openSUSE Hobbled By Microsoft Patents

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?"

Comments

Prior art

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Steve Gibson pointed out decades-old prior art that would invalidate the Cleartype patent (if our patent system weren't corrupt) several years ago.

Re:Prior art

[gweihir]

Steve Gibson pointed out decades-old prior art that would invalidate the Cleartype patent several years ago.

Indeed he did. Not that the idea itself merits a patent anyways. It is pretty obvious and shopuld not be patentable in the first place.

Re:Prior art

[0123456789]

There's a difference between being able to find prior art for something, and being able to afford to go to court to defend yourself against a patent infringement lawsuit. Sadly, the gulf between the two positions is pretty wide. Maybe there should be an appeal process for patent awards? If you can show that a patent affects you in some way, and shouldn't have been granted for some reason (eg prior art), you could appeal against the patent award and attempt to get it rescinded in a quicker and cheaper process than a full-on court case?

Re:Prior art

[tomhudson]

The funny thing is I just installed OpenSUSE 10.2 alpha 3 and the fonts look better than ever; if this is how they look without cleartype, who needs it?

Re:Prior art

[pikine]

I'm afraid the decades-old Apple II and IBM PC is not prior art. Pixels are either on or off for Apple II and IBM PC's CGA displays, so they apparently don't (and can't) care too much about color fringing. Sub-pixel font rendering on LCD screen deals with 256 shades for each sub-pixel, and the emphasis is on how to adjust sub-pixel brightness to reduce color fringing.

This is explained in Steve Gibson's Turning Theory into Practice. Sub-pixel font rendering is not the same as sub-pixels on CGA displays. The ideas are related, but the plumbing is different.

Perhaps I'm misleading in saying that CGA is not prior art of ClearType. I haven't actually read the patents of ClearType, so I obviously cannot tell; I'm basing my claim solely on Steve's webpage alone.

Re:Prior art

[tomz16]

Any time I've turned on cleartype on a fresh install of windows, my first impression has always been that it just made fonts look "blurrier", for lack of a better word.

However, after using it for a day or two, turning it off is absolutely painful. IMHO, it really DOES make text MUCH easier to read on an LCD.

-Tom

Re:Prior art

[AJWM]

The Apple II didn't have a CGA. Colors were generated by dot-timing the luminance signal into an NTSC composite monitor (read, TV), faking out the color decoding in the monitor. Subpixel rendering was done by reversing that to choose the appropriate color to generate the desired dot timing. On a monochrome monitor these showed up as higher-resolution dots than the nominal pixels in display memory.

Go look at the circuit diagram for an Apple II, for pete's sake. It's not that complicated, maybe a dozen or so 74-series chips plus the memory and CPU.

Clear type uses exactly the same idea -- pick the color to activate the desired combination of R, G and/or B stripes in the LCD pixel -- i.e. activate the desired sequence of horizontal dots by color choice.

Novell is the Judas Goat.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I think Novell has become an wholly owned subsidiary of MSFT and is being used for the express purpose of setting up precedents and creating more and more FUD. I have seen a version of anti-aliasing and sub-pixel addressing way back when in, of all places, grc.com.

Re:Novell is the Judas Goat.

[duncanmhor]

Judas Goat - used at an abbatoir to lull animals into a false sense of security.

Now it is clear

[javilon]

Novell is the new SCO

anti-aliasing makes me need glasses

[stokessd]

That might be a good thing(tm). In many cases I prefer non anti-aliased fonts. I have a nice LCD with a DVI connection for a clear picture, then I'm supposed to fuzzy it up? Anti-aliasing lakes me think I need glasses in many cases.

Sheldon

It's FreeType for a start!

[DrMindWarp]

This is complete nonsense written by someone that is clearly clueless and forwarded by an editor that is equally clueless. This is a FreeType library setting for compiling programs (not ClearType!). It is the same for every Linux distribution as it is the default setting for the development library. It has never been enabled by default.

Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Cleartype is just sub-pixel AA which existed long before MS ever used it for font rendering. Bytecode type hinting is patented by (IIRC) Apple, it is usually disabled in Freetype and and an alternative (auto-hinting) method used instead.

Apples and oranges, the bug reporter is confused or trolling.

It's only the filtering

[oergiR]

AFAICT, subpixel rendering is not disabled, only the 5-tap filter that's supposed to reduce colour fringes. See http://www.grc.com/cttech.htm. Apparently this is one of the things Microsoft has patented, and I haven't seen any "prior art" for this specific technique. In my humble opinion disabling the filter is not much of a loss as it just makes fonts look fuzzier.

Re:It's only the filtering

[b0z0n3]

So, Microsoft has patented blurring text?

I don't want to pay M$ everytime I have a couple of beers....

never so

[Deternal]

As far as I can read, it has never been enabled. It needs to be enabled at compile time, which the ansvar to the linked bug report clearly states by c&p of the relevant info from the FreeType lib.

This is a complete non-issue and has been known for a while. It predates the Novell/MS agreement.

Re:never so

[oergiR]

Mod parent up.

The main developer of FreeType decided to disable the filter in September. The Novell deal was later and had nothing to do with this.

This is completely clean -

[lmb]

openSUSE does not ship code which is known to infringe patents or IP, so the patents either get invalidated (lengthy and expensive) or the code disabled / removed. This policy is not affected by the NOVL/MSFT deal at all; quite the contrary, it has always been Novell/SUSE's policy to not ship such code.

Just like openSUSE doesn't ship infringing Linux drivers, or Debian not shipping certain licenses.

What the heck is the fuzz about?

Clear-Type replacement

[Kim0]

They could just use this replacement, which is not patented:
http://oyhus.no/SubLCD.html

the openSUSE team did the right thing

[w_albright]

IMHO, they did the right thing. One of openSUSE's goals is to be completely open source software (hence the 'open' in 'openSUSE'). Even if they may have the right to use them due to the MS/Novell patent deal, they do not want the distro encumbered with non-OSS software in the default install. Fedora 7 also disables this feature.

If you want a distro protected (encumbered) by MS patents, buy SUSE Enterprise.

Novell - Just brilliant

[HangingChad]

It really doesn't matter if this is related to the patent deal with Microsoft or not. The damage is done by the mere perception that Novell is aligned with Redmond.

This whole deal is to IT was Iraq is to foreign policy: A bad idea implemented without a clear exit strategy.

Unless the goal was to drive users to Ubuntu. In that case it's a brilliant plan.

Re:Novell - Just brilliant

[bwalling]

The damage is done by the mere perception that Novell is aligned with Redmond.

I won't disagree with that statement, but that's no excuse for this ridiculous story posted to Slashdot. For all of the griping around here about other companies' FUD, this is basically pure FUD itself. Alas, it's not an isolated case. It's too bad so many people read this site - it's a very poor source of information if you just scan the front page.

Re:This is what I like about Linux

[Aequo]

Do you have any examples of how openSUSE has been crippled by Microsoft? It has already been pointed out further up that this article was _clearly_ either written by someone trying to spread FUD or by someone who just isn't very knowledgable (subpixel hinting is a freetype setting that the freetype developers themselves suggest disabling for distros). It is quite funny to see so many people jumping on the bandwagon, attempting to find 'omgz evil' in Novell because they made a business deal with Microsoft; obviously a deal that turns out to have done them more bad than good in the eyes of the community.

Re:It is about precedents

[twistedcubic]

In my opinion, open/free Linux is still 5-10 years behind Windows and OSX in terms of desktop functionality ...

Yeah, a friend of mine has a Windows 95 machine, and I tried it out recently. Man, I was BLOWN AWAY. I've been wasting productivity on my Gentoo and Ubuntu machines, when all this time Windows 95 just makes it much easier. I mean, it looks and functions better, and everything just works. My friend showed me how to take all my LaTeX files (100 or so) for my book, with all the revision history in Git, and convert it all to Microsoft Word. Wow! Productivity SQUARED! After watching my reaction, my firend slapped me on the head (really hard) and exclaimed, "It's the APPS, stupid!"