7 ms·

When Rob Pike first met rms

117 points by willvarfar 15y ago

guard-of-terra 15y ago
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.
- willvarfar 15y ago
  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.
  - gcb 15y ago
    my bet, it's an opinion that helps google monetize on software research. whatever that is.
  - nknight 15y ago
    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.
    - willvarfar 15y ago
      True its strenuous, but its at least indicative in that he didn't distance himself from it in 2006 either. You could imagine that if he felt differently in 2006 he'd have mentioned it in the preamble? He posts one or two entries a year in that blog; this note was not some noise he dumped, it was a deliberate posting.
      - nknight 15y ago
        I can imagine a lot, but that doesn't mean I get to substitute my imagination for reality. You're reading into the post what you want, not what is there. If you actually had any interest in truth, you'd ask him. Instead, you've decided you know what his views and motives are based on no evidence whatsoever, and are asserting your opinion publicly.
- luriel 15y ago
  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.
  - mkopinsky 15y ago
    What's the criticism of GCC?
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
- stcredzero 15y ago
  As a devil's advocate, I'll ask, would software patents be as bad if: 1) The Patent Office gave proper attention to prior art 2) The Patent Office implementation of "obvious" was sane? I'll posit that, given these two stipulations, most of the bad in software patents wouldn't be with us.
  - fffggg 15y ago
    "would software patents be as bad if" You've chosen difficult wording here. When you ask if things would be so bad if we lessened their badness the answer is obviously no -- things would be incrementally better if made incrementally better. But this is no more than a tautology. Software patents are bad, in any form. They can be made not-quite-so-bad, but they will always be harmful to the intellectual development of society.
  - gruseom 15y ago
    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.
    - stcredzero 15y ago
      I'd argue that what you propose is covered by a sane approach to "obviousness."
      - willvarfar 15y ago
        So you can defeat a patent by claiming you invented it independently later? ... how would that work?
        stcredzero 15y ago
        You'd have to prove that you did formulate it independently yourself. There couldn't be other prior art. If your own inventor's journal revealed a large amount of work, that would show the original patent was indeed valid. If you could prove that you did invent it yourself, and that it wasn't that big a deal, the patent should fall. So to win in your case, you'd have to tread a tightrope between "not enough evidence to show independent origin" and "the thing is obviously substantive enough to warrant a patent." Most likely, the thing actually is obvious and there would be other prior art, which the Patent Office currently doesn't pay attention to.
watmough 15y ago
This is a lovely outcome, and illustrative of how people can exercise their right to assemble peaceably and make their views known. In the wider World, we should think twice about criminalizing peaceful protesters, as some recent laws seem to be doing. cite: http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/ready-occupy-what-you-need-know-about-hr-347-criminalizing-protest-law http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/ready-occupy-what-you-n...
babarock 15y ago
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 the protesters as mindless sheep blindly following rms, where indeed they were smart people genuinely against the idea of software patents. After all, this is MIT we're talking about, is anyone surprised that these guys actually showed interest in Rob's talk? I know that if I were there, I would've definitely put up a protest sign, while still being thrilled to attend the talk.
- gcb 15y ago
  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 and they just decide to do so carrying signs). all that said, i believe having both sides is healthy. and i'm not against patents. i learn a lot about reading them. my only 3 grips with the patent system are 1) patents have more legalese than technical details 2) patents last damn too long 3) because of #1 they give out patents for too generic stuff.
  - kiba 15y ago
    all that said, i believe having both sides is healthy. and i'm not against patents. i learn a lot about reading them. my only 3 grips with the patent system are 1) patents have more legalese than technical details 2) patents last damn too long 3) because of #1 they give out patents for too generic stuff. Have you ever read Against Intellectual Monopoly? It's a fascinating account against patent and copyright in general. I learned that the patent and copyright of today are totally not unique to our time. It doesn't matter if you do software or steam engine. Patent trolls exist in both era, and people who we think as heroes, aren't.
  - 15y ago
kunj2aan 15y ago
>I also think they were surprised that the inventor of #4,555,755 was funny, theatrical, and clever I respect Rob as a programmer, but that came off as a little too self congratulatory.
- SamReidHughes 15y ago
  And your post comes off as a bit too smug.
- antithesis 15y ago
  Yeah, it's certainly noteworthy, but one is allowed to do that. What I wouldn't like, though, is if he were overexaggerating, but we can't check that.
kanja 15y ago
I don't think this article could have made rms look better. He increased attendance to an educational event, while protesting a piece of immoral legislation. Everybody wins!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
gwern 15y ago
> 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!
- gpvos 15y ago
  Actually, in 1991.
  - gwern 15y ago
    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...
    - enneff 15y ago
      I don't see where he claims he is keen on patents. He claims that business are, which is truer now than it ever was.
chris_wot 15y ago
Seems to me that the protestors furthered their cause very well. By being peaceful, respectful and non-violent they showed that they were not just mindless drones - they were thoughtful folk of a technical persuasion. Software patents are bad for everyone. Even those who have patents get sued routinely by those who have other patents. They must file patents as "defensive patents", even if they have no intention of using them. The whole situation is predicated on greed and stifles research and innovation. The only folk who make any real gain out it are lawyers.
huggyface 15y ago
"of which the worst is that AT&T has never threatened to sue anyone over the patent" Earlier in the piece it describes AT&T sending off demands to prospective licensees, and then those licenses being "politely" returned. Is Mr. Pike really so naive that he doesn't understand that the demand for a license is entirely backed by the implicit threat of a lawsuit to force the same? If that weren't the case the participation level would be 0%.
- romeodelight 15y ago
  This is amusing. I was told that among MIT undergraduates a bizarre form of political correctness had developed, putting Stallman in charge of a pack of eager misguided nerds who in a healthier environment would probably be protesting the killing of rats in biology class.
- fffggg 15y ago
  This comment stood out for me as well, and strikes me as extremely disingenuous. Another that caught my eye was "Free Software is like Free Love, a hippie pipe dream in which computing is free from venality, commercial interests, even capitalism" I was upset that Pike could write such things in 2006 as this is demonstrably untrue -- contrary to being a pipe dream, Free Software has completely replaced the space previously occupied by ATT unix. But, then I realized this piece was authored in 1991, which makes this opinion merely lacking in foresight.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - kamaal 15y ago
    >>Free Software has completely replaced the space previously occupied by ATT unix. But, then I realized this piece was authored in 1991, which makes this opinion merely lacking in foresight. I think it would difficult for anybody to predict how things would pan out. Linux wasn't yet there. Perl was still just the sysadmin's tool, yet and extremely powerful one though but still looked like a little advanced awk. Not until a couple of years later, when Linux was everywhere. Perl had eaten severely in most languages share. No body could have predicted somebody could co ordinate an effort like building of a language or kernel from distributed locations, yet managing to build high quality software that would go on to rule the world. And also look at the kind of people who built it. Although I agree that Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall had strong university background. Development of things like Linux and Perl happened in the most unconventional environments, to solve the most unexpected problems. Software design was taken over by hackers from academics and researches in big labs run by corporates. For most talented people who didn't participate in those movements at that time, they basically a lost a shot at making their mark in history. Rob Pike is just one of such many smart people who missed the boat. That fact will always remain. Rob Pike might be a genius. But the future generations of software won't seem him in the same light as RMS, Linus or Larry Wall.
algolicious 15y ago
I looked twice to verify that she needed the wheelchair. I'm not quite sure why Pike wrote this. Was he afraid that the wheelchair concealed a weapon of some sort? But how can you visually verify that a person needs a wheelchair? I also wonder what Pike thinks now that his employer is being sued over the violations of patents in their open source GUI software. The swipe-to-unlock patent strikes me as about as obvious as backing store.
- icebraining 15y ago
  I'm not quite sure why Pike wrote this. Was he afraid that the wheelchair concealed a weapon of some sort? But how can you visually verify that a person needs a wheelchair? Considering the sign she had, I think Pike considered the hypothesis that she was using the wheelchair as a "theatrical prop".
- tuxychandru 15y ago
  The woman was carrying the sign "Patents Cripple Software.". Rob might have thought the wheelchair was symbolic.
pasbesoin 15y ago
These reader-oriented top-level Blogspot domains are really starting to piss me off. (The posted URL is blogspot.se, while the author is Pike, who is in the U.S. and most likely uses blogspot.com for his access.) What, again, is the rationale for this? Other than enabling some sort of lame country-specific filtering? P.S. Or is it in part specifically to provide a route around the U.S.'s arbitrary domination/control of .com domains? Symbolic as well, if practically speaking the U.S. government is unlikely to just shut down blogspot.com . So, I guess I'm going from pissed off to trying to remember past conversation/explanation around this change.
- willvarfar 15y ago
  my bad, didn't spot that when I posted it; hadn't even noticed I got redirected to a .se version before. I'm presuming its the same content.
  - pasbesoin 15y ago
    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.
    - willvarfar 15y ago
      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 .... :)
      - pasbesoin 15y ago
        Ok, so now I should be annoyed at you, for posting a dupe. ;-)
stcredzero 15y ago
In the end, it turned out to be an example of restraint and civility in the tech world.
mtigas 15y ago
Note: The AT&T patent in question is actually 775 rather than 755: http://www.google.com/patents?id=UOMZAAAAEBAJ&dq=4555775 http://www.google.com/patents?id=UOMZAAAAEBAJ&dq=4555775 This was posted a few years ago and that also resulted in a fairly interesting HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607335
vph 15y ago
>"[RMS]: You may have heard that AT&T has a patent on a simple technique called "backing store" which consists of saving the hidden parts of a window in off-screen memory." Rob Pike didn't seem to correct this as wrong or overly-simplified. If true, the patent is kinda nasty. The idea of saving hidden parts of a window seems like a basic idea to anyone who develops a windows system. I don't this particular idea is deserved to be patented.
- enneff 15y ago
  Easy for you to say now. The patent was awarded more than 30 years ago.
yeah123 15y ago
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.
downvoteme 15y ago
This seems strange. His employer uses GNU Linux, open source software and has built an entire business on it. So, in retrospect, who was right?

117 points by willvarfar 15y ago

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.

willvarfar 15y ago
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.
- gcb 15y ago
  my bet, it's an opinion that helps google monetize on software research. whatever that is.
- nknight 15y ago
  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.
  - willvarfar 15y ago
    True its strenuous, but its at least indicative in that he didn't distance himself from it in 2006 either. You could imagine that if he felt differently in 2006 he'd have mentioned it in the preamble? He posts one or two entries a year in that blog; this note was not some noise he dumped, it was a deliberate posting.
    - nknight 15y ago
      I can imagine a lot, but that doesn't mean I get to substitute my imagination for reality. You're reading into the post what you want, not what is there. If you actually had any interest in truth, you'd ask him. Instead, you've decided you know what his views and motives are based on no evidence whatsoever, and are asserting your opinion publicly.
luriel 15y ago
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.
- mkopinsky 15y ago
  What's the criticism of GCC?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
stcredzero 15y ago
As a devil's advocate, I'll ask, would software patents be as bad if: 1) The Patent Office gave proper attention to prior art 2) The Patent Office implementation of "obvious" was sane? I'll posit that, given these two stipulations, most of the bad in software patents wouldn't be with us.
- fffggg 15y ago
  "would software patents be as bad if" You've chosen difficult wording here. When you ask if things would be so bad if we lessened their badness the answer is obviously no -- things would be incrementally better if made incrementally better. But this is no more than a tautology. Software patents are bad, in any form. They can be made not-quite-so-bad, but they will always be harmful to the intellectual development of society.
- gruseom 15y ago
  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.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    I'd argue that what you propose is covered by a sane approach to "obviousness."
    - willvarfar 15y ago
      So you can defeat a patent by claiming you invented it independently later? ... how would that work?
      - stcredzero 15y ago
        You'd have to prove that you did formulate it independently yourself. There couldn't be other prior art. If your own inventor's journal revealed a large amount of work, that would show the original patent was indeed valid. If you could prove that you did invent it yourself, and that it wasn't that big a deal, the patent should fall. So to win in your case, you'd have to tread a tightrope between "not enough evidence to show independent origin" and "the thing is obviously substantive enough to warrant a patent." Most likely, the thing actually is obvious and there would be other prior art, which the Patent Office currently doesn't pay attention to.

watmough 15y ago

This is a lovely outcome, and illustrative of how people can exercise their right to assemble peaceably and make their views known. In the wider World, we should think twice about criminalizing peaceful protesters, as some recent laws seem to be doing. cite: http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/ready-occupy-what-you-need-know-about-hr-347-criminalizing-protest-law http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/ready-occupy-what-you-n...

babarock 15y ago

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 the protesters as mindless sheep blindly following rms, where indeed they were smart people genuinely against the idea of software patents. After all, this is MIT we're talking about, is anyone surprised that these guys actually showed interest in Rob's talk? I know that if I were there, I would've definitely put up a protest sign, while still being thrilled to attend the talk.

gcb 15y ago
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 and they just decide to do so carrying signs). all that said, i believe having both sides is healthy. and i'm not against patents. i learn a lot about reading them. my only 3 grips with the patent system are 1) patents have more legalese than technical details 2) patents last damn too long 3) because of #1 they give out patents for too generic stuff.
- kiba 15y ago
  all that said, i believe having both sides is healthy. and i'm not against patents. i learn a lot about reading them. my only 3 grips with the patent system are 1) patents have more legalese than technical details 2) patents last damn too long 3) because of #1 they give out patents for too generic stuff. Have you ever read Against Intellectual Monopoly? It's a fascinating account against patent and copyright in general. I learned that the patent and copyright of today are totally not unique to our time. It doesn't matter if you do software or steam engine. Patent trolls exist in both era, and people who we think as heroes, aren't.
- 15y ago

kunj2aan 15y ago

>I also think they were surprised that the inventor of #4,555,755 was funny, theatrical, and clever I respect Rob as a programmer, but that came off as a little too self congratulatory.

SamReidHughes 15y ago
And your post comes off as a bit too smug.
antithesis 15y ago
Yeah, it's certainly noteworthy, but one is allowed to do that. What I wouldn't like, though, is if he were overexaggerating, but we can't check that.

kanja 15y ago

I don't think this article could have made rms look better. He increased attendance to an educational event, while protesting a piece of immoral legislation. Everybody wins!

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

gwern 15y ago

> 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!

gpvos 15y ago
Actually, in 1991.
- gwern 15y ago
  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...
  - enneff 15y ago
    I don't see where he claims he is keen on patents. He claims that business are, which is truer now than it ever was.

chris_wot 15y ago

Seems to me that the protestors furthered their cause very well. By being peaceful, respectful and non-violent they showed that they were not just mindless drones - they were thoughtful folk of a technical persuasion. Software patents are bad for everyone. Even those who have patents get sued routinely by those who have other patents. They must file patents as "defensive patents", even if they have no intention of using them. The whole situation is predicated on greed and stifles research and innovation. The only folk who make any real gain out it are lawyers.

huggyface 15y ago

"of which the worst is that AT&T has never threatened to sue anyone over the patent" Earlier in the piece it describes AT&T sending off demands to prospective licensees, and then those licenses being "politely" returned. Is Mr. Pike really so naive that he doesn't understand that the demand for a license is entirely backed by the implicit threat of a lawsuit to force the same? If that weren't the case the participation level would be 0%.

romeodelight 15y ago
This is amusing. I was told that among MIT undergraduates a bizarre form of political correctness had developed, putting Stallman in charge of a pack of eager misguided nerds who in a healthier environment would probably be protesting the killing of rats in biology class.
fffggg 15y ago
This comment stood out for me as well, and strikes me as extremely disingenuous. Another that caught my eye was "Free Software is like Free Love, a hippie pipe dream in which computing is free from venality, commercial interests, even capitalism" I was upset that Pike could write such things in 2006 as this is demonstrably untrue -- contrary to being a pipe dream, Free Software has completely replaced the space previously occupied by ATT unix. But, then I realized this piece was authored in 1991, which makes this opinion merely lacking in foresight.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- kamaal 15y ago
  >>Free Software has completely replaced the space previously occupied by ATT unix. But, then I realized this piece was authored in 1991, which makes this opinion merely lacking in foresight. I think it would difficult for anybody to predict how things would pan out. Linux wasn't yet there. Perl was still just the sysadmin's tool, yet and extremely powerful one though but still looked like a little advanced awk. Not until a couple of years later, when Linux was everywhere. Perl had eaten severely in most languages share. No body could have predicted somebody could co ordinate an effort like building of a language or kernel from distributed locations, yet managing to build high quality software that would go on to rule the world. And also look at the kind of people who built it. Although I agree that Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall had strong university background. Development of things like Linux and Perl happened in the most unconventional environments, to solve the most unexpected problems. Software design was taken over by hackers from academics and researches in big labs run by corporates. For most talented people who didn't participate in those movements at that time, they basically a lost a shot at making their mark in history. Rob Pike is just one of such many smart people who missed the boat. That fact will always remain. Rob Pike might be a genius. But the future generations of software won't seem him in the same light as RMS, Linus or Larry Wall.

algolicious 15y ago

I looked twice to verify that she needed the wheelchair. I'm not quite sure why Pike wrote this. Was he afraid that the wheelchair concealed a weapon of some sort? But how can you visually verify that a person needs a wheelchair? I also wonder what Pike thinks now that his employer is being sued over the violations of patents in their open source GUI software. The swipe-to-unlock patent strikes me as about as obvious as backing store.

icebraining 15y ago
I'm not quite sure why Pike wrote this. Was he afraid that the wheelchair concealed a weapon of some sort? But how can you visually verify that a person needs a wheelchair? Considering the sign she had, I think Pike considered the hypothesis that she was using the wheelchair as a "theatrical prop".
tuxychandru 15y ago
The woman was carrying the sign "Patents Cripple Software.". Rob might have thought the wheelchair was symbolic.

pasbesoin 15y ago

These reader-oriented top-level Blogspot domains are really starting to piss me off. (The posted URL is blogspot.se, while the author is Pike, who is in the U.S. and most likely uses blogspot.com for his access.) What, again, is the rationale for this? Other than enabling some sort of lame country-specific filtering? P.S. Or is it in part specifically to provide a route around the U.S.'s arbitrary domination/control of .com domains? Symbolic as well, if practically speaking the U.S. government is unlikely to just shut down blogspot.com . So, I guess I'm going from pissed off to trying to remember past conversation/explanation around this change.

willvarfar 15y ago
my bad, didn't spot that when I posted it; hadn't even noticed I got redirected to a .se version before. I'm presuming its the same content.
- pasbesoin 15y ago
  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.
  - willvarfar 15y ago
    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 .... :)
    - pasbesoin 15y ago
      Ok, so now I should be annoyed at you, for posting a dupe. ;-)

stcredzero 15y ago

In the end, it turned out to be an example of restraint and civility in the tech world.

mtigas 15y ago

Note: The AT&T patent in question is actually 775 rather than 755: http://www.google.com/patents?id=UOMZAAAAEBAJ&dq=4555775 http://www.google.com/patents?id=UOMZAAAAEBAJ&dq=4555775 This was posted a few years ago and that also resulted in a fairly interesting HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607335

vph 15y ago

>"[RMS]: You may have heard that AT&T has a patent on a simple technique called "backing store" which consists of saving the hidden parts of a window in off-screen memory." Rob Pike didn't seem to correct this as wrong or overly-simplified. If true, the patent is kinda nasty. The idea of saving hidden parts of a window seems like a basic idea to anyone who develops a windows system. I don't this particular idea is deserved to be patented.

enneff 15y ago
Easy for you to say now. The patent was awarded more than 30 years ago.

yeah123 15y ago

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.

downvoteme 15y ago

This seems strange. His employer uses GNU Linux, open source software and has built an entire business on it. So, in retrospect, who was right?