
Rob Pike on Richard Stallman - vorador
http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2006/06/i-cant-find-this-on-web-so-here.html
======
madair
As much as I like Rob Pike, that's a pretty horrible patent to try to
rationalize. Pretty weak rationalizations too: They let me do the research I
want, they get to patent it; And: Heaven is boring.

I suppose there's a contingent here that doesn't mind patents on basic
techniques, but let the karma suffer, my momma taught me right from wrong.

~~~
ellyagg
Riiight. You were in such danger of being voted down when you came out against
software patents on Hacker News.

I don't like software patents or RMS; can't there be a sane middle ground?

~~~
chanux
Hackers loving patents & all those restrictions?. The world has changed hell a
lot from the days I read _real_ hackers notes on text files. I was a kid then
& loved all that.

Update: added _real_

~~~
chanux
Those days hackers replied with facts, but didn't hide others opinions.

------
ddoubleday
Of course, history has shown that Stallman was correct about the insidious
effect of software patents.

~~~
halo
Hm. I'm unsure.

I think current software patents last too long, to a point where non-obvious
inventions become obvious as a field develops, and too many obvious or
suitably vague patents are passed as well. Clearly you shouldn't be able to
patent how many clicks something takes. Whatsmore, submarine patents really
are a threat, and there should be a 'use it or lose it' enforcement clause,
similar to trademarks. But these aren't problems of software patents alone,
these also apply to patents in general, and situation really needs to change.

However, I'm not sure I can say that software patents are _inherently_ a bad
idea. I have no real objection to the creators of the MP3 format receiving
income from their innovations, for example, or other, similarly complex
software innovations. The current system being flawed doesn't mean that a
better, more reasonable, system couldn't be made.

~~~
dantheman
Patents were to cover inventions not algorithms... copyright covers the
implementation of a piece of software, a patent is not needed if you look at a
piece of software and copy it then you've violated copyright. There is not
copyright on physical inventions, hence the "need" for patent protection.

The main issue is that sure it's great to be compensated for your work but it
is not a right. Patents and copyrights are to encourage people to produce &
that is all. The software industry does not need patents to encourage people
to innovate, so by definition we don't need patents in software.

~~~
gaius
_The software industry does not need patents to encourage people to innovate_

Without intellectual property, why would anyone ever acquire a startup? Just
copy it or poach a few key developers.

Remember, everyone's gotta eat, put a roof over their head and so on. RMS has
got that covered with a million-dollar grant from the MacArthur Foundation and
another cool million from the Takeda foundation. What do _you_ got?

~~~
randallsquared
> Without intellectual property, why would anyone ever acquire a startup? Just
> copy it or poach a few key developers.

Reddit has no unique "intellectual property" of a make-or-break nature, as far
as I know. Yet they were bought. There are lots of reasons to buy startups
that have nothing to do with patents or copyright: to get the founders, to get
the name, domain, and code, to get the userbase (same as last, in some cases),
to get contracts or other associated deals, and probably lots more.

~~~
vorador
And don't forget the spirit. The spirit is more important than the product.

------
dkarl
He must not be aware of how much his bitterness towards Stallman shines
through, because he doesn't bother to either justify it or apologize for it.
The natural arc of the essay, starting with his "feeling of impending doom"
and proceeding to the innocuous reality, seemed headed toward an ending that
addressed or explained his initial negative expectations. Instead, he takes
mean-spirited and irrelevant potshots at Stallman's social skills. Bizarre.

~~~
Semiapies
That's a rather loaded read. I read it as a guy going to give a presentation
and finding out that he was going to be protested against. He was nervous
about a confrontation, but the GNU folks were polite, attentive, and didn't
disrupt his talk.

If someone wanted to portray that sequence of events in a hostile way, the
usual course would be to not admit any trepidation and mention dismissively
that some fanatics held up signs.

He might be bitter on the subject elsewhere, but casting that blog post as
such seems to be reaching.

~~~
dkarl
It's not my read that's loaded, it's Pike's language. He's relentlessly
negative about Stallman. Whether his dislike of Stallman is justified is
another question, but that's my point: he doesn't bother justifying it. His
only concrete criticism of Stallman is his claim that AT&T never threatened to
sue anyone over the patent. His writing manages to drip with disdain without
making any other concrete claim:

"hippie pipe dream"

"promiscuous computing"

"harangue"

"I always thought only boring people went to Heaven."

"characteristic inaccuracies" (here referring to the idea that AT&T ever
threatened to sue)

"bizarre form of political correctness"

"eager misguided nerds who in a healthier environment would probably be
protesting the killing of rats in biology class"

If he had come right out and said Stallman was an attention-whoring fool whose
ideas were incoherent religious baloney, we'd expect him to back it up. So why
should we accept him using indirect language to say the same thing? I realize
he was posting something he wrote fifteen years earlier, but he didn't say
anything to disown or apologize for his intemperate language.

~~~
Semiapies
The guy has an opinion. However, he indicated he expected worse from the GNU
folks and was wrong about how how they'd act.

------
10ren
_At one point they all applauded spontaneously when I described a feature of
the system._

I really like these protesters. To me, the article suggests that if you invent
something genuinely cool and useful, no-one will hate you for patenting it -
even if they want to.

------
chanux
conclusion: Even though people hate patents, they still love the technology
eclipsed by.

------
skwiddor
The Plan 9 crew had another run-in with Stallman later on, and much to our
(the Plan9 users and devs) this one worked out in the favour of FOSS

<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html>

The wave of FOSS came at just the wrong time for Plan 9. Lucent had bought the
Labs and were losing money hand over fist in the tech crunch, they were taking
out alternate light bulbs in the Labs building to save money! Lucent's lawyers
were unhappy about removing the restrictions (you could modify the kernel
source for your project but had to submit your changes upstream to Lucent -
crazy clause!).

The corp name over the door changed to Alcatel / Lucent. The team was let go -
mostly to Google (where Pike is now).

<http://www.proweb.co.uk/~matt/plan9/curse_of_glenda.html>

Still, Plan 9 From Bell Labs lives on, even with its patents copied into Linux
(private namespaces). We'll wait for Oracle to use them for MySQL and raise
the submarine!!

------
azgolfer
Today's software environments are the result of a huge amount of creativity.
Certainly there are many, many things in them that are valid patentable ideas.

------
DannoHung
Richard Stallman, in an alternate universe, trades places with Turd Blossom.

