
When Rob Pike first met rms - willvarfar
http://commandcenter.blogspot.se/2006/06/i-cant-find-this-on-web-so-here.html
======
babarock
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
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.

~~~
georgemcbay
"it makes stallman looks pathetic (no eye contact)"

I used to hang around the FSF/Media Labs frequently as a teenager in the early
to mid 1990s (the era this story is from) and met rms several times and this
description didn't seem out of place to me at all.

rms is many things, some of them quite admirable, but he is also one of the
most socially awkward penguins you could ever meet.

~~~
gcb
Don't doubt at all. Just tried to pick up one example from the text on each
comment i made... That one wasn't the most fortunate i agree. But the comments
aim to encompass the text as a whole

------
guard-of-terra
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.

~~~
stcredzero
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.

~~~
gruseom
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
I'd argue that what you propose is covered by a sane approach to
"obviousness."

~~~
Locke1689
It's not. Consider the calculus: invented almost simultaneously by two
brilliant mathematicians (Leibniz and Netwon).

For a more recent example, consider NP completeness, proved completely
independently by Stephen Cook and Leonid Levin.

Or even reinventions made disparate by time: the Cooley-Tukey FFT was first
formulated by Gauss in 1805.

If these inventions are "obvious," then all inventions are obvious. The truth,
not widely acknowledged, is that most inventions are as much a product of the
environment of the inventor as the inventor themselves. They're not smarter
and they're not unique. Patents should not prohibit coincidental parallel
invention, only reverse engineering.

~~~
gruseom
_Patents should not prohibit coincidental parallel invention, only reverse
engineering._

Well put. That's exactly the intuition I was trying to express.

------
chris_wot
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.

------
kunj2aan
> _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.

~~~
antithesis
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.

------
watmough
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-n...](http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/ready-occupy-what-you-need-
know-about-hr-347-criminalizing-protest-law)

------
kanja
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!

------
algolicious
_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
_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".

------
pasbesoin
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
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
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
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
Ok, so now I _should_ be annoyed at you, for posting a dupe. ;-)

------
gwern
> 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
Actually, in 1991.

~~~
gwern
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
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.

------
vph
>"[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
Easy for you to say now. The patent was awarded more than 30 years ago.

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

------
mtigas
__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>

------
downvoteme
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?

------
huggyface
"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%.

~~~
fffggg
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.

~~~
kamaal
>> _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.

~~~
jan_g
Well, I don't agree with your assessment of Rob Pike. As far as I know he
worked with Thompson and Ritchie (who unfortunately passed away last year) and
I regard all three of them as one of the most important figures with regards
to Unix and systems programming. And they marked the history quite
significantly, in my opinion. At least as important as RMS or Linus.

~~~
georgemcbay
I agree with you but would also like to add that Rob Pike isn't just a
historical figure at this point, he's very much still in the game.

Go is turning into a fantastic language and is likely to have a far bigger
real-world footprint than the work on Plan 9 had.

