openSUSE Hobbled By Microsoft Patents

Posted by CowboyNeal on Monday April 9, 2007 @11:38PM from the or-at-least-disfigured dept.

kripkenstein writes "openSUSE 10.2 no longer enables ClearType (which would improve the appearance of fonts). The reason given on the openSUSE mailing list for not enabling it is, 'this feature is covered by several Microsoft patents and should not be activated in any default build of the library.' As reported on and discussed, this matter may be connected to the Microsoft-Novell deal. If so, Novell should have received a license for the Microsoft patents, assuming the deal covered all relevant patents. Does the license therefore extend only to SUSE, but not openSUSE?"

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I have a question... by purpleraison · 2007-04-10 00:19 · Score: 0, Redundant

I am not familiar with the history of the clear type patents etc., but I do know that no version of Windows has ever had font-smoothing until Vista rolled around. Whereas Linux and Macintosh has used smoothed pixels for as long as I can remember.

Is this clear type, and if so -- What has changed?

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