Google closes Issue 9
code.google.com
code.google.com
Oh, right...
[1] http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/lets-go/705004
[2] http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/web_services/sh...
Not to mention that a lot of people would have never heard of his language if Google didn't come out with their own Go.
And you don't need to hear about it, that's what search engines are for.
He created a programming language called Go, worked on it for 10 years, published papers and books on the subject, a team from Google creates a programming language, calls it Go, and essentially tells him to go fuck himself when he points it out.
I do think it qualifies.
> Not to mention that a lot of people would have never heard of his language if Google didn't come out with their own Go.
Oh then I guess that makes it ok. Thanks everybody, ethics are irrelevant, please move along the show is over.
In any case, it's now pretty certain nobody will ever hear of his language ever again.
Yes, he worked hard. That is unfortunately completely irrelevant. His language is not widely used and was largely a one-man operation. So it didn't get much notice.
a team from Google creates a programming language, calls it Go, and essentially tells him to go fuck himself when he points it out.
Changing the name costs time/money and Google was already using Go in a bunch of places internally when they released it. They decided it wasn't worth it. And 'go' is one of the most common words in the English language. The guy didn't trademark it. Tough luck.
Oh then I guess that makes it ok.
Well that's not what I meant but it was probably a dick move for me to imply he had other motives when complaining about Go. Go! didn't even have a Wikipedia page until after Google released Go.
This was not related to my original criticism of they OPs hyperbole, just an added point. Google's naming collision is the best thing that could have happened to Go!
Up until the point he submits another paper to a conference / journal. It might not be a real smooth vetting process.
Personally "Go!" and "Google Go" are different enough to me that I wouldn't have trouble differentiating. I don't have trouble differentiating Digital Mars D and Dtrace D, either.
I believe Firefox went through two name-changes after the project's initial kick-off, but the Mozilla Foundation is hardly a 900-pound gorilla. This kind of sucks for Go!'s creator (and was a bit sloppy for Google Go's creators), but it's hard to tell Google where to sit.
- Go! didn't have a wikipedia page until it was hastily created after Go was launched.
Tarsnap doesn't have a wikipedia page either, but I'd be rather irritated if someone else created an online backup service and called it "tarsnap".
The existence of a wikipedia page is a very poor way of adjudicating notability.
Especially since being notable is one of the requirements for inclusion.
At best, wikipedia editors may collect evidence for notability, but neither presence nor absence of a wikipedia page alone makes a strong case.
I agree, but as one of the only pages on the net that talk about Go! today (outside of this naming dispute) its creation date is of relevance here.
If someone takes out a patent and has a tiny, fringe or effectively nonexistent business around actually performing the patent, but sues anyone who independently comes up with the same idea, we call that person a "troll".
If someone chooses a name for a project and builds a tiny, fringe or effectively nonexistent community around it, but complains about anyone who independently tries to use the same name, we curse his vile oppressors.
(Is there just a bit of a difference between this situation and a patent troll? Yes. Is the difference small enough that you can see there from here? Yes. Should people be thinking pretty hard about what precedents they want in this type of situation? You bet your ass they should.)
I think likening this person's work to a "patent troll" situation is kind of disrespectful. I get the feeling that he just wished Google had done a search and left him alone.
The thing with project names is that they're used by definition. To draw a better analogy from trademark law, the standard is not "is the name in use", but whether use of the name for something new would cause confusion. In this case, the overwhelming majority of material on the original "Go" consists of articles complaining about the name conflict. The actual community around it seems to consist of the guy who came up with it, and so few other people as to be effectively nonexistent. Thus, what is the likelihood of actual confusion occurring?
Which gets me back to the question I wanted people to think about: what level of use of a project name should qualify for "nobody else gets to use this"? If anything anyone's ever used -- regardless of how much notoriety or traction they gained in doing so -- is off-limits, we're going to have to resort to random strings of characters pretty soon, and start moving our way up through the Unicode planes as we do so :)
No.. but it's coming up fast:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....
If I had a really obscure project that I was proud of, and Google came along and made a project with a similar name, and the result was that many thousands of people became aware of my project, I would indeed be tickled.
I think Google missed an opportunity to gain a little developer goodwill here, but I don't think it will hurt them in the long run. (Assuming Go ever becomes a popular language)
It would have been nice if Google had avoided the name conflict, but unfortunately there's no central programming language registry and he had done nothing to make his language easily discovered (to the point where it didn't even have a website), so it seems likely that Google chose the same name in complete innocence — at the worst, it seems like they might have thought it was a toy name for a toy language used simply for explanatory purposes, not something anyone cared about.
Essentially, once the name was already associated in people's minds with Google, the horses were out of the barn. He chose to get concerned about Go!'s presence in the public consciousness far too late.
You're right there's no central repository of programming language names... But there is such thing as a search engine...
Or right after they did, considering the state of the language at the time I doubt it was used that much internally, so it's not like it would have cost them billions of man-hours in lost productivity.
Nobody's missing it, it simply isn't relevant to the discussion/
That's cold, Google.
Tracking the history on this is a bit slippery because "go" is such a genric term. To qualify this it is a case of finding out what peer review or engagement was undertaken and how far the idea of Go! (as in the non-google one) made it, or if further languages or research were progressed on the back of it.
As someone who dabbed into multi-agent programming back in early 2000s, I can assure you there are lots of obscure languages and projects in the area. Just like in any other CS field.
Adoption is irrelevant, it is still nice to refer to someone's work by name as a part of scientific discourse.
I don't think I'm arguing much pro or con wise on the topic itself, just siding off into the topic of publication vs wider adoption in the target community. My case was the same, I'm sure my work was interesting and important, but it didn't exactly set the journals on fire. =)
Wait until someone tells you about the holocaust...
Hello lawsuit from Apple
Larry Wall used grep over a Usenet feed to be sure that he would catch all references to Perl. (He did this before Kibo popularized the technique.) He therefore wanted a name that (among other things) would have very few false positives.
Also, some forums don't allow you to search for single-letter names.
On the other hand google was unlucky. They lost on public relations on this issue.
A trademark (again, legal or de facto) violation would have occured here if google knowingly took the name Go to gain an advantage from the (non-existing) good reputation this guy built around his Go. But they didnt, since their Go, by the virtue of Googles impact alone, probably got more brand awareness in the first hour of the first presentation, than this guy's Go in 10 years.
Does this mean that the "big guys" can simply take over names from the small guys? Yes and no. Yes, because if you want to protect a name, protect it legally, as everybody else does. Theres a legal mechanism for that. And No, because the guy still can keep his name, Google didnt trademark it and then sued him. The world is large enough for 2 (and more) Go's. Just being the first to take a name for some obscure personal mini-project nobody else cares about _should_ not mean that now nobody can use the same name, worldwide, ever again.
So on the one hand, I feel that one can't possibly satisfy everyone, and if you're going to snag a desirable name like 'Go' for your product, it's up to you to think ahead about how to preserve your rights of ownership. For example 'Go' could be a great name for a brand of shoes or a bicycle, but if you don't launch an actual product people can buy and associate the name with it, then you can't complain too much when Nike or someone tries the same thing later. Go author Frank McCabe's own homepage [1] doesn't exactly ddraw attention to the project. On the other hand, Google has IMHO been a bit heavy-handed in defending their own mark, as when they picked a fight with 'Groggle' an Australian startup which aimed to help users find retailers of particular alcoholic drinks (grog being a synonym for booze down under), though both the site and dispute seem to be on the back burner right now.
1. http://homepage.mac.com/frankmccabe/Menu2.html
A nicer and inexpensive solution (in case anyone@google is reading) would be a link on the Go! homepage saying 'If you're looking for the Go logic programming language by McCabe and Clark, click here.' To be honest, I think the unfortunate naming overlap has generated more attention for the Go language than it would ever have acquired on its own.
"Gone" can also be an alternative :))
Also it's not even the same name: 'Go' vs 'Go!'
It is "unfortunate", carry on.
[1]http://books.google.com/books?id=jyIrfDokmKgC&lpg=PR11&#...
"Go [rising intonation]"?
That would be "Go?"
I think you want: "Go [FALLING intonation]".
Go Click... kind of catchy.