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.. _phk_patent: | ||
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A patently good idea | ||
==================== | ||
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When I was in USA, diplomas on the wall was very much a thing. | ||
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I don't think I fully reverse-engineered the protocol for which | ||
diplomas would get hung and which would be filed away, apart from | ||
the unbreakable rule that, like it or not, anything your company | ||
handed out was mandatory on the office-wall, no matter how embarrasing. | ||
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Our paediatrician had diplomas for five or six steps of her education. | ||
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My favourite pizzeria had a diploma for "Authentic Italian Food" | ||
from a US organization suffering from fuzzy territorial perception. | ||
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Co-workers had diplomas from their universities, OSHA, USAF, DoE, | ||
CalTrans and who knows what. | ||
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But the gold-standard of diplomas, at least amongst the engineers, | ||
was having a US Patent on the wall, even if it only ever made them | ||
a single dollar in assignment fee. | ||
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I asked one of them about his patent and he answered wryly: *"It | ||
proves to my boss and my mom that I had at least one unique idea | ||
in my career."* | ||
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Personally I do not think the patent system does what people think | ||
it does, ie: protect the small inventor from big companies, so I | ||
have no patents to my name, and in fact no diplomas on my wall at | ||
all. | ||
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But I still mentally carve a notch when I see one of my ideas | ||
being validated in some form. | ||
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Containers and Zones are not jails, but they know, and I know, where | ||
they got the basic idea from, and that is plenty of validation | ||
for my ego. | ||
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Today is Store Bededag in Denmark, loosely translated "All Prayers | ||
Day", by definition a friday and we, like many other danes, have | ||
eloped to the beach-house for a long weekend. | ||
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But being self-employed I puttered around with VCC, the VCL compiler, | ||
this morning, and as a result, you will soon be able to say:: | ||
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import vmod_with_impractically_long_name as v; | ||
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My idea that Varnish would be configured in a Domain Specific | ||
Language compiled to native code is obviously one of my better, | ||
and about 10 years ago, that was becoming very obvious. | ||
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In Norway `Varnish Software <https://varnish-software.com>`_ were | ||
being spun out of the Redpill-Linpro company. | ||
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Artur Bergman, one of the first Varnish Cache power users, who ran | ||
Wikias content delivery and hit our project like a blast-oven with | ||
ideas, patches, measurements, general good cheer and incredibly low | ||
tolerance for bull-shit, started the `Fastly CDN <https://fastly.com>`_. | ||
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Prior to that, I had done a bit of soul-searching myself, wondering | ||
if I should try to take Varnish and run with it? | ||
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In conventional economic theory, I would have patented the | ||
VCL idea, and become as rich as the idea was good. | ||
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But in all probable worlds, that would only have meant that the | ||
idea would be dead as a doornail, I would not have made any money | ||
from it, it would never have helped improve the web, and I would | ||
have wasted much more of my life in meetings than would be good for | ||
anybodys health. | ||
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As if that wasn't enough, the very thought of having to hire somebody | ||
scared me, but not nearly as much as the realization that if I built | ||
a company with any number of employees, sooner or later I would | ||
have to fire someone again. | ||
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Writing code? Yes. | ||
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Running a growing company? No. | ||
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The result of my soul-searching was this email to announce@ where | ||
I took myself out of the game: | ||
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.. code-block:: text | ||
Subject: For the record: Varnish and Money | ||
From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> | ||
To: varnish-announce@varnish-cache.org | ||
Date: Fri Nov 19 14:03:22 CET 2010 | ||
Just so everybody know where I stand on this... | ||
Poul-Henning | ||
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- | ||
Hash: SHA1 | ||
Introduction | ||
- ------------ | ||
As the main developer of the Varnish Software and the de-facto leader | ||
of the Varnish Open Source Project, it is my desire to see Varnish | ||
used and adopted as widely as possible. | ||
To the same ends, the founders of the Varnish Project chose the BSD | ||
license to facilitate commercial exploitation of Varnish in all | ||
forms, while protecting the independence of the Open Source Project. | ||
The BSD license is non-discriminatory, and makes no attempt to | ||
separate the good guys from the bad guys, and neither should it. | ||
The Varnish Project, as a community, is a different story. | ||
While the BSD license can guarantee that Varnish, as software, will | ||
always be available, a thriving Open Source Community takes a fair | ||
bit more effort to hold together. | ||
Nothing can rip apart an Open Source project faster than competing | ||
commercial interests playing dirty, and since Varnish has started | ||
to cause serious amounts of money to shift around, it is time to | ||
take this issue a bit more seriously. | ||
Non-competition pledge: | ||
- ----------------------- | ||
My interest in Varnish is developing capable quality software, and | ||
making a living at the same time. | ||
In addition to Varnish, I have some long time good customers for | ||
whom I do various weird things with computers and software, and | ||
since they have stuck with me and paid my bills, I will stick with | ||
them and send them more bills. | ||
The Varnish Moral License (VML) was drawn up to provide a money-stream | ||
that can fund my Varnish-habit, and it was designed as an "arms-length" | ||
construction to prevent it from taking control of the projects | ||
direction. | ||
Therefore acquiring a VML does not mean that you get to tell me | ||
what to do, or in which order I should do it. There is no "tit for | ||
tat" involved. The only thing you get out of the VML, is that the | ||
next version of Varnish will be better than the one we have now. | ||
Therefore: | ||
As long as I can keep my family fed, happy and warm this | ||
way, I will not enter any other commercial activity related | ||
to Varnish, and am more than happy to leave that field open | ||
to everybody and anybody, who wants to try their hand. | ||
Fairness pledge: | ||
- ---------------- | ||
As the de-facto leader of the Varnish community, I believe that | ||
the success or failure of open source rises and falls with the | ||
community which backs it up. | ||
In general, there is a tacit assumption, that you take something | ||
from the pot and you try put something back in the pot, each to his | ||
own means and abilities. | ||
And the pot has plenty that needs filling: From answers to newbies | ||
questions, bug-reports, patches, documentation, advocacy, VML funding, | ||
hosting VUG meetings, writing articles for magazines, HOW-TO's for | ||
blogs and so on, so this is no onerous demand for anybody. | ||
But the BSD license allows you to not participate in or contribute | ||
to the community, and there are special times and circumstances | ||
where that is the right thing, or even the only thing you can do, | ||
and I recognize that. | ||
Therefore: | ||
I will treat everybody, who do not contribute negatively to | ||
the Varnish community, equally and fairly, and try to foster | ||
cooperation and justly resolve conflicts to the best of my | ||
abilities. | ||
Policy on Gifts: | ||
- ---------------- | ||
People sometimes prefer to show their appreciation of Varnish by | ||
sending me gifts. | ||
I really love that | ||
But please understand, that any and gifts or other appreciations I | ||
may receive, from cartoons on my Amazon Wishlist, up to and including | ||
pre-owned tropical tax-shelter islands, with conveniently unlocked | ||
bank vaults filled with gold bars (one can always dream...), will | ||
all be received and interpreted the same way: As tokens of | ||
appreciation for deeds already done, and encouragement to me to | ||
keep doing what is right and best for Varnish in the future. | ||
Poul-Henning Kamp | ||
Signed with my PGP-key, November 19th, 2010, Slagelse, Denmark. | ||
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- | ||
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (FreeBSD) | ||
iEYEARECAAYFAkzmdRkACgkQlftZhnGqOJOJwwCffytQ5kGP+Grh2unpNIIw8G2R | ||
QcQAn18fGLT4Lx2ACBivtk5wEFy6fUcu | ||
=3V52 | ||
-----END PGP SIGNATURE----- | ||
-- | ||
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 | ||
phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 | ||
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe | ||
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. | ||
Today (20190517) Arturs `Fastly <https://fastly.com>`_, company | ||
went public on the New York Stock Exchange, and went up from $16 | ||
to $24 in a matter of hours. So-called "financial analysts" write | ||
that as a consequence Fastly is now worth 2+ Billion Dollars. | ||
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I can say with 100% certainty and honesty that there is no way | ||
I could *ever* have done that, that is entirely Arturs doing and | ||
I know and admire how hard he worked to make it happen. | ||
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Congratulations to Artur and the Fastly Crew! | ||
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But I will steal some of Arturs thunder, and point to Fastlys IPO | ||
as proof that at least once in my career, I had a unique idea worth | ||
a billion dollars :-) | ||
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*phk* |