4 ms·

Just to clear some things up. The idea was invented by Doug McIlroy who said that we should screw computers together like garden hoses. This was in the 60s. The

Just to clear some things up. The idea was invented by Doug McIlroy who said that we should screw computers together like garden hoses. This was in the 60s. They made unix pipes as a simple compromise. I wanted to make "screen" for plan 9 and because plan 9 has no TTY, you can do it just with buffered muxed pipes. It was a lucky insight into something cool. I invented nothing, I just tried to keep working in the great tradition of unix and share the implementation of ideas. By the way, ants.9gridchan.org is actually more interesting than all this patent bullshit. I'd rather have people take an interest in my current work than make a huge soap opera out of this. Advanced Namespace Tools for Plan 9 are pretty cool I think.

jff 14y ago
Mycroft, don't be too hasty. I remembered Eric and others working on this for a long time, and indeed with a little bit of searching I found an email Eric sent back in May 2009 linking to a page which led me to http://graverobbers.blogspot.com/search/label/brasil http://graverobbers.blogspot.com/search/label/brasil In those articles, and in the email thread, he discusses running commands across multiple machines using methods which I believe are recognizable as multi-pipe like. This article predates your "time traveling". Let it go. IBM employees are strongly encouraged to submit things for patents. You do something interesting, you write it up quickly and send it to the patent lawyers, they do the rest. Maybe eventually you find out it has been approved. I'm not saying it's good, but it's the IBM corporate culture and this is not an especially unusual situation.
- mycroftiv 14y ago
  I think I have stated clearly that I personally do not take credit for these ideas. I believe that Doug McIlroy expressed everything important related to pipes, hubs, and everything else. I believe that IBM's patent in this case is indefensible completely regardless of any work that I have personally done - but that my personal interests in this area called my attention to this patent. As I hope I made clear, I think the idea of "we can mux the readers and the writers" is not anything that should be patented, and neither is the details of implementing this idea.
- moron4hire 14y ago
  It's this sort of attitude, "well, it's the lawyers' fault, you can't blame the engineers" that helps enable this sort of garbage. Yes, you absolutely can blame the engineers. They choose to work at IBM and choose to stay there even after they learned about the patent happy nature of the company. Same goes for every other patent happy company. You can't continue to patent everything under the sun if you don't have engineers finding it for you. "Just following orders" hasn't been a good excuse longer than software has been a significant field.
  - mkingston 14y ago
    > You can't continue to patent everything under the sun I see what you did there
derleth 14y ago
> By the way, ants.9gridchan.org is actually more interesting than all this patent bullshit. But the patent bullshit is why your software is worthless. It can't be used because someone claims ownership of the very concept it's built on.

jff 14y ago

Mycroft, don't be too hasty. I remembered Eric and others working on this for a long time, and indeed with a little bit of searching I found an email Eric sent back in May 2009 linking to a page which led me to http://graverobbers.blogspot.com/search/label/brasil http://graverobbers.blogspot.com/search/label/brasil In those articles, and in the email thread, he discusses running commands across multiple machines using methods which I believe are recognizable as multi-pipe like. This article predates your "time traveling". Let it go. IBM employees are strongly encouraged to submit things for patents. You do something interesting, you write it up quickly and send it to the patent lawyers, they do the rest. Maybe eventually you find out it has been approved. I'm not saying it's good, but it's the IBM corporate culture and this is not an especially unusual situation.

mycroftiv 14y ago
I think I have stated clearly that I personally do not take credit for these ideas. I believe that Doug McIlroy expressed everything important related to pipes, hubs, and everything else. I believe that IBM's patent in this case is indefensible completely regardless of any work that I have personally done - but that my personal interests in this area called my attention to this patent. As I hope I made clear, I think the idea of "we can mux the readers and the writers" is not anything that should be patented, and neither is the details of implementing this idea.
moron4hire 14y ago
It's this sort of attitude, "well, it's the lawyers' fault, you can't blame the engineers" that helps enable this sort of garbage. Yes, you absolutely can blame the engineers. They choose to work at IBM and choose to stay there even after they learned about the patent happy nature of the company. Same goes for every other patent happy company. You can't continue to patent everything under the sun if you don't have engineers finding it for you. "Just following orders" hasn't been a good excuse longer than software has been a significant field.
- mkingston 14y ago
  > You can't continue to patent everything under the sun I see what you did there

derleth 14y ago

> By the way, ants.9gridchan.org is actually more interesting than all this patent bullshit. But the patent bullshit is why your software is worthless. It can't be used because someone claims ownership of the very concept it's built on.