From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263509AbUJ2X2R (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Oct 2004 19:28:17 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263537AbUJ2XVm (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Oct 2004 19:21:42 -0400 Received: from wproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.184.202]:30324 "EHLO wproxy.gmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263654AbUJ2XOq (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Oct 2004 19:14:46 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:references; b=T60oZ9qk2/xZcc3TYvc9bJEoeXot/4mun3E84V8zFEXbmrkNa3Kam7hwftKLA2r3dIC+T/qUcNCwQBYLUsddxaINB/3Am9B5/t1UrT1jG/ELkZjul3GL+uPqdF7o+YoN1VRPalpeHPzE0HN3r8FIZdISxbI7S/gaCaquCoziAiI= Message-ID: <9e47339104102916141019bd23@mail.gmail.com> Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 19:14:34 -0400 From: Jon Smirl Reply-To: Jon Smirl To: Alexander Stohr Subject: Re: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?] Cc: airlied@gmail.com, kendallb@scitechsoft.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: <015101c4bde1$1051bce0$8511050a@alexs> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <1098806794.6000.7.camel@tara.firmix.at> <015101c4bde1$1051bce0$8511050a@alexs> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 19:12:15 +0200, Alexander Stohr wrote: > Hi Jon, Hi audience, > > (I just got aware of that discussion because i got that mail CCed > trough a resend on a general discussion list about software patents.) > > Even if ATI and nVidia, plus maybe even IBM, would sign a well written > and working agreement between them all, it would not stop anybody else > out there in the world that is holding patents from inspecting the unveiled > data and then looking for specific things that might work for pressing out > some Billion dollars from those companys. Patents do work, but they do > work mostly for the lawers income, and for companys that have the only > purpose for getting revenues from a "bought up" patent portfolio. Those > can be really nastys, even if you are Microsoft you dont like to pull out The best way to make this work would be to get ATI, nVidia, IBM and Intel into a room and do a cross licensing deal on the interface portion of the designs. If the four companies also enter into a mutual defense pact that will stop any third parties from causing trouble. On the other hand, this strategy doesn't work if you are currently, knowingly violating an existing valid patent. Keeping things secret does nothing to protect you from a patent infringement suit. All it does is make it a little harder to initially detect that there are grounds for one. Once someone files suit they will use the legal process to get all your secret designs anyway. I also question if keeping interfaces secret is gaining anyone any advantages over the competitors. Everyone involved possess an excellent engineering staff capable of easily figuring out what the other groups are doing. GPUs compete on functional units, chip processes, parallelism, marketing and manufacturing cost, not on the device driver programming model. My belief is that everyone involved would gain from contributing to a common pool of code for Linux. I don't believe that doing this is going to alter anyone's market share; but it will make the users a lot happier and breed goodwill for all involved. -- Jon Smirl jonsmirl@gmail.com