MS Buys (Some) SGI Patents

FatRatBastard writes "The Reg. is reporting that Microsoft has purchased the rights to most of SGI's 3D patents. Speculation from the Reg hacks is that MS may want the patents more for crushing OpenGL support than for technology they're building inhouse." Well, crush is strong - but it would give them more leverage with some hardware vendors for sure.

Comments

'crush' OpenGL

[nsanit]

I know the original posting said it was strong language, but there are just too many games out there that use OpenGL that are too popular to be crushed.

Besides, OpenGL is goverened by a board of companies, not just SGI.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[T.E.D.]

Besides, OpenGL is goverened by a board of companies, not just SGI.

It doesn't matter who "governs" OpenGL. All Microsoft has to do to kill it now is refuse to license their 3D patents to any hardware vendor who chooses to make OpenGL drivers instead of DirectX.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[MarkusQ]

T.E.D.: It doesn't matter who "governs" OpenGL. All Microsoft has to do to kill it now is refuse to license their 3D patents to any hardware vendor who chooses to make OpenGL drivers instead of DirectX.

Or even in addition to DirectX.

-- MarkusQ

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[grammar nazi]

1. Company A wants to improve their product.

2. Company A legally learns/purchases/adapts technologies from rival product.

3. As a result, company A's product is improved.

This sounds fair to me. It even sounds *gasp* competitive.

The grammar nazi doesn't have any problems with it. If Microsoft adapted many of the good technologies from Apple, Linux, etc. then I would probably start using it more often.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[nowt]

But are they a monopoly?

MS: "No.... we just extort standards!"

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[penguinboy]

Step 3 has yet to happen, in this case. Of course one can't guarantee that Microsoft is trying to be anti-competitive, but given their history it's remains a possibility that can't be ruled out ahead of time.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[JoshMKiV]

... As many new multiplayer games dump OpenGL to try to reduce cheating...

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[SirSlud]

3. As a result, company A's product is improved.

Often, these types of purchases are made just to run the newly bought foobar through the shredder. It's the easiest and most reliable way to win a competition. (On that note, I won't argue that its not competative .. just, in a bad way.) MS doesn't have much to gain from OpenGL, IMHO, and since the XBox, and Windows, etc is all DirectX'ed, I suspect they'd be more interested in running OpenGL into the ground than learning anything from it, incorperating it into DirectX, and then letting OpenGL go out in the middle of a large sunny grassy field so that they will meet on the market battlefield again. I mean really, I can't think of many companies that would do that in the first place, but MS would be the last company to do it.

>If Microsoft adapted many of the good technologies ..

What if they just bought every software company, and released a product that incorperated all the good technologies? We'd all die, cause what you like is different than what I like, so I don't mind having a choice and choosing differently than you. The notion of a 'right' solution is BS, so ensuring that fish A doesn't nibble on every other fish in the pond is critical to maintaining consumer confidence and a healthy economic ecosystem (nevermind encouraging competition and innovation). It'd be a very incestuous market with not much new to show for itself very often ...

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[UberLame]

Who knows what MS wants long term, but in the near future, Direct3D isn't ready to replace GL for real work. I'm sure MS wants to move in that direction though.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[SirSlud]

It'd be a very incestuous market with not much new to show for itself very often ...

... which is to say that the MS in that scenario would never invent anything, and that all the other fish would want to stop living, cause everytime they had a new idea, it'd just be bought from them and bastardized for the masses. People don't do stuff just for money; people want to see their innovative babies through to customer satisfaction. If ideas keep getting snatched up and implemented by the guy who likes to ejaculate his products prematurely on the market, it ruins it for everyone. This is why I don't support the scenario you described as a particularly healthy one in the long term.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Glock27]

It doesn't matter who "governs" OpenGL. All Microsoft has to do to kill it now is refuse to license their 3D patents to any hardware vendor who chooses to make OpenGL drivers instead of DirectX.

No one makes OpenGL drivers "instead of" DirectX. Every card I'm aware of supports both. I assure you, if Microsoft were to try something so predatory, there would be a huge backlash. (Microsoft does sit on the OpenGL ARB by the way.) I wouldn't worry about the future of OpenGL unless viable alternatives are found for both Linux (Unix) and Macintosh. I find that highly unlikely.

My guess is this is more aimed at leverage versus NVIDIA, Microsoft's Xbox chip supplier.

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Gaijin42]

SGI had that power as well. They chose to sell that power to microsoft. They were not forced. Just because you like SGI's policies better than Microsoft's policies does not invalidate the right of ownership. (Assuming for the argument, that the patents in question are legitimate non-trivial patents)

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Zeinfeld]

It doesn't matter who "governs" OpenGL. All Microsoft has to do to kill it now is refuse to license their 3D patents to any hardware vendor who chooses to make OpenGL drivers instead of DirectX.

Microsoft does not have a history of using software patents to block rivals. Unlike Apple for example who used a copyright theory to block other companies attempts to use the Xerox-Parc GUI interface. Apple failed to intimidate Microsoft, but they broke Atari whose GEM O/S had a far better user interface as well as multi-tasking.

Using blocking patents is not a logical strategy for Microsoft. In the first place it might well involve an anti-trust violation, particularly now that the courts have rulled that Microsoft is a monopoly. Most companies can refuse to grant patent licenses on whatever grounds they like, monopolies are considerably more restricted. The main strategic reason not to use patents as blocking tactics is that there is little point when you have 95% of a market.

The only patent I can think of offhand that MSFT uses in a blocking fashion is the Kerberos extension patent. They make sure that people know that the technology is patented however.

I can see Microsoft using the patents in several ways. One would be simply to stop someone else buying them and launching a suit. Patent suits are cheap to file and expensive to defend. Another reason is simply to have ammo to fire back if they were sued by a competitor.

Probably the best reason for Microsoft to buy the patents however is simply for advertising, to project itself as a market leader in the 3D space as the successor to SGI. Another reason might be to enhance future XBOX versions (although chances are that Microsoft Sony and Nintendo will come to some reciprocal licensing deal).

Incidentally if SGI is selling the patent portfolio I doubt that a sale of their other assets can be far behind. It is pretty much their crown jewels.

The restrictions that MSFT might well make on open source use of technology they own the patents to would be requiring reciprocal licenses and prohibiting what they call viral licenses. The reciprocal license issue is necessary simply to maintain the 'defensive' aspect of the patent. RMS will get real tweaked about prohibiting viral licenses, but so what?

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Mr_Matt]

It's not so much that Microsoft has the right to purchase these patents as to what Microsoft intends to do with them, now that they own them. It's still too early to tell, of course - even putting aside my own perspective as a "Linux Zealot (TM)" it wouldn't be fair to assume that Microsoft will necessarily Do The Wrong Thing. What worries people (and me) is Microsoft's track record.

You're absolutely right - SGI had the same power to lord OpenGL over the masses, and they have sold that power. What is troublesome is the fact that SGI let OpenGL live, and Microsoft may not.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

> Incidentally if SGI is selling the patent portfolio I doubt that a sale of their other
> assets can be far behind. It is pretty much their crown jewels.

My guess is that this isn't the crown jewels they've let go - remember Fahrenheit? I bet this sale is all the co-developed technologies that came out of that (deadly) partnership.

And I bet SGI is saying 'good riddance' too!

Mr Thinly Sliced

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[TWR]

Apple failed to intimidate Microsoft, but they broke Atari whose GEM O/S had a far better user interface as well as multi-tasking.

Bullshit.

Read http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Gem/History/gem1.htm l. It outlines why Apple sued Atari over GEM/1. Basically, they just copied many interface features from the original Mac: disks on the desktop, trash on the desktop, even down to how icons and the toolbar were shaded. Apple didn't "break" Atari; they demanded Atari change these blatant interface rip-offs, and Atari did. After all of this was settled, there were GEM/2, GEM/3, GEM/4, GEM/5 and later versions under different names. Hardly sounds like "broken" to me.

-jon

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[TWR]

And let me correct myself: Digital Research wrote GEM, not Atari. The Atari ST and the IBM PC could both run GEM, though.

-jon

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[iomud]

Microsoft needs more competitive products? Who are they competing with again?

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[David Gould]

Just because you like SGI's policies better than Microsoft's policies does not invalidate the right of ownership

No, that doesn't invalidate it, assuming you believe that the "right of ownership" of knowledge was ever valid in the first place. However, if you've believed all along that the very concept that it's possible in any sense to "own" knowledge, information, and ideas was bad, dangerous, and destructive, then this is just one more reason why.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Gaijin42]

If SGI sold those rights to Microsoft, with full knowledge of what MS may do with them, then SGI is no better than MS.

They wanted money, the just let MS do the dirty work in exchange for the money. :)

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Master Bait]

I think you've been reading too much Ayn Rand!

1. Company A wants to improve their product.
1. Company A wants more profits. (real world)

2. Company A legally learns/purchases/adapts technologies from rival product.
2. Company buys rival company or company's product. They have virtually unlimited assets to do this because they are a monopoly (real world).

3. As a result, company A's product is improved.
2. Company A discontinues rival company's product. Company A's product gains total market share, even though it is inferior (real world).

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Mr_Matt]

If SGI sold those rights to Microsoft, with full knowledge of what MS may do with them, then SGI is no better than MS.

You could be right - assuming that SGI knows what MS is going to do with the OpenGL patents. Let's put it this way - if I sold somebody my car, knowing that they're only buying my car to run down little old ladies at the Senior Center, then yes, I'm no better than the low-life I sold my car to. But generally people with plans like that tend not to make public those plans. Am I then still culpable for selling that car? Sure, I knew darn well that it was a possibility that the buyer could run people over with the car. They might also be buying it to haul groceries. Unless I know beforehand, it would be hard to say that I was responsible to the little old ladies for selling that car.

I doubt very much that Microsoft would go to SGI, say "We'd like to buy OpenGL to destroy it, how much do you want for it?" Does that seem unlikely to you as well?

They wanted money, the just let MS do the dirty work in exchange for the money. :)

Man, I'm as much of a conspiracy theorist as anybody else, but why would SGI, after years of development and support of GL, decide to cash in on its demise? There's many more uses for GL than just games, you know, and DirectX doesn't seem to be the choice of those non-gaming uses. Seems more likely that Microsoft made an offer that SGI couldn't refuse - happens all the time. It's just too bad SGI threw out the baby with the bathwater.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[MrResistor]

One thing about MS' track record is that they do have a history of having their own products compete with themselves and letting the market decide which one survives. Argueably, DirectX has already beaten OpenGL, so maybe that's a moot point.

As a patent, though, this could be very bad if MS decides it wants OpenGL to die, since patents cover ALL implementations of the concept covered in the patent. As such, MS essentially owns mesa, and that makes me very uncomfortable.

One can always hope, though, for legal relief. Perhaps this will be the case that kills software patents?

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the graphics side of SGI's business is no longer where they make their money. Expect them to reposition themselves into high performance computing. Additionally, watch for their new products. They're not dead yet, they have a good bit of life left. They're hoping for a turnaround and have been making numbers for a while now. War always helps them with sales to the government and all the employees they cut put them back in line with reality.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[pmz]

...there are just too many games out there that use OpenGL that are too popular to be crushed.

It isn't just games. There is a lot of genuine industry-driving software out there based on OpenGL. For example, high-end CAD systems on UNIX workstations (that have OpenGL-accelerated graphics hardware).

If Microsoft denied a company, such as Sun Microsystems or IBM, the right to manufacture or distribute OpenGL graphics systems to run OpenGL-based CAD software, then, overnight, a whole enormous aspect of the world economy--mechanical design and manufaturing--needs to be done on Windows-based workstations. This really really really sucks.

If Microsoft builds a world where I have to do software development, mechanical design, everything using Microsoft software and hardware, then that's a world where I will quit my career and become a monk. Having nothing is better than having Microsoft-everything.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[BeeShoo]

"...Unless I know beforehand, it would be hard to say that I was responsible to the little old ladies for selling that car."

Unless the party you were selling the car to had a well known history (that you were fully aware of) of running down little old ladies with newly purchased cars.
I'd put MS into that category...

...only as an analogy, of course :-)

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Sunlighter]

All Microsoft has to do to kill [OpenGL] now is refuse to license their 3D patents to any hardware vendor who chooses to make OpenGL drivers instead of DirectX.

And all the hardware vendors have to do is refuse to manufacture video cards that support DirectX unless they are allowed to also support OpenGL. Write your hardware vendors!

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Zeinfeld]

Read http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Gem/History/gem1.htm l. It outlines why Apple sued Atari over GEM/1. Basically, they just copied many interface features from the original Mac: disks on the desktop, trash on the desktop, even down to how icons and the toolbar were shaded.

Bullcrap on your bullshit.

Apple stole the basic ideas from Parc. The GEM lawsuit was pure intimidation. Apple calculated that they could monoplolize the GUI market with aggressive lawsuits. Apple sued Microsoft over Windows even though it looks nothing like MAC.

In the end the lawsuit strategy ended up almost destroying Apple. The management got so fat lazy and complacent that they thought they had the GUI market in perpetuity. They invested research dollars in practically anything other than their core O/S, Dylan, Newton you name it, but not multi tasking or memory protection or a decent TCP/IP stack. They did not believe it was necessary

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Mr_Matt]

Unless the party you were selling the car to had a well known history (that you were fully aware of) of running down little old ladies with newly purchased cars.

Ouch, you're right. I'm trying really hard to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, though, as I'm sure SGI was. Reality though? Grandma better watch out. :)

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[davechen]

Well, SGI's stock hit a low of 31 cents last fall, so I'm guessing they desperately needed the money to stay alive. They sold off the only thing of any value that they had left. For the past couple of years its been a question of whether or not SGI could manage to stay alive. Even though the stock has rebounded to $2.61, I'm still not optimistic.

dave

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[BeeShoo]

Here we go... one more time...

Apple did not STEAL anything from Parc. They PURCHASED the rights to Parc's ideas to augment their existing GUI. Parc made money on the deal. Of course it was nothing compared to what it was worth, but...

If you're actually interested in what happened rather than perpetuating this myth, check out GUI History

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot. I'm glad nazis didn't win a war because you would read their version of history as bible. Atari had the OS developed before Apple but Apple came out with the computer first, so shut your stupid hole and don't let anymore shit to come out.

btw, small monochrome monitors will be the new trend, go buy one. It has been written, so it must be true.

K

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Zeinfeld]

Apple did not STEAL anything from Parc. They PURCHASED the rights to Parc's ideas to augment their existing GUI. Parc made money on the deal. Of course it was nothing compared to what it was worth, but...

However they got it the fact remains Apple had no right to claim control over the use of the technology by others. Nor for that matter did Xerox since they never took out the patents.

The whole Apple IP strategy was FUD from the start, using copyright rather than a patent to attempt to protect a design. But they managed to scare off the software houses from supporting the Atari machine.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Bob Uhl]

Apple stole the basic ideas from Parc [sic].

You lie, or are mistaken. Apple bought the right to talk to the Xerox PARC engineers. The use of the GUI was on the up-and-up. The GEM lawsuit was essentially a trade-dress suit--which is fair. So was the Windows one, which was slightly less fair, but still, I think, within the realm of decent acts. Microsoft had previously indicated acceptance of Apple's claims--surely then it should have been held to the deals it made.

There are technical reasons that Macs went in for co-operative multi-tasking, unprotected memory &c. They don't make a lot of sense nowadays, but they were once compelling.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[dse]

Microsoft does not have a history of using software patents to block rivals.

Microsoft did use its patents on the Active Streaming Format to block an open-source implementation. VirtualDub once supported editing ASF files but the author was forced to remove it. Granted this wasn't a patent Microsoft purchased, and in many cases Microsoft is using things other than patents to block rivals.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[csbruce]

The only patent I can think of offhand that MSFT uses in a blocking fashion is the Kerberos extension patent. They make sure that people know that the technology is patented however.

I thought that the Kerberos embrace-and-extend attack was protected as trade secret distributed with a non-disclosure EULA [as part of an open-source-developer-contaimination strategy]. No patents involved.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[gtaluvit]

There's always the issue of what about other platforms? Sure, linux isn't exactly known as a 3d gaming platform but Mac's still have a tiny marketshare for gaming. What will Mac be left with?

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

In the end the lawsuit strategy ended up almost destroying Apple. The management got so fat lazy and complacent that they thought they had the GUI market in perpetuity. They invested research dollars in practically anything other than their core O/S, Dylan, Newton you name it, but not multi tasking or memory protection or a decent TCP/IP stack. They did not believe it was necessary

Right on, but it doesn't discount what the parent poster said. Apple's management might have been smug and following a doomed strategy, but Apple's laywers were quickly restrained by the courts to the 'trade dress' of some particular user interface elements. The look of the Mac trashcan came from Apple, not PARC, and GEM had blatently ripped them off.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[nagora]

Don't talk rubbish. I remember the Lisa coming out and everyone talking about how it looked like the Xerox stuff in that old issue of Byte. Apple may have bought or hired the engineers but they were copying someone else, end of story. Then they cried to the courts when other people copied Xerox too.

"Blatant rip-offs"! Don't make me laugh.

TWW

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[njdj]

The restrictions that MSFT might well make on open source use of technology they own the patents to would be requiring reciprocal licenses and prohibiting what they call viral licenses

Yet another Microsoft fan blathering about "viral licenses" - why did this rant get modded up?

"Viral license" is Microsoft-speak for the standard GPL license, which makes the perfectly reasonable provision that if you use code which the community has given to you, you have to contribute any changes you make back to the community, if you distribute the result. Without that provision, anyone who tries to contribute source code to the community can turn out to be working (unpaid of course) for Microsoft. Microsoft will take your code, make some changes, and use it in a product that you cannot legally copy. This is not paranoia, this is reality - MS did it with TCP/IP implementations. What they have done with Kerberos implementations is even worse.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[BlackGriffen]

You have this precisely backwards, my friend. M$ wants DirectX to be the only standard for 3D because that will strengthen their OS monopoly in a non-obvious way. I'd bet that their original intention was to use their OS as the leverage to take the 3D market, crush the competition, and make it so that Windows is the only OS capable of supported 3D at a cost-effective price. With all of the antitrust attention they've been getting, they can't exactly take that path without a great deal of risk. With the patents, however, M$ now has a "legitimate" method of crushing the competition. Crushing the competition using their OS is definitely an anti-trust violation, but crushing the competition with valid patents is arguably an anti-trust violation. The key is that since it can be validly argued either way, the best the opposition could hope for is a long and drawn out court battle with some of the deepest pockets in the world.

Remember, Bill always thinks in terms of how to gain an advantage. If these patents didn't potentially give M$ some key advantage, it wouldn't have bought them.

BlackGriffen

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... care to enlighten some of us as to how OpenGL and cheating are somehow related?

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Llywelyn]

Modern (and relatively clueless) Objectivists aside, I suspect that if Ayn Rand studied Microsoft she would have relaized that they are a case in point of the kind of monopoly she didn't like.

The Government Created kind.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[spitzak]

GEM definately did copy the style of the Apple interface, including the appearance of the icons on the desktop and the title bars and resize handle of the windows. The Star did not have window borders (other than a 1-pixel line) and the icons were different with very few diagonal lines, and did not have a menu bar at the top.

To the other poster who said there were technical reasons Apple did not do multitasking, that would appear to be false, as the Lisa already did (cooperative) multitasking, and so did GEM and several DOS clones, and Unix-like systems, all on hardware commonly available then. Memory protection and true time slicing multitasking was available for only a slightly greater price such as was in workstations or in the MicroVax. The lack of Multitasking in the Mac was probably one of the biggest mistakes they did, otherwise I think they would have wiped Unix and Windows off the desktop.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[TheMMaster]

I doubt very much that Microsoft would go to SGI, say "We'd like to buy OpenGL to destroy it, how much do you want for it?" Does that seem unlikely to you as well?
no, but if microsoft comes to your house and says "We want to buy openGL from you" wouldn't your first reaction be "why" and not "how much"
As much as I love SGI, I think they know what microsoft wants to do with GL, but for the moment I don't think SGI will let GL crash and burn, I suspect Microsoft wants the migh-end 3D modeling stations that still largely run *IX...

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.3dlabs.com for example -- There's lots of high end cards that support OpenGL (primarily a pro 3D API) and do not support DirectX (primarily a game API).

AKA - There's a whole world beyond PriceWatch :)

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I suspect Jesus, Mosas, and Mohommad wouldn't like Microsoft either. Is that what you are getting at?

Ayn Rand never grasped regulated capitalism or the modern corporate super-state that existed right under her nose because it was too subtle for her simplistic pro-Capitalist anti-Communist arguments.

That being said, Bill Gates is practically a character right out of one of her books, and I suspect that she would idealize and defend the rise of Microsoft.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[ImaLamer]

If Microsoft adapted many of the good technologies from Apple, Linux, etc. then I would probably start using it more often.


Ok, then go get XP! Recycle bin? "Built-in support for high-performance multiprocessor systems." "A reliable foundation you can count on - keeps your computer up and running when you need it most." "Remote Desktop - remotely access your Windows XP Professional PC, from another Windows PC, so you can work with all of your data and applications while away from your office." "Internet Connection Firewall - automatically shields your PC from unauthorized access when you're on the Internet." "Encrypting File System - protects sensitive data in files that are stored on disk using the NTFS file system." "Access Control - restrict access to selected files, applications, and other resources." "Group Policy - simplifies the administration of groups of users or computers." "Multi-lingual User Interface (MUI) add-on - change the user interface language to get localized dialog boxes, menus, help files, dictionaries, and proofing tools etc." Hell, there is even multi-user support! Even an 'administrator' account!

How about when they come up with something on their own... use the products.

Oh, don't forget:

4. Company B goes out of business

5. Customers loose rights to technology C

6. Company A is the only product in town.

*Italic quotes are from MS themselves

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[kcbrown]

Using blocking patents is not a logical strategy for Microsoft. In the first place it might well involve an anti-trust violation, particularly now that the courts have rulled that Microsoft is a monopoly.

Yeah, and we've all seen for ourselves all of the nasty, horrible things that happen to Microsoft as a result of anti-trust action. Like ... er ... umm ... well, I'm sure there's been something!

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Zeinfeld]

I thought that the Kerberos embrace-and-extend attack was protected as trade secret distributed with a non-disclosure EULA [as part of an open-source-developer-contaimination strategy]. No patents involved.

There is a clickwrap agreement on the document that states that the mechanism is IP of Microsoft. I asked one of the engineers why they didn't use a patent, they said they had and did I want to license it.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Vardamir]

Become a monk, or take justice into your own hands - whichever comes first ;). Also, I suspect that, overnight, a new 3D API would spring up in OpenGL's place, probably borrowing many features from both DirectX and OpenGL. This is due to choice of architecture in a platform as much as it is the OS. Lets face it IA-64 ain't all that and a bag of potatoe chips, neither will it be in 3-4 years. It's also outrageously expensive. Thats the price you pay for bad compatability in the world of Wintel, folks.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[abdulla]

Maybe thats why they bought the patents, after all, all consoles are at roots graphical, if they have leverage on a graphical stance to put pressure on the other companies such as Sony and Nintendo to beckon, they can dominate the console market. My question is, why isn't Sony doing graphics work, after all aren't they a bigger company than Microsoft that relies on graphics across the board? Or has microsoft already sunk there teeth in to Sony with VIAO and other such products that rely on Microsoft technology?

As far as I'm concerned, I'm buying a GameCube!

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember how Ayn Raynd thought that the USSR was Socialist? That was so hilarious. She kept trying to discredit Socialism by using the USSR as an example and she seemed to think Capitalism and Socialism are synonomus.

It is merituous of notice, that one, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, had a stylish goatee and moustache. Ayn Raynd had a great hate for the 'Communists' that made her family poor. It is no coincidence that in her cult she made all the male members shave off their facial hair, knowing this fact.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

"She kept trying to discredit Socialism by using the USSR as an example and she seemed to think Capitalism and Socialism are synonomus."

I meant to say:

She kept trying to discredit Socialism by using the USSR as an example and she seemed to think Communism and Socialism are synonomus..

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

"Modern (and relatively clueless) Objectivists aside, I suspect that if Ayn Rand studied Microsoft she would have relaized that they are a case in point of the kind of monopoly she didn't like."

I think you do not understand Ayn Raynd's movement, Objectivism. There is no kind of Objectivist, outside of the clueless kind. Their leader and all of the followers of that movement have been dim and will continue to be dollops.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[DeathPenguin]

>>1. Company A wants to improve their product.
2. Company A legally learns/purchases/adapts technologies from rival product.
3. As a result, company A's product is improved.
This sounds fair to me. It even sounds *gasp* competitive.

MS buying OpenGL patents is like Intel buying Alpha. They aren't going to improve their own products with the newly acquired technology, they're gonna kill it off and push their own arguably inferior technology.

Re:'crush' OpenGL

[Benjiman McFree]

msft buying the opengl patent *is* anti-competitive in itself, as opengl is the only 3d competitor to msft's 3d technology and while i sincerely doubt they will refuse to license opengl to video card makers(who would stop them if they did decide to bury opengl).. here is the likely senarios.

they will charge 2-3 times as much to license out opengl vs. the official msft 3d technology; if msft can make opengl to unnaffordable, then you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that linux and 3d's lifespan is limited to the lifespan of existing video chipsets allready produced.

--Software patents sux; KILL THE ANTICHRISTS!

First SoftImage, now SGI

[Stavr0]

Looks like MS wants to muscle in ILM's territory ...

Re:First SoftImage, now SGI

[__aaakhl8499]

SoftImage is now owned by Avid (I believe) - Microsoft bought them, forced the NT port out the door (probably broke up the drive behind the SGI product), and then sold them to Avid...

I believe Windows is the primary platform for XSI...

Re:First SoftImage, now SGI

[gamgee5273]

I'm not saying that I agree with your conjecture, but George Lucas against Bill Gates? I pick Lucas, hands down. ILM has a history of innovation - Star Wars wouldn't have existed without it. MS doesn't seem to be angling for ILM (if this is about high-end 3D applications as opposed to games) as it is trying to stop Mac OS X from gaining a handhold in the industry via Pixar and Disney.

Re:First SoftImage, now SGI

[Proteus Child]

Looks like MS wants to muscle in ILM's territory ...

There's a mental image - sitting in the audience watching episode II and the screen suddenly turns bright blue in the middle of a fighter battle...

Re:First SoftImage, now SGI

[Anonymous Coward]

*glances around*

MacOSX is in no danger of gaining a foothold in this industry. We have a few older macs around for 2D manipulation, but our 3D workstations are in the process of being migrated from IRIX to Linux just as fast as we can port our internal tools.

Re:First SoftImage, now SGI

[srvivn21]

Nah, that would mean the projector was running some version of Windows.

The film would show fine, but it would just be past deadline and over budget.

Re:First SoftImage, now SGI

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so you're going to use the Linux version of Maya? Oh wait, there isn't one.

How about the Linux version of Softimage? Oh wait, there isn't one.

Well, there are always the Linux versions of Lightwave and Electric Image! Oh wait, there aren't any.

Well, I guess you can always use that open-source wonder, "Blender"! Yeah, it's just as good as the commercial packages!

...

What part of "this industry" do you work in, anyway? Joe's Discount Visual Effects?

Re:First SoftImage, now SGI

[gamgee5273]

Well, I think you might want to look at where Jobs has been pointing Pixar. Eventually you'll see Macs in there - he said as much even three years ago. Now, a truly interesting fight would be for a Pixar takeover of Apple (or vice versa) vs. an MS move into digital film editing/making. People keep pushing for Apple to buy SGI - can you imagine the power of an IRIX-strengthened OS X? More than likely a pipedream, but still a cool idea...

Re:First SoftImage, now SGI

[PotatoHead]

A|W is shipping maya on Linux right now.

pushing directx?

[oo7tushar]

I know that directx has improved greatly over the years making it much nicer and easier to use. Does anybody know if they're porting it to Linux?

WINE supports it, but are they going to modify so that it can be used like glut and opengl in X apps?

Re:pushing directx?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, it's part of a concerted effort to port MS Office to Linux as well. What are you smoking?

Re:pushing directx?

[scott1853]

Yes, MS is working very hard on creating software to support rival operating systems so that they can create a competitive marketplace.

Re:pushing directx?

[sql*kitten]

Yes, MS is working very hard on creating software to support rival operating systems

Office for Macintosh, anyone?

OpenGL 2

[tweakt]

Wasn't there supposed to be some great new version of Open GL to take on Direct X? I guess that'll never happen though.

Re:OpenGL 2

[scott1853]

Who says OpenGL can't already take on DirectX.

As long as Carmack keeps using it, that's a major score right there. The latest Nascar game also has support for both DirectX and OpenGL, and OpenGL is recommended for GeForce cards. Any good developer can create a layer of abstraction that will allow them to easily work in either environment.

As fas as version 2.0 goes, I think they're still taking suggestions on what people want added.

Re:OpenGL 2

[Anonymous Coward]

The final spec for OpenGL 2 is planned to be released at Siggraph. It has been supported by all ARB members including Microsoft.

Here are the proposals: http://www.3dlabs.com/support/developer/ogl2/index .htm

Re:OpenGL 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Well directx is not just about the "graphics" side of the app/game, most app/games really like OpenGL, mainly because it is more mature, featureful, widely used by undergrads, etc etc....(there's a lot of reasons - and yeah Carmack does explain it best).

DirectX is a great product, the three who initiated it on contract for M$ were virtually spat out soon after its beginnings (they were not Microserfs)....some more bitter than others, however, OpenGL is considered to be better than Direct3D in a lot of ways, only recently has Direct3D begun to get some very nice techniques in the API that OpenGL has not, and thus, there is a call for OpenGL 2.0, and this M$ patent stuff wont stop that. The call is out for all types of new cool manipulations that might be needed in the future for cool eye candy. Hop to it imagineers!! :)

Disagree with The Register

[Marx_Mrvelous]

I don't think that MS owning these patents will really help microsoft "crush" OpenGL. They're doing that already with DirectX.

I have to admit, the one thing MS does very well is a fast development cycle. DirectX is a very mature, feature-rich 3d API. Everyone supports it already. The only way OpenGL can compete is to attain strong developers, maintain a good ease-of-programming and give game deisgners and card venders a solid reason to support it.

Re:Disagree with The Register

[Anonymous Coward]

Indiana Academy? Class of 1999? Hmm... I do believe I know you.

Re:Disagree with The Register

[scott1853]

Whoa big fella.

"Fast development cycle"

You do realize that equates to "we don't need QA", also "don't bother implementing the last 500 features on that list", and don't forget "don't waste time writing good documentation".

Re:Disagree with The Register

[L0rdJedi]

Everyone supports it already? It's been out since at least 1996. It's been at least 5 years. I would hope "everyone" would be supporting the MS sponsored 3D API for Windows.

Besides, two words: Id Software.

4 Titles: Quake, Quake2, Quake3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

If you need more, Half-Life.

In other words, every major game out there that I know of supports OpenGL. And as was mentioned in a previous post, John Carmack has made a conscious decision to develop only for OpenGL. That also means Id can port their games to Linux and other *nixes that much faster.

And Microsoft isn't exactly crushing OpenGL with DirectX. The only way they'll be able to do that would be by buying the patents and then refusing to license the technology without a DirectX version.

Re:Disagree with The Register

[Marx_Mrvelous]

I dunno, I don't know anyone named "Anonymous cowards" ;)

Re:Disagree with The Register

[jtdubs]

OpenGL 2.0 is due out "shortly." If you've followed it's deveopment much or read any of the proposed specs that 3dfx has released than you would probably feel differently.

Yes, DirectX has a fast development cycle. This also implies that they release new APIs frequently and force code migration.

OpenGL is far more mature as evidenced that even though no new OpenGL spec has come out for years it is still just as feature-rich as Direct3D.

With OpenGL 2.0 having amazing support for pixel and fragment shaders and a entire reworking of the transformation pipeline, OpenGL will be able to PORTABLY do absolutley everything D3D can do now, and will be able to do for the next 5 years.

Justin Dubs

Re:Disagree with The Register

[Anonymous Coward]

My website

The site is not completed yet, but at least you know who I am now. I go by SlashChick here since my other account hit 50 karma. :P

Re:Disagree with The Register

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is that?

Re:Disagree with The Register

[Anonymous Coward]

You know how this place is filled with testosterone filled geeks with too much 'one handed' websurfing going on. And you, an attractive young lady and all......

Re:Disagree with The Register

[Anonymous Coward]

hehehe... well, thanks. :P

If I get that ZDNet article about .Net posted, it will become even worse. ;)

Re:Disagree with The Register

[MtViewGuy]

I remember the good old days when DirectX 3.0 was a major disaster for everyone involved--a lot of display drivers wouldn't work with DirectX 3.

Fortunately, once Microsoft got to DirectX 5.0 things were way better, with much more hardware support. Indeed, today's DirectX 8.1 is a very powerful and mature API for sound and graphics in general, and is well-liked by many developers.

IMHO, what Linux really needs is the equivalent of DirectX. I believe there are several Open Source development projects that is aimed specifically for better multimedia in Linux that uses DirectX-like API's.

Re:Disagree with The Register

[BitwizeGHC]

With OpenGL 2.0 having amazing support for pixel and fragment shaders and a entire reworking of the transformation pipeline, OpenGL will be able to PORTABLY do absolutley everything D3D can do now, and will be able to do for the next 5 years.

Not if Microsoft owns and refuses to license the patents!

Microsoft has had its heart set on migrating the 3D market -- all of it, not just games -- to Direct3D. The Fahrenheit project was a collaboration with SGI to do precisely this: it essentially swallowed up OpenGL as a "legacy layer" on top of a New, Improved Direct3D. Microsoft has the money, the business clout, and now that SGI has bowed out of the partnership and gotten cozy with the Linux crowd, the motive to take the market by force on its own if need be. Must be nice to be a monopoly.

Re:Disagree with The Register

[chrish]

3D Labs is spearheading OpenGL 2.0, not 3dfx (which is long-dead at this point; their assets sold to nVidia).

Re:Disagree with The Register

[jtdubs]

Yeah. Sorry. Typo. It's been a long day, I knew it started with a 3d and the brain said 3dfx. Nostalgia I suppose.

Justin Dubs

Re:Disagree with The Register

[jakew]

I agree that Linux would benefit from richer sound and graphics APIs, but strongly disagree that they should resemble DirectX.

I've used DirectX briefly. It's horrible. It's COM-based, and like everything COM-based, you have to type half a page of code to have the same effect as a normal function call. I haven't got the url handy, but there's a comparison of DX and OpenGL on the net somewhere. OpenGL is a lot simpler.

Embrace, not crush

[Chocky2]

They won't want to "crush" opengl, too big a market. This will provide a lot a leverage in that market, then they just "embrace and extend" the standards a little bit. Not like they've done that before!

Re:Embrace, not crush

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, OpenGL extends into markets that DirectX cannot touch, such as high end 3D. Unless Microsoft wants to port Direct3D to Irix, Solaris, etc... Still the vendors won't be happy after hundreds of man-years spend on refining applications to squeeze the most out of a 3D card.

Just as you would use an 18 wheeler instead of a Corvette to pull a trailer full of forklifts, you would use a 128MB Oxygen GVX (http://www.provantage.com/scripts/go.dll/-s/ffagp vid) card instead of a Geforce 3 for 3D studio Max.

Does SGI even own OpenGL??

[lukegalea1234]

Does SGI even own OpenGL??
It's an open standard.. isn't that what the OPEN stands for?

Re:Does SGI even own OpenGL??

[oo7tushar]

They can own patents to methods and procedures and techniques in it. Just like genes, you can't own the actual gene but you can patent specific portions that you disocvered (patenting how they work and techniques with it)

Re:Does SGI even own OpenGL??

[homer_ca]

No, but they own patents to many features of the OpenGL standard. Just like how Frauenhofer owns many patents on MPEG audio.

Re:Does SGI even own OpenGL??

[damiam]

For example, it seems MS now holds a patent on alpha blending. Scary.

Re:Does SGI even own OpenGL??

[abdulla]

OpenGL was IrixGL without the window system bindings

Only the first step.

[Rothfuss]

I believe this is just the first step in a larger attempt by Microsoft to buy the entire 3rd Dimension.

I'm really going to hate having to pay them royalties when I'm using it.

-Rothfuss

Re:Only the first step.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they don't want to own the third dimension, they just want to own the 3d pie charts.

Re:Only the first step.

[Daemonator]

lol. I was gonna say something similiar, just thinking that they want to at least own gibson virtual 3rd dimension. Lol...

Re:Only the first step.

[L0rdJedi]

So this gets modded up to Insightful (from Funny) and the reply gets modded down as OffTopic?! What the hell is going on?!

Re:Only the first step.

[mandolin]

I believe this is just the first step in a larger attempt by Microsoft to buy the entire 3rd Dimension.

There goes the neighborhood. Time to move to Flatland.

Re:Only the first step.

[gmhowell]

I'll move to flatland. I figure I'll at least be a square. Maybe a pentagon.

Re:Only the first step.

[pyros]

I can just see MS asking SGI about the thrid dimension....

SGI: okay, take an ordinary square
MS: slow down there egghead.

Re:Only the first step.

[JabberWokky]

I'll move to flatland. I figure I'll at least be a square. Maybe a pentagon.

Be a square. Otherwise you run the risk of having little flatland planes flown into you.

obConcept: In flatland, three fixed broadcast antennas can perform "GPS". But do you need "line of sight"? Are all EM waves polarized? Ahhh... no... not the "Physics in Flatland" Nightmares again. --
Evan "I wanna be a line segment" E.

John Carmack on Direct 3D

[green pizza]

http://www.bluesnews.com/archives/carmack122396.ht ml

Now, I know D3D has undergone many changes since then, but without a 100% about-face, I doubt they could fix the major coding issues.

Re:John Carmack on Direct 3D

[Matey-O]

Dude, John's .plan was dated 199_6_!

Re:John Carmack on Direct 3D

[dzym]

How about this one.

A log can change in 5 years, eh?

I mean, god forbid that Microsoft actually improves their products?

Re:John Carmack on Direct 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey look, a pointless comment that contains wothless 5 1/2 year old information that's modded up to +. And looky here, it was posted within 6 minutes of the story being posted, what a suprise.

Re:John Carmack on Direct 3D

[alanh]

Check out some of Mr Carmack's
more recent thoughts on Direct3d and OpenGL.

Re:John Carmack on Direct 3D

[John Whitley]

Simplified Account of Reality Ahead

Actually, D3D, as of DirectX 8, has pretty much been gutted and is now nearly a line for line translation from OpenGL. The D3D design has been asymptotically converging towards OpenGL's design in many ways. Unsurprising, as the MS architects and developers were continually faced with 1) the same problems that OpenGL had been designed to address, and 2) a graphics developer market whose major experience has been OpenGL.

Re:John Carmack on Direct 3D

[SuiteSisterMary]

Mr. Carmack's current thoughts. Emphasis mine.

D3D is clunky, etc Not really true anymore. MS made large strides with each release, and DX8 can't be called a lousy API anymore. One can argue various points, but they are minor points. Anti-Microsoft forces have a bad habit of focusing on early problems, and not tracking the improvements that have been made in current versions. My rant of five years ago doesn't apply to the world of today.

Re:John Carmack on Direct 3D

[abdulla]

It has changed A LOT, I can vouch for that since I'm using it now (no, I do not worship satan). The main area where D3D is ahead of OpenGL right now though is in the unfied implementation of programmable hardware, I don't have to rewrite code for 3 different vendor extensions to OpenGL, it's just the one straight way that D3D specifies, another boon to the developer is D3DX, its just the easiest way to get a lot of 3D working quickly and its already been low-level optimised. The other 2 facts are that it isn't just D3D but the whole DirectX framework, we really do need an OpenX of some sort, I swear in the future I will try to help develop something like that, we need OpenGL/OpenAL/OpenML in one. The other thing is the API is written in C++, i don't care to start a language debate, but it helps in convenince when say multiply quaternions, it also has a backend binding to C so it retains C compatibility, these are things we need to see in OpenGL. More than GLU, we need a full set of utilities that rivals D3DX, GLQuaternion, GLMatrix, GLVector, etc.

How would this affect Mesa?

[adlam.bor]

How would this affect Mesa?

Hmmm

[Guitarzan]

So now MS can use some of the GL tech on improving Direct3D!

No, wait, that's crazy talk.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Improve it how?
D3D has more features and functionality than OpenGL. It has for a while now.
Irregardless of that, I don't think this is a OpenGL issue. MS wants the IP so it can continue to go forward with DX9 and beyond, without getting caught up in legal red tape. MS has actually 'cross licensed' technologies so other hardware vendors can use it. It helps hardware vendors out in the end. Instead of licensing texture compression from S3, MS licensed it, and then the rest of us got it for 'free' for D3D. We still can't put it in our OpenGL driver, since S3 wants a licensing fee if we implement that extention.

I think this IP purchase is more of the same, and in the end hardware vendors and the end user will benefit. (of course, MS bank account will as well, I won't deny that).

I design 3D chips as well as write drivers, so I know what I'm talking about here.

Not Just Paranoia

[MasterBlaster]

The last paragraph sums it up:

Microsoft isn't in the PC hardware business, and it's unlikely that the patents will change its technical strategy. But they do add significantly to its bargaining position with hardware vendors, giving Redmond important new leverage. Rival APIs, principally OpenGL, are kept alive through the support of graphics hardware vendors. And for a hardware partner, avoiding a lawsuit, or gaining a contract to work on future versions of Xbox, may well outweigh the advantages from continuing to support OpenGL.

I guess Microsoft trying to crush open source isn't just paranoia after all.

Re:Not Just Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon we will be working for One Big Company.

Re:Not Just Paranoia

[Faramir]

Au contraire... there is no reason to think that The Register is not just paranoid like the rest of us. Now, obviously, this is a pretty decent analysis of a possible use for these patents. But still these are vague threats to the industry that may have been cooked up to spread FUD about MS.

There is enough actual reason to fear and doubt MS out there already. Before adding potential reasons, and spreading them as actual, can we have a reasonable discussion about them? Or is it enough for someone to make generic statements about "avoiding lawsuits?"

Personally, I would like to know on what grounds anyone would be worried about lawsuits. I won't deny the possible existence of such grounds; I just want to actually hear what they are instead of speculate blindly.

Would someone be kind enough to post a basic description of OpenGL's relationship to SGI's technologies, and to the company itself. Was/is SGI involved directly in the formulation of OpenGL? Could MS have purchased patents that OpenGL relies upon, patents that do not have "free" alternative implementations? Is there a GL that OpenGL is compatible too (like OpenSSH to SSH)?

Re:Not Just Paranoia

[Glock27]

And for a hardware partner, avoiding a lawsuit, or gaining a contract to work on future versions of Xbox, may well outweigh the advantages from continuing to support OpenGL.

NVIDIA is the graphics (and glue chipset) supplier for Xbox. It is also now the sole supplier of graphics chips for desktop Macs. Apple is solidly behind OpenGL as it's strategic 3D API (as is the entire high performance 3D graphics world, for that matter). I'd be willing to place a large wager that NVIDIA (which has strong SGI roots) will not abandon OpenGL.

One last thought - I think Microsoft would be very ill advised to try to charge more for the use of those patents than SGI was...and that cost should already be part of current hardware prices.

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:Not Just Paranoia

[billybob]

[nvidia] is also now the sole supplier of graphics chips for desktop Macs

The powerbook G4 has an ATi radeon. The current imac (not the new one) has an ATi rage 128 pro. The ibook has an ATi rage mobility.

Now, what were you saying?

As for nvidia ditching opengl, i would put that in the "highly unlikely" category as well. id software uses opengl for all its games. i cant imagine opengl being out of the ball game, no matter what M$ does... at least for a while.

Re:Not Just Paranoia

[Glock27]

The powerbook G4 has an ATi radeon. The current imac (not the new one) has an ATi rage 128 pro. The ibook has an ATi rage mobility.

Now, what were you saying?

Er, I was saying that now (as in it changed recently) NVIDIA is the sole supplier of desktop Mac graphics chips. I was not referring to discontinued iMacs or notebooks. There was an press release circulated by NVIDIA to that effect not long ago.

I hope that clears things up... ;-)

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:Not Just Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful?? This is a QOUTE from the article! Try reading the article before you moderate.

Re:Not Just Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell is the old imac the current one, whiptard?

Re:Not Just Paranoia

[billybob]

How the hell is the old imac the current one, whiptard?

Well, since the new imac is not on the market yet, I would consider the "old" imac to still be the "current" imac.

Plus, apple is going to continue to sell the old imac for a while. So please, drop your drawers and bend over.

Re:Not Just Paranoia

[Glock27]

Well, since the new imac is not on the market yet, I would consider the "old" imac to still be the "current" imac.

I think they're shipping now from Apple's online store.

Regardless, that has nothing to do with who the current chip supplier is. ATI hasn't sold any desktop graphics chips to Apple for awhile now. It's all been NVIDIA (actually it's all on 3rd party OEM AGP 4x graphics boards, except for iMac). They're going into new machines that still need to go through the distribution pipeline.

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:Not Just Paranoia

[Glock27]

Just to finish off this thread, I found the same release on Yahoo I saw elsewhere:

NVIDIA Graphics Technology Now Standard in All Apple Desktops

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Could this be...

[smaug195]

Something having to do with the homestation? Or the X-Box?

OpenGL 2.0

[tweakt]

yeah, here it is:
3d labs proposes opengl 2.0

and some other ones for perspective:

OpenGL Article 1
Open GL Article 2

How about they buy the "sgi" logo...

[green pizza]

... so Silicon Graphics can go back to the "cube" logo!

Re:How about they buy the "sgi" logo...

[mini me]

SGI will no longer be able to use the cube logo since Microsoft now owns the patents on the process of creating that logo*.

* yes it is a joke, not too far from the truth though.

Re:How about they buy the "sgi" logo...

[kyras]

Presumably, SGI sold the rights to the THREE-DIMENSIONAL cube logo as well, so they'd have to go to a square to avoid legal trouble...

Re:How about they buy the "sgi" logo...

[Mr. Piccolo]

lol...

here's my suggestion:

0000000
0 0
0 0
0 sgi 0
0 0
0 0
0000000

Re:How about they buy the "sgi" logo...

[Mr. Piccolo]

BLAST! That didn't work...

0000000
0*****0
0*****0
0*sgi*0
0*****0
0*****0
0000000

That'll be $147,682 please...

remember Java

[oo7tushar]

Remember how MS made their own Java VM and modified the language to suit themselves?

Perhaps they're aiming for MS OpenGL (MS OpenJelly, lube up and aim for penetration)

(please don't troll me)

Re:remember Java

[Jon_E]

and then how they were sued for it? and then tried to obfuscate it all by calling it C# .. yeah that was funny!

Re:remember Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wait they also now have J# and it looks equally similar in fact if i remeber correctly it will even run JAVA code that is based on the 1.1.8 api and older

Re:remember Java

[Snowfox]

Remember how MS made their own Java VM and modified the language to suit themselves?

Perhaps they're aiming for MS OpenGL (MS OpenJelly, lube up and aim for penetration)

People have short memories.

Remember Fahrenheit, the SGI/Microsoft/etc initiative for the next OpenGL plus scene graph?

MS walked all over the specs, doing strange and troublesome things to it, yet only ever had two people actively "working" on it, all while racing to get Direct3D out the door before OpenGL (or later Fahrenheit) could get a hold in the Windows development community.

As I hear it second-hand from an ex-SGI guy, SGI was pouring incredible resources into Fahrenheit, while MS was essentially blocking progress, while waving the promise of MS-acceptance in order to prevent their dropping MS' involvement.

When they realized they were burning cash and talent to go nowhere fast, SGI eventually gave up and said "Stick with OpenGL and Inventor or whatever -- we don't care anymore."

Re:remember Java

[Anonymous Coward]

So, SGI fell for the oldest (Microsoft) trick in the book. All they had to do was read the traderags to figure out what was going on. When MS released DirectX 7 or something, they said "this is Fahrenheit!" -- SGI could have done something similar, but instead they are still diddling around with OpenGL 2.0 talkshops.

Re:remember Java

[Snowfox]

So, SGI fell for the oldest (Microsoft) trick in the book. All they had to do was read the traderags to figure out what was going on. When MS released DirectX 7 or something, they said "this is Fahrenheit!" -- SGI could have done something similar, but instead they are still diddling around with OpenGL 2.0 talkshops.

I find it remarkable that someone could poke fun at OpenGL's standard committees while posting a website predominately aimed at the UNIX community.

Zing! ;)

opengl32.dll

[MJArrison]

All past MS OS's since Win95 have (thankfully) shipped with basic OpenGL support (opengl32.dll ). Does any one know if this is true with XP and/or future MS OS's?

Re:opengl32.dll

[abdulla]

i can vouch for XP, and isn't opengl the core of apple's graphical pride?

Death of QuickDraw3D

[micromuncher]

OpenGL [support by developers] killed QuickDraw3D at Apple. Pablo Fernicola went from Apple to Microsoft to lead D3D.

I seem to remember Pablo was not a fan of OpenGL. But what pattents specifically did MS buy? And the death of OpenGL is not necessarily a bad thing.

Re:Death of QuickDraw3D

[unconfused1]

If he was not a big fan of OpenGL...why move to Microsoft to build on a bastardized wrap-up of OpenGL (DirectX)?

No one believes that Microsoft comes up with their shit themselves, do they?

Re:Death of QuickDraw3D

[dair]

Pablo Fernicola went from Apple to Microsoft to lead D3D

I thought it was the DirectAnimation group he joined (or some similar 2D thing).

-dair (and to stay marginally on topic, you can get an LGPL implementation of QD3D here)

Re:Death of QuickDraw3D

[Anonymous Coward]

And the death of OpenGL is not necessarily a bad thing.

Yeah, cuz D3D is supported on every major platform. Just like OpenGL. I'm glad we'll all be using D3D on so many different operating systems for all graphics applications.

If MS kills the world's best API for medical imaging just to push Xbox and Windows games then they deserve to burn in hell.

word

[spitzcor]

Word. What is up with the stupid "sgi" logo and the boatload of money I here they paid some consultants for the new look.

Bring back the cube.

On the Look-Out

[Alien54]

Now that's an area that the three men in a boat - the proposed MS compliance body - might care to examine. We'll be watching.

Personally, I think that each state should have at least one rep looking into MS

It is a matter of trust. In this case, past performance is an indicator of future results.

Re:On the Look-Out

[allism]

OK, so that's 50 people...and we should probably have one person from each state looking into each of the big oil companies too, since they haven't quite proven trustworthy in the past, so we've now employed several hundred more people...and what about the drug companies, just in case the FDA isn't quite doing their job properly, oh, and we'd better keep and eye on the FDA too...

Pretty soon we'd have negative unemployment! Good solution!

Re:On the Look-Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Would suck for the guy in Alaska.

Re:On the Look-Out

[CmdrPinkTaco]

Who watches the watchers?

Re:On the Look-Out

[Alien54]

oh, and we'd better keep and eye on the FDA too...

or else we could get all the psychs to make us all trustworthy

"Let me apply this shock one more time just to be sure"

Consider this..

[LordOfYourPants]

Do you like silicon? Do you like graphics? Do you like corporations? Then you'll LOVE SGI.

Re:Consider this..

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

Do you like silicon? Do you like implants? Do you like barely legal operations?

Then you'll love neural implants.

Bet you thought I was going to mention tits didn't you.

Re:Consider this..

[screwtheNSA]

Nope!
Silicon is for chips, and SILICONE is for breast implants....Personally, I'd choose saline over silicone for any implants(breast), tehy are a lot safer and feel more au natural to boot too!
I lived in a city that made implants, and I toured their facility and they gave us "samples" of different implants using both silicone and saline.
What a major difference the two wre, not to mention that "if" your silicone implant leaked, you could end up with major surgical costs, whereas the "leaky" saline implant was simply absorbed, causing no long term effects to our central nervous system.

Didn't this happen a LONG time ago?

[qurob]

I thought they bought or at least licensed a bunch of SGI stuff back when they started up on DirectX/Direct3D....

Remember the rumours that SGI was going to be bought out by MS?

SGI was supposed to move to all NT workstations :)

Re:Didn't this happen a LONG time ago?

[Performer Guy]

No it didn't happen a long time ago. Microsoft bought a UK company called Rendermorphics for the D3D stuff.

The rest is just rumour, I can name about 6 times SGI was rumoured to be getting bought by someone. The Microsoft one was never credible. The most plausible rumour was when it looked like Sun were going to buy them.

Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[starseeker]

What does this mean for the use of OpenGL in open source? Are we going to have to start developing our own open source replacement for OpenGL now?

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[DCMonkey]

http://www.mesa3d.org/

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[einer]

I thought mesa3d was the answer until I went to their site:

Mesa is a 3-D graphics library with an API which is very similar to that of OpenGL.* To the extent that Mesa utilizes the OpenGL command syntax or state machine, it is being used with authorization from Silicon Graphics, Inc.(SGI).

Can Microsoft keep them from emulating the state machine and syntax. I don't have an answer for that, but if they can, then non-MS 3d graphics are truly in trouble.

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[SpinyNorman]

Open source OpenGL already exists - it's called Mesa, and given that SGI have not fought it (in fact AFAIK they've been quite friendly towards it), I doubt Microsoft would be able to... IANAL but I beleive if you don't defend your rights you lose them.. although I hope Microsoft's buying the patent rights doesn't given them a legal angle to pursue Mesa if they chose to.

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[Big Stick]

Wouldn't Mesa be exactly that? Of course, in the Introduction
section on the site they note:

"To the extent that Mesa utilizes the OpenGL command syntax or state machine, it is being used with authorization from Silicon Graphics, Inc.(SGI)."

I imagine there would need to be some modifications.

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[ADRA]

He was talking about an API replacement for OpenGL, not the implementation of it..

If it has near to exactly the same feature set, that means that the patents trasnfered may be used to block some functionality, if microsoft deams that they Mesa3-D library uses their patented software.

Even on their site, Mesa states that they did have permission to produce an OpenGL clone despite the fact that it is not an officially licensed OpenGL impolementation. Will microsoft make the same concessions?

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[haruharaharu]

Open source OpenGL already exists - it's called Mesa

Last I heard, Mesa wasn't claiming OpenGL compatibility specifically to avoid legal hassles

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[XGA]

The real question is:

Does SGI still hold patents to those features of OpenGL?

What exactly was transfered to MS?

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[mwa]

Maybe not. If all they are doing is emulating the "command syntax or state machine" of OpenGL and the underlying implementation does not infringe upon the patent (which I have to think is the case, or SGI probably would have objected), then wouldn't this simply be a method of maintaining "compatibility"? If so, I think the anti-trust implications of trying to stomp on the compatibility layer would be fairlyl risky for MS.

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[Quarters]

If you don't defend your trademark rights you will lose them. You can sit on your patents up until n-1 days before they expire and then go after anyone/everyone who has been violating them.

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the issue is that certication costs money, so they can't claim that they are "OpenGL-certified" (and use the logo). They can claim compatibility with a published specification without problems.

That's all trademark stuff, of course, apart from any patent issues.

Re:Might bode ill for OpenGL based projects?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you miss the point. Microsoft did not buy the "OpenGL command syntax or state machine" (from the Mesa site) or the OpenGL trademark -- they bought patents which may or may not be essential to Mesa's and others' implementations.

Given MS' past example

[Rev.LoveJoy]

Tell me why, again, crush is too strong a word?

-- RLJ

Re:Given MS' past example

[nomadic]

Because they already dominate the 3d API market.

Next Gen consoles

[Belly of the Beast]

This will be a major pain in the ass when Sony and Nintendo go to design their next gen consoles. The current and previous generations of consoles are built around SGI's project reality. It could, in an odd way, force the console makers to be truely inovative.

DirectX is actually good now...

[MaestroSartori]

Its a lot better in many ways than OpenGL (at least I think so). Its certainly powerful and easy to code for. It was a load of poo up til at least DX6, but now its surprisingly nice and object-oriented. They are of course targetted at completely different uses: D3D is generally Retained Mode, whereas OpenGL is generally Immediate Mode. I can't be bothered explaining what those mean, so go look in Google, but it does mean that DX is probably better for games, whereas OGL is better for most other things.

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[MisterBlister]

How did this get modded as insightful?

I happen to think D3D is better than OpenGL currently, if you're doing Windows-only game programming.

However, D3D isn't 'generally Retained Mode'. D3D dropped its retained mode support (which nobody used anyway, and D3D has always had an immediate mode API) a while ago, back at DX5 or so. Of course, you're free to create your own scene-graph/retained mode API over the current immediate mode API if you like, but it no longer includes that API in the standard SDK.

D3D used to have D3DRM, OpenGL has Inventor, both are/were retained mode APIs on top of the immediate mode APIs.

Also, its extremely silly to claim that retained mode means it is better for games? How many games can you name that use a retained mode API?

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[Redline]

Its a lot better in many ways than OpenGL

On MacOS X , which is better, OpenGL or DirectX? On Linux for the Playstation2, which is better?
Most of the comments here are decidedly Wintel bent. Most people are agreeing that DirectX is better than OpenGL, on intel hardware running Windows. That may be true, but I can't seem to get DirectX to run on my PPC NetBSD machine. There are lots of platforms out there that are not (yet) 0wned by MS, that stand to lose big *if* OpenGL starts getting crushed.

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[geekd]

That's not the point. the point is that OpenGL is cross platform.

I don't think I'll be seeing DirectX on my linux box anytime soon.

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[Glock27]

Its [DirectX] a lot better in many ways than OpenGL (at least I think so). Its certainly powerful and easy to code for. It was a load of poo up til at least DX6, but now its surprisingly nice and object-oriented. They are of course targetted at completely different uses: D3D is generally Retained Mode, whereas OpenGL is generally Immediate Mode. I can't be bothered explaining what those mean, so go look in Google, but it does mean that DX is probably better for games, whereas OGL is better for most other things.

Last I looked at it, almost every serious game was done in Direct3D immediate mode, and most recent changes to the API are there.

OpenGL is perhaps only better for games in that it is a thin C layer on top of the hardware rather than a thicker COM layer. One can always write OO scene graph frameworks on top of OpenGL like Performer.

Most importantly, though, is that every computing platform other than Windows that supports hardware 3D acceleration does so through OpenGL. I expect it to outlive Direct3D. :-)

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[mattblanchard]

Full-screen 3D games (the only kind I play) use Immediate Mode, not Retained mode - so it seems that you would want an API that concentrates on getting Immediate Mode right. Lo and behold! - OpenGL was designed from the ground up for Immediate Mode using hardware rendering.

Just keepin you on your toes ;)

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget that DX is windoze only, and that WE DON'T LIKE THAT PART. Even if using DX gets me hot supermodels, that doesn't help if I'm on a MAC. Or under Linux. COMPRENDO?

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[gorilla]

The world is much bigger than just games. Visualization of data is a huge market, and something I think is going to expand as time goes on. If you're trying to analyze your sales for 10,000 stores around the world then you're going to have very different goals than if you're trying to write the next Quake.

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[dpilot]

Whaddya mean, isn't cross-platform?

DirectX runs on Win95, Win98, Win98SE, WinME, Win2K, WinXP, and is presumably source-compatible with XBox. Sounds like all the *desired and significant* platforms are covered.

The MS definition of cross-platform.

(Sarcasm, if you can't tell)

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[BrotherPope]

>How many games can you name that use a retained mode API?

Until recently: EverQuest. And let me tell ya, it's been a real thorn in the side of us TransGaming subscribers (and certainly more so for the developers). Well, you asked. :)

Info on the Retained Mode API usage here:
http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=1 0

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[praedor]

Irrelevant. OpenGL is OPEN and can work on any platform/operating system. DirectX and its progeny are M$ only.

If not for OpenGL, there would be no DirectX/Direct3D. It is the only competitor to microsnot in this area. Killing it is bad no matter what you think of DirectX/Direct3d.

OpenGL is in continual evolution. It is gaining features just as Direct3d has. It has fallen behind in a few areas in recent history but the new features being brought into it bring the two libs to parity. M$ can't stand this, and the fact that most game developers STILL support OpenGL, so they wish to eliminate it. Bad no matter how you slice it.

Re:DirectX is actually good now...

[CaseyB]

D3D is generally Retained Mode, whereas OpenGL is generally Immediate Mode. I can't be bothered explaining what those mean, so go look in Google

You first, because you obviously have no clue what you're talking about. No one ever used the DX retained mode.

Re:More than gaming to graphics

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

> The only way OpenGL can compete is to attain
> strong developers, maintain a good ease-of-
> programming and give game deisgners and card
> venders a solid reason to support it.
OpenGL aint just about the games man. If your developing a visualisation system of oil field sensor data, do you think you really use DirectX?

Nope, you go to the real guns, SGI.

Microsoft have a huge way to go before they grab that share of the market. For one thing, there is a whole heap of legacy apps in these scientific visualisation areas that rely on OpenGL backwards compatibility.

Mr Thinly Sliced

Software patents suck

[jmd!]

For more information on how much software patents suck, be sure to check out the League for Programming Freedom.

Selling Patents

[XGA]

I'm sorry if I don't understand this, but how can you sell a patent? Wouldn't selling the rights just allow microsoft to use the patented materials? If the Patent Office grants you a patent, how do you sell it?

Re:Selling Patents

[Codifex Maximus]

I think a patent is an intangible asset that can be sold.

Owning the patents gives you control. Having a license just allows you the right to use the patented technology.

Big difference.

Crush is strong.

[WasterDave]

Well, crush is strong

No, crush is usual.

Dave

Re:Crush is strong.

[NevDull]

Well, crush is strong

No, crush is usual.

It's also orange soda. Yummm.

Great

[Cave Dweller]

MSFT: "Oooh, we're just buying the patents to increase competition in the software market. Monopoly? what's that?.."

Bleah..

Re:Great

[tetsuo13]

What?! Call me crazy but what does MS have anything to do with OpenGL?? How does this help competition?

Here's the summed up plan:

1. Buy competition's patents
2. Keep them for yourself
3. Watch competition wither away
4. Lay back in gold armchair next to gold rocket-powered car parked next to gold house

Here's an old USENET post I found

[qurob]

From: Allen Akin (akin@tuolumne.asd.sgi.com)
Subject: Re: Licensing of OpenGL to Microsoft
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.apps.softimage, comp.sys.sgi.graphics, comp.graphics.api.opengl, comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy, comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.graphics, comp.graphics.raytracing, comp.graphics.rendering.misc, comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing
View this article only
Date: 1996/02/21

SGI licenses OpenGL to anyone, including all of its competitors in the
workstation market. The reasoning goes something like this:

1. SGI builds great workstations, but what really makes them
useful (and thus makes people willing to buy them) is
high-performance full-featured 3D graphics and imaging
applications.

2. Applications developers can't afford to support a large number
of graphics APIs. The development and maintenance costs are
too high, and since feature sets vary from API to API, it's
difficult for an application to take advantage of all the
desirable features of multiple APIs.

3. If a single graphics API is supported on a sufficiently wide
variety of machines (including SGI's), and if that API is fast
and full-featured, then applications developers can
concentrate their limited resources on that API and do a good
job of using it effectively.

4. The result is a larger number of good-quality 3D graphics
applications that are capable of running on SGI hardware.
This makes it easier for SGI to sell workstations. In the
long run it also increases the number of potential SGI
customers by making it easier for applications developers to
create products for new markets.

5. Of course, SGI's competitors that adopt OpenGL also gain
access to a larger pool of 3D applications. However, this
doesn't make a lot of difference to SGI, because we have to
work to remain competitive in any case. It's important to
understand this! *The competition would have become more
intense even if OpenGL didn't exist.* Licensing OpenGL creates
no significant new risks for SGI, but it does create new
opportunities.

Hmmmm.

[jd]

1. Microsoft is found a monopoly, with excessive power, and a habit of abusing it.

2. SGI, who were working on OpenGL 2.0, suddenly sell Microsoft a bunch of patents, the money from which may be keeping SGI alive.

3. Microsoft may not be into hardware, per se, but you can bet that they'll either price the patented stuff out of existance, or try to mould it so that compliant hardware only works with Microsoft products.

If you don't like this -- speak up!

[Derek]

If you really think (as I do) that this is an indication that MS intends to extend its monopoly by squeezing out competing standards and technology, then make your voice heard!

According to the US law you still have until Jan 28th to comment on the court's final judgement.

I recommend you take a minute and make sure the US justice department hears your concern.

-Derek

Re:If you don't like this -- speak up!

[JasonAsbahr]

Honorables,

It has come to my attention that Microsoft has recently acquired fundamental patents for 3D graphics technology and techniques from SGI. This is a dangerous situation, as it grants Microsoft significant leverage over the independent 3D hardware manufacturers who are currently supporting the only rival to Microsoft's Direct3D graphics API, OpenGL.

Microsoft has in the past worked to delay and distract advances in 3D graphics technology, such as in the abortive "Fahrenheit" plan with SGI in the 1990s. During that period, SGI was transitioning from selling Unix-only workstations to begin selling workstations running Microsoft's Windows NT. At the same time, OpenGL was gaining on Microsoft's Direct3D in terms of features, hardware support, and developer support. If SGI wanted to sell NT boxes, SGI would have to agree to the Fahrenheit plan. The perfectly timed Fahrenheit deal slowed that advance of OpenGL by, among other things, reducing SGI's active promotion of it, and allowed Microsoft's Direct3D to gain a strong lead.

Yet OpenGL support still survived due to the interest of software developers and the support of third party 3D hardware manufacturers. This latest move by Microsoft to acquire core 3D technology patents would finish the hatchet job, granting Microsoft the power to force third party 3D hardware manufacturers to drop support for OpenGL, and ultimately stifle competition and innovation in the marketplace.

Please do not let this come to pass.

Thank you,

Jason Asbahr
Game Developer

Re:If you don't like this -- speak up!

[Performer Guy]

Good post, here is some related background on Microsoft's suppression of OpenGL.

http://www.vcnet.com/bms/features/3d.html

Re:If you don't like this -- speak up!

[Graymalkin]

Honorables,

I read an article written by the quality journalists at the Register and I know from experience that I should believe everything they have said. I would like yo suggest you read the Register for all of your news because it is the finest newspaper in all the world. I must tidy up this letter so I can go pee my pants and fume because I think Microsoft is taking over the world when in reality the Register doesn't say fucking shit about Microsoft buying anything more than "rights" to some of SGI's IP which doesn't specify if they bought patents of licenses.

Thank you,

Jason Asbahr
Game Developer

Re:If you don't like this -- speak up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Honorables,

WHAAAAZZAAAAAAP!

Thank you,

Jason Asbahr
Game Developer

Re:If you don't like this -- speak up!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read past comments... (Score:2)
by GoofyBoy on Wednesday January 16, @02:41PM (#2849783)
(User #44399 Info)

... you would have known that this was an issue before.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=25432&thresh ol d=0&commentsort=3&mode=thread&cid=2762096

Why so ominous?

[Da VinMan]

I mean, there's probably a really good reason why MS is buying the patents. Like, perhaps they're sick of paying licensing fees to SGI for those patents?

Duh!

Re:Why so ominous?

[Anonymous Coward]

well maybe im sick of paying licensing fees to microsoft...

Will MS license this IP?

[spitzcor]

SGI needs the cash. But does it need it that badly? They sold their souls to the devil!

The register report said that the money came in last year. Is this old news? Even if it is this is pretty significant. You know that SGI must of had millions of dollars in revenue each year just from the proceeds of licensing all that IP. I betcha venders and others will now be forced to license those technologies from Microsoft instead. What is stopping MS from relicensing these technologies for so much $ that venders are forced to go with different stuff? - ie, not OpenGL.

If this is true I'm surprised we haven't heard of any of this yet. Maybe they haven't gotten the ball rolling. Or, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about :)

-spitzcor

Re:Will MS license this IP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of the episode of Southpark where they find Cartman's mom on the front of "Crack Whore" magazine. He said "She was young and needed the money" and they said "This was last month's issue!"

SGI needs money but is it worth becoming a "Crack Whore" over it?

Crushing 3D objects

[suso]

Crushing 3d stuff would be pretty useful for games, car races, crushing virtual pop cans, etc. I think they'll have the market cornered.

What about Mesa 3D?

[Narcocide]

mabye mesa 3d will save us all from the eventuality that it will be illegal to play games in non-microsoft operating systems?

What are the implications?

[Faramir]

So what, fellow /.ers, are the actual implications of this?

The Register indicates that this probably, primarily, is related to XBox licensing. Perhaps this is actually a rather simple matter, where Microsoft is buying the patents instead of paying royalties. That's what it (appears) to look like on the surface. Of course, just basing this analysis off The Register, I'm not really looking at the surface, now am I? I'm looking at a potentially distorted reflection. Anyway, if this is the case, is this so bad?

Now, there are hints at sinister subliminal intentions on MS's part. No surprise that such accusations are raised here, deserved or not. OpenGL crushing is the first, and basically only, intention discussed here so far. Are there other possible implications from this deal? I do not know much about the gaming/3d-graphics industry, but I am genuinely curious what people think might come out of this.

Re:What are the implications?

[SirSlud]

The XBox runs on Direct X, OpenGL's direct competition and nemesis. I mean, we've gotten to the point where even MS can go around saying, "Yeah, we did this so we can kick some ass and make some money for our stock holders.", which is true, legal, and widely accepted.

I don't think sinister is the word - it's standard operating procedure for MS, along with lots of other large corperations. The Real beauty of it is that MS also has an alibi - they kept SGI in business (maybe), thus ensuring they still have competitors. MS is to the market now what the US is to the world - they are taking things over via a dependance on existance. That is to say, they can keep companies alive and in buiness as a kind of bribe. This is so they cannot be accussed of being so successfully [anti-competative/innovative] (take your pick, doesn't matter for the sake of argument) as to have killed off all of their competitors!

Re:What are the implications?

[SirSlud]

kept SGI in business (maybe)

I'd just like to say that this is a grossly unqualified statement. If anyone can shed some light as to SGI's true financial situation, I'd be interested to know if MS could claim something along the lines of what I suggested above.

Re:What are the implications?

[Anonymous Coward]

if MS is the US, when do the suicide JIHAD bombers begin to hit redmond washington?

Re:What are the implications?

[SirSlud]

Throw a packet sniffer down before the traffic hits microsoft.com, and I wonder how many you'll see per second ... ;)

Re:What are the implications?

[4of12]

The Real beauty of it is that MS also has an alibi - they kept SGI in business (maybe), thus ensuring they still have competitors.

You laugh, but it's true!

Remember several years back when Apple was on the ropes and MS bailed them out with $150M ?

You'll also recall that part of the deal included a provision for Apple to start distributing MS IE instead of Netscape Navigator, whose stock symbol has, umm, disappeared.

I think bailing Apple was absolutely critical for MS, since otherwise their market share would have shot up even more alarmingly close to 100% than it is already. It's easier to claim there are competitors when you have only 92% of the market compared to when you have 98% of the market:)

Taken to the extreme, it wouldn't be out of place for MS to buy or bail out a Linux based company either. I think that almost happened with Corel. My own paranoid view on that deal was that Corel developers might have been moving Wine along too quickly to suit MS and they had to throw some molasses into the machine.

Re:What are the implications?

[SirSlud]

Who said I was laughing man, I believe it! :)

Re:What are the implications?

[jelle]

"instead of Netscape Navigator, whose stock symbol has, umm, disappeared"

Netscape was bought by AOL back in 1998. That's why they're not listed anymore.

Re:What are the implications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft hardly "bailed out" Apple with the $150 million (for which Microsoft got stock in return). At that time, Apple was sitting on a couple of BILLION dollars or so worth of cash.

The "5 years of Microsoft Office support" bit was more significant, but MS-Office/Mac makes money for Microsoft, so that wasn't exactly a giveaway either.

Re:What are the implications?

[metamatic]

Also, Microsoft was caught stealing QuickTime source code, and didn't have a legal leg to stand on. The court case was quietly dropped as part of the $150m deal.

Re:What are the implications?

[glenmark]

Remember several years back when Apple was on the ropes and MS bailed them out with $150M ?

A bit off-topic, but I feel I must correct this. It is inaccurate to describe Microsoft's purchase of $150M in nonvoting Apple stock as a bail-out. That was a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in cash that Apple had in the bank, and was done largely as a PR move. In effect, Jobs convinced Gates to say to the world "See, even Microsoft has faith that Apple will continue to be around, so much so that we are investing in it and continuing to produce Office for the Mac platform." Microsoft has since sold those shares for a tidy profit.

As you pointed out, there was some quid pro quo in the deal, with Apple making IE the default shipping browser. However, what seldom gets mentioned is that Jobs managed to strike the deal because he had Gates over a barrelhead over theft of intellectual property, at least so the rumor mill grows...

It's the old MS steamroller of legal doom

[gmkeegan]

Classic MS strategy: get any premise for initiating a lawsuit against competitor X, and pretty soon X will settle or go away. As X approaches infinity...

"Insightful" ?!!

[apankrat]

How the hell was moderating this message ?

Other game hardware

[Stultsinator]

They could use these patents to gain royalties on games meant for other platforms, not just ones made for the Xbox or Windows. Say, if Sony were to incorporate some 3D texturing method in the PS2 API that MS just bought.

The Reg, do we really Trust it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the Reg's info seems biased and hear-say, we don't know the terms of the deal, shouldn't we find out BEFORE jumping to conclusions???

Re:The Reg, do we really Trust it?

[trongey]

shouldn't we find out BEFORE jumping to conclusions???

No. That would be much less fun and satisfying. What were you thinking?

My 2 cents

[vulgarDPS]

What it looks like to me is that they are trying to get all the NVidia stuff. NVidia has a deal with SGI to view and write alot stuff that interfaces with SGI machines and OpenGL in order to rape the graphics possibilities. This is also why the linux driver for NVidia cards is half open source and half closed source. If MS can take that capability out of NVidia cards by gobbling up all the patents and not allowing NVidia to do this anymore then theoretically they could force NVidia (one of the biggest manufacturers of video card) to pull out of raping OpenGL for graphics and instead use DirectX. Then MS would be justified in stopping its support of GL.

let's not split hairs here...

[Narcocide]

microsoft is evil. someone needs to realize that they can't be proven guilty by any of our laws, because all our laws rely on the power of the courts to enforce them... what we need is the purifying all-powerful justice of the wrath of god; the only thing that can save us now!

Re:let's not split hairs here...

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm. We do have hope.
If Linux can hit Quantum computing first (start porting the kernel!), Open-Source would have a _very_ good change ... new software designed for new hardware, ... very little of Microsoft's current monoply would actually carry over :-)

Re:let's not split hairs here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, find me a quantum computing platform to port Linux to, I'll get cracking on the core code, and we can get some other coder flunkies to start writing and porting drivers ...

Wait, how massively parallel do you want this to scale to again?

Re:let's not split hairs here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Redmond Wa. is sitting on a big-ass fault line so you might not be too far off.

MesaGL

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean that we can't use MesaGL in public for free anymore? Or would future versions (using SGI's GL docs) be required to get Microsoft certifications?

Re:More than gaming to graphics

[Marx_Mrvelous]

That's a very good point, one I overlooked. I wonder if it is MS's intentions to drop or strangle off support for OpenGL in the Unix world. I guess that we'd have to know which patents they purchased to see if that were possible.

"basic" is right!

[cthulhubob]

OpenGL 1.2 came out before Windows 98 did... OpenGL 1.3 is the current standard....

But Microsoft *still* ships OpenGL 1.1 with each of their operating systems -- Windows XP still uses the same version of OpenGL as Windows 95, even though OpenGL 1.3 is vastly improved...

They basically only include it right now as a token show of compatibility - they don't care about how usable it is. This just means they don't have to bother anymore.

Re:"basic" is right!

[Anonymous Coward]

MS's software OpenGL implementation actually dates from NT 3.1 ('93) as a checkbox feature to make the system more competitive with Unix workstations. There wasn't many games written in OpenGL back then.

Of course, anyone doing real OpenGL work will use a hardware board (which MS has always supported), so the main point of the feature was really just to support the 3D screensavers. I think that's the only reason it was ported to Win95 and continues on today - nobody's ever used it for anything else, and MS is too lazy to port the screensavers to DirectX.

Re:"basic" is right!

[Anonymous Coward]

WinXP is worse than that. I tested a fresh install of the release version of WinXP, and it appeared to be doing only software rendering on my card (GeForce2 GTS). A quick visit to the nVidia website for new drivers boosted the performance *7x* on our test application. XP may ship with the same OpenGL version (1.1), but the implementation is crippled. Can't wait to see what they do next...

Slashdot: Quite a Bore

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot spends far more time these days complaining about Microsoft or other "closed" software companies than it does talking about interesting and new development's within its own "open" community. Granted, it's important to note what's going on in the rest of the world, but basically this site feels like it now exists for the sole purpose of bitching about Microsoft. Slashdot was much more fun when it concentrated on the really exciting developments which make open source computing both a way to develop software *and* a real community.

Re:Slashdot: Quite a Bore

[I The Man in Black I]

There is chance that this event will greatly influence the open source movement... There is even a chance that this is an ATTACK on the open source movement (although we will need more accurate information about this matter before we can say that for sure)... I think that is the reason why it was posted.

Tomas Beaujean (a.k.a. The Man in Black)

Mesa

[Fembot]

Does this therefore mean that microsoft can sue Brian Paul (the Mesa Author) for every penny he has and more if they decide to?

Not good

[barole]

Microsoft does not want OpenGL on windows because it means that applications aren't tied to the windows platform. Unfortunately for them, they can't say this openly - people need OpenGL and many will move to other platforms to get it.

So, Microsoft says all the right things - that they support OpenGL and include it as part of windows. However, it is a bit like their half-hearted posix mode. Win2k does not included any hardware acceleration for Opengl (according to the register). Also, OpenGL on win32 is stuck at an old version (1.1? or 1.0) and extensions and more recent (eg 1.2) features must be used via their ugly extension mechanism. Microsoft backed out of their agreement with SGI on Fahrenheit - burning SGI in the process.

Re:Not good

[Performer Guy]

No, they want and need OpenGL on Windows. They just want it to stagnate. What they dearly want is all developers to write to the Direct3D API. This way they get to have their cake and eat it. They can run 'legacy' OpenGL applications and attract applications from other platforms (mainly *nix and mainly professional applications), but applications written to the Windows platform are difficult to port elsewhere and are effectively tied to their operating system.

And this so called DirectX runs on ? (NT)

[Quazion]

No text

bend over nvidia

[Anonymous Coward]

MS is buying patents to try and squeeze cheap chips out of you.

Thats SIX years old. SIX !!!

[VividU]

And it got moderated to a 5.

Does

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft still hold the patent to the serial mouse?

Who cares if they try

[f00zbll]

There's obviously some truth the last paragraph, and without a doubt Microsoft is no friend of open source. All of that is old news. It doesn't necessarily mean DX will win or that hardware manufacturers will just roll over.

There is a heck of a lot more to 3D that just games. There will always be a need for research and engineering related 3D visualization and some one will provide the products. DirectX still isn't going to cut it for hardcore 3D work that requires realtime high res applications. It's one thing to render a couple megs of textures and low res models quickly. It's another to render 300mb of textures on a high res (100million polygons) object in realtime. Having the IP from SGI will help microsoft get there, but it takes a heck of a lot more than just patents to get there. A lot of blood, sweat, tears and long hours are required. There's still plenty of room for open source to come up with a competing API that works better.

Re:Who cares if they try

[dair]

It's one thing to render a couple megs of textures and low res models quickly. It's another to render 300mb of textures on a high res (100million polygons) object in realtime.

That doesn't have much to do with the API though - if you're pushing that much data around then your performance is going to come from hardware, not from calling glDrawElements vs DrawPrimitive. Although MS have a foot in the hardware door with the XBox, patents on hardware would be more valuable to someone like nVidia/ATI than MS.

You would need to know exactly which patents had been purchased to guess at their motives - the SECC filing just talks about "intellectual property rights", which may or may not mean patents (although the Reg seems to think so).

-dair (my guess would be it's just a reflex reaction: they saw something interesting on offer, and snapped them up to prevent someone else from doing so)

Re:Who cares if they try

[f00zbll]

I doubt the actual DX API would have to change much, since most of the changes would be in the guts, OS and hardware. I'm no expert on DX API, so others will have to clue me in.

If the architecture changes drastically to say 256bit for everything, the API should change to take advantage of it no? Or say the architecture changes such that the average system has 8 CPU and the OS doesn't employ pervasive multithreading/processing, the API would need to change to ease development and see performance improvement? Or what happens when a researcher wants to hook up say 1100 CPU's and GPU's to do realtime high res visualization that's taking data from say 2K instruments? I doubt DX API's implementation can handle it. In theory, one should be able to use parts of the API and change the implementation to handle different situations, but some change would be needed. All the wonderful things like sound and synchronization of video and sound would be useless overhead. But then again, by the time that happens DX will be replaced by something else.

Oh no.

[sinserve]

Clippy is gonna have sharper edges.

Re:Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Clippy sucks. Links the cat is much cooler :)

Open source drivers vid card drivers don't matter.

[Odinson]

All of a sudden "just trust them" dosn't sound like a good idea when it comes to NVidea.

Mark my words, if things keep going the way they are , NVidea will become the Troll Tech everyone originally feared. The GPL has more power for consumers then many want you to see.

It was nice knowing you high end 3d on Linux. You will be missed.

What's up with MS in the h/w market?

[Jon_E]

Is the software market drying up and they're trying to extend and embrace .. i mean diversify?

Boy talk about a viral company ..

If you think DirectX is at the same level as oGL

[Anonymous Coward]

you're freakin nuts! Every game I have that runs both DirectX and OpenGL runs flawlessly in GL and very slow in DirectX. I have 4 systems and have tried it on all different platforms. ATI/nVidia/S3 ... DirectX is a joke.

Did MS purchase a license, or the patents?

[Greg Lindahl]

There's nothing in the Register article that gives any proof that MS purchased anything other than a license for the patents, not the patents themselves.

So, as is often the case, this is probably much ado about nothing.

Re:Did MS purchase a license, or the patents?

[kcbrown]

The article says that SGI has "transferred" the patents to Microsoft. This implies that SGI sold Microsoft the patents themselves, not merely a license to use them.

Re:Did MS purchase a license, or the patents?

[Greg Lindahl]

There's nothing in the Register article that gives any evidence that SGI "transferred" the patents to Microsoft. The Register is not a credible source, and engages in fuzzy reporting at best.

Can they be stopped?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are successfully squashing technologies I
like by using the money I spent on the Xbox,
PocketPC, and Windows to by software
and hardware patents now.

Sure I could live without those
technologies above, but why the hell
would I want to.

-J

Re:Can they be stopped?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess it all boils down to whether you
a) like the other technologies more than the MS crap,
or
b)Enjoy having your choice of products more than having any particular sort.

Re:Open source drivers vid card drivers don't matt

[L0rdJedi]

It wouldn't be NVidia's fault of MS decided to stop licensing the APIs to them (or priced them out of existence). Or are you really going to blame NVidia on something caused by MS?

NVidia Driver Implications?

[BadBlood]

Weren't those SGI patents what kept Nvidia from open-sourcing their Linux drivers?

Now with Microsoft owning them, the chance of a fully open-source driver goes...up?...down?...stays the same????

Re:NVidia Driver Implications?

[glwtta]

Considering the whole XBox arrangement (i.e. pretty much the same technology as nVidia retail cards but in MS's hands) I'd say the chances are nil - regardless of who owns what patents. My uninformed opinion only, of course.

Re:Open source drivers vid card drivers don't matt

[the_2nd_coming]

ahhh, but remember, Nvidia has Glide....perhaps they can manuver that into a position to replace openGL Eh?

If you read past comments...

[GoofyBoy]

... you would have known that this was an issue before.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=25432&thresh ol d=0&commentsort=3&mode=thread&cid=2762096

Re:yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact it's probably easier to write a virus for Linux because it's open source and the code is available. So we will be seeing more Linux viruses as the OS becomes more common and popular.

--
Wishful thinking from McAfee

It's true folks. When the code is available, it is probably easier to write a virus if you want.

Re:CNN had a story about this earlier today

[Anonymous Coward]

I still think you are an asshole but, my man, that was some funny shit. Can't believe I fell for that.

Patriots Awake

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the Parish reports, your tax dollars are
being redirected to the M$ gang to hoarde
intellectual property and basically destroy
open source, open societies, capitalism, and your civil liverties. The punks are laughing at you slow witted slashbots and Bill Gates *IS* pure evil.
Better throw this off or prepare to succumb
to the prisons that are being built for you.

Return to the glory years of 3D...

[Fourier]

Maybe we can convince NVidia to whip out the old Glide API. Woo-hoo! The return of 3dfx!

Re:Return to the glory years of 3D...

[denzo]

I know this is offtopic, but... I found this piece of information from the 3dfx (soon-to-be-deleted) Website:

Did you know NVIDIA GPUs are the graphics of choice for Half Life users? In a recent Valve Software survey, data captured from 35,488 Half Life user machines showed 67% of graphics were NVIDIA.

Emphasis mine. Sounds spooky.

Re:Return to the glory years of 3D...

[Sadfsdaf]

No not really, a recent update, i believe around the time Half-Life added voice chatting, had a survey, on the bottom it clearly says to skip the survey. It clearly told you that you could skip the survey w/o any penalty in the first page.

Re:Return to the glory years of 3D...

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost 640,000 results

55% of the users are using Nvidia cards

http://valve.speakeasy.net/survey/

Re:Open source drivers vid card drivers don't matt

[Odinson]

It wouldn't be NVidia's fault of MS decided to stop licensing the APIs to them (or priced them out of existence). Or are you really going to blame NVidia on something caused by MS?"

I'm not blaming them entirely, to do so would be to blame them for Microsoft's dominance. I'm blame people who don't see that GPLed drivers will be used long after propriatary ones are orphaned.

Always use GPLed software for infrastructure. OS connection to your video card is infrastructure. I do blame NVidia for not seeing that "cicumstances beyond their control" might leave Linux running NVidia owners out in the cold. That qualifies as not caring on their part.

Along the same vein I wish Windows drivers were GPLed as well. I feel awfull for all those sysadmins who automaticly respond "I don't know, I'll contact Microsoft" to all questions.

Then it won't be open

[RageMachine]

Then It won't be OpenGL anymore.

M$ will kill the Open in it, and turn it into ClosedGL, or MSGL.

Why?

[gnovos]

What I can't understand is how the SELLING of patents and copyrights is EVER a good thing. I can undersatnd that case for innovation and protecting people's ideas for a limited time, but when you allow those protections to be sold, they stop being used as devices to foster innovation, but as roadblocks.

Re:Why?

[glwtta]

does anyone, anywhere still think that patents are used to "foster innovation"? If so, then they are among the most gullible people on this planet.

I think this is bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't anyone here know some rich guy who could buy Microsoft and GPL all their code?

Re:Open source drivers vid card drivers don't matt

[thefogger]

I was under the impression that Glide is too closely tied to 3dfx chips to be used for any other kind of chip. But I may be mistaken.

My 3 cents

[RageMachine]

A while back, Nvidia bought out its largest competitor, 3Dfx. Nvidia calimed that 3Dfx ignored some of its so called 'patents', and used, what they claimed was their technology.

Ive owned 3Dfx cards since 3Dfx was in the marketplace, I still own a Voodoo3, and don't really care to buy an Nvidia since I don't like waiting weeks for some company to fix their driver bugs.

Since this happened with Nvidia vs. 3Dfx, this put Nvidia in a sort of 'monopoly position'. Which means that they now have most of the 3D market in terms of which gamers are concerned. This would give M$ even more leverage with these patents, and would ultimatly FORCE gamers that use their OS to run DirecX, or whatever they call it.

On a personal note (Moderators: This last paragraph is my 2 cents, and should be ignored when moderating, just my little rant.) I use 3Dfx becuase I CHOOSE to. I have no reason to switch to a closed source driver card, and yes, I DO get angry when I can't find the latest source because of Nvidia's tactics. I see MANY people online using Nvidia's, but I say to myself, they are only hurting themselves in the longrun, and let it go.

Re:Open source drivers vid card drivers don't matt

[Anonymous Coward]

But isn't Glide a bastardized version of OpenGL? If so, MS could say that it infringes on the OpenGL patents and not allow any development to continue.

And that relates tothe $ of chickens n China How?

[Jonny Ringo]

This article is about MS owning 3d pattents that can damage open OpenGL. So are you saying (in your opinion) that its cool that MS might be trying to squash the comptition becasue DirectX is better?

Thank God...someone had the nerve

[Anonymous Coward]

SGI is dying quickly I am glad to see that the technology is going to be put to use. Now maybe some new gaming technology can benifit from this

Re:John Carmack on Direct 3D -- what year?

[Anonymous Coward]

It says "by John Carmack on Sunday August 19, @02:05PM (#2194363) "

For the sake of posterity, couldn't /. include the four-digit year?"

Re:Open source drivers vid card drivers don't matt

[L0rdJedi]

Ah, ok, you are intelligent (not that I didn't think so before, but now it is fully apparent).

I manage Microsoft servers myself and I hate that kind of response too. They really don't know anything about the underlying architecture or how the code works or anything low level like that (not that MS even mentions it in any of their course work either).

Get a grip!

[Anonymous Coward]

The register article says very little - it is all speculation. If this happened over a year ago, then why is the ARB finalizing OpenGL 2.0. Why is OpenGL.org thriving? And think about it - why would SGI ever sell to Microsoft and not to another company like Apple (who is flush with cash and depends on OpenGL).

Seems like a misinformed and sheer speculative news piece to me.

3rd Dimension (R) is...

[Anonymous Coward]

...patent pending for someone, I'm sure.

SGIs press release...

[The Lord of Chaos]

http://www.sgi.com/newsroom/press_releases/2001/oc tober/microsoft.html

Looks to me to be the same story.

I have my doubts that Microsoft is getting EXCLUSIVE rights to any of SGIs patents.
IANAL but AFAIK if anyone else depends on SGI patents for their products they would have licensed them from SGI for a specified amount of time (ie 1 year, 3 years, depends on their licence agreement). For Microsoft to block products (SW or HW) with SGI patents they would have to wait for those patent licences to die, prevent SGI from issuing new licences (by making some sort of deal involving some sort of deal for exclusive licences for X number of years).

Seems more likely that Microsoft is just getting a non-exlusive license which lets them use SGI technology in DX*, or their OS, or the XBOX or whatever.

MS shouldnt be allowed

[Anonymous Coward]

MS shouldnt be allowed to buy part of companies, complete companies, intellectual rights, patents, etc from now on.

If they are so great, they can develop stuff better then the others.

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That market is negligible compared to the
gaming market.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're vastly misinformed with that statement. You obviously must be a gamer, because that's the only way you could be so short-sighted about it. I am a gamer and a researcher at a university. My university, and many others across the nation (Being in the majority) do visualization and computational physics experiments on Solaris or Linux boxen running OpenGL. We don't need to be running simulations on boxes that have to be rebooted once an hour or so.

OpenGL is multi-platform and scalable to platforms that are *much* stronger than what DirectX is useable on. If MS tries to kill OpenGL, then they'll stifle off the education/scientific community. And please, just face facts for a minute - Who buys high-powered computational servers *other* than universities and research labs? Don't say corporations - They just need application and database servers - They couldn't give a rat's ass about 3D rendering on those systems.

If you can't beat 'em...

[lunadude]

...buy 'em. It's the M$ way.

Why not replace OpenGL w/something under lgpl?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then anybody could make hardware that supported it? Are patents stopping this?

At least...

[root_42]

...time will be gratis. Oh, darn! Now I've given them an idea.

Quit whining

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for pity's sake. If all you whiners had gotten around to BUYING something from SGI they would have stayed healthy enough to avoid selling off their patents. Instead y'all sit around mooching your free software while doing nothing to help maintain a viable software industry. Ya get whatcha deserve.

sue?

[Anonymous Coward]

They wanna buy everything, let's just sue them.

Not everyone is for sale, and certainly not us developers. They started this war. Bill Gates has been trouble for people since his letter to the Bay Area Computer Users Group in the mid 70's.

Yes, he does indeed think he owns people. If they lost a major court case, they would lose the war, not the battle, the war. Other's could survive, but he wouldn't be able to stand this.

Some of us know this man, and he's a very dangerous intellectual. Some are smarter than him though, and money can't buy everything.

Expect them to try to crush everyone, including Apple. This WILL happen.

They will only keep people around to make a surface resemblance to something remotely looking like competition.

We will not be silenced by you, Bill. You don't impress us.

finally

[TheQuantumShift]

Maybe now I can get some decent OpenGL on the XP box at work with the TNT2... Or maybe Microsoft's "strategic partner" or whatever, nVidia will write out OpenGL support in their drivers slowly over time...

Re:If you don't like this -- speak up![Fahrenheit]

[Thagg]

Interestingly, while several people speculated that Fahrenheit was intended to kill OpenGL, from what I can see it actually saved it. Fahrenheit encouraged Microsoft to not knife this particular baby long enough to allow a reasonably strong set of OpenGL boards to be produced.

Fairly quickly in the course of the Fahrenheit project, SGI realized that it would not be a good idea for Fahrenheit to actaully be released; because that really would mean the end of OpenGL. So, they dithered and delayed, rewrote and reimplemented, argued and agreed to disagree for a truly critical couple of years. That was long enough.

Eventually the charade could not be maintained any longer, and Fahrenheit disappeared. Up until the last day, though, SGI made every appearance of being totally committed to Fahrenheit -- it was on the front page of www.sgi.com until the day it was killed.

thad

Re:Open source drivers vid card drivers don't matt

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it isn't.
Glide is "A low-level rasterization API" for 3dfx cards.
Of course, it is usable as a foundation for a hardware-accelerated OpenGL(-like(Mesa)) APIs.

Webjumpers

[Anonymous Coward]

Please look up US patent 5,737,560.

What about GLide?

[Cutriss]

Don't laugh...honestly. If MS were to stifle off OpenGL, then NVIDIA would have a corner on the non-Microsoft-OS rendering market, since they own all the core assets to the only other viable multi-purpose rendering API out there.

Think about it. MS turns out the lights on OpenGL. No new hardware with OpenGL support under threat of contract lawsuit. NVIDIA ports GLide (Or finishes the port, rather) and is instantly the only supplier of non-DirectX consumer and professional level rendering equipment.

Oh Dear! Remedial Irony Class Needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... I think this was irony.

"It's like goldy and bronzy exept it's made of iron".

Maybe you'd like a canned laughter overdubbed to tell you when to laugh. I knew septics had an obvious sense of humour but....

Lucius Sour .

Ich Bin Ein Transgamer....

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that Transgaming Technologies (www.transgaming.com) have a direct"X" implementation which is used on the Mandrake Linux Gaming Edition.

The only worry is that if I am a Transgamer I will have to wear women's undies to play Quake.

It'll be a great excuse!

Lucius Sour

The answer is under your noses!

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical slashdot. Someone posts the answer to the
question "what exactly did SGI sell?" and (perhaps
because of the Anonymous Coward author) there
it sits, modded at 0, completely neglected.

All this worrying about OpenGL over nothing. (And
for the guy who wondered where OpenGL came from
and if there was a non-open GL - GL was developed
many years ago by SGI for programming their
graphics machines. SGI decided it would be better
to have one common graphics standard for
workstations than several different ones, dividing
the application developer base. Thus was born
OpenGL.)

Expiration?

[damiam]

So when do the OpenGL patents expire? They must have already been around for quite a while.

This is simple

[sun_hardware_rules]

SGI now has something beter and they no longer need OpenGL. They just offloaded something onto MS that had no value for them and managed to get some ok money in the process. Or they are completly broke in half and need the money or they die. But even then 60 Mil wont get a dying company very far.

Ownership, Right to Use, or Right to Enforce?

[Andy Dodd]

Agreed.

If they just have purchased the right to use (at the stated sum of $62.5 million, sounds like a Right to Use purchase to me.)

Right to Enforce or full ownership... That's a different story and is Bad News.

Yes, it is possible (I didn't realize this until recently) for someone to grant someone else the right to enforce a patent but retain ownership.

Shifty Business

[abdulla]

Maybe SGI slipped them a doozey and sold them "graphics patents" but they were really just placebos so the kiddies at Microsoft would be thinking they were high on top of graphics market, but really they were sold the rotten cheese...

Re:More than gaming to graphics

[Anonymous Coward]

"If your developing a visualisation system of oil field sensor data, do you think you really use DirectX?"

That's what all kinds of sound guys said about DirectSound and yet more and more professional stuff is relying on it. Give it time and I wouldn't be surprised if the apps support it on the windows platform.

MesaGL

[abdulla]

doesn't mesagl rely on the fact that sgi let them continue ahead and waved the patent claims, could this mean microsoft might try to bury mesagl?

SGI charity

[abdulla]

maybe to stop SGI from doing such stupid things in the future, we should set up a donation scheme, everyone donates a dollar to keep the company affloat and to stop it being eaten up by the microsoft sharks? what do you say? only a dollar each!

Because this is Slashdot,

[PigeonGB]

and everyone has to be anti-Microsoft.
Now if Apple did this, Microsoft would be crapped on for something else.

OpenGL as leverage for DirectX � la W95+NT

[SgtChaireBourne]

Another equally unpalatable alternative is if Microsoft first requires vendors to make DirectX drivers as a pre-condition to being granted a license for OpenGL. MS did this with those heinous little "works with Window95" or "designed for Windows95" (or what ever the exact wording was) stickers on software packaging -- in order to get the sticker, there had to be a version for NT as well. This will first ensure nearly 100% penetration for DirectX, at which point MS can gradually be difficult with the OpenGL licenses.

I'm past thinking up something consturctive to say

[Anonymous Coward]

so...

Bill Gates,

You are a mother fucking megalomaniacal son of a bitch. The world is not for your taking.
Your life is not a boardgame.

You make Mr. Burns look like a saint.
I'll see you in hell.

Re:If you don't like this -- speak up![Fahrenheit]

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, spoken like someone who hadn't changed Netscape's homepage on his Octane for a good while.

xfree86???

[vandan]

I did a search on this page to find xfree86, and did not find ONE mention.
How does this affect Mesa / xfree86-DRI?

NO MORE BOXEN!

[JCMay]

Boxes Boxes Boxes!

It was cute the first time, but that was long ago. Now it's just annoying.

Just because you learned the plural form of the name of a large beast of burden ends with "en" doesn't mean that all English nouns ending in "x" are pluralized that way.

You claim to be involved with post-secondary education. If you were, you'd realize that the word is "boxes," with an "S."

As far as corporations not needing 3D visualization, you must be ignororing whole segments of industry: petroleum, aerospace, and communications jump immediately to mind. Automotive and consumer products design is enhanced via use of 3D virtual prototyping. There's more to life than finance, food service and retail!

When do these patents expire anyway?

[shamino0]

US patents normally expire after 17 years.

I was using GL applications on an SGI IRIS-3D system back in 1990 (approximately 12 years ago) when I was in college. I'm pretty sure that these were not top-of-the-line systems, and I'm also pretty sure that they weren't first generation systems. It is quite likely that GL was around for at least 3-5 years by the time I started using these systems.

In other words, the patents that SGI sold may be about ready to expire anyway. I'm not 100% sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if the first GL products are close to 17 years old by now, meaning the patents shouldn't be far behind either.

MADDDDD???

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all we need is freek'n Microsoft Buying the grand daddy of 3D graphics SGI. Microsoft know's there DirectX is a cheepo imitation version of OpenGL, and Since Microsoft Can't Crush them they buy them out, Sheesh there lame.
This could mean very bad things for Games I'm afraid, OpenGL was originally Public Software, now You'll probably have to get a license to develop with OpenGL(The BEST!).

This is a serious ISSUE!!!!!!!!!!!

And ALL THERE WILL BE LEFT IS ANOTHER MICROSOFT MONOPOLY(They do not belive in OpenSoure like
Like OPEN(Open source) GL(Graphic's Language)!

GOODBYE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HA