On: Universities have formed a company that looks a lo...

[hlandau]

Interestingly the fallout of this practice isn't just academic. Colin Percival, who is the author of Tarsnap and who sometimes posts here, is also the author of bsdiff, an efficient binary delta patching algorithm. His website notes he implemented a superior version of this algorithm for his 2006 Oxford PhD thesis. I seem to recall him mentioning years ago that the IP for this superior version belonged to Oxford, and how he hoped they would at some point give him permission to release the code for it. As far as I'm aware nothing has been heard since, though maybe I missed something.

[cperciva → hlandau]

They eventually did give me permission, but I never got around to cleaning up the code for release.

[angrais → cperciva]

Have you perhaps written a paper or article that highlights the differences? I'd like to learn more and don't know much about diff algorithms.

Also, am sure myself and others would be interested to see your current/old code.

[cperciva → angrais]

The second chapter of my thesis describes the version of bsdiff I wrote as part of my doctorate.