I added the (post-quantum cryptography) bit to the post title as the raw on gives a fluff tone to something that comes with actual technical substance and not intellectual property handwaving.
I am certainly not qualified to judge whether this is indeed a case of plagiarism or not, but if someone like Mr. Bernstein finds it to be, I as a non-mathematician will accept that judgement. However, there is one thing that strikes me as a flawed reasoning. The post wants to make the point that an undiscovered patent was the reason for Google to stop the post-quantum cryptography experiment once they were made aware of the patent and even goes as far to call the patent a “land mine”. Google is not a random someone, but one of the world’s largest companies. Why would they not try to do what a patent is actually meant to achieve, namely to simply license it? Licensing a patent is certainly not beyond Google’s range of financial resources. The post makes it sound as if there is no alternative than to get sued for infringing the patent, while it certainly is possible to negotiate and license it. Nobody forces you to work around it. I can’t comment on US patent law, but at least in European patent law, you can even force the patent holder to license the patent for “fair conditions” if he is on a persornal crusade against you and does not want to license it.
You don’t want to create a standard that’s based on a patent, because a standard would require an ocean of people (besides Google) to license the patent. This is what hurt GIF back in the day, and why standards committees now instinctively avoid anything that smells like it might be patented.
Bah, I stopped reading at some point because I find the premise a bit off; quantum computers are some orders of magnitudes from being useful for cryptography but we would need to improve them a lot less for them to be useful for some protein folding calculations or whatever bio-adjacent things.. so basically it’d be hard to have some secret quantum computer that can break RSA without also having medical technology that is a century ahead, so I’m going to stay skeptical on the necessity for all the post-quantum stuff and focus on how we can improve education.
I added the (post-quantum cryptography) bit to the post title as the raw on gives a fluff tone to something that comes with actual technical substance and not intellectual property handwaving.
I am certainly not qualified to judge whether this is indeed a case of plagiarism or not, but if someone like Mr. Bernstein finds it to be, I as a non-mathematician will accept that judgement. However, there is one thing that strikes me as a flawed reasoning. The post wants to make the point that an undiscovered patent was the reason for Google to stop the post-quantum cryptography experiment once they were made aware of the patent and even goes as far to call the patent a “land mine”. Google is not a random someone, but one of the world’s largest companies. Why would they not try to do what a patent is actually meant to achieve, namely to simply license it? Licensing a patent is certainly not beyond Google’s range of financial resources. The post makes it sound as if there is no alternative than to get sued for infringing the patent, while it certainly is possible to negotiate and license it. Nobody forces you to work around it. I can’t comment on US patent law, but at least in European patent law, you can even force the patent holder to license the patent for “fair conditions” if he is on a persornal crusade against you and does not want to license it.
You don’t want to create a standard that’s based on a patent, because a standard would require an ocean of people (besides Google) to license the patent. This is what hurt GIF back in the day, and why standards committees now instinctively avoid anything that smells like it might be patented.
Bah, I stopped reading at some point because I find the premise a bit off; quantum computers are some orders of magnitudes from being useful for cryptography but we would need to improve them a lot less for them to be useful for some protein folding calculations or whatever bio-adjacent things.. so basically it’d be hard to have some secret quantum computer that can break RSA without also having medical technology that is a century ahead, so I’m going to stay skeptical on the necessity for all the post-quantum stuff and focus on how we can improve education.