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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.'"
It's actually pretty funny Google itself didn't see this coming. Results in Google for go programming language are about the existing Go! language and the main developers book about it.
In this case Google should really change the name since its been used in an existing programming language for years. But maybe they are:
"We recently became aware of the Go! issue and are now looking into the matter further," a company spokesperson said in an e-mail.
Two "Go"'s considered harmful.
Here's a perfect example of why we need IP laws.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
From the Wikipedia page about Go!, you can download its source code here. Is this language really serious? No docs, just one book with a typo on its front?
How is this news? Google was unaware that the name was taken. I do think they'd be stupid to keep it, though.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
I bet someone at Google will get fired soon...
Either 1 of 2 things may have happened:
1) They used Microsoft Bing to search for potential trademark violations
2) They were too lazy and didn't check at all.
No TM, no copy right? Why is this guy complaining?
to call a stop. Or a stop!
while $STOP; HAMMERTIME; end
Anybody want my mod points?
Google should rename it Goo, or if that's taken then Gooo or Goooooooooo...
Tag this one !news.
Since when is a gazillion-dollar company considered "under fire" because one dude with no legal status is annoyed at them?
By that logic, "McDonald's has come under fire this week for serving goodmanj a batch of stale fries last time he went there."
This was reported by the author in Issue 9. There have been suggestions to rename the language to Issue 9 - I like it.
Well, releasing a book, without a trademark on the name that you used in the title of the book? Maybe I'm misunderstanding here, but I thought the publisher would at least want a TM on the name if it's used in the title of the book (to prevent any issues down the road)...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
Couldn't they have googled the name first? You'd kind of expect at least that from them..
Not like Go is such a great name anyway. They should run a poll to decide the name. With enough luck it'll get called Marblecake or Colbert++.
You just got troll'd!
If Francis McCabe wanted to protect his work he had 6 years in which to do it. Either he's trying to close the barn door after the horses are gone or he's looking to try to get some sales for his book. They should have planned better.
If Ken Thompson and Rob Pike were designing it, they probably didn't care about getting fired / marketing implications / public backlash etc. They have a history of choosing provocative names, just look at the plan9 stuff.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Google does whatever it damn pleases. The "do no evil" slogan has lost its meaning because Google is convinced that it simply cannot do evil and everything it does is for the good of mankind and everybody else is a heretic anyway.
It originates from the paper by Dijkstra where he argued GoTo statements should be banned. That resulted in many structured programming languages main stream computer science. But what is not known is that the same paper spawned a new set of less well known languages based on "COME FROM" statement to avoid the "GO TO" statement. The Go! (pronounced Go-Not) language belongs to this little known branch. It is completely and entirely different from the plain old Go language.
Dont get me started on the Japanese chess game Go.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I think they should call it Goop. So much code produced by humans has looked like a blob from a bad sci-fi movie that it seems fitting.
No, it isn't even a "Trademark Thing®" The Author of "Go!" does not have a trademark on "Go!". He never applied for one.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
while $STOP { // Credit where due
collaborate();
listen();
}
Ice Cream has no bones.
Maybe it's time for tougher IP laws where such things would be possible! At least I would if I were into politics...
Hey, the guys who ripped that one off actually ended up making $20 million. Anyone want to pay me for my new "Pearl" programming language?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Perhaps Mr. McCabe should have trademarked the name???
Simply using the name in a commercial capacity is enough to get an unregistered trademark. However, the problem is that he is not selling the Go! programming language. If it's not a commercial entity, then trademark doesn't apply.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
(or maybe that's just my age showing)
I think this sounds light.
--Stak
Holy happy hippy crap!
How would Google even know that a language called "Go" exists?
They would have to have some mechanism for searching the internet to do that.
Given it's purpose, to be the glue that fastens functionality to web pages, it should be called "Goo"...
Of course, the makers of ShoeGoo may think people will be confused, and those who clean their hands with Goop may also have some difficulty being clear, if it should stick to their fingers...
joe
if (exists(town{"Der Kommissar"})) {
exit
} else {
@ARRAY = reverse @ARRAY;
}
This template was added 2009-11-12 14:22
They can call it Goog.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
A poll would be interesting.
Personally, I think that "Go and "Go! are two different names, so there is no problem.
...since the new "Go" will always be "Go beta". There will be an older "Go" and a newer "Go beta"... Who's confused now ?
One has a bang (!) at the end, while the other doesn't.
Everybody knows the difference between C and C#
The claim has no basis.
They will have to call it GoToo!
I've seen this explanation a few times, but none of them say straight out that the guy with the older non-commercial language is going to have to change the name of it. Or if eventually the site is going to be DMCAed or whatever.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
They've renamed it Go?
Given who's involved, they coulda called it 9½, or maybe stepped past Inferno and called it Paradisio.
This is why I name all my programming languages by UUID. In fact, look for my new book, Ed68c886-6390-4255-813f-48e61f6b0b06: The Definitive Guide to be published in the second quarter of next year!
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
DMCA is not an issue, since this is a question of trademark, not copyright.
It seems to me that the only way McCabe could be legally forced to change the name is if trademark law applied, but if trademark law applied, then the mark would be his, since trademark law is "first to use", not "first to file".
Legal questions aside, if Google keeps using the name, then McCabe will have to change his name not for legal reasons, but practical ones.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
A+ != A# != A#
C != C# (in fairness they are related)
There are several languages refereed to as D
F != F#
L != L#
M != M4
If you can't tell the difference between to similarly named programming languages perhaps programming isn't for you!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
What is wrong with people who name new computer languages? Like it or not, google has become a defacto reference for coders. You can't remember the exact syntax of python string concatenation, Google it and see:
Results 1 - 10 of about 21,200 for python "string concatenation". (0.20 seconds)
And the relevant examples are bunched near the top of the first page. Now try the same for Go:
Results 1 - 10 of about 50,000 for Go "string concatenation". (0.20 seconds)
Of course none of them are relevant but you can see that Go coders are going to have a much worse Signal/Noise ratio.
The only thing I don't like about the processing language is its name:
Results 1 - 10 of about 45,900 for processing "string concatenation". (0.24 seconds)
Of course it come from a long history of google silly names like 'C'
Results 1 - 10 of about 84,300 for C "string concatenation". (0.09 seconds)
Microsoft wasn't very smart here: .net "string concatenation". (0.30 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 157,000 for
Sun was better
Results 1 - 10 of about 70,600 for Java "string concatenation". (0.19 seconds)
Now we're talking:
Results 1 - 10 of about 7,050 for fortran "string concatenation".
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,230 for cobol "string concatenation".
Of course those last two are much less popular languages but the S/N ratio of the pages you get when you search google for that is very high.
Google should have a naming contest for their new language. Come up with something unique like zarking00g
Or if eventually the site is going to be DMCAed or whatever.
DMCA? Is someone alleging copyright infringement? I thought this dispute was about trademarks.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The trouble with Go! as a proper name is that it is too short to be distinctive and will therefore be hard to search for.
Any attempt to find websites relating to or even mentioning this language (or the alleged book on it) yesterday completely failed: in fact the only sign of it was on a bug report against Google's Go complaining over the name. These days finding a usable name for anything is bordering on impossible, someones 5minute project from years ago thats been long since abandoned can safely be ignored.
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.
People are coming down on "Google" but I was under the impression that this was just some Google engineer's pet project ("20%" time) with maybe some help from his friends there. Lots of stuff coming out of Google is like this because of Google's very liberal policies. However, people always act like everything that comes out of the company is some strategic product driven by the highest levels.
So Google can change theirs to "Goscript", and gain the clarity of the Java/Javascript situation. And nobody will confuse it with ghostscript. It's perfect!
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
This is scandalous! I would expect better from a company with the motto "Don't be evil." Google should make it absolute clear that this new language is not Go!
I propose they rename it to !Go.
You'd think that google, of all companies, would realize that making people google for "go" is practically a non-starter.
The thing that bugs me about the name is that it is difficult to Google.
I know you want a cute name, but please give us something more unique that we can search with!
Same goes for you D!
Well if it's a case of "first to use", then that would be the Chinese emperor Yao (2337-2258 BC).
So then Google should make it clear that their language is not McCabe's "Go!" by changing the name to "!Go!" (not Go!).
P.S. I suspect grandparent is spinning a yarn. Perhaps "Funny" is a more appropriate moderation than "Insightful".
Lets Go!
by Francis McCabe
Book published in 2007
http://www.lulu.com/content/641689
Here it is in google..
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:lulu.com+go+programming
Yes that search is with a site restriction but still it is indexed by google and the page is more than a day old.
Issue 9 is kind of a mouthful to pronounce
So maybe just call it I9
... As Google Language. And then opensource their development stack, codenamed openGL.
...ofcourse be called GoTwo
Anything but "Go' ... Googling the word "go" was never going to have a happy ending for people looking for programming information.
No sig today...
now that ya mention go--which is weiqi in chinese, where the game originated--it is interesting to note that the game holds a special place in computer science as a benchmark for AI testing. See here. I can't remember where i read it but someone once said there are more possible board positions than there are stars in the known universe, which makes programming for the game entirely dependent on how well the program can evaluate positions.
I'd really be interested to see if google's language can utilize CUDA to analyze hundreds of board positions at a time, or if it can implement google search-like pattern recognition to find groupings of favorable board positions. Name aside, what does the language bring new to the table?
No trademark or copyright, and by all accounts- "Go!" is a dead project. "Go" makes sense because of the goal of developing a fast-compiling language, and it can also be seen as the first two letters of "Google" which makes some sense from a marketing standpoint. It say- Go for it Google!
In academia, it's "Publish or Perish". The creator of "GO!" did publish. But, the problem is, he is in the world of IT/CS, and in that world, it's "Market or Perish".
Google is marketing their language, they have a working system, compiler, etc. and it is generally available.
This guy did some work, but unless he has a company actively pushing it, then all he has is a thought experiment.
Now, if Google, took HIS work, extended it and called it their own, then they have a problem.
When I was a kid I knew a woman who invented the "Barbie" doll. She had drawings that dated a year before the drawings that Mattel used to prove their ownership (she's been on TV a few times). Mattel beat her to market, they won. (There was another woman that claimed she created Barbie, but the problem was she worked for Mattel, before leaving to create the doll.)
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Since Go! is taken, what about STOP or STALL?
I would have suggested BING! (But Its NOT Go!) but it seems that someone else is using that name...
The Programming language formerly known as go.
Go-be-gone
not-go
or go! for the C types out there
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
Right now he'd be saying "G'oh!"
Perhaps Mr. McCabe should have trademarked the name???
Simply using the name in a commercial capacity is enough to get an unregistered trademark. However, the problem is that he is not selling the Go! programming language. If it's not a commercial entity, then trademark doesn't apply.
I'm not sure why you think selling something is a pre-requisite for being able to trademark its name. What is key is that you use the trademark on an ongoing basis and are the first to use it in a particular field.(Amongst other things). Even if you freely give something away you can still trademark its name; all a trademark does is identify a particular product and prevents others with similar products from trading on your good (or bad) name. Google, for example gives away many services for free yet can still own the rights to Google as a servicemark or trademark; depending on whether you consider search a service or a good.
As for trademarking the name, using it should at least create an unregistered trademark which can prevent others from using it for similar products; at least in the areas where he trades. Registering provides stronger legal protections but just because you do not register a name doesn't mean someone else can use it for a similar product in the same area where you do business.
All of the above assumes the name is unique enough to be considered trademarkable; which is a separate issue.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Simply using the name in a commercial capacity is enough to get an unregistered trademark.
You should mark it with the unregistered trademark symbol, "TM"; without that, you'll have a hard time enforcing it.
I nominate this for "Best nerd joke of 2009".
I'm not sure why you think selling something is a pre-requisite for being able to trademark its name. What is key is that you use the trademark on an ongoing basis and are the first to use it in a particular field.(Amongst other things). Even if you freely give something away you can still trademark its name; all a trademark does is identify a particular product and prevents others with similar products from trading on your good (or bad) name. Google, for example gives away many services for free yet can still own the rights to Google as a servicemark or trademark; depending on whether you consider search a service or a good.
I didn't say he had to be selling it, I said he had to be using it in a commercial capacity. Trademark applies to, well, trade. I might use a certain nickname on an ongoing basis in a particular field, but that doesn't mean I automatically get a trademark on that nickname. It would have to be a mark of trade in order for it to be trademarkable.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
If I might be so bold as to suggest a rename of Googles endeavors to " Goog". This still remains catchy and could become a verb for coding in this language just as "to Google" is to search with the corresponding engine.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I tried both googling and binging for the online GO manual so I could analyse its properties. It was probably recently released and hasnt acquired many links yet. Plus GO is a common junk word.
I find it ironic that I cant sucessfully use google to find something at google.
I like how the Wikipedia article was created yesterday. It is now notable for Google having never heard of it.
Google did this out of ignorance about a language that doesn't look like it's been updated in over 2 years. From the looks of it, the guy hasn't publicly updated his code for Go! in over two years. Do a google search for "Go! programming language" and the only result for his work in the first two pages (where most people look) is a single ACM citation.
You know what Google should do? Offer him an interview with the presumption of being hired to work on their version unless he proves unqualified (unlikely, given the cover similar spaces) and maybe a cool wad of cash to smooth out any IP issues. For a language that has apparently never risen above a research project, even $25k would be sufficiently just compensation for him to renounce any IP claims against Google and go about his merry way.
They should rename it Phoenix. Or maybe Firebird!
You see, open source projects never have naming conflicts.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
If you want to get a syntax example for perl, you google for "perl syntax" or "perl printf" or some such.
If you want info for Go, you type "go syntax" and since the word GO is one of the most common in the English language, you get 14,700,000 hits.
DUMB NAME. VERY BAD NAME.
Google should immediately make lemonade out of lemons and change the name to something like "golang" or "goog" -- everyone will be much happier that they did, and did it reasonably early.
Because Googling for "go" gets you 2,950,000,000 hits. Yes, that's billions. And yet they didn't see that choosing such a common word for a language name was a bad idea. Ah, how the mighty goof up.
I didn't say he had to be selling it, I said he had to be using it in a commercial capacity. Trademark applies to, well, trade. I might use a certain nickname on an ongoing basis in a particular field, but that doesn't mean I automatically get a trademark on that nickname. It would have to be a mark of trade in order for it to be trademarkable.
Fair enough, although I disagree with your definition of trademark - if you, for example, used "Dr. BugBeGone" as your name when you came to fix programming bugs for companies, I think you would have a legitimate servicemark; just as you could create a tool to fix bugs and call it "Dr BugeMeNot's Magic Programming Elixer" and have a valid trademark. I would consider making a programming language available for use sufficient to create a an unregistered trademark, as the name is a unique identifier for a particular product in a particular field.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Wouldn't GING work? (Go is not Go!)
For example, if we allow anyone to use up a two letter name for a programming language just by uploading some code or publishing something in the internet, we'll quickly run out of two letter names. Then it'll be 3 letters etc. When a truly important new language is developed it'll be have to be called something not easy to pronounce.
3)They don't give a damn. They're PhDs at Google. Why does anyone else matter?
Please help metamoderate.
Have you read my blog lately?
Go++
The motto is not "Do no evil", it's "Don't be evil". "Do no evil" implies never doing anything that could be construed as wrong - an impossible task unless you resign yourself to just "Do nothing". "Don't be evil" allows you to make mistakes and correct them, or to choose the lesser of two evils.
So, then they just have to call it Go# (Go sharp) and get away with it !
"From what I've read, Go! was pretty much unknown to anyone outside a very small group 2 years ago."
From what I've read, Go was pretty much unknown outside of Google until about a week ago.
Purl
See
SeePlus
Fourtrain
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Trademarks are generally classified by product markets, at least for names. I sincerely doubt Chinese emperor Yao was making Go for computers back in the 23rd century BC.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
"If it's not a commercial entity, then trademark doesn't apply."
You mean I can still trademark a "GPL" product as long as I offer it for sale?
Just put an @ sign after it: Go@ (goat)
Goo might be a good rename, but how about GoGo? The mascot could be a dusty old Hoho.
Probably it should be renamed Gspot
Everyone also knows the similarity. They are in some sense connected. Technically you may argue that C is glorified assembly and C# is a modern OO language. But there is a direct lineage I think from C through C++ and Java to C# as standard application development languages, each of which attempted to remedy some of the weaknesses of the previous one.
More importantly perhaps, no-one would confuse them because C is so well known. The very popularity of C makes it easy to tweak the name just a bit and yet have the difference be universally recognized. This simply isn't the case for lesser known names. If I wrote a play titled Romeo and Julia, you would likely recognize both the reference to Shakespeare and realize that the name is different. There would be no confusion. If I picked a lesser-known title, however, you could well be confused. Would you realize that The Prisoner of Zendo was different from The Prisoner or Zenda? (Though The Prisoner of Zenda is hardly obscure.)
The lack of widespread knowledge of Go makes it particularly vulnerably to confusion with Go! Also, Google has immensely marketing power sufficient to overwhelm recognition for Go. How many participants in this discussion would have known the difference before today? I certainly wouldn't. If you named a language C', however, (assuming there is no such language already; I picked the prime because it is visually almost unnoticeable), I would instantly recognize that it was not C.
With the thousands of languages and acronyms floating around, there are bound to be collisions (e.g. IDL=Interface description language, interface definition language, or Interactive Data Language). However, I doubt this would have been a big problem if the collision wasn't with something so big as Google.
That supports my theory that the music software company Native Instruments named their code with words like "Battery", "Reason" and "Kontakt" so that it'd be close to impossible to find anything useful when searching for stolen serial numbers.
"Legal questions aside, if Google keeps using the name, then McCabe will have to change his name not for legal reasons, but practical ones."
I think you mean strike that and reverse it.
Linux is not used in a commercial capacity (at least not by the trademark holder) and yet the name is trademarked.
"It was intended as a somewhat non-commercial language in the tradition of logic programming languages". "Non-commercial"? What's the point of making a programming language if you don't intend it to be used by anyone who's actually serious about using it for actual, practical, real-world purposes? Get out of computer science if you're going to be an angry bitter tree hugger, you should be teaching basket weaving courses in a liberal arts ashtray-college if you're going to be that profoundly worthless to society.
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
Presumably its a co-ordination language and data flows between stones down and to the right. Perhaps Black and white might just represent arity and what a stone actually did might not be denoted by color. You would have monadic stones (white?) and dyadic stones (black?) and the syntax would require that monadic stones have at most one stone above or to the left since they can only accept one input at a time.
Either that or the language would be weakly typed and data arriving from above or from the left would be processed separately.
The board would have a left and a top which would accept inputs from the environment but could extend infinitely to to bottom and right.
Squirrel!
Suffix: .gg (looks anyhow like .go)
Slogan: Go go.
Neat: GoGo would cast this name controversy into a name singularity; always reminding us of the great day such a thread hit nearly 400 comments on /.
yet googling for 'go programming language' - what anyone that knows anything about issues with short words and search engines would do, does find it. It is highly implausible that google did not know about this before the announcement. It is quite disturbing they even got this far.
if only
That guy should be happy Google took the name he used for his obsolete language and just let it go at that. All his crying and whining is pathetic. He didn't make a copyright for it, why is he being such a little baby about it?
"The current implementation is a plain mark-and-sweep collector but a replacement is in the works."
At that point....no thanks for now.
I wonder if this is going to be the new Ruby.
Also, looking at the tutorials: nice job at recreating Ada. Really.
They must be, they're a heevul corpra$hun.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why did they choose Go for a name anyway? Sounds like it would be very hard to search for information about it.
Simply using the name in a commercial capacity is enough to get an unregistered trademark. However, the problem is that he is not selling the Go! programming language. If it's not a commercial entity, then trademark doesn't apply.
He has a book for sale on the programming language. That sounds like using the name in a commercial capacity to me.
Besides being the names of two traditional Asian board games people successully told apart for millenia, if we can handle C, C++ and C#, why should Go and Go! ("Go-bang") be a problem?
ignatius
It doesn't - but do you think it's wise for him to wait until he is sued? Personally I'd rather avoid the risk altogether. Especially if that may be years later, when Google's language has become far more popular, and proving that his was around earlier may be much harder?
He has a book for sale [lulu.com] on the programming language. That sounds like using the name in a commercial capacity to me.
The name of the book, yes. The name of the programming language, no. The book is the product, not the programming language.
I could write a book about you. That doesn't grant me the ability to trademark your name.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
If you can trademark a Coca-Cola lounge chair or baseball cap, I'm fairly certain that the Chinese emperor mentioned here would qualify as the first international user of the name "Go". Heck, I've seen Paramount Studios trademark the use of Spock and Kirk for things that have nothing to do with the famous television program.... and go after fan websites who use these terms without permission for trademark infringement.
Don't forget the famous lawsuit between the Beatles and Steve Jobs/Steve Wozniak over the use of the trademark "Apple"
Still, Google could have selected a term that was derived from the game of Go instead, but Atari is already taken.
just call it "goo" and call it a day.