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Apple Patent Blocking PNG Development
Daniel writes: "Apple has a patent (U.S. Patent No. 5,379,129) on compositing a source and destination image using a mask image. This patent appears to read on alpha channel transparency, which the PNG and MNG file formats use. APPLE has declared in their patent statement to the Scalable Vector Graphics Working Group that their patent is only available for RAND Licensing. Since this patent appears to read on the PNG file format, Apple is hampering work on the PNG and MNG file formats.
Perhaps Apple would like to clarify this situation by explicitly stating that this patent does not cover the PNG and MNG file formats or by RF Licensing their patent to the PNG and MNG development groups.
Alternatively, the PNG and MNG developers are asking people to submit prior art in order to invalidate Apple's patent. SGI in particular appears to have prior art with their 'blendfunction.' Make sure the prior art you submit is older than May 08, 1992, the filing date of Apple's patent."
Fp
Yet another crppling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confrmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in th recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dad.
Fact: *BSD is dead
However, [IBM] hasn't tried to *hamper development* of projects using this strange and unusual UI covention.
No, but they've definitely used it to their advantage. I came across this information around a decade ago, so forgive me if I'm overly broad or forgotten some of the details, but this is how I understand IBM operated during the original Attack Of The Clones.
Let's say you and I decided back in 1986 to start building IBM compatible PC's. Hey, everyone's doing it, we'll sell 'em cheaper than IBM and make a fortune. So we get the board and case suppliers online, license our own version of the Phoenix BIOS and negotiate bundling licenses for MS-DOS, and we're underway.
Pretty soon after getting started, we get a nice little packet from IBM's legal department which contains photocopies of a few PC-technology-related patents held by IBM, and a polite letter wishing us success in our venture and inviting us to come on in to negotiate a patent-licensing agreement. You and I, being young turks who've never dealt with Big Blue, decide that IBM isn't going to bother with us over a few patents, and blithely continue our little operation.
Some time later (reports vary), there's a knock on our door. Several suits enter, one of them carrying a largish briefcase. They introduce themselves as legal representatives of the IBM Corporation, and in the course of time reveal the contents of the case. In it are complete copies of over four hundred patents with direct application in the construction of a fully IBM-compatible PC, covering everything from the ISA bus to the way the cursor moves when you hit the Enter key. They explain the situation to us, and finally dawn breaks upon our fevered brows.
We sign an agreement granting us permission to use any and all patents involved in PC construction, in return for a nice healthy royalty to IBM for every PC we make. We also sign a non-disclosure agreement which states that we will not only keep the agreement confidential, we will keep the existence of the agreement confidential.
Thus, for several years, IBM made money from every PC ever made, whether it had IBM on the label or not. I assume the patents in question have expired by now, but IBM is a technology-creating machine even now, and a large chunk of their revenue still comes from royalties.
Side note: I fully support this kind of use of intellectual property. If I create something and someone else is making money directly from my creation, I should profit as well. If someone is using my creation for free, however, that's another kettle of fish, and I lack room in these margins to deal with that issue fully.
2001-02-05 10:55:26 Hawaiian ISP: "No AOLers!" (articles,news)(rejected)
2001-10-31 16:00:26 Audiogalaxy blocking my own copyrighted songs (yro,internet)(rejected)
2001-11-14 02:59:15 Op-Ed piece advocates summary executions by police (articles,news)(rejected)
Now I see I should have submitted them like this:
Apple: "No AOLers!"
Microsoft blocking my colon
RMS advocates summary execution for people who don't refer to it as "Gnu Linux"
And now I'll be modded down as Offtopic. You just can't win. :P
But seriously, Slashdot does seem a bit on the tabloid side lately.
-Legion
Shit man, click links people. I clicked on the link to the W3 page (http://www.w3.org/2001/07/SVG10-IPR-statements.ht ml) and right there at the top clearly stated:
Update: Adobe have updated their license to clarify that it is, indeed, Royalty-Free.
Talk about quick overreaction. Maybe check out the links and info before posting a story next time?
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
And thats why you come back, time and time again. You love it you slag.