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A 2x Faster Web

blog.chromium.org

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Re: A 2x Faster Web

#61

Post by sketerpot »

rbanffy wrote: post #57
Xichekolas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example: Simon Peyton-Jones and Simon Marlow, which make up a huge chunk of power behind Haskell and specifically GHC, are Microsoft researchers. (Although Haskell and GHC are not Microsoft projects, they get paid by Microsoft to work on them.)

In return, Microsoft gets a ton of concurrency-related IP that could be used to stifle the market for non-Microsoft implementations in the future. This makes me uncomfortable. You just don't trust your money to an apparently unarmed bank-robber.

The Simons publish their work freely, and go to a lot of effort writing their papers well so that their work spreads beyond Microsoft. And as far as I know, their code is all open source.

Re: A 2x Faster Web

#62

Post by Xichekolas »

rbanffy wrote: post #57
Xichekolas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example: Simon Peyton-Jones and Simon Marlow, which make up a huge chunk of power behind Haskell and specifically GHC, are Microsoft researchers. (Although Haskell and GHC are not Microsoft projects, they get paid by Microsoft to work on them.)

In return, Microsoft gets a ton of concurrency-related IP that could be used to stifle the market for non-Microsoft implementations in the future. This makes me uncomfortable. You just don't trust your money to an apparently unarmed bank-robber.

I am not a patent lawyer, but is there any evidence that Microsoft is even trying to protect this particular IP?

AFAIK, the Simons publish research papers freely, and GHC is licensed under what amounts to a BSD3 license (by the University of Glasgow... not Microsoft).

Re: A 2x Faster Web

#63

Post by rbanffy »

sketerpot wrote: post #61
rbanffy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In return, Microsoft gets a ton of concurrency-related IP that could be used to stifle the market for non-Microsoft implementations in the future. This makes me uncomfortable. You just don't trust your money to an apparently unarmed bank-robber.

The Simons publish their work freely, and go to a lot of effort writing their papers well so that their work spreads beyond Microsoft. And as far as I know, their code is all open source.

Any idea if there are patents pending on any of this IP? I would see that if the patent was applied for before the paper is published, the paper would not be considered prior art and would not invalidate the claims.

As for licensing, Microsoft owns the said IP and can re-license it on a whim.

Not all of Microsoft is evil, but they, as a company, cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner.

Re: A 2x Faster Web

#64

Post by devicenull »

shimon wrote: post #8

Am I missing their explanation of how a SPDY-capable client and server discover and make use of SPDY instead of HTTP? For this to take hold in the wild, it has to be possible for me to run a combined HTTP+SPDY server, and for a client connecting to it to automatically make use of SPDY if it is capable. This must happen without user intervention (i.e. we don't expect people to type spdy:// instead of http:// ). It see…

You could easily just have the server send an additional HTTP header for all it's responses. Old clients would ignore it, and new ones could detect it and start the SPDY session.

Re: A 2x Faster Web

#65

Post by nostrademons »

symesc wrote: post #10
swombat wrote: post #7

Impressive, how Google are taking on challenges that pretty much no other company could possibly address... replacing email... enhancing HTTP, etc... They're the only company with the means to take on such massive, unprofitable projects, and at the same time enough street cred that everyone won't immediately assume they're trying to make the web proprietary. The fact that they tend to open up these things from the ge…

Agreed. I think the important thing to note is that Google is the only large company whose business model depends almost completely on the success of the Internet. This is why we see them at bat for Net Neutrality as well as efficiencies within communication protocols. Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, HP, IBM . . . those companies make their livings in other ways. The only company comparable to Google would be Yahoo in this…

Umm, Amazon? EBay?

Google may be the biggest company whose success depends upon the Internet, but they're far from the only one.

Re: A 2x Faster Web

#66

Post by dedalus »

dedalus wrote: post #51

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP-NG/http-ng-scp.html had some similar ideas which when combined with http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc998.html gives you this SPDY. But how do you gain adoption of such a tech across clients and servers (which was the problem with pipelining) will be an interesting question to see

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-natarajan-http-over-sctp-00 also had similar ideas but SPDY is better because of Resource Prioritization

Re: A 2x Faster Web

#67

Post by neilc »

rbanffy wrote: post #63
sketerpot wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Simons publish their work freely, and go to a lot of effort writing their papers well so that their work spreads beyond Microsoft. And as far as I know, their code is all open source.

Any idea if there are patents pending on any of this IP? I would see that if the patent was applied for before the paper is published, the paper would not be considered prior art and would not invalidate the claims. As for licensing, Microsoft owns the said IP and can re-license it on a whim. Not all of Microsoft is evil, but they, as a company, cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner.

I don't think there's really a big ethical difference between MS, and other big companies like IBM and HP. Each company does a lot of research that benefits the community at large; they also need to recoup that investment via patents, technology transfer and the like. Trusting IBM, for instance, any more or any less than Microsoft is a little naive.

Re: A 2x Faster Web

#68

Post by rbanffy »

neilc wrote: post #67
rbanffy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea if there are patents pending on any of this IP? I would see that if the patent was applied for before the paper is published, the paper would not be considered prior art and would not invalidate the claims. As for licensing, Microsoft owns the said IP and can re-license it on a whim. Not all of Microsoft is evil, but they, as a company, cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner.

I don't think there's really a big ethical difference between MS, and other big companies like IBM and HP. Each company does a lot of research that benefits the community at large; they also need to recoup that investment via patents, technology transfer and the like. Trusting IBM, for instance, any more or any less than Microsoft is a little naive.

I must disagree. Even if IBM has a chequered past, Microsoft has a very nasty recent history of anti-competitive and plain unethical behaviour under the current administration. I agree IBM cannot be trusted, but claiming someone should trust Microsoft because IBM is no better (a disputable allegation in itself) is a logical failure.

Re: A 2x Faster Web

#69

Post by shykes »

drusenko wrote: post #47
shykes wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could browse to the page the regular way, then load a Javascript or Flash library which would use SPDY for all further communications. In your typical web app the user experience could be visibly improved. You can already do this with Flash today, and it would be much easier for Google to push it into the DOM than to touch the transport protocol.

I'm missing how javascript has the abilities to touch the transport layer in such a fundamental way -- could you explain?

It doesn't - but one could imagine adding support for raw sockets in the DOM. It's easier to change things at the document level rather than at the discovery and transport level.
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