The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI) was a
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
based
think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
.
AdTI was named after the French historian
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville (; 29 July 180516 April 1859), colloquially known as Tocqueville (), was a French aristocrat, diplomat, political scientist, political philosopher and historian. He is best known for his works ...
. Founded in 1988, its president was
Ken Brown and its chairman was
Gregory Fossedal Gregory Fossedal (born 1959) is an American writer and political/economic theorist. He served as chairman of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI).
Fossedal, Gordon Haff, Benjamin Hart, and Keeney Jones founded the '' Dartmouth Review'' in ...
. At its peak it had 14 full-time staff researchers. In 2006, the organization ceased most operations, issuing its last press release in 2007 to announce that its former chairman was running for President of the United States.
Activities
Intellectual property studies
The AdTI published a series of studies beginning in 2002 on the theme of
intellectual property
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...
in the software industry. The Institution authored ''Opening the Open Source Debate'' (June 2002), a report critical of Microsoft's open-source rivals. This report claimed that open source software was inherently less
secure
Secure may refer to:
* Security, being protected against danger or loss(es)
**Physical security, security measures that are designed to deny unauthorized access to facilities, equipment, and resources
**Information security, defending information ...
than
proprietary software
Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...
and hence a particular target for
terrorists
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
.
These studies culminated in ''
Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' of Open Source Code'' (prereleased May 2004), questioning the generally accepted provenance of Linux and other open source projects, and recommending that government-funded programming should never be licensed under the
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...
but under the
BSD license
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lic ...
or similar licenses. While the book called for increased investment in open source development, it criticized what it called "hybrid" source models, in which true open source code is mixed with proprietary code, with the result that intellectual property rights are nullified.
To illustrate potential problems with this approach, the book cited the case of
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android. He also c ...
, creator of
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
. It claimed Torvalds used source code taken from
Minix, a small
Unix-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
used in teaching
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
, to create Linux 0.01, on the theory that no mere student could write an entire Unix-like
kernel
Kernel may refer to:
Computing
* Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems
* Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution
* Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming
* Kernel method, in machine learnin ...
single-handedly—although writing a kernel of similar size and capabilities is a standard part of many
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
degrees. These claims have been seriously questioned, including by many of those quoted in support, such as
Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum (born March 16, 1944), sometimes referred to by the handle ast, is an American-Dutch computer scientist and professor emeritus of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
He is the author ...
, author of Minix;
Dennis Ritchie
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He is most well-known for creating the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system and B p ...
, one of the creators of Unix; and
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...
, leader of the GNU project. Others have said that quotes attributed as being from an "interview with AdTI" were in fact from prerelease papers (
Ilkka Tuomi
Ilkka Tuomi (born 26 September 1958), is a Finnish computer scientist, noted for writings on the subject of the Internet.
Works
Ilkka Tuomi has written books, including ''Networks of Innovation: Change and Meaning in the Age of the Internet'' whi ...
) or from
message board
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
posts (Charles Mills, Henry Jones).
Alexey Toptygin
Alexey, Alexei, Alexie, Aleksei, or Aleksey (russian: Алексе́й ; bg, Алексей ) is a Russian and Bulgarian male first name deriving from the Greek ''Aléxios'' (), meaning "Defender", and thus of the same origin as the Latin Al ...
said he had been commissioned by Brown to find similarities between Minix and Linux 0.01 source code, and found no support for the theory that Minix source code had been used to create Linux; this study is not mentioned in the book.
It cited a number of arguments for the claim, including an email from Tanenbaum saying MINIX "was the base" Torvalds used to create Linux. Tanenbaum later published a refutation of the book's interpretation, wherein he recounted an interview with Ken Brown while the latter was researching the book, during which Tanenbaum had emphatically stated his belief that Torvalds wrote Linux single-handedly and provided examples of other people or small teams who had performed similar feats in the past.
The AdTI was preparing a new study in November 2004, tentatively titled ''Intellectual Property Left'', to argue that "the IT industry sector's reluctance to pursue rampant IP infringement against public domain software developers and users is going to precipitate billions of dollars in balance sheet downgrades by Wall Street."
The later papers stand in contrast to the Institution's 2000 paper, ''The Market Place Should Rule on Technology'', which discusses Linux as a direct competitor to
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
.
Other publications
The AdTI produced a number of papers on education policy.
When the B-2 bomber program was threatened in 1995, the AdTI organised a letter to President Bill Clinton signed by seven former
Pentagon
In geometry, a pentagon (from the Greek πέντε ''pente'' meaning ''five'' and γωνία ''gonia'' meaning ''angle'') is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°.
A pentagon may be simpl ...
chiefs:
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former U ...
,
Caspar Weinberger
Caspar Willard Weinberger (August 18, 1917 – March 28, 2006) was an American statesman and businessman. As a prominent Republican, he served in a variety of state and federal positions for three decades, including chairman of the Californ ...
,
Frank Carlucci
Frank Charles Carlucci III ( ; October 18, 1930 – June 3, 2018) was an American politician and diplomat who served as the United States Secretary of Defense from 1987 to 1989 in the administration of President Ronald Reagan. He was the fi ...
,
Harold Brown,
James Schlesinger
James Rodney Schlesinger (February 15, 1929 – March 27, 2014) was an American economist and public servant who was best known for serving as Secretary of Defense from 1973 to 1975 under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Prior ...
,
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld (July 9, 1932 – June 29, 2021) was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under president Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under Presi ...
and
Melvin Laird
Melvin Robert Laird Jr. (September 1, 1922 – November 16, 2016) was an American politician, writer and statesman. He was a U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. congressman from Wisconsin from 1953 to 1969 before serving as United States Secret ...
.
The AdTI published
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy Gingrich (; né McPherson; born June 17, 1943) is an American politician and author who served as the 50th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. A member of the Republican Party, he was the U ...
's 2003 book, ''Saving Lives & Saving Money: Transforming Health and Healthcare''.
AdTI was a member organization of the
Cooler Heads Coalition
The Cooler Heads Coalition is a politically conservative "informal and ad-hoc group" in the United States, financed and operated by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The group, which rejects the mainstream scientific opinion on climate change, ...
which asserts that "the science of global warming is uncertain" and is focused on "dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis".
Funding
Microsoft had been one of the Institution's backers for five years, although a Microsoft spokesman said they had not funded any specific research.
References
External links
*
*
Accusatory Study: Many Open-Sourcers Steal Code (LinuxInsider, 19 May 2004)*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexis De Tocqueville Institution
Climate change denial
Think tanks established in 1988
Political and economic think tanks in the United States
Organizations of environmentalism skeptics and critics
2007 disestablishments in Washington, D.C.
Think tanks based in Washington, D.C.