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When Rob Pike first met rms

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Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#11
"of which the worst is that AT&T has never threatened to sue anyone over the patent"

Earlier in the piece it describes AT&T sending off demands to prospective licensees, and then those licenses being "politely" returned. Is Mr. Pike really so naive that he doesn't understand that the demand for a license is entirely backed by the implicit threat of a lawsuit to force the same? If that weren't the case the participation level would be 0%.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#12
post #9

> I was congratulated warmly and people were excited about the future of software patents. Nowadays, however, the climate in universities at least is very different, and Richard Stallman is almost single-handedly responsible for the change. (The business community, on the other hand, is still excited.) Written in 2006... O tempora o mores!

Actually, in 1991.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#13
I looked twice to verify that she needed the wheelchair.

I'm not quite sure why Pike wrote this. Was he afraid that the wheelchair concealed a weapon of some sort? But how can you visually verify that a person needs a wheelchair?

I also wonder what Pike thinks now that his employer is being sued over the violations of patents in their open source GUI software. The swipe-to-unlock patent strikes me as about as obvious as backing store.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#14
These reader-oriented top-level Blogspot domains are really starting to piss me off.

(The posted URL is blogspot.se, while the author is Pike, who is in the U.S. and most likely uses blogspot.com for his access.)

What, again, is the rationale for this? Other than enabling some sort of lame country-specific filtering?

P.S. Or is it in part specifically to provide a route around the U.S.'s arbitrary domination/control of .com domains? Symbolic as well, if practically speaking the U.S. government is unlikely to just shut down blogspot.com .

So, I guess I'm going from pissed off to trying to remember past conversation/explanation around this change.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#17

I looked twice to verify that she needed the wheelchair. I'm not quite sure why Pike wrote this. Was he afraid that the wheelchair concealed a weapon of some sort? But how can you visually verify that a person needs a wheelchair? I also wonder what Pike thinks now that his employer is being sued over the violations of patents in their open source GUI software. The swipe-to-unlock patent strikes me as about as obvious…

I'm not quite sure why Pike wrote this. Was he afraid that the wheelchair concealed a weapon of some sort? But how can you visually verify that a person needs a wheelchair?

Considering the sign she had, I think Pike considered the hypothesis that she was using the wheelchair as a "theatrical prop".

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#18

I looked twice to verify that she needed the wheelchair. I'm not quite sure why Pike wrote this. Was he afraid that the wheelchair concealed a weapon of some sort? But how can you visually verify that a person needs a wheelchair? I also wonder what Pike thinks now that his employer is being sued over the violations of patents in their open source GUI software. The swipe-to-unlock patent strikes me as about as obvious…

The woman was carrying the sign "Patents Cripple Software.". Rob might have thought the wheelchair was symbolic.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#19

"of which the worst is that AT&T has never threatened to sue anyone over the patent" Earlier in the piece it describes AT&T sending off demands to prospective licensees, and then those licenses being "politely" returned. Is Mr. Pike really so naive that he doesn't understand that the demand for a license is entirely backed by the implicit threat of a lawsuit to force the same? If that weren't the case the participati…

This is amusing.

I was told that among MIT undergraduates a bizarre form of political correctness had developed, putting Stallman in charge of a pack of eager misguided nerds who in a healthier environment would probably be protesting the killing of rats in biology class.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#20

"of which the worst is that AT&T has never threatened to sue anyone over the patent" Earlier in the piece it describes AT&T sending off demands to prospective licensees, and then those licenses being "politely" returned. Is Mr. Pike really so naive that he doesn't understand that the demand for a license is entirely backed by the implicit threat of a lawsuit to force the same? If that weren't the case the participati…

This comment stood out for me as well, and strikes me as extremely disingenuous.

Another that caught my eye was "Free Software is like Free Love, a hippie pipe dream in which computing is free from venality, commercial interests, even capitalism"

I was upset that Pike could write such things in 2006 as this is demonstrably untrue -- contrary to being a pipe dream, Free Software has completely replaced the space previously occupied by ATT unix. But, then I realized this piece was authored in 1991, which makes this opinion merely lacking in foresight.

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