an open letter to George Soros

[Rick A. Hohensee]

Rick Hohensee
301-595-5804
[e-mail]
Oct. 2, 2002

Mr. George Soros,

I believe your involvement in Transmeta is utterly in conflict with your
ideals of openness in a way that I don't believe you are aware of. The
reasons I believe this are highly technical, and somewhat subtle, and yet
quite striking subjectively. Microsoft, as represented by Paul Allen in
Transmeta, would surely spend a fortune to keep Linus Torvalds on a leash.
For technical reasons, I believe this is why Transmeta was created, and
the real potential of an open source software revolution has so far been
thereby prevented. Linux's success is mostly inevitable as PC hardware
became capable of running unix. Now it is being prevented from succeeding
further. I believe similar motives are at work at Red Hat Software, which
has many prominent members of the Linux clique on the dole. This would
help explain RHAT's historically bizarre IPO circus, and helps to explain
why RHAT doesn't really comprehend unix and thinks they are Microsoft.
They are Microsoft, who don't comprehend unix.

Linus Torvalds consistantly favors modifications to Linux that pursue a
server orientation. This invariably leads to tremendous added complexity.
This also does not directly threaten what Microsoft calls "the client",
i.e. the end-user's PC, i.e. Windows. A servers-only orientation is also a
tiny subset of the potential of a free unix. By far the greatest possible
benefit of a free unix (which is what Linux is) to individuals and markets
is in direct competition with Windows. One might legitimately argue
otherwise, but direct competition with Windows has almost completely been
avoided, which is very strange. This is what I attempted to do, and was
completely ostracized.

Whether Torvalds' love of unix's traditional server role is 100% genuine
or not, it is a terrible disservice, and is not what George Soros
preaches. The open source unix world, including GNU, prevents real
effective openness with bogus complexity. In most cases, the so-called
open source movement is as hostile to real innovation as Microsoft is.

Admittedly, I am exactly the disgruntled, bitter malcontent that would
raise such accusations. By the same token, such are the people that see
such things. I submit my technical works, and thier utter lack of
proliferation, for the interested reader to guage the validity of my
accusations, and whether my bitterness is sui generis or justified.

        I have devised a preliminary compensation scheme for authors of
        open source software based on the songwriter royalties model.

        I am the first person ever to insert a Forth-like interpreter into
        a Linux (or any unix) kernel. This is historic, and was met with a
        few grunts in the Linux kernel mailing list. There have since been
        one or two other in-kernel Forths.

        I did the first syscalls-only linking library in Linux, libsys.a,
        which I suspect may have sparked the embedded-Linux efforts.

        I have devised the simplest means by far for a unix user to
        customize thier directory structure, a very basic convenience.

        I have written two better systems languages than C; osimplay and
        H3sm.

        Many other works in Linux, Forth-like languages, and
        documentation.

At this point, what Linux might have been will not spring from Linus
Torvalds. It will therefor probably not spring from unix at all. The
parasites have overtaken Linux, just as they did with the Commodore Amiga;
they bought it and killed it. Microsoft and Intel absolutely had to kill
the Amiga due to it's tremendous superiority to the PC. They packed the
board, who then scuttled Commodore. This destructive parasitic process
does not have to continue indefinitely, however.

As an ancillary matter, but also pertinent to your investment in
Transmeta, note that the Crusoe chip's crucial low-power characteristics
are a pitiful joke compared to stack machines. I tried meekly to convey
this to Torvalds before Crusoe came out.

flames > /device/bitbucket

Rick Hohensee

http://linux01.gwdg.de/~rhohen
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/install/clienux/descriptive
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/install/clienux/interim/ABOUT