FreeType Project Cheers TrueType Patent Expiration

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday July 19, 2010 @03:44AM from the just-wait-it-out-i-guess dept.

FlorianMueller writes "The FreeType project celebrates the expiration of Apple's TrueType bytecode patents. The open source font rendering engine now has the bytecode technology enabled by default. The relevant code existed for some time, but the project felt forced to disable it and advise everyone not to use it due to patent encumbrance. The 20-year maximum of validity of software patents is long, but sometimes the stuff that becomes available is still useful. The Unisys GIF patent was an example. And anything open-sourced 20 years ago would also be patent-free by now (except for the code that has since been added)."

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Re:Can now embed into X11? by MrHanky · 2010-07-19 04:17 · Score: 0, Flamebait

What the fuck are you talking about? How the hell will "some code from Wine" added to a "X11 backend" benefit anything bandwidth wise? You don't make any sense whatsoever.