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Tandberg Attempts To Patent Open Source Code

Posted by Soulskill on from the cut-and-paste-your-way-to-innovation dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As if the current situation with software patents wasn't bad enough, it appears a new phenomenon is emerging: companies are watching the commit logs of open source projects for ideas to patent. In this case, Tandberg filed a patent that was step-by-step identical to an algorithm developed by the x264 project — a mere two months after the original commit. The particular algorithm is a useful performance optimization in a wide variety of video encoders, including Theora."

4 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. FIRST POST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    EAT MY DICK, idiots!

    1. Re:FIRST POST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Hmmm idiot. Isn't that what most people though of Armin Miewes victim?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes

    2. Re:FIRST POST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Stupid AC. Had he said "eat my pussy" he'd be at +5 "what's your email" now.

  2. Open Source Ass Kicking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    If you came to my gangs place and took our stuff, we would come to your house and get medieval on you and your families asses.
    So what's the Geek equivalent? You gonna infiltrate and drop his company down the shitter or just whine about it like I think you're gonna?
    About 60% of you want to defer to the useless justice system, about 20% will just sit there wishing 'someone' would DDoS them, 10% just give up, 5% think the code could be bettered anyway, 2.5% would do something if it directly affected them and the rest just opened another tab to explore their sexuality.
    Well, maybe if we whine in unison in 5 part harmony with a bridge, chorus, turnaround and 5 verses of " Life Ain't Fair". It's bound to work, we do it here all the time with smashing results.
    We get results, right?
    Yup, business as usual.