If Yahoo had any shred of credibility left with developers then it has succeeded in destroying that with its misguided patent lawsuit against Facebook. But the suit isn’t all bad. It has the potential to become a catalytic event for broader social awareness of the perils of software patents, similar to how the SOPA/PIPA battle moved copyright and its enforcement into more of a mainstream issue. That was sort of the gist of Mark Cuban’s post. The first group of people who should really start t...

If Yahoo had any shred of credibility left with developers then it has succeeded in destroying that with its misguided patent lawsuit against Facebook. But the suit isn’t all bad. It has the potential to become a catalytic event for broader social awareness of the perils of software patents, similar to how the SOPA/PIPA battle moved copyright and its enforcement into more of a mainstream issue. That was sort of the gist of Mark Cuban’s post. The first group of people who should really start t...

My partner Brad put up a great post on the USV blog yesterday, arguing for an independent invention defense against software patents. A while back, I had proposed an alternative, a change in how litigation works. In that post, I wrote that:Some folks have suggested doing away with software patents altogether as a way of addressing this problem. That strikes me as too dramatic a solution as I don’t believe that all software patents are evil. For instance, if someone were to spend years and lot...

My partner Brad put up a great post on the USV blog yesterday, arguing for an independent invention defense against software patents. A while back, I had proposed an alternative, a change in how litigation works. In that post, I wrote that:Some folks have suggested doing away with software patents altogether as a way of addressing this problem. That strikes me as too dramatic a solution as I don’t believe that all software patents are evil. For instance, if someone were to spend years and lot...

Google announced and released a number of innovations to their core search product this week, including search options and support for microformats/RDFa. What I think is most interesting about this is not so much the specifics of what they have done, but that they continue to innovate in core search. This contrasts with several other big names on the Internet, such as eBay, which for years have not really improved their core offering. One thing this suggests is that Google has in fact built a...

Google announced and released a number of innovations to their core search product this week, including search options and support for microformats/RDFa. What I think is most interesting about this is not so much the specifics of what they have done, but that they continue to innovate in core search. This contrasts with several other big names on the Internet, such as eBay, which for years have not really improved their core offering. One thing this suggests is that Google has in fact built a...

I love Vernor Vinge’s concept of a “programmer-archeologist” (A Deepness In the Sky, he also coined “programmer-at-arms”) as someone who digs through the layers of existing systems to understand why and how stuff works. I was reminded of this over the weekend, as I worked through some old code of my own and that from a bunch of other developers on DailyLit. My exposure to “software archeology” goes as far as back as the first time I earned money from programming. I was 17 and had just come ba...

I love Vernor Vinge’s concept of a “programmer-archeologist” (A Deepness In the Sky, he also coined “programmer-at-arms”) as someone who digs through the layers of existing systems to understand why and how stuff works. I was reminded of this over the weekend, as I worked through some old code of my own and that from a bunch of other developers on DailyLit. My exposure to “software archeology” goes as far as back as the first time I earned money from programming. I was 17 and had just come ba...

Of course I do love chocolate easter eggs (my favorite ones are filled with brittle). But I am a huge fan of easter eggs in software. There are several good lists on the web including Egg Heaven and The Easter Egg Archive. It’s great to discover a bit of humor and surprise in something one uses almost every day.

Of course I do love chocolate easter eggs (my favorite ones are filled with brittle). But I am a huge fan of easter eggs in software. There are several good lists on the web including Egg Heaven and The Easter Egg Archive. It’s great to discover a bit of humor and surprise in something one uses almost every day.