[PLUG] A bit confused about 2.6 kernel and X drivers

[Elliott Mitchell]

> From: AthlonRob <athlonrob at axpr.net>
> On Thursday 03 June 2004 04:16 pm, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > AthlonRob <athlonrob at axpr.net> writes:
> > > Legally, they'd find themselves fighting a lot of lawsuites, I fear,
> > > if they opened their driver code up.
> >
> > So what?  They should be thinking about their customers first, from
> > there the revenue will follow.
> 
> The issue as it was explained on the LKML a while back, is this:
> 
> In our Patent-happy world, it is virtually impossible to create any computer 
> hardware that doesn't step on some patent somebody has somewhere, especially 
> if you're designing something as complex as a graphics card.  It simply isn't 
> feasible to make sure your hardware violates no patents out there already.
> 
> If they released the source code to their drivers, everybody would begin 
> inspecting it for evidence of violations.  Regardless of whether or not there 
> are any violations, they're going to be sued.  As the only people to win in a 
> lawsuite are the lawyers and consultants, that would cause nVidia to lose 
> money even if they won the suites.  Guess who will foot that bill?

Just in case anyone didn't already know the USPTO has granted some
ridiculous patents:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,727,830.WKU.&OS=PN/6,727,830&RS=PN/6,727,830

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20040602_141034.html


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