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Google closes Issue 9
- sigzero 16y agoDid anyone really think Google was going to respond in any other way? I read Issue 9 when it came out along with some of the comments on it. I knew then Google would just close the ticket and do nothing.
- junkbit 16y ago"Status: Unfortunate"
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- gaius 16y agoThis is what not being evil looks like. Imagine the howls if Microsoft had steamrollered over a small developer who'd spent 10 years working on M#.
- jbarham 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft
- cosgroveb 16y agoOn the one-hand I feel for the developer who originally named his language "Go." On the other hand I've never heard of it... Who does HN think is right in this case and why?
- gaius 16y agoGoogle has the mightiest search engine ever created and they couldn't check there wasn't already a programming language by that name? It would just have been polite.
- gjm11 16y agoOr: Google has the mightiest search engine ever created and they didn't find his language when they checked? It must have been so obscure that you can't really blame them.
- jkkramer 16y agoI think they both chose a terrible name.
- protomyth 16y agoThere are some great language names for search, but go isn't one of them. Perl and PHP seem to work really well. Ruby and Python sure don't.
- btilly 16y agoIn Perl's case that was quite intentional. Larry Wall used grep over a Usenet feed to be sure that he would catch all references to Perl. (He did this before Kibo popularized the technique.) He therefore wanted a name that (among other things) would have very few false positives.
- silentbicycle 16y agoWorse still: J, K, R, Io, T. At least with Python and Ruby, you can google for "python programming" or "ruby programming". Also, some forums don't allow you to search for single-letter names.
- protomyth 16y agoThe book is on Lulu [1] and there is an Information Week article [2] on the issue. I would be pretty ticked if Google (a web search company) stomped on my work. It just seems like a really cruddy thing to do. It's in the logic / agent group of languages and I have run across the article a couple of times but it is my no means famous. It is not like Google's Go is super well known either, so picking a new name that could be googled would probably be the kind thing to do. [1] http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/lets-go/705004 http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/lets-go/705004 [2] http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/web_services/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221601351 http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/web_services/sh...
- ubernostrum 16y agoFlip side: If someone takes out a patent and has a tiny, fringe or effectively nonexistent business around actually performing the patent, but sues anyone who independently comes up with the same idea, we call that person a "troll". If someone chooses a name for a project and builds a tiny, fringe or effectively nonexistent community around it, but complains about anyone who independently tries to use the same name, we curse his vile oppressors. (Is there just a bit of a difference between this situation and a patent troll? Yes. Is the difference small enough that you can see there from here? Yes. Should people be thinking pretty hard about what precedents they want in this type of situation? You bet your ass they should.)
- invisible 16y agoYou liken it to a patent but it is more similar to a trademark. I would think most everyone agrees trademarks are very good things in practice 99.9% of the time.
- chc 16y agoThat's because if you don't use your trademark, you lose it. There's no equivalent to "Oh, I used the name in a little-known paper I wrote and now I can sue you." If nobody knows about your trademark, you probably don't own it.
- eogas 16y ago>Status: Unfortunate That's cold, Google.
- akent 16y agoAnd I thought "WONTFIX" was harsh.
- nuclear_eclipse 16y agoI would have just used WORKSFORME.
- superk 16y agoIf you've ever managed an open-source project and have to deal with tens or hundreds of requests for features or changes to the API specific to a single use-case (usually that the requestor needs for a client but doesn't want to implement themselves) you'd understand why sometimes "WONTFIX" is the only suitable reply.
- tspiteri 16y agoWhen I saw that I didn't see it as cold, but as cool. You can't expect to block anyone from using a name they like just because you would like to use it for your hobby project. While I understand the Go! language designer having a go at it, the issue was soon reduced to whiners whining about a complete non-issue. Had Google tried to block the Go! designer from continuing to use his name, they would have been evil, but as things are, they are not evil at all.
- protomyth 16y agoWhen you submit to conferences / journals and write a book, it ceases to be a "hobby project".
- momotomo 16y agoUnsure on this. Submission vs Reception debate? Submitting papers and publishing books is attempting to initiate the move from hobby to research topic or accepted language but it doesn't look like it moved much past that. Virtually anyone can take these actions if they are motivated enough. Tracking the history on this is a bit slippery because "go" is such a genric term. To qualify this it is a case of finding out what peer review or engagement was undertaken and how far the idea of Go! (as in the non-google one) made it, or if further languages or research were progressed on the back of it.
- roryokane 16y agoThe original bug submitter's language, originally called Go, is now called Go!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go!_(programming_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go!_(programming_language)
- hvs 16y agoIt would've been interesting if they had renamed the language, "Issue 9". I think Google missed an opportunity to gain a little developer goodwill here, but I don't think it will hurt them in the long run. (Assuming Go ever becomes a popular language)
- krakensden 16y agoI don't know, it seems to much like assuming the mantle of Plan 9, and that... has some negative connotations.
- pyre 16y agoAren't a bunch of the Plan9 devs working on Go though?
- hvs 16y agoRob Pike and Ken Thompson were not only on the development team for Plan 9, many of the ideas in Go come directly from their work on the Limbo language.
- krakensden 16y agoYes, but they're not calling it Go9.
- Terretta 16y agoI quite liked the comment suggesting Google rename their language to the eligibly employable moniker "i9".
- mdwrigh2 16y agoHello lawsuit from Intel.
- heyitsnick 16y agoHow about iNine? Hello lawsuit from Apple
- cperciva 16y agoGoogle's response to this makes me want to create a pornography search engine called "Go Ogle!" and respond to the inevitable cease-and-desist letters with "the naming similarity is unfortunate, but I don't expect it will cause more than minimal confusion".
- InclinedPlane 16y agoThe only problem with that is that people would primarily find, or not, "go ogle" through ... google.
- pufuwozu 16y agoGo Ogle IT: http://www.googleit.com/ http://www.googleit.com/
- dmoney 16y agoWhat domain name would you use though?
- tlrobinson 16y agoOr how about just Google bombing "go language" and related search terms? Oh, right...
- bhiggins 16y agoBoth will be irrelevant soon enough anyway.
- tspiteri 16y agoWhat some people are missing is that before Google's Go, the Go! language was so obscure that even googling for "go" would not have found it. In fact, the second comment (http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9&cnum=500&cstart=33#c2 http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9&cnum=500&...) on the issue, by the Go! designer himself, suggests that to find its page you should google for his name, not for "go" or "go programming language".
- masklinn 16y ago> What some people are missing is that before Google's Go, the Go! language was so obscure that even googling for "go" would not have found it. Nobody's missing it, it simply isn't relevant to the discussion/
- may 16y agoThe Go logo looks like a potato with feet.
- yanw 16y agoNo one really confused the two and I don't see how having similar names would hurt any of them. Also it's not even the same name: 'Go' vs 'Go!' It is "unfortunate", carry on.
- bfung 16y agoThe book is also on Google Books[1], and peering into the table of contents, the language is named "Go!" Perhaps someone is bitter. +1 [1]http://books.google.com/books?id=jyIrfDokmKgC&lpg=PR11&dq=isbn%3A0975444913&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=jyIrfDokmKgC&lpg=PR11&#...
- seabee 16y agoThis is what gets me; nobody gets C and C# confused. Why Go and Go! ?
- 1337p337 16y agoMaybe no one you know. Try looking for a job doing C, and wading through the confused recruiters. I die a little every time I see "C/C++/C#" in a posting. (To say nothing of the ones calling "Ruby on Rails" a language.)
- mahmud 16y ago# is pronounced "sharp". How do you pronounce "!"? "Go [rising intonation]"?
- barrybe 16y agoBefore people get carried away with stories about how the big guy is crushing the little guy, keep in mind that there are at least 4 different programming languages named D, and this doesn't seem to have killed any of those projects. Name collisions are inevitable when everyone picks names that are around 1-4 characters.
- xentronium 16y agoHe could still use the name "go-bang" or something like that which is even arguably better googlable. However, google response makes me sad too.
- poink 16y agoI wish Google would have come up with a new name, and I feel bad for this guy, but it's just way too common a name to figure you'll have it all to yourself. I'd feel the same way if the language was called "Do" or "Run".
- chc 16y agoI do feel for the guy, but if I'm being honest and practical, it will be less trouble for him to change the name of his obscure and almost unused language than it would be for Google to rename Go. It would have been nice if Google had avoided the name conflict, but unfortunately there's no central programming language registry and he had done nothing to make his language easily discovered (to the point where it didn't even have a website), so it seems likely that Google chose the same name in complete innocence — at the worst, it seems like they might have thought it was a toy name for a toy language used simply for explanatory purposes, not something anyone cared about. Essentially, once the name was already associated in people's minds with Google, the horses were out of the barn. He chose to get concerned about Go!'s presence in the public consciousness far too late.
- gaius 16y agoHow much hassle would it have been for Google to have changed the name before they announced it? You're right there's no central repository of programming language names... But there is such thing as a search engine...
- masklinn 16y ago> How much hassle would it have been for Google to have changed the name before they announced it? Or right after they did, considering the state of the language at the time I doubt it was used that much internally, so it's not like it would have cost them billions of man-hours in lost productivity.
- mmavnn 16y agoExcept that it appears the language was so obscure that Googling it did not pull back any references. Not entirely surprising given that there wasn't even a website for the language at the time.
- slowpoison 16y ago> From the comments - http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9#c576 http://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9#c576 "Gone" can also be an alternative :))
- knodi 16y agoI love the issue status (Status: Unfortunate). Poor bastard.
- shuri 16y agoThe guy should rename _his_ language to issue 9 and he will get the good will and publicity :).
- techiferous 16y agoNow what am I supposed to do with issuenine.com? ;)
- supersillyus 16y agoSeems like an instance of the well-known "Michael Bolton Problem" from Office Space. You had a name, you were using it, but something significantly more notable comes along with the same name. They didn't steal your name, but by virtue of being much more popular, now nobody thinks of you when they hear your name, they think of the other thing that you have no association with and came after you. There's no theft, just an annoyance for you. You were probably never going to be famous, but now it is much harder. On the ironic upside, people who didn't care about you before now remember you, because of the naming conflict.