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Google Under Fire For Calling Their Language "Go"
Norsefire writes "Since releasing the 'Go' programming language on Tuesday, Google has been under fire for using the same name as another programming language that was first publicly documented in 2003. 'Go!' was created by Francis McCabe and Keith Clark. McCabe published a book about the language in 2007, and he is not happy. He told InformationWeek in an email: 'I do not have a trademark on my language. It was intended as a somewhat non-commercial language in the tradition of logic programming languages. It is in the tradition of languages like Prolog. In particular, my motivation was bringing some of the discipline of software engineering to logic programming.'"
There's no IP.
There is copyright, patents and trademarks. This sounds like a trademark thing, so no need to confuse the issue.
Some things are ethically questionable even when there is no legal problem involved. A concept often forgotten in the corporate world.
As someone stated before, this is not a legal issue. It's just about basic politeness.
In this case Google should really change the name since its been used in an existing programming language for years.
Why? Go! is just another hobby language that's only been around for a few years. The only thing it has generated is a few academic papers. There probably have been thousands of those in the past 50 or so years. I see no reason for Google to change the name of its computing language just because there are already one or more programming languages with similar names. As the previous sentence implies, I wouldn't be surprised to find out there there are several programming languages with something very similar.
I would hate to have you as a boss.
Oh you had a bug in you code... YOUR FIRRREED!
Oh you tried to come up with a creative name that was taken by some obscure language... YOUR FIRRREED!
When brain storming for ideas in the meeting you idea that we all liked had a problem... YOUR FIRREED!
I bet you work for the government or something. People make mistakes. Googling for GO will lead to a lot of results and people know that and Go is used for a lot of help support too. So they probably realized it is such a common word finding a language like it will be like a needle in a haystack.
Sure google searches now will probably bring you better results however now that it is news it would effect the Google search criteria.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This Is Not GO.
It apparently also means "To take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by borrowing them." in Pasquense, Easter Island.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Just because it is currently a hobby language doesn't mean something popular might be made with it later. That would result in a naming collision for people (which go language?) and a complex legal battle if both products became successful.
Here's what would happen if nobody says anything: Google's Go gets popular and now has trademark weight. Go! hobby language gets popular because basement developer makes new popular app. Google sees this as a threat to trademark and is forced to use legal action.
Of course, the hobby language Go! could dwindle and produce nothing of value but we don't know that yet. He's actually doing everyone a favor by bringing up this topic right now while both languages don't have much weight to defend. It eliminates the possibility of expensive arguments in the future.