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Would you mind posting (potentially redacted) copies of those emails, just so that we can get an idea of what was involved in GoogleOS? It would be nice if some

Would you mind posting (potentially redacted) copies of those emails, just so that we can get an idea of what was involved in GoogleOS? It would be nice if some of the people you worked with piped up to tell us more about this too. I suppose that they will see what is happening and do so some time soon anyway as this is getting quite a bit of exposure. For everyone else, here's confirmation of the patent - Jeff's name is indeed on it: http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,239,662.PN.&OS=PN/8,239,662&RS=PN/8,239,662 http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Se... > Inventors: Nelson; Jeffrey (Mountain View, CA) This seems legitimate to me and, frankly, the responses from Peter Kasting and other Google employees look to be immature and childish. Perhaps most Google employees are not as professional and high caliber as they appear on the surface.

magicalist 14y ago
There were jokes made in that thread, but can you point to any of Peter Kasting's actual comments that would qualify as immature and childish? I only know Peter's work on chrome/webkit bug reports and occasional sites where "pkasting" shows up (he has a single comment as an hn user), but I've only known him to be communicative and supportive, and this is more than a small overreaction to paint him like this when all his post amounts to is "this doesn't sound right. anyone know more?" and his additional comments are specific and not emotionally charged. Hopefully the irony in your post isn't lost on you. As for the patent, it doesn't seem all that chromeos specific, actually. For instance, the claims are very focused on an OS that is or can be stored server-side, with the client fetching an image from the server (that includes the user's preferences?) on startup and dumping it again at shutdown. The patent process tends to make ideas more generic as they are recorded, but even a generous interpretation of this doesn't really cover chromeos or the OS he described in the blog post (at least the part he most emphasized, the idea of keeping everything in RAM). ChromeOS doesn't get OS updates that differently than other operating systems (and certainly not as new images every time it connects to the update server), and the preferences sync system stands totally separate from the rest. This doesn't invalidate the blog post, but I don't really think the patent backs up the specific claim of "inventing chromebook".
- jrogers65 14y ago
  Yes, you're quite right about Kasting - it was late at night and my focus was lacking. Unfortunately, I cannot correct my comment above.

magicalist 14y ago

There were jokes made in that thread, but can you point to any of Peter Kasting's actual comments that would qualify as immature and childish? I only know Peter's work on chrome/webkit bug reports and occasional sites where "pkasting" shows up (he has a single comment as an hn user), but I've only known him to be communicative and supportive, and this is more than a small overreaction to paint him like this when all his post amounts to is "this doesn't sound right. anyone know more?" and his additional comments are specific and not emotionally charged. Hopefully the irony in your post isn't lost on you. As for the patent, it doesn't seem all that chromeos specific, actually. For instance, the claims are very focused on an OS that is or can be stored server-side, with the client fetching an image from the server (that includes the user's preferences?) on startup and dumping it again at shutdown. The patent process tends to make ideas more generic as they are recorded, but even a generous interpretation of this doesn't really cover chromeos or the OS he described in the blog post (at least the part he most emphasized, the idea of keeping everything in RAM). ChromeOS doesn't get OS updates that differently than other operating systems (and certainly not as new images every time it connects to the update server), and the preferences sync system stands totally separate from the rest. This doesn't invalidate the blog post, but I don't really think the patent backs up the specific claim of "inventing chromebook".

jrogers65 14y ago
Yes, you're quite right about Kasting - it was late at night and my focus was lacking. Unfortunately, I cannot correct my comment above.