From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <1e5b724826497f6b518b1d5f6aa935ec@sphericalharmony.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:41:39 +0000
From: mycroftiv@sphericalharmony.com
To: 9fans@9fans.net
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Subject: [9fans] The PATENTED IBM MULTI-PIPE : the evolution of unix pipes
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John Floren wrote:
> Looking through my mail archives, I found a link from Eric that led me
> to http://graverobbers.blogspot.com/search/label/brasil which I think
> contains the seeds of multi-pipes. Note that these were all posted
> prior to your time-traveling expedition.

I apologize for not making myself clear. I believe that the basic ideas
of multipipes/hubfs and probably MANY OTHER pieces of software from
1970-now were all established as prior art far in the past - literally
decades before multipipes or hubfs. Hubfs was simply an attempt to
implement already existing ideas stated by Doug McIlroy and others. I
make ZERO claim of invention or originality in Hubfs or Iosrv.

However, software patents are a Very Bad Thing no matter what, and a
software patent on the idea of multiplexing unix pipes is a truly
terrible one, making a simple and generic concept that should be
widespread in computing into the monopoly property of a single company
which I do not believe can actually take credit for the core idea.

So, the tl; dr is - this is an area of interest to me which my own work
makes me care very much about. I do not believe it is my own work in
particular which has any significance, but my own work gives me emotional
motivation to object strongly to this absurd software patent.

Ben Kidwell
"mycroftiv"