by many of its claimed sources.
The prerelease has long been delisted from the distributor's site and the book was never given a proper release, although the prerelease PDF is available online.
The title is a reference to samizdat, a form of private circulation of suppressed literature within Soviet-bloc countries, and by extension slang for papers that contain programming techniques and code, sometimes from sources that have not authorized publication, which are often passed from programmer to programmer. Samizdat claims that Linus Torvalds used source code taken from Minix, a small Unix-like operating system used in teaching computer science, to create Linux 0.01, on the theory that no mere student could write an entire Unix-like kernel single-handedly.
The book also recommends that government-funded programming should never be licensed under the GPL, but under the BSD license or similar simple permissive licenses. It states that the US government should:
"Work vigorously to create a true 'free source' code capability program at universities and colleges. This program should go to promote true open source projects, not hybrid source projects like the GPL and Linus .
Official source
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