Truth Behind the ClearType/OpenSUSE FUD

Kennon writes "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols over at Linux Watch clears up the FUD around Tuesday's Slashdot discussion concerning OpenSUSE, ClearType, and patent deals with Microsoft."

Comments

ClearType

[Miguel de Icaza]

I think ClearType is a great idea

What a novel idea

[dattaway]

To come up with an idea, prevent others from working on it, and to claim all work in the area as their own property. And make claims of future work as well: "more patents to come." Sounds like pirating to me. Microsoft is raping and pillaging the software community.

Changed Before the Microvell Deal

[10scjed]

This change was last summer, pre-microvell, so the news actually would have been if OpenSUSE was enabling it and taking advantage of MS' patent covenant for Novell customers and OpenSUSE contributors while other distros couldn't.

MS' plan to fragment the community is only effective if Novell has customers and developers supporting them, otherwise the covenant is irrelevant. Boycott Novell, the rest takes care of itself.

Re:Changed Before the Microvell Deal

[rudegeek]

if Novell has customers and developers supporting them

You reap what you sow. Novell exposed themself to any FUD by going to bed with MS. Now everything they do (whatever it will be FOSS friendly or commercial) will be taken into MS deal context. It will just get harder and harder to wash off mud thrown by others.

Not that I think FUD is a weapon FOSS supporters should use. But a bit of paranoia is healthy. :-P

Re:Changed Before the Microvell Deal

[kripkenstein]

This change was last summer, pre-microvell, so the news actually would have been if OpenSUSE was enabling it and taking advantage of MS' patent covenant for Novell customers and OpenSUSE contributors while other distros couldn't.

Yes. I submitted the previous story about this matter, and I stand corrected. I didn't know everything about the issue; I relied on the sources reporting on it, and mainly, the whole matter seemed suspicious, and I thought posting it to Slashdot would shine some light on it. Not 100% sure if doing so had an influence, but what matters in the end is that things are now clarified.

From my standpoint, the interesting issue that remains is what I mentioned in the little comment at the end of my submission for the previous story: ok, assuming there are MS patents on this technology, isn't Novell licensed to use them now (even if it "isn't a patent license", but it just acts like one)? Apparently the Microsoft-Novell deal doesn't help openSUSE out much with regard to MS patents. Is the same true for SUSE?

Re:This hurts my head

[10scjed]

According to Microsoft's attorney, software patents are invalid in the US as well:

MR. OLSON [For Microsoft]: The '580 patent is a program, as I understand it, that's married to a computer, has to be married to a computer in order to be patented.
JUSTICE SCALIA: You can't patent, you know, on-off, on-off code in the abstract, can you? MR. OLSON: That's correct, Justice Scalia.
JUSTICE SCALIA: There needs to be a device.
MR. OLSON: An idea or a principle, two plus two equals four can't be patented. It has to be put together with a machine and made into a usable device.

One good invention in the past decade

[michaelmalak]

Microsoft has come up with some outstanding products and inventions over the years:

1. 1991: Word for Windows 2.0
2. 1992: Excel 4.0
3. 1993: Visual Basic 3.0
4. 1996: Windows NT 4.0
5. 2001: ClearType

Notice any clustering of the dates? With hundreds of billions in revenue, all they can produce in over a decade is ClearType? Let them have it -- we'll live with seeing our font pixels.

I got ya patent *right here*

[mtec]

Ballmer asked his lawyers for a patent on his peener
The prototype was quarter scale and looked like a pipe cleaner
Prior art be damned! He told the counsels - get to working!
I can prove it's novel just by bellowing and jerking!

Re:Wonderful Practice

[lilomar]

Since when is disagreeing with a companies business decisions not a good reason to stop using their products? That's kinda the only way for the public at large to keep corporations even remotely close to ethical (not that it always works). You may not agree that Novell has done anything worth boycotting them for, but isn't that up to their customers (in this case Linux users) to decide? You make your choice, and even try to make others see it your way, but don't knock the system. It may not be perfect, but it's all we got.

Re:This hurts my head

[squiggleslash]

There seems to be a confusion of terminology in the above, but I admit I may be misreading it.

Anti-aliasing is not the same thing as sub-pixel rendering, which is orthogonal to anti-aliasing and can be (and almost always is) combined with it.

Anti-aliasing is merely the use of different shades to adjust the sharpness of object boundaries, where the shade is based upon the amount of a pixel the objects covering that pixel would intersect. While this sounds like something that would be describable by the term "sub-pixel rendering" if, for a moment, you assume you would divide the pixel into smaller virtual pixels to calculate the end result, that's not what sub-pixel rendering refers to. The term "sub-pixel" is not being used to describe these smaller "virtual pixels".

In an LCD a pixel is made up of three "sub-pixels": real, discrete, lighting elements that together illuminate one complete pixel. The sub-pixels are the three primary colours and are almost always mounted side by side as three thin strips. Sub-pixel rendering is the technique of using the separate red, green, and blue sub-pixels of an LCD "pixel" in isolation to improve the sharpness of object boundaries. When used, the screen effectively has an increased horizonal resolution of 3x the regular resolution, so a 1400x1050 screen effectively becomes 4200x1050.

It is usually, if not always, used in conjunction with regular anti-aliasing (though technically it doesn't need to be.)

Microsoft's patents, as I understand it, cover the latter, and in particular focus on preventing "colour fringing" that is otherwise a major downside of using sub-pixel rendering.

Re:ClearType draws from Apple II, says developer

[Tim Browse]

Technologist Steve Gibson, a software developer and consultant whose claim to fame was inventing the light pen more than a decade ago

From Wikipedia:

The first light pen was used around 1957 on the Lincoln TX-0 computer at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Gibson was born in 1955. That's some fast work!

Microsoft didn't invent this idea.

[ACMENEWSLLC]

Microsoft may have a patent on ClearType, but they didn't invent it. We did the same thing in the Commodore 64 days with regards to fonts in graphics. I clearly recall zooming in on text and seeing different colors in the transition from text to background. I've spent many hundred hours doing graphic arts on the Commodore 64 and have been published.

I guess prior art doesn't apply to patents anymore?

"Sub-pixel font rendering with Free&Clear - Microsoft says they invented their "ClearType" technology, but I quickly and independently "invented" the same thing . . . as had others who came years before. It is very cool, but rather obvious. "

http://www.grc.com/ct/cleartype.htm

Re:ClearType draws from Apple II, says developer

[JavaBear]

Gibson have a "Who Did It First?" text regarding sub-pixel rendering as well:

http://www.grc.com/ctwho.htm

Software Patents outside the US

[bug1]

Not all countries recognise software patents, so i assume this patents doesnt apply in all countries.

Why do we force software patents on people who live in non-software patent countries ?

Re:Wonderful Practice

[jeevesbond]

This all shows the wonderful practice of choosing systems based on gut reactions and petty politics.

Petty politics or genuine concern that Microsoft and Novell are preparing to give the FLOSS community a good shafting? It's all in the semantics.

If you switched, or spend appreciable time bashing or advocating a boycott of SuSE because of the Novell/MS deal, you are a moron. I'm sorry. You aren't making any sort of choice based on the merits of the system, just on politics and the fact that you dislike microsoft. The agreement is harmless to "the community." It's an indemnity agreement! That's about the most benign thing two companies could possibly sign.

No. That agreement is tantamount to Novell saying: 'yes, GNU/Linux does infringe upon Microsoft patents.' It gives Ballmer evidence to extort money from GNU/Linux users, will probably be used in future lawsuits by Microsoft and has been the basis of much anti-GNU/Linux FUD.

What is particularly bad for the community is the indemnity stops with the Novell customers, the development community is very much left out in the cold. I'm scared of releasing my code under a FLOSS license because of patent FUD. It might be an indemnity agreement, but it's a thinly veiled threat too.

The bad part is that the reaction (as we saw here, sometimes humorously disinformed) is unfairly hurting a valid (some would say good) choice in the linux market (choice is good!)

You speak of choice, yet the Microsoft/Novell deal has taken customers away from other distros (for all the wrong reasons). The whole point of the deal is to eliminate choice and leave Microsoft with just one competitor to deal with: Novell.

If a company kills babies, I'm not going to buy their products. In fact I'll actively make others aware of their actions, this is not petty, I would consider it my moral duty. As a geek Novell and Microsoft have done something far worse: gone against the spirit (if not the letter) of the GPL. It is therefore my moral duty to boycott their products and advise everyone (who would know what I'm talking about) to do the same.

Re:OS X's subpixel rendering? Adobe's "CoolType"?

[TheRaven64]

You can still do sub-pixel AA on a CRT, you just can't use the same algorithm as on an LCD. The trick behind sub-pixel AA is to realise that any adjacent group of red green and blue emitters can be regarded as a pixel, not just those that are exposed as a pixel by the hardware. On an LCD, it's easy because you have a nice regular RGBRGBRGB pattern. You can trea a GBR, BRG or RGB run as a pixel, and just alter the colours for the hardware pixels to turn on the individual emitters as required. For CRTs, it's a little bit more difficult, but it's still possible.

Re:They didn't invent clear type, Steve Wozniak di

[Kadin2048]

Well except the sub pixel anti-aliasing they claim as their invention was invented by Steve Wozniak a couple of decades earlier.

I think it was even earlier than that, there were some links in yesterday's discussion to what looks like exactly the same feature, being investigated by Xerox even earlier. The prior art on at least the most general concepts of this (subpixel rendering by switching on individual Red, Green, or Blue color elements in a display) seems pretty damning.

But then again, the prior art against Microsoft's FAT patents was pretty damning too, and it even went through two USPTO reviews that said the patents should be invalidated, but at the 11th hour there was an additional review and suddenly they were "novel and non-obvious" again. Makes you wonder exactly Microsoft has by the short hairs that made a phone call to smooth things over... If they really need these patents, they'll never be overturned regardless of the obviousness of the prior art; the patent system is too thoroughly corrupt.