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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.
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.
Dude, John's .plan was dated 199_6_!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
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.
Keeping
> 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
3. As a result, company A's product is improved.
.. 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.
..
...
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
>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
"Old man yells at systemd"
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?
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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.