Theme 1 – The article is vague and under‑cited
- “A sort of oddly opinionated article despite having little citation to it and being rather vague on events and timelines compared to some other pieces out there.” – Jwillacyd
- “I’d love to know why for example, the author finds it so clear that Pajitnov should not have won a copyright. I don’t have any stake in it myself, the claim just isn’t supported in the article.” – Jwillacyd
Theme 2 – Dispute over who truly owns Tetris and the fairness of credit
- “Contrary to the claim attributed to Henk Rogers there were no ‘straightforward business arrangement’ between Pajitnov and myself… I did not entirely agree with the content, but I trusted Alexey and signed the paper anyway. In a few months my name disappeared from all newly released versions of Tetris…” – ndiddy (quoting Gerasimov’s account)
- “For his part, he seems to feel here that pajitnov cut him out unfairly.” – Jwillacyd
- “Looks like he developed the original on his employer's equipment during work hours. And the copyright on tetris pieces is just ridiculous given the Colomb's publication…” – 331c8c71
Theme 3 – Misuse/misunderstanding of the term “samizdat” in the Soviet context
- “Samizdat very specifically refers to censored texts. Yeah sure various versions of Tetris informally circulated around on floppies/tapes just like all other games and software, but that's not samizdat…” – orbital-decay
- “Samizdat was not just about censored texts. The larger point of samizdat is specifically about viable ways to distribute your stuff even if it was not seen even by a single censor.” – ShinyLeftPad
- “people in the USSR had to be creative… to bypass censorship… This created things like roentgenizdat or 'ribs' (gramophone recordings made from polyester X-ray films).” – konart