I think that is the definition of progress. Something first exists as an idea no one could use, and now it exists as a practical and useful implementation.

How is that not progress?

It is a progress, but not an advancing-the-state-of-the-art progress. Often "progress" is used to mean an advancing-the-state-of-the-art kind in some context. I believe this is the case here.

So you are just disagreeing on the definition.

It's interesting that you link to your patent but not to the "something pretty much exactly like that". If I am correct in assuming that what you built is a) obsolete now and/or b) proprietary, then the answer to your (rhetorical?) question is: yes, a highly respected open-source organization working on a modern and freely available project (even if it is nearly identical to one of yours from a decade ago) is progress.

The concrete implementation of it is contained as open source (not free, but as in "you can look at the source and change it") in a commercial offering, which was the 'normal' back in these days. Yes, it is great that it is made freely available and is backed by an open source organization, no doubt. However, given the amount of time in-between, on a fundamental technical level though it seems slow progress at best.

I guess my rebuttal is very schoolyard...so what? I don't really understand the goal of meta-discussions about the speed of progress or lack thereof. This project seems potentially useful in the here and now, which is where we are living.

I didn't mean to imply judgment of the licensing of your software - I think everyone should license whatever they make however they wish - a fully free version of anything is simply more useful to me personally, as someone who isn't a deep-pocketed business, and who enjoys reading code.

I'm in full agreement with you and yes, it's a silly discussion. I guess I just wanted to point out that the idea behind it isn't all that original and actually pretty old, it's just that it's now made widely accessible, which IS great. Maybe I should've just kept the whole thing to myself ;)