From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/4892 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Michael Barr Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: patenting colimits? Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 19:53:45 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: Michael Barr NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1243389345 23195 80.91.229.12 (27 May 2009 01:55:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 01:55:45 +0000 (UTC) To: Vaughan Pratt , categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Wed May 27 03:55:43 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1M98Mo-00042p-3G for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Wed, 27 May 2009 03:55:42 +0200 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1M97j0-0003oW-EJ for categories-list@mta.ca; Tue, 26 May 2009 22:14:34 -0300 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:4892 Archived-At: Interesting comments by Vaughan. I have not looked at this patent and have no intention of doing so. But Charles and I, both in CTCS and in a paper published in some CS conference proceedings exhibited things like a sketch for trees of integers as a pushout or amalgamated sum of a sketch for trees and that for integers by identifying the sort for integers in the latter with the sort for leaves in the fomer. I think we have a triple amalgamation too, something like trees of lists of integers. So evidence of prior art certainly exists, if anyone cares. On the other hand, I for one would welcome serious applications of category theory in industry. My former department is hiring in only three areas: number theory (in which they are truly strong), applied math, and statistics (in each of which I rather suspect they are truly weak since they are competing with every g-d university in North America). I would just love to shove it in their collective faces that by allowing the category theory group to wither, they have allowed an important applied area to disappear. But no, they would rather be in the rearguard than the advanced guard. Wouldn't it be nice to make the same point to NSF which announced officially in 1993 that there would never again be any funding in category theory? Michael [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]