Dennis Ritchie on Computer Science and Commerce (1984)

> Computer science is different from … more traditional disciplines. > Philosophically it differs from the physical sciences because it seeks > not to discover, explain, or exploit the natural world, but instead to > study the properties of machines of human creation. In this it is > analogous to mathematics, and indeed the "science" part of computer > science is, for the most part, mathematical in spirit. But an > inevitable aspect of computer science is the creation of computer > programs: objects that, though intangible, are subject to commercial > exchange. > >

More than anything else, the greatest danger to good computer science research today may be excessive relevance. Evidence for the worldwide fascination with computers is everywhere, from the articles on the financial, and even the front pages of the newspapers, to the difficulties that even the most prestigious universities experience in finding and keeping faculty in computer science. The best professors, instead of teaching bright students, join start-up companies, and often discover that their brightest students have preceded them. Computer science is in the limelight, especially those aspects, such as systems, languages, and machine architecture, that may have immediate commercial applications. The attention is flattering, but it can work to the detriment of good research.

As the intensity of research in a particular area increases, so does the impulse to keep its results secret. This is true even in the university … although in academia there is a strong counterpressure: Unless one publishes, one never becomes known at all. In industry, a natural impulse of the establishment is to guard proprietary information. Researchers understand reasonable restrictions on what and when they publish, but many will become irritated and flee elsewhere, or start working in less delicate areas, if prevented from communicating their discoveries and inventions in suitable fashion. …

Another danger is that commercial pressures of one sort or another will divert the attention of the best thinkers from real innovation to exploitation of the current fad, from prospecting to mining a known lode. These pressures manifest themselves not only in the disappearance of faculty into industry, but also in the conservatism that overtakes those with well-paying investments — intellectual or financial — in a given idea. Perhaps this effect explains why so few interesting software systems have come from the large computer companies; they are locked into the existing world. …

Partly because they are new and still immature, and partly because they are a creation of the intellect, the arts and sciences of software abridge the chain, usual in physics and engineering, between fundamental discoveries, advanced development, and application. The inventors of ideas about how software should work usually find it necessary to build demonstration systems. For large systems, and for revolutionary ideas, much time is required: It can be said that UNIX was written in the 70s to distill the best systems ideas of the 60s, and became the commonplace of the 80s. …