5 ms·
Having worked at IBM, I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obviou
by ChuckMcM 5mo ago
Having worked at IBM, I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. But that is just a guess.
In the 80's IBM had a whole class of high level technical people called "Systems Engineers" whose entire job description was to opine on the merits of any given system. Not write systems, not debug them, and certainly not to explain them, it was simply to opine "you're doing it wrong."
- MoonWalk 5mo agoMicrosoft is suffering from the lack of such a group today; they're definitely doing it wrong, where "it" is pretty much everything... except pissing off users.
- coredog64 5mo agoMicrosoft could implement the "Am I doing it wrong?" check via the shell script `/bin/true`
- Henchman21 5mo agoThey’d need to install WSL2 first though!
- rbanffy 5mo agoA TRUE: device?
- Henchman21 5mo agoAs long as I can plug in a serial console and it endlessly spits out 1s!
- Nition 5mo agoIt's a Linux subsystem for Windows so we'll call it Windows Subsystem For Linux.
- colejohnson66 5mo agoWasn't that due to trademarks?
- wvenable 5mo agoFor trademark safety, this is the correct approach. You can say "Blah for XXX" and that's fine but if you say "XXX blah" then you can get into trouble.
- Nition 5mo agoIs this really true, or is it just something people have repeated enough times like 'nuclear Ghandi'? I mainly ask because Microsoft has another product called Linux Integration Services: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=55106 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=551...
- wvenable 5mo agoIt's not a rule, it's just convention. Trademark law is about whether there is confusion about who made the product but not specific wording. Using "Blah For XXX" wording just makes it clearer. "Tool for Windows" vs "Windows Tool" The latter sounds much more like it could come from Microsoft. People repeat this because it avoids this confusion but it is not mandatory. A few projects on Github have had to be renamed because they've been challenged and the accepted solution from the trademark holder has has been to switch it around and become "for XXX".
- Nition 5mo agoThat makes sense, although in that case personally I would have named it Windows Linux Subsystem.
- 5mo ago
- thaumasiotes 5mo ago> I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. Something that's bothered me about user-facing patents: Let's assume that the idea of using a keyboard key to move between input fields in a software form is not obvious, and in fact is a brilliant stroke of genius the likes of which the world is not likely to see again. If that one guy hadn't been born, we would have gone thousands of years with no method, keyboard-based, mouse-based, or otherwise, of moving from one input field to another input field. Every piece of software would use nonconfigurable timers, and you'd just have to hope you could type fast enough. I don't see what the hypothetical benefit of extending patent protection to this brilliant idea is supposed to be. Say you're the company who comes up with the idea. You can benefit by including it in your product, where all your users can see it. In other words, the benefit you get from coming up with this idea is that you can publish it for the world to see, and that's the only way you can benefit from it. A usability feature that your users cannot use or know about doesn't increase usability. Even though the idea isn't obvious, the implementation is. If you disclose your brilliant idea, everyone will copy it and your advantage in the marketplace will be transitory. So... what is the purpose of giving you a patent? That cripples the marketplace, but it fails to realize the benefit of patents, publication. Publication necessarily had to happen anyway.
- Onavo 5mo agoYou can say the same about swipe to unlock and that had been litigated to death.
- thaumasiotes 5mo agoI did say the same about swipe-to-unlock: >> Something that's bothered me about user-facing patents
- philipallstar 5mo agoPresumably it's to give you an advantage for putting in the work to develop it for a period of time.
- 5mo ago
- FartinMowler 5mo agoWhat?!?! I was an IBM Systems Engineer in the late 1980s / early 1990s and that was nothing like my job description.
- ChuckMcM 5mo agoDo you remember what the official definition was? I admit I was working at an internship in FEIS (Field Engineering Information Services) in Colorado and people with that title would occasionally yo-yo in to a meeting make some comment that didn't apply and then yo-yo out again. None of the engineers in the organization had anything but disdain for them. If you were late 80's, I was interning in the late 70's so its entirely possible that they restructured the job responsibilities somewhat. But again I'd really love to see what was the official job description from the time.
- rbanffy 5mo ago> I would guess that using the tab key in this way was part of a patent they were pursuing and Microsoft's use would show this to be 'obvious' and thus not patentable. IBM insisting it not to be tab wouldn’t make sense. Microsoft was working for them and the programs should adhere to the CUA (Common User Access) standard.
- andrewf 5mo agoOS/2 1.0 and the first edition of the CUA were both released in December 1987 according to Wikipedia; Raymond's story isn't dated but could've happened before this. (If I had to make a wild guess, I could imagine this request was a side effect of some internal IBM battle about what the CUA should dictate).
- rbanffy 5mo agoI imagine this is mostly about form-based applications, GUI or not, before the Microsoft pulled the rug from under IBM.