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Who invented vector clocks?

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Re: Who invented vector clocks?

#31

Post by auggierose »

p-e-w wrote: post #25
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even “who was the first person to mention X in a publication” can be different from “who invented X”. Inventions can fly around the industry for awhile before they get documented, and it is unclear who really invented them, or perhaps they were invented multiple times independently.

I'd wager that the first person to mention an idea in a publication is almost never the originator of the idea. The obstacles for publishing something are so enormously high that the effort to publish is often much larger than the effort to invent the thing being published. As a result, academia and industrial science are largely institutions that formalize and describe ideas, not institutions where ideas originate,…

The obstacles for publishing something today are pretty much nil. Just put it on your website, or on the arXiv. If you put it on your website, make sure that you can prove later on what you put there when (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping).

Re: Who invented vector clocks?

#32

Post by ilyt »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #19
gwern wrote: post #6

This is a good example of how academic citation practices subtly launder out the role of compute, trial-and-error, and practitioners in favor of academia. OP concludes that if you want to cite Fidge & Mattern for credit for 'developing the theory ', that's fine. But notice, that's not how it started and is an answer to a different - no one was asking, 'who finally explained why vector clocks work in a rigorous way',…

this is absolutely the opposite how the citation game works - very often the first person to hit the buzzer gets all the credit and the people that come after and actually give a clean, rigorous, expository treatment gets absolutely zero credit/cites.

Even worse when it is not just some random credits but patent.

Re: Who invented vector clocks?

#33

Post by baryphonic »

David Reed's 1978 PhD thesis describes "pseudo-time," which is a precursor to the work Liskov and Lamport did.[0] (Reed calls his overall system he developed "NAMOS," with pseudo-time being the coordination mechanism.) In fact, the pseudo-time algorithm has some flaws which Liskov described in the mid-80s. I believe Lamport's PAXOS is a sort of pun on NAMOS.

[0]https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/889815

Re: Who invented vector clocks?

#34

Post by p-e-w »

auggierose wrote: post #31
p-e-w wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wager that the first person to mention an idea in a publication is almost never the originator of the idea. The obstacles for publishing something are so enormously high that the effort to publish is often much larger than the effort to invent the thing being published. As a result, academia and industrial science are largely institutions that formalize and describe ideas, not institutions where ideas originate,…

The obstacles for publishing something today are pretty much nil. Just put it on your website, or on the arXiv. If you put it on your website, make sure that you can prove later on what you put there when ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping ).

Self-publishing doesn't count as "publishing" for most purposes. Trying to claim academic priority based on something you uploaded to your website or the arXiv is a recipe for getting laughed at, or, even more likely, for getting ignored outright. At least outside of those very few fields where the arXiv has become somewhat established, like math, computer science, and to a lesser extent, physics.

Re: Who invented vector clocks?

#35

Post by seanmcdirmid »

p-e-w wrote: post #34
auggierose wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obstacles for publishing something today are pretty much nil. Just put it on your website, or on the arXiv. If you put it on your website, make sure that you can prove later on what you put there when ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping ).

Self-publishing doesn't count as "publishing" for most purposes. Trying to claim academic priority based on something you uploaded to your website or the arXiv is a recipe for getting laughed at, or, even more likely, for getting ignored outright. At least outside of those very few fields where the arXiv has become somewhat established, like math, computer science, and to a lesser extent, physics.

arXiv isn’t a great cite. It’s like “technical report”, and it doesn’t really count for points so much as it is a courtesy provided to the reader (well, the only real points that should matter).

I once dug out the invention of IDE code completion coming from a structured programming system called Alice Pascal from the mid 80s via a magazine article. That was a fun investigation, but no one really cared.

Re: Who invented vector clocks?

#36

Post by vivegi »

Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System. Communications of the ACM 21, 7 (July 1978), 558-565. Reprinted in several collections, including Distributed Computing: Concepts and Implementations, McEntire et al., ed. IEEE Press, 1984. PDF https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/time-clocks.pdf

Lamport cites

> The origin of this paper was the note The Maintenance of Duplicate Databases by Paul Johnson and Bob Thomas. I believe their note introduced the idea of using message timestamps in a distributed algorithm. I happen to have a solid, visceral understanding of special relativity (see [5]). This enabled me to grasp immediately the essence of what they were trying to do.

The Maintenance of Duplicate Databases, Paul Johnson and Bob Thomas (1975). https://www.rfc-archive.org/getrfc.php?rfc=677

Leslie Lamport's website link to Time Clocks. https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#time-clocks

Re: Who invented vector clocks?

#37

Post by auggierose »

p-e-w wrote: post #34
auggierose wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obstacles for publishing something today are pretty much nil. Just put it on your website, or on the arXiv. If you put it on your website, make sure that you can prove later on what you put there when ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping ).

Self-publishing doesn't count as "publishing" for most purposes. Trying to claim academic priority based on something you uploaded to your website or the arXiv is a recipe for getting laughed at, or, even more likely, for getting ignored outright. At least outside of those very few fields where the arXiv has become somewhat established, like math, computer science, and to a lesser extent, physics.

You can (and should) always go for some more respected form of publishing afterwards, especially if you need points for academia. But if you were first, and you didn't document that properly, and you couldn't get it published in any "respectable" form, guess who is laughing now? If the arXiv is good enough for Perelman, it is good enough for me.

Of course, a certain amount of immunity to social values is helpful here.

One problem with this approach though is the "double-blind review" policy of some prestigious publications. If your stuff is on the arXiv, it's difficult to double-blind it. One of the reasons why I think double-blind is a bad idea.

Re: Who invented vector clocks?

#38

Post by auggierose »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #35
p-e-w wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-publishing doesn't count as "publishing" for most purposes. Trying to claim academic priority based on something you uploaded to your website or the arXiv is a recipe for getting laughed at, or, even more likely, for getting ignored outright. At least outside of those very few fields where the arXiv has become somewhat established, like math, computer science, and to a lesser extent, physics.

arXiv isn’t a great cite. It’s like “technical report”, and it doesn’t really count for points so much as it is a courtesy provided to the reader (well, the only real points that should matter). I once dug out the invention of IDE code completion coming from a structured programming system called Alice Pascal from the mid 80s via a magazine article. That was a fun investigation, but no one really cared.

Sounds interesting, maybe write a paper about it?

Re: Who invented vector clocks?

#39

Post by seanmcdirmid »

auggierose wrote: post #38
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

arXiv isn’t a great cite. It’s like “technical report”, and it doesn’t really count for points so much as it is a courtesy provided to the reader (well, the only real points that should matter). I once dug out the invention of IDE code completion coming from a structured programming system called Alice Pascal from the mid 80s via a magazine article. That was a fun investigation, but no one really cared.

Sounds interesting, maybe write a paper about it?

I did! Onward 2010 I think. It was a fun paper. Escape from the maze of twisty classes.

Re: Who invented vector clocks?

#40

Post by sbierwagen »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39
auggierose wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds interesting, maybe write a paper about it?

I did! Onward 2010 I think. It was a fun paper. Escape from the maze of twisty classes.

2012! https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/escape-...
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