StarDestroyer.Net BBS

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26125.html

"In January we revealed that Microsoft had acquired a chunk of SGI's graphics portfolio. At the time we mused if the Beast had a plan to scupper OpenGL.

"This was taking paranoia too far, wise heads told us.

"But in the minutes of the OpenGL developer meeting, it's clear that Microsoft has staked an IP claim on portions of the OpenGL spec, and it's willing to license it's patents on RAND terms..."

They're evil. Moreover, software patents are evil. Software patents are the single biggest thing holding back the development of good software. When you think about the fact that software companies must have legal departments to tell them whether they can implement certain features in their software without being sued, you begin to realize how badly the use of software patents has fucked the computer industry and us, the computer users.

To grant patents on computer software with the same 17 year expiry as patents for automotive or industrial technologies is absolutely ludicrous. Computer technology has a 2 year cycle, and a 17-year expiry is simply unreasonable. Moreover, the patent office has repeatedly demonstrated outstanding incompetence in deciding whether a patent application is legitimately "unobvious", so it routinely grants patents on solutions to problems which anyone could come up with independently if necessary. The whole system is completely fucked, and it works to the benefit of the big software companies, all of which have huge patent portfolios which they use as leverage against each other.

In effect, the big companies can freely develop software because they have countless frivolous patents which are probably being infringed by whoever might try to sue them in return. There exists a sort of "quid pro quo" between the big companies in this regard; as IBM put it, cross-patenting agreements are worth an "order of magnitude more" than the ability to actually sue someone for infringement. But small companies and home programmers don't have this lever, so software patents eventually squeeze small developers out of the market.

Software patents are just another example of the United States' backslide from capitalism into mercantilism. The US business community is very carefully creating a legal environment where entrenched firms who get tired of competing with smaller players can either grease the right palms in Congress or go to court and have the competition declared illegal by legislation or judgement.

The net result of all this will be to make the economic landscape of the US look rather like that of South America: a handfull of hyper-rich lording over millions of serfs. While this would be a very fitting end for the United States they will unfortunately take much of the rest of the world down with them...

This makes me sick to my stomach. It's too bad I'm an atheist, because I'd love to see Bill Gates in hell.

Just be glad that patenting wasn't around like it is today when they were coming up with the fundamental CS algorithims like the linked list.

Don;t worry too much about it. I don;t think this is going to be a big problem. Besides the various standards committees can hold M$ balls to the fire if they start screwing around too much.

BTW openGL has its mound of trouble irrespective of whether this goes RAND.

Correct me if I am wrong, but if you don;t sell something for profit, aren't you allowed to use patented materials. With openGL being free, this would seem to fall under this use.

They'll probably make some windows only OGL calls and require game-makers to use them or they'll ban them from using the windows platform.