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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.
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.
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
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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.
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
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?
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
Remember Amalek.
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)
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
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.
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