[Commons-Law] Why Makes Software Tick?

[Hasit seth]

Hi,

    I always wonder what are the factors that make software such a
rapidly growing field? Perhaps no other applied science has grown with
such rapidity. Certainly no other applied science has affected so many
aspects of life in such a positive way as computer science has done.

    Lot of people are interested in the community aspect of software -
how free software can help bridge digital divide, how freedom to alter
code "perhaps" leads to better code, sharing, collaboration and so on.
 While all this is noble and fine, I guess the spirit of innovation
driving the computer science revolution has little care for community
sociological stuff.  The real joy of developing new software is just
creating something cool.  Just like artist create art because they
want to, not because they want to feed some art theories.

    The whole set of Xerox PARC inventions (ethernet, mouse, GUIs....)
was created within 3 years of bringing very smart people together,
each of whom created cool inventions in individual capacity and as a
group too.  Invention and innovation is perhaps more personal
phenomenon than it is social.

    Another great institution is Bell Labs which created among other
things - the mother of all UNIX clones (e.g., Linux), original UNIX
system itself.  Bell Lab's Rob Pike (I have mentioned him before on
this list) is one of the original contributors to the UNIX system. Rob
worked at Bell Labs for a quarter century before he quit to work for
Google.  Below is an interesting article that gives a peek into Pike's
pysche who is a good example of someone having that  "spirt of
software invention and innovation".

   There is another hidden point in this article, as to what is the
future of software? If software moves to a services model (Google is
one example, though the service is "free") can free software work in a
services model? Google is neither open source nor gives its services
for "free" in the true sense of the word, but still it works? why and
how? Is that bad or good?

Regards,
Hasit Seth
==============================================
Goooood move
Physicist trades job at Bell Labs for a spot in a cool playground for
twenty-somethings
Sunday, June 05, 2005
BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
Star-Ledger Staff

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Rob Pike says friends were puzzled when he
left New Jersey's Bell Labs in 2002 and headed for Silicon Valley.

The tech bubble had already popped. Why would he want to chuck nearly
a quarter-century career at a Nobel Prize-winning address for some
goofy-sounding Web search company -- run by geeks scarcely half his
age?

Google, that's why.

As Google's share price flirts with $290 each, few would second-guess
"Commander" Pike, as his Google business card now identifies the
computer scientist.

While Lucent Technologies, which owns Bell Labs, struggles to
stabilize itself in the telecom world, Google is minting young
billionaires. Its $72 billion market capitalization dwarfs the
economies of many countries. Microsoft's founder Bill Gates is taking
notes.

But all that money talk just bores Pike.

"I honestly don't know anyone who came here to work for the money,"
says Pike, who, at 48, feels like he has executed a perfect dive into
the Fountain of Youth. "I took a huge pay cut to come here. The reason
is, it's an exciting place to work."

He says a dozen or so Bell Labbers have flocked to Google, the center
of the Internet universe right now. That it can lure talent of Pike's
caliber, from the venerable birthplace of the transistor, is both a
testament to Google's brash vision and a reflection of Lucent's bumpy
fortunes.

Like Bell Labs in its heyday, Google has become a magnet for
technology's best and brightest minds. They are coming from such
places as NASA, MIT and Berkeley. Google recently lured Adam Bosworth,
who helped develop Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser, from BEA
Software to become vice president of engineering.

And just as the old AT&T telephone monopoly allowed Bell Labbers to
pursue pure science for the public good, Google, which has an informal
motto of "Don't be evil," carves out 20 percent of employees'
schedules for their own intellectual pursuits. When he isn't tweaking
Google's powerful search software, Pike helps out on a national
telescope project that aims to unravel cosmic mysteries of "dark
matter."

He says it took him 15 years to meet the president of Bell Labs. Larry
Page and Sergey Brin, the Stanford whiz kids who started Google in
1998, and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt are no strangers around the
Googleplex.

"They think they can make a difference," Pike says of Page, 32, and
Brin, 31. "Their biggest influence is to make people think bigger.
They tend to push people to launch (services) earlier than they want,
and bigger than they want, and it really works," Pike says, citing
Google Maps and Gmail as examples.

It's not all fun and games.

"You come to work, work late, and go home with a head full of ideas,"
says Pike, a physicist educated at the University of Toronto and the
California Institute of Technology. "We work hard here -- but are
rewarded by being able to play hard."

Still, jumping to Google would seem to pose severe hazards of culture
shock for someone in mid-life. The Googleplex, as their spacious
corporate headquarters here is known, resembles a glimmering
playground for 20-somethings.

Pike sits down with a reporter inside a gleaming white tent, erected
in a cavernous glass building full of quirky angles and enormous
spaces. Projectors stream keywords from users' (G-rated) Google
searches onto walls of lobbies, where visitors find free fruit drinks
and electric massage chairs. Lounges sport oversized beanbag chairs
and Lego toys.

The cafeteria serves free gourmet dishes such as mahogany salmon and
portabello Wellington, prepared until recently by a chef who cooked
for the Grateful Dead. There are beach volleyball matches in the
courtyard, roller hockey games in the parking lot, and a small pool
where swimmers exercise against an artificial current. Some employees
get around on scooters.

The place smells young.

"Google treats employees like college students because they were
recently," Pike says. "That's weird. But it's better than being
treated as geriatric."

Pike skips Google's annual dance and the ski trips to Tahoe. But last
week he joined younger cohorts at a company screening of "Star Wars:
Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith."

Working with brainiac kids keeps him sharp, he says. To keep up
physically, he bikes 100 miles a week. Pike's Web site cheerfully
sports X-rays from a near-fatal crash.

Google crackles with a creative energy that reminds Pike of Bell Labs,
before the labs were split off from AT&T, before most of his senior
colleagues strapped on golden parachutes, before he was given
management chores. Back when Bell Labs had a sense of humor, too.

Compared with the Googleplex, the halls in Murray Hill look drab and
dreary, like your grandparents' high school. But they have seen
bowling contests and juggling unicyclers such as the late Claude
Shannon. A pioneer of digital communications, he dreamed up
rocket-powered Frisbees and motorized pogo sticks for laughs.

Pike, a Toronto native, shares some of those whimsy genes.

"He definitely was fun-loving," says Dennis Ritchie, a Bell Labs
computer scientist.

At Bell Labs, Pike helped devise a computer networking system -- and
named it for one of the cheesiest movies ever made, "Plan 9 from Outer
Space." Another project, for cable TV boxes, was dubbed Inferno.

Early in Pike's career someone suggested he needed a sexier résumé ...
so he tacked on a 1980 Olympic silver medal in archery. Not bad,
considering Canada and the United States boycotted those Moscow games.
Pike wanted to medal in the biathlon, he deadpans, but figured no one
would believe him.

Pike enlisted magicians Penn & Teller to play an elaborate practical
joke on his Nobel laureate boss at Bell Labs. On TV's "Late Night with
David Letterman," Pike played a poker-faced mad scientist as Penn
Jillette sawed Teller in half.

"Bell Labs is full of smart people. Google is full of smart people.
The country is full of smart people. Rob's just smarter," says
Jillette, who met Pike through acquaintances at the MIT Media Lab.

Jillette says Pike can explain quantum mechanics or Anna Nicole Smith
with equal ease.

"He didn't want to be a standard nerd, so he decided to learn about
pop culture," Jillette says. "He reads 'Entertainment Weekly' with
'Nature' and the 'Economist.'"

As Lucent's stock nose-dived a few years ago, the fun faded at Bell
Labs and the future started looking shaky.

"I just wanted out," Pike says.

Another Bell Labs expatriate recommended Google. Pike's wife, artist
Renee French, came by after his interview there. Who, she asked, was
that young man her husband had been talking to?

"Oh, he's the founder," Pike remembers answering.

Pike still marvels at Google's massive computing resources. His job is
improving the software behind the searches, for smoother "crawling,"
indexing and logging of 8 billion Web pages. He also hones software
for "data mining" -- making sense of user patterns, so Google can
deliver relevant ads to users of its mostly free services.

"Rob's a very, very clever guy," Google CEO Schmidt says.

Sometimes Pike misses the scientific diversity of Bell Labs, where he
could rub elbows with astrophysicists and biochemists. But products
trickled slowly, if ever, from the labs. They blast from Google at
hyperspeed.

"Here," Pike says, "you can have an idea on Monday and have it on the
Web site by the end of the week."

Kevin Coughlin covers technology. He may be reached at
kcoughlin at starledger.com or (973) 392-1763.

ROB PIKE

Age: 48

Title: Google "Commander"

What he does: Fine-tunes software for indexing 8 billion Web pages,
and for mining data from Google user patterns.

Education: University of Toronto, California Institute of Technology;
a physicist by training

Hobbies: Biking, photography

Marital status: Married to artist Renee French (www.reneefrench.com)

Best friend: Penn Jillette, of the Penn & Teller magic act

Last job: Computer scientist and department head at Bell Labs in
Murray Hill, where he helped develop operating systems called Plan 9
and Inferno. Left in 2002 after 23 years.

On the privacy of Gmail, a Google service that automatically scans
e-mails to deliver relevant ads: "Engineers cannot read your mail. No
human can get near your mail."
(c) 2005  The Star Ledger
(c) 2005 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.