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When Rob Pike first met rms

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Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#41

Post by gwern »

gpvos wrote: post #12
gwern wrote: 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.

Hm, so it was. Still, he didn't modify or add any kind of footnote or disclaimer or update when he posted it in 2006, which is suggestive. One indeed wonders if he is still keen on patents...

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#42

Post by pasbesoin »

willvarfar wrote: post #40
pasbesoin wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to address particular annoyance at the poster. If annoyance is merited (I'm no longer sure, but based just on the concept/precept of having a "unique" or canonical-shared identifier for content, I'm troubled), then it would be at Blogspot for creating this circumstance.

More a surprise than offense. If blogspot hadn't tried to localise me, I'd have submitted a .com link and HN would have spotted that this story is actually a dupe and we wouldn't be pondering this topic all over again .... :)

Ok, so now I should be annoyed at you, for posting a dupe. ;-)

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#43

Post by yeah123 »

Corporations trying to protect intellectual property can be just as mindless as zealots like RMS and followers.

How about AT&T trying to protect the code for the true(1) utility?

It's easy for each side of the debate to criticise the other.

Maybe what really matters is whether people can access and use good software. (Thus RMS's seemingly radical position might actually be useful to society.)

Google would be nowhere without having access to free code. They built a company on open source. And they still haven't replaced it all with stuff written in-house. The most they do is make modifications. What does that tell you? For one, it's cost-effective.

Where would any of us be without free code? We all use it, to some extent. It has helped us make progress. That includes business progress.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#44

Post by georgemcbay »

gcb wrote: post #27
babarock wrote: post #6

I enjoyed the story, but something bothers me (just a little bit). I don't like his attempts at sensationalizing the event: > The protesters were surprised, I think, that my subject was interesting to them. At one point they all applauded spontaneously when I described a feature of the system. Rob Pike is a renown scientist, at the time working on Plan9 , the most exciting project of the moment. He tried to portray t…

Rob Pike is one of my software architects idols. but he is a AT&T/google ambassador. and a public figure. this is a good propaganda piece. it's interesting, but you can't ignore the semiotics of how it makes stallman looks pathetic (no eye contact) and the events all turn out to play right to the good side (a more pragmatic analysis would say that 100% of the audience were people already intending to attend anyway an…

"it makes stallman looks pathetic (no eye contact)"

I used to hang around the FSF/Media Labs frequently as a teenager in the early to mid 1990s (the era this story is from) and met rms several times and this description didn't seem out of place to me at all.

rms is many things, some of them quite admirable, but he is also one of the most socially awkward penguins you could ever meet.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#45

Post by Locke1689 »

stcredzero wrote: post #29
gruseom wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would help, of course, but what about the situation where A works hard to solve a difficult problem and puts out a product, only to find out later that B had already patented that solution? If A's work was independent of B's, why should B own it? Especially in the egregious and common subcase where B never actually produced anything other than a patent.

I'd argue that what you propose is covered by a sane approach to "obviousness."

It's not. Consider the calculus: invented almost simultaneously by two brilliant mathematicians (Leibniz and Netwon).

For a more recent example, consider NP completeness, proved completely independently by Stephen Cook and Leonid Levin.

Or even reinventions made disparate by time: the Cooley-Tukey FFT was first formulated by Gauss in 1805.

If these inventions are "obvious," then all inventions are obvious. The truth, not widely acknowledged, is that most inventions are as much a product of the environment of the inventor as the inventor themselves. They're not smarter and they're not unique. Patents should not prohibit coincidental parallel invention, only reverse engineering.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#46

Post by nknight »

willvarfar wrote: post #3
guard-of-terra wrote: post #2

Software patents are bad, okay? He got into them before that became obvious. Now it is. He is too stubborn or too blind to state this truth; instead he hides behind "business community is still excited". Stallman organizing protest can not be more wrong than Pike not acknowledging the problem.

That post shows Rob's opinion in 1982, 1991 and 2006. I wonder what his opinion is now. Whatever it is, its going to be considered. But it doesn't mean it hasn't evolved.

How can it be said to show his opinion in 2006?

This is the only part of that post written in 2006:

"I can't find this on the web, so here follows a note I wrote in 1991 of an odd event in my computing career."

Everything after that is from 1991. You have no basis for interpreting the 2006 posting of this 1991 note as anything, save preservation of history.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#47

Post by mkopinsky »

luriel wrote: post #5
guard-of-terra wrote: post #2

Software patents are bad, okay? He got into them before that became obvious. Now it is. He is too stubborn or too blind to state this truth; instead he hides behind "business community is still excited". Stallman organizing protest can not be more wrong than Pike not acknowledging the problem.

Yea, I'm a big fan of much of Rob's work (from Plan 9 to Go), but about this he is plain wrong. At the same time I'm a big critic of RMS and his work (from GCC to the GPL, passing by the Free Software Song ;) but he is right that software patents are a very harmful monster.

What's the criticism of GCC?

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#48

Post by gruseom »

Locke1689 wrote: post #45
stcredzero wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that what you propose is covered by a sane approach to "obviousness."

It's not. Consider the calculus: invented almost simultaneously by two brilliant mathematicians (Leibniz and Netwon). For a more recent example, consider NP completeness, proved completely independently by Stephen Cook and Leonid Levin. Or even reinventions made disparate by time: the Cooley-Tukey FFT was first formulated by Gauss in 1805. If these inventions are "obvious," then all inventions are obvious. The truth,…

Patents should not prohibit coincidental parallel invention, only reverse engineering.

Well put. That's exactly the intuition I was trying to express.

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#49

Post by gcb »

georgemcbay wrote: post #44
gcb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rob Pike is one of my software architects idols. but he is a AT&T/google ambassador. and a public figure. this is a good propaganda piece. it's interesting, but you can't ignore the semiotics of how it makes stallman looks pathetic (no eye contact) and the events all turn out to play right to the good side (a more pragmatic analysis would say that 100% of the audience were people already intending to attend anyway an…

"it makes stallman looks pathetic (no eye contact)" I used to hang around the FSF/Media Labs frequently as a teenager in the early to mid 1990s (the era this story is from) and met rms several times and this description didn't seem out of place to me at all. rms is many things, some of them quite admirable, but he is also one of the most socially awkward penguins you could ever meet.

Don't doubt at all. Just tried to pick up one example from the text on each comment i made... That one wasn't the most fortunate i agree. But the comments aim to encompass the text as a whole

Re: When Rob Pike first met rms

#50

Post by [deleted] »

mkopinsky wrote: post #47
luriel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I'm a big fan of much of Rob's work (from Plan 9 to Go), but about this he is plain wrong. At the same time I'm a big critic of RMS and his work (from GCC to the GPL, passing by the Free Software Song ;) but he is right that software patents are a very harmful monster.

What's the criticism of GCC?

[deleted]
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