Re: patent on O_ATOMICLOOKUP [Re: [PATCH] loopable tmpfs (2.4.17)]

Larry McVoy
2002-05-25T05:00:03Z

On Sat, May 25, 2002 at 12:48:00AM -0400, Karim Yaghmour wrote:
> "Anything which is not part of the patent's claims is not covered by
> the patent, and can be done by anyone anywhere anytime, without regard
> to the patent."

Sure. As long as it does not depend on the patent to work. I don't care
if Victor says that you have to love your mother in order to license his
patent. If that's what he says, those are the terms. You are *paying*
for the right to use the patent. His terms are that you are 100% GPL
all the way through. OK, so deal with that.

Eben is absolutely right - if you want to do something completely unrelated
to the patent, which does not use any aspect of the patent, you are in the
clear. Unfortunately for you & Eben, that's irrelevant if what you are
doing doesn't work without RT/Linux. If that's true, you're using his patent
and you have to pay his price.

I really don't see the problem anyway. FSMlabs worked long and hard to
produce their work. And took the time and effort to patent it. And they
allow you to use it for free if you are working on 100% free stuff. That's
pretty reasonable. Your only complaint seems to be that you can't make
money off of it without licensing the technology. Why don't you just
license it and be done with it?
--
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Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm