[9fans] A personal apology to EricVh

[9fans] A personal apology to EricVh

[mycroftiv]

Hi Eric, I'm Ben.  I'm sorry I triggered this controversy, it wasn't
my intention to do anything other than ridicule what I thought was a
bad software patent.

I think you personally are probably a great person and someone I'd
like to meet and be friends with.  I love Plan 9 and I have a hard
time connecting to other people and the community about my ideas I
feel.

I don't think in any way that you took the idea of multipipes from my
work.  I think the idea of pipemuxing is very simple and obvious and
comes directly from the comments of McIlroy and Thompson in numerous
interviews about UNIX pipes origins.

I think the ideas in the multipipe patent are great and important
ideas, and I am sure the multipipe implementation is beautiful and you
and your team invested a huge amount of truly original work and
development in creating the implementation.

I also believe that - as a MORAL matter, not a LEGAL one, because the
law is completely screwed on this topic - that pipe muxing,
multipipes, hubfs, whatever - NONE of that should be patented.  Anyone
who wants to mux some pipes however they want shouldn't have to answer
to me - or pay IBM - at all.

I repeat again, I would like to apologize on the personal level to
Eric and any other members of the IBM Blue Gene team who feel that my
comments are in some way unfair to their work and originality.  I
repeat again, I do not personally claim any credit for the idea of
muxing pipes, I just put out a simple implementation a few years ago,
so seeing a patent for an idea that was age-old in computing rubbed me
the wrong way and triggered a lot of sarcasm.

I do not believe any software patents should ever be granted or upheld
for any software technologies, as a general matter.  This particular
patent due to the subject matter is even more objectionable to me than
most, hence my emotional reaction.

I do hope than when and if we get the chance to meet, we can discuss
Plan 9 as friends with a common interest.

Ben Kidwell "mycroftiv"