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He mentions Lojban[0] but ironically fails to note that Lojban itself is a fork of Loglan[1]. It came about because the late Dr. James Cooke Brown, inventor of
by fernly 10y ago
He mentions Lojban[0] but ironically fails to note that Lojban itself is a fork of Loglan[1].
It came about because the late Dr. James Cooke Brown, inventor of Loglan, tried to keep tight control over its development by claiming intellectual property rights over it. However, Brown did not move fast enough toward finalizing, formalizing and documenting the language to satisfy some of the enthusiastic and inventive community that had formed around it.
A group of those enthusiasts kept the basic concepts and syntax of Loglan (which they deemed not copyrightable) and created a new basic vocabulary to replace the words that Brown or the Loglan Institute could claim ownership of. (Reminiscent of the IP disputes over APIs versus implementations.) The result was Lojban, which continues to have a small community and a collection of translated documents and tutorials.
[0] https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan
- jflatow 10y agoWhich makes me think that the lesson of this story is not "avoid forking at all costs", but that building anything universal is a fragile endeavor. Anybody can just come along and obsolete your status with respect to that goal. As for being forgotten, it seems inevitable, if universality is your only selling point.