3 ms·

What rationale do you have for giving google a free pass on this? There is absolutely no chance that Go! will ever amount to anything aside from a bit of resea

by andreyf 17y ago

What rationale do you have for giving google a free pass on this? There is absolutely no chance that Go! will ever amount to anything aside from a bit of research. It's hosted on a homepage.mac.com account [1], and hasn't been updated in over two years. Google's Go, on the other hand, is designed by ken [2], at what's arguably the top industrial research lab in the country. It's designed to replace C++. 1. http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/default?user=frankmccabe&templatefn=FileSharing1.html&xmlfn=TKDocument.1.xml&sitefn=RootSite.xml&aff=consumer&cty=US&lang=en http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/defaul... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson

jacquesm 17y ago
So, because google is big they get to do as they please ? The 'bit of research' is roughly 30 man years. There is a book in print about it. Until yesterday you could actually find something about it on the internet. Whether or not it amounts to something in your eyes does not give google the right to just stomp all over it and appropriate that name. Might does not make right. How big something is depends on your position and perspective. If 'being updated in the last two years' is a criterion why didn't they re-use algol ? There is this thing called corporate responsibility and google is displaying very little of it in this particular case. It's interesting how 'who designed it' and 'where it was designed' seems to be enough to give them a free pass to do this in your eyes. What do you expect me to do with the link to Ken Thompson ? Are you introducing me to him ? Do you think it matters that he's involved in this with respect to the name of the project, not the quality of the language or the concepts in it ?
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  "So, because google is big they get to do as they please ?" Consider a different phrasing: if I start a project with a particular name, work on it for a bit and then abandon it for a few years, do I have a right to demand -- forever -- that no-one else use the same or a similar name? It's instructive to note that in many countries, trademark laws include the concept of "abandonment", whereby a name or mark can lapse through disuse.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    So, you are effectively arguing that since the namespace is finite that google had no option but to pick a name that was already in recent use ? How would you feel if they took the name 'arc' for this project ? After all, arc is a one guy 'hobby project', and it's state of maintenance seems to be such that it will not be ever in wide distribution, that makes it fair game right ? As far as I'm concerned, any language that has an entry in 99 bottles is in existance, whether maintained or not doesn't enter in to it, it takes 30 seconds to verify if a name is 'taken'. http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-go!-289.html http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-go!-289.html
    - ubernostrum 17y ago
      "So, you are effectively arguing that since the namespace is finite that google had no option but to pick a name that was already in recent use ?" No, that's you making things up and trying to pretend that I said them. And, again, the fact that "Go!" looks rather strongly like abandonware makes me wary of granting its author the right to demand no-one use the same or a similar name.
- andreyf 17y ago
  This is silly, and off-topic, and you're right that the concepts in a language are what matter. Incidentally, that's also what this article is about, so let's focus on that.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    this comment now makes no sense because the parent got edited. Both are programming languages, 5 minutes of work on googles part would have resolved the clash. Either they've been careless (doing your homework before you stake a claim on a name is important, see the 'gmail' fail in Germany, which they rightly lost, and yes, that was a trademark dispute, and in spite of being clearly wrong from the get-go google decided to push on and on in a clear attempt to crush the other party with litigation when everybody could see they were just plain wrong). Or they've been doing this wilfully, in which case they deserve no respect at all.

by andreyf 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

So, because google is big they get to do as they please ? The 'bit of research' is roughly 30 man years. There is a book in print about it. Until yesterday you could actually find something about it on the internet. Whether or not it amounts to something in your eyes does not give google the right to just stomp all over it and appropriate that name. Might does not make right. How big something is depends on your position and perspective. If 'being updated in the last two years' is a criterion why didn't they re-use algol ? There is this thing called corporate responsibility and google is displaying very little of it in this particular case. It's interesting how 'who designed it' and 'where it was designed' seems to be enough to give them a free pass to do this in your eyes. What do you expect me to do with the link to Ken Thompson ? Are you introducing me to him ? Do you think it matters that he's involved in this with respect to the name of the project, not the quality of the language or the concepts in it ?

ubernostrum 17y ago
"So, because google is big they get to do as they please ?" Consider a different phrasing: if I start a project with a particular name, work on it for a bit and then abandon it for a few years, do I have a right to demand -- forever -- that no-one else use the same or a similar name? It's instructive to note that in many countries, trademark laws include the concept of "abandonment", whereby a name or mark can lapse through disuse.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  So, you are effectively arguing that since the namespace is finite that google had no option but to pick a name that was already in recent use ? How would you feel if they took the name 'arc' for this project ? After all, arc is a one guy 'hobby project', and it's state of maintenance seems to be such that it will not be ever in wide distribution, that makes it fair game right ? As far as I'm concerned, any language that has an entry in 99 bottles is in existance, whether maintained or not doesn't enter in to it, it takes 30 seconds to verify if a name is 'taken'. http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-go!-289.html http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-go!-289.html
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    "So, you are effectively arguing that since the namespace is finite that google had no option but to pick a name that was already in recent use ?" No, that's you making things up and trying to pretend that I said them. And, again, the fact that "Go!" looks rather strongly like abandonware makes me wary of granting its author the right to demand no-one use the same or a similar name.
andreyf 17y ago
This is silly, and off-topic, and you're right that the concepts in a language are what matter. Incidentally, that's also what this article is about, so let's focus on that.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  this comment now makes no sense because the parent got edited. Both are programming languages, 5 minutes of work on googles part would have resolved the clash. Either they've been careless (doing your homework before you stake a claim on a name is important, see the 'gmail' fail in Germany, which they rightly lost, and yes, that was a trademark dispute, and in spite of being clearly wrong from the get-go google decided to push on and on in a clear attempt to crush the other party with litigation when everybody could see they were just plain wrong). Or they've been doing this wilfully, in which case they deserve no respect at all.