Patent Issue Delays Doom 3 Source Code Release

An anonymous reader writes "id Software is still planning to release the Doom 3 source this year, but it's been delayed by a patent issue that's causing John Carmack to personally rewrite some of the code. The patent issue in Doom 3 concerns the Carmack's Reverse algorithm and has led Carmack to rewrite it in the open-source Doom 3."

Comments

Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

So some patent troll deserves money because someone discovered something a random genius discovered again from scratch a year later, long before the patent was granted? And this helps innovation somehow?

Re:Human civilization fail

[tomhudson]

While it may not affect Doom3, it *could* affect anyone else using code from the open-source version for anything else. Better safe than sorry, hmm?

Re:Human civilization fail

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If it makes you feel any better, the holder of this patent isn't strictly a patent troll; but Creative, world renowned for having not done a damn thing worth mentioning since the SoundBlaster, and somehow continuing to ship alarmingly priced cards in the face of shit that has the decency to be priced as such, from outfits like realtek, and genuinely decent hardware from companies that actually know something about audio...

Re:Human civilization fail

[D'Arque Bishop]

It gets worse when you consider that (if I recall correctly), the patent was held by Creative Labs, and they waited until a month or two before the game was to be released to inform id of the patent. They essentially blackmailed id into putting EAX-specific features to avoid a lawsuit and delay the game's release.

Re:Human civilization fail

[operagost]

Did you even read the story, much less the linked articles? No one is being sued right now. Also, the way the patent process works, your patent is pending from the day you submit it until it is rejected or approved. I don't see how the fact that the patent office needs time to research (and don't we normally criticize them for not researching thoroughly?) is relevant.

Re:Human civilization fail

[mfh]

Actually Carmack might find himself in hot water over this if the patent holders (Creative Labs) get litigious, which they undoubtedly will because in cases like these the patents are there so that they can be used to extort funds, much like trolls guarding a bridge, forcing payment in order for permission to pass.

I wonder if Id had previously settled with Creative about this patent issue, or not -- because Doom 3 was the most successful product launch for the company to date at over 3.5mil copies sold. That could be a big payday for Creative Labs if Id didn't contract this properly.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Zaphod The 42nd]

And this helps innovation somehow?

Oh no, not at all. This helps the rich get richer. What, you thought government was looking out for you?

Re:Human civilization fail

[robthebloke]

Do you like shadow boxing?
you do?
Oh good!
Fight a patent troll in court, win, and the judge will order the troll to pay all legal expenses. And like that, poof. He's gone! (And your company is lumbered with all the legal costs). Sadly it's normally just cheaper to comply, no matter how much evidence of prior art you have.

A few years ago we used to have conferences where people would actually detail how the technical aspects of their games worked. These days a patent troll would be at the back of the conference, and would have submitted a patent application before the speaker had even finished presenting. It's no wonder that companies are so unwilling to let their employees write papers these days :(

Re:Human civilization fail

[GReaToaK_2000]

In addition if anyone remembers, there were plenty of issues between id, Creative and (wait for it) Gravis. Yes, for anyone old enough to remember those days, the UltraSound card by Gravis was the first wave table sound card and VASTLY superior to anything (non)Creative Labs ever put out.

id's support of the UltraSound card was a bone of contention for Creative and I can easily see that Creative would have a hair across their collective ass(ets) including something they (creative) might want to litigate for.

Re:Human civilization fail

[blahplusplus]

" ship alarmingly priced cards in the face of shit that has the decency to be priced as such, from outfits like realtek, and genuinely decent hardware from companies that actually know something about audio..."

Their "alarmingly high priced" cards are your subjective perception and they are still miles better then most onboard solutions in terms of features and sound quality, volume and software features. I have yet to find a soundcard that comes with simple, easy to use and clean audio tools that you get with audigy card. Now I know you can download more advanced audio editing software but for quick and dirty stuff like "recording what you hear" through the wave channel from a movie/clip or off the internet it is a godsend. I still can't stand onboard motherboard audio after all these years because of the lack of software options and tweaking that I'm used to on audigy line of cards.

Re:Human civilization fail

[nedlohs]

Because something that is inependently invented within a year of the filing date and before the patent is granted doesn't deserve patent protection.

Conceptually, it is clearly something obvious enough to those skilled in the field and thus not patent worthy. Practically, society has the invention there's no need to grant a temporary monopoly on it to someone in exchange for them publishing it.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Runaway1956]

Well - to be fair, when I hear the word "patent" in any discussion remotely related to software, I have that rabid dog reaction. It's only natural for a relatively sane person to do so.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Eraesr]

They (Creative) already did. id Software and Creative Labs made an agreement that id Software could use the algorithm without paying any fees if they included support for Creative's EAX and branded the game with Creative Labs logos. See http://techreport.com/discussions.x/7113

Re:Human civilization fail

[Mad Merlin]

Id at the time agreed to use some Creative sound technology in Doom 3 that they wouldn't have otherwise used in exchange for Creative not patent trolling Id over Carmack's Reverse being used in Doom 3.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Theaetetus]

Because something that is inependently invented within a year of the filing date and before the patent is granted doesn't deserve patent protection.

I don't see anything in the patent act that says that patents are only granted to inventions that are "deserving". Do you have a citation?

Conceptually, it is clearly something obvious enough to those skilled in the field and thus not patent worthy.

[Citation needed]. How do you know that the second inventor didn't spend months and months working hard to come up with the idea? The mere fact that it's possible that two people can both eventually, through hard work, come up with the same solution doesn't mean the solution is obvious - it means we have two smart people.

Additionally, your interpretation is directly counter to the statute. Look up 35 USC 102(g), which explicitly describes what happens when two people independently invent the same thing and both apply for a patent - hint: the answer is not that the invention is obvious and both applications are rejected.
While the interference process has gone away under the new patent reform act, that's merely because they simplified the process. It still doesn't mean that the invention is legally obvious and therefore unpatentable.

Practically, society has the invention there's no need to grant a temporary monopoly on it to someone in exchange for them publishing it.

Not at all... In fact, as noted, the second inventor may have spent months and months to come up with the solution. If the first inventor published early, then the second inventor wouldn't have to have wasted his time. Society has lost due to the wasted time and money that could have been better spent on the next invention.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember very well - I followed the GUS to market on Usenet and preordered one before they came out. Despite a rough initial release, especially with driver issues and a lack of much native support (due to SB/ADLIB support in software only), it was still an incredible soundcard for it's time and I remember it very fondly.

Interestingly (and to bring this post back on topic), id Software were one of the first commercial game companies to provide support for the Gravis Ultrasound and as the parent points out it caused a fair amount of friction at the time. Bear in mind that this was back in the days of id's Doom - a smash hit that was single-handedly responsible for selling a crapton of ethernet cables, modems and routers due to the, novel and the time, 4 player networking support build in to the game. Native support of the Ultrasound (which sounded FAR FAR FAR better than the SoundBlaster) had the potential to sell a lot of sound hardware too, something Creative clearly felt threatened by.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

>-- But then again, being a Slashdot veteran, I suppose you just heard the word patent and started salivating like a rapid dog, forming an opinion without any facts. I wouldn't expect anything less -- it's the reason most people have moved on to other sites

Most people? But not you? Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
And by the way, it's rabid. Sheesh.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet clearly this is a case of a company gaining benefit from a patent when the other guy didn't even copy their idea but arrived at it entirely independently. This is the reason why people salivate like rabid dogs over patents. If the idea was so obvious that two different teams faced with the same problem come up with exactly the same solution within months of each other, there never should have been a patent in the first place, Creative should have had nothing to hold over iD.

Re:Human civilization fail

[queequeg1]

No, trademark owners are required to protect their IP rights or risk losing them. The one possible exception in the patent world is submarine patents, but it doesn't sound like that sort of situation was present here.

Re:Human civilization fail

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Independent invention should be a defense at the very least. It probably should be proof of "obviousness".

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Creative did this to EVERY development studio if they used stencil shadows on previous generation titles. They certainly did for the developer I worked for. Why else do you think EAX survived longer then a heartbeat?

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know anything about anything? What exactly do you think EAX is? What exactly do you think Carmack's Reverse is? Lurk moar.

CAPTCHA: cruddy

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap. Creative labs, I havent heard that name in years,

Re:Human civilization fail

[Chrisq]

Because something that is inependently invented within a year of the filing date and before the patent is granted doesn't deserve patent protection.

Conceptually, it is clearly something obvious enough to those skilled in the field and thus not patent worthy. Practically, society has the invention there's no need to grant a temporary monopoly on it to someone in exchange for them publishing it.

If you had that exception there would be a can of worms. How many people would claim to have invented something even if they had seen "patent pending" the example?

Re:Human civilization fail

[nedlohs]

I don't see anything in the patent act that says that patents are only granted to inventions that are "deserving". Do you have a citation?

Non-obviousness, you know one of the patent criteria.

Citation needed]. How do you know that the second inventor didn't spend months and months working hard to come up with the idea? The mere fact that it's possible that two people can both eventually, through hard work, come up with the same solution doesn't mean the solution is obvious - it means we have two smart people.

That one didn't apply for a patent might be some indication. That it's a simple tweak to an existing algorithm might be another.

Additionally, your interpretation is directly counter to the statute. Look up 35 USC 102(g), which explicitly describes what happens when two people independently invent the same thing and both apply for a patent - hint: the answer is not that the invention is obvious and both applications are rejected.

Given the problems the patent system has I don't think the statute matters that much when discussing "human civilization fail". Whether something is working the way the law says it should is irrelevant to discussions of whether the system is good for society.

Not at all... In fact, as noted, the second inventor may have spent months and months to come up with the solution. If the first inventor published early, then the second inventor wouldn't have to have wasted his time. Society has lost due to the wasted time and money that could have been better spent on the next invention.

Who cares? It's a sunk cost. That the patent system didn't prevent that cost from happening is just further indication that the system isn't doing the job of promoting progress.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Nanosphere]

world renowned for having not done a damn thing worth mentioning since the SoundBlaster

Chronology of most tech companies:

-Genius Engineer develops tech
-Salesman buddy helps start company
-Product becomes sucessfull
-Salesman brings in more of his salesman/lawyer buddies to grow company
-Group of salesmen/lawyers push genius engineer to some obscure corner of the company
-Innovation slows to crawl or stops entirely
-Company floats for the next decade or two off litigation and anti-competitive licensing while salesmen/lawyers rake in $$
-Another genius engineer somewhere else develops better tech
-Company devoid of any innovation fades into obscurity

Re:Human civilization fail

[bhcompy]

Wait, you actually had to ask if Creative Labs got litigious? Creative Labs is the biggest offender in the goddamned industry. Augh, I'm still pissed about Aureal

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you fucking moron. We're not talking about EAX. We're talking about stencil shadow techniques. TFA doesn't even mention EAX, no doubt because EAX is an audio system. So everything you've written about EAX above is complete bullshit.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Bengie]

I had an A3D sound card back in the late 90s, that cost $20 at the time and would still kick the crap out of a modern day $80 Creative card.

Even back then, it had better 3D sound than I've heard in the past decade from any game, and used almost no CPU time, even back on my Celeron 450a.

What happened to them you ask? Creative kept at them with a frivolous lawsuit that eventually bankrupt Aureal with lawyer fees. Aureal was ran almost entirely by engineers, which meant very cheap high quality and innovative products/research, but they couldn't survive in the USA lawsuit world.

I have loathed Creative ever since. They are on the same level as RIAA/MPAA for me.

Re:Human civilization fail

[msobkow]

At least EAX worked, unlike some of the earlier sound driver APIs in Linux land.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Theaetetus]

That one didn't apply for a patent might be some indication.

There are many reasons people don't apply for patents. Lack of a person filing an application doesn't mean that another person's application is therefore obvious.

That it's a simple tweak to an existing algorithm might be another.

If it's so simple, why had no one come up with it before?

Given the problems the patent system has I don't think the statute matters that much when discussing "human civilization fail". Whether something is working the way the law says it should is irrelevant to discussions of whether the system is good for society.

Or, it means that the people who studied and drafted the laws know a wee bit more than some anonymous internet hipsters who blithely declare that civilization has failed.

Society has lost due to the wasted time and money that could have been better spent on the next invention.

Who cares? It's a sunk cost

Now that's a "human civilization fail".

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

"Lack of software options" is one of the key reasons I don't use products from Creative Labs. They don't have Linux support. Yeah I know blah blah market share it would break the company if it tried to cater to such a small sliver--even though it doesn't break other companies who do it--even though other companies do more than just sound cards*. Creative's technology is uniquely hard to do I guess. What with those complicated audio processors it must rival a GeForce (the original one).

* No they don't do web cams. They do plastic moldings for web cams.

Re:Human civilization fail

[gnasher719]

Non-obviousness, you know one of the patent criteria.

Surely Carmack discovering it independently doesn't make it obvious.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Applekid]

[Citation needed]. How do you know that the second inventor didn't spend months and months working hard to come up with the idea? The mere fact that it's possible that two people can both eventually, through hard work, come up with the same solution doesn't mean the solution is obvious - it means we have two smart people.

The actions of Creative reveal whether it was obvious in the literal sense, which should match the legal sense (but does not for some strange reason).

Creative had a patent on an algorithm for shadows. Doom 3 had shadows. Evidently, the algorithm was so obvious that Creative "knew" id Software had infringed without even looking at what the Doom 3 code is actually doing. It's as if they knew there was no other way. Not sure about today's graphics research, but how would they be so certain they knew that at the time if it wasn't inherently obvious?

Re:Human civilization fail

[idontusenumbers]

After which the assets of Aureal were purchased by Creative.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I clearly know more than you do, since I actually read the article. Nice of you to post anonymously to avoid losing your precious karma by the way.

Re:Human civilization fail

[gknoy]

Thank you for your incisive and informative argument. Next time, if you feel he has it wrong, please actually contribute something other than "you're an idiot", so that we can all benefit from your knowledge. The Wikipedia article notes that it was discovered in 1999 by some Creative engineers (why were they stenciling shadow volumes? I have no idea), presented at a conference, and then subsequently patented. It also notes that Carmack independently invented it in 2000.

I can certainly see how Carmark might consider it something "obvious" to a skilled professional (of which he is the very definition), but kudos to him for (yet again) doing awesome stuff, and taking time to clean up things he's built in order to better share it with the community. I suppose that having earned as much money as he has lends a bit of flexibility to his work schedule.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't be modded informative. Trademarks aren't patents.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Mr Z]

Wow, does someone help you dress in the morning? You realize EAX is a sound technology, and Carmack's Reverse is a graphics technique, right?

Re:Human civilization fail

[DigiShaman]

SNR level and isolation. That's what you truly want in a sound card these days. While the DAC (CODEC) chips found on any on-board solutions may be top notch, the implementation is often absolute shit with regards to the quality of components used (capacitors, resisters...ect) with them.

Re:Human civilization fail

[nabsltd]

Their "alarmingly high priced" cards are your subjective perception and they are still miles better then most onboard solutions in terms of features and sound quality, volume and software features.

A Realtek solution with Dolby Digital live output via S/PDIF is pretty much perfect, especially for the price.

I don't see any reason to pay for average quality D/A converters in a "high-end" sound card and crappy amps in a "computer" speaker system, when you can get better quality using an external amp and real speakers.

Re:Human civilization fail

[ifrag]

still can't stand onboard motherboard audio after all these years

I can't stand it because it's too damn noisy. There's always a lot of noise on there, and that's even when using a card. Asus came up with some fancy high end card that looks like it has some shielding on it, but I've found the easiest way to get rid of that noise is to switch to an external box with either USB or FW interface. As soon as that signal is analogue it really needs to be away from the PC to have a fighting chance.

Re:Human civilization fail

[nabsltd]

Look up 35 USC 102(g), which explicitly describes what happens when two people independently invent the same thing and both apply for a patent - hint: the answer is not that the invention is obvious and both applications are rejected.

This doesn't really matter when you look at the huge number of patents that are granted and later overturned once someone points out that the initial patent examiner basically didn't do his job.

In this case, there were at least two different "inventors" that we know about who had published information about this algorithm. A thorough search might have revealed dozens more examples that show this was "obvious", at least to people skilled in the field.

Re:Human civilization fail

[GReaToaK_2000]

Sadly, Gravis had NO idea how to properly market a sound card as they were "simple" joystick manufacturers (etc).

It was always amazing to setup two systems next to one another for the serial "network" game (one with a Creative board the other with an Ultrasound board) and compare the sound quality. It was amazing. Plus id has always put so much time and thought into the graphic and sound quality it's clearly a different experience when you compare them.

Ah... Memory lane. Thanks.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Adrian Lopez]

Surely Carmack discovering it independently doesn't make it obvious.

It also doesn't make it non-obvious. Remember the criterion is that it be non-obvious to somebody skilled in the field, like Carmack.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I will also loathe Creative for all time for killing off Ensoniq entirely and subsuming Emu into crappy soundcard hardware. Two great synth companies that just got raped by the acquisition.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

-Another genius engineer somewhere else develops better tech

-Company devoid of any innovation fades into obscurity

Correction: Company devoid of any innovation sues new company out of existence, this is the reality of the current market thanks to the patent mess we have.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Calydor]

What does acting like a speedy canine have to do with anything?

Perhaps you meant to say 'rabid', a derivation from 'rabies', which is not called 'rapies' for obvious reasons.

Re:Human civilization fail

[tibit]

Yep. And that's what he said: trademark owners are required to protect their IP rights. Patent holders' won't risk "losing" anything if they don't fight every patent violation they learn about.

Re:Human civilization fail

[mikael]

From previous Gamasutra articles, the original paper had a bug in the algorithm described (deliberate error?) related to when the observer was already in a shadow volume. Creative Labs filed or bought out the patent on the correct version of the algorithm.

The next commercial entity to use the correct algorithm gets bushwhacked with the patent.

Re:Human civilization fail

[newcastlejon]

Nice of you to post anonymously to avoid losing your precious karma by the way.

Pot, meet kettle.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Theaetetus]

Look up 35 USC 102(g), which explicitly describes what happens when two people independently invent the same thing and both apply for a patent - hint: the answer is not that the invention is obvious and both applications are rejected.

This doesn't really matter when you look at the huge number of patents that are granted and later overturned once someone points out that the initial patent examiner basically didn't do his job.

In this case, there were at least two different "inventors" that we know about who had published information about this algorithm. A thorough search might have revealed dozens more examples that show this was "obvious", at least to people skilled in the field.

Sure, but you can't make a legal decision based on evidence that "might have" existed that you've never found. That's like convicting someone of murder because, even though you haven't found a body, weapon, DNA, motive, or other evidence, you have a gut feeling. The Examiner has to make a decision based on the evidence he or she has, not hypothetical evidence. If the argument is that they lack sufficient time and resources to do better searches, I agree... they only get about 10 hours per case. But that's not an argument that they're unskilled, it's an argument that they're rushed.

Re:Human civilization fail

[nedlohs]

If it's so simple, why had no one come up with it before?

It has worse performance than the algorithm it is a tweak to. But handles a common enough case better.

There's also Dietrich at Nvidia who came up with the same thing at about the same time, again independantly.

Basically once the hardware was there and good shadowing was wanted the technique was independantly developed multiple times because it is a reasonably simple step to take.

Re:Human civilization fail

[cayenne8]

If I were to be wanting to put together a good 'media' box, for doing higher end audio (flac) to my living room stereo, the good one (decware tube amps, Klipschorn speakers, etc)...and wanting to do it with Linux...

What would be some of the best audio cards to get and be able to use with good amps, etc? Possibly also multi-channel sound? Something with good drivers...

Also, what would be the good applications to play my tunes with?

Thanks in advance....

Re:Human civilization fail

[gorzek]

GP must think "Carmack's Reverse" is the algorithm used to play music backwards. Truly an innovation.

Re:Human civilization fail

[s73v3r]

I don't see anything in the patent act that says that patents are only granted to inventions that are "deserving". Do you have a citation?

No, but it's definitely part of the justification behind patents being allowed in the Constitution.

How do you know that the second inventor didn't spend months and months working hard to come up with the idea?

Doesn't matter. Someone else was able to come up with independently, at around the same time. Meaning that it's not a novel solution, but it's the type of solution that a reasonable engineer, faced with a similar problem, would come up with.

Re:Human civilization fail

[s73v3r]

If the first inventor published early, then the second inventor wouldn't have to have wasted his time.

You're right; he'd have to waste even more time because the reasonable solution would be locked away in a patent, meaning he couldn't use it.

Re:Human civilization fail

[s73v3r]

If it's so simple, why had no one come up with it before?

Because the problem hadn't come up before? To paraphrase your own response, lack of a technique being used before doesn't mean that the technique itself isn't obvious.

Or, it means that the people who studied and drafted the laws know a wee bit more than some anonymous internet hipsters who blithely declare that civilization has failed.

Highly doubtful that they actually knew about the software industry.

Re:Human civilization fail

[s73v3r]

If they claimed to have invented it, then they would be able to produce lab books and documentation showing their research. If they can't, well then they're shit out of luck.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Theaetetus]

I don't see anything in the patent act that says that patents are only granted to inventions that are "deserving". Do you have a citation?

No, but it's definitely part of the justification behind patents being allowed in the Constitution.

No, it really isn't. Patents are about economic efficiency and reduction of needlessly repeated research and lost man-hours by encouraging public disclosure. They're not a reward only for sufficiently worthy inventions. That's what the Nobel Prize is for.

How do you know that the second inventor didn't spend months and months working hard to come up with the idea?

Doesn't matter. Someone else was able to come up with independently, at around the same time. Meaning that it's not a novel solution, but it's the type of solution that a reasonable engineer, faced with a similar problem, would come up with.

... after months and months of experimentation, thus proving that it's not obvious. The test for obviousness is that that reasonable engineer could come up with the solution without undue experimentation. It absolutely does matter.

Re:Human civilization fail

[bluefoxlucid]

I don't use Audigy tools, but the Audigy card sounds far better than a current-gen VIA or RealTek AC97 onboard. I bought an Audigy2 for $10 and use it in Linux.

Re:Human civilization fail

[s73v3r]

. after months and months of experimentation, thus proving that it's not obvious.

That doesn't prove a thing regarding it's obviousness. Stop pretending it does.

Re:Human civilization fail

[omnichad]

Just do optical audio out and don't worry about having DAC on the PC. Even if you have to buy an external DAC, you're probably still better off.

Re:Human civilization fail

[petermgreen]

True enough BUT a PC is a bad place to be putting analog audio circuitry in the first place because it's an electrically noisy environment. If sound quality is your pritority you are probablly better off running S/PDIF, TOSLINK or HDMI to an external DAC.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

While the Gravis Ultrasound was definitely superior to anything Creative Labs (or anyone else) had put out for its time, newer Creative Labs Cards (only in the past decade, in fact) were finally able to match its audio fidelity.

Re:Human civilization fail

[omnichad]

I'd rather say that convicting is equivalent to granting the patent. You don't want either unless you're absolutely sure.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

ur and idoit

Re:Human civilization fail

[Theaetetus]

. after months and months of experimentation, thus proving that it's not obvious.

That doesn't prove a thing regarding it's obviousness. Stop pretending it does.

Uh, yes, it does. As I said in the sentence you clipped out, the legal test for obviousness is whether one of ordinary skill in the art could come up with the same solution without undue experimentation. If it required months and months of experimentation, then it's almost certainly not obvious.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Doctor Memory]

Anyone feeding a tube amp from a digital source is already living in a state of sin...

Re:Human civilization fail

[Darinbob]

Why do you assume a patent troll? A patent troll is someone who just buys a load of unenforced patents and then starts litigating. In this example though the patent creator and Carmack independently came up with the same algorithm.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look Asus' Xonar range. The reviews look good (don't take my word for it, DuckDuck/Google is your friend) and there is a spectrum of quality/price to pick from.

Re:Human civilization fail

[cayenne8]

Anyone feeding a tube amp from a digital source is already living in a state of sin...

How do your figure? Ok...so, I don't have my turntable yet, but I figure with things ripped to flac..I'm lossless, and no wow/flutter running it from harddisk....

Seems pretty good to me so far....but I do want to get a nice turntable for some special albums on vinyl...

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time, if you feel he has it wrong, please actually contribute something other than "you're an idiot", so that we can all benefit from your knowledge.

He did not call anyone an idiot (he accused him of being ignorant), so why do you accuse him of that? He did, if in question, point out that EAX (the technology that Creative pressured Id to adapt) and Carmack's Reverse (the patented technology that was the level for that) are entirely different things, which is all the argument necessary WRT the incoherent rant he replied to.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange, I thought that illustrious title went to Apple.....

Re:Human civilization fail

[DigiShaman]

Crutchfield seems to have ok selection of external DACs. But sure. If you don't mind having a separate breakout box and the extra cost, a dedicated DAC is the way to go.

Re:Human civilization fail

[s73v3r]

No, it doesn't. Stop pretending it does. You have no evidence of any kind of "undue experimentation" taking place. Stop pretending you do.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Coren22]

if you feel he has it wrong, please actually contribute something other than "you're an idiot", so that we can all benefit from your knowledge.

Come on, he isn't Michael K, that guy calls everyone an idiot, but never posts anonymously.

Re:Human civilization fail

[PReDiToR]

It isn't about the best technology, it's about market penetration and availability.
Windows has never been the best, nor most efficient technology for x86 32/64, but it's always been the most popular.
I remember having a floppy that created IPX drivers for NE2000 compatibles to run on coax, and yes, we all went out and discovered "networking" at that time.
AdLib, SB and GUS were all present in most games, but SB was the one that all games had. Under DOSbox everything that has SB has sound.
GUS should have black boxed the Creative gear (even when AWE32 came out people were still using 8bit SBs) to help with some of the crap we have now. Driver standardisation could have come about a lot earlier if people like me didn't have to carry around floppies full of drivers for different chipsets. It wasn't just sound, as far as VGA goes I had Cirrus Logic, but I kept others on hand, including SciTech's uniVBE gear for LAN parties.
Patenting, copyrighting and closed source gear has turned this opportunity into a minefield as far as computers that "just work" goes. If your gear works better, is prettier and has better warranty than the next guy you will sell more units. Locking every other player out just means that people resent your industry and you for not playing nicely. The consumer wants your gear, and if you don't perform well enough they will buy someone else's. Don't make that hard to do or they won't buy your gear again. SONY.

Sorry, had a beer, ranted a bit. <big grin>

Re:Human civilization fail

[Coren22]

Though with a dog you never know, it could be rapies or rabies :)

Re:Human civilization fail

[Theaetetus]

No, it doesn't. Stop pretending it does. You have no evidence of any kind of "undue experimentation" taking place. Stop pretending you do.

Months and months of experimentation is, per se, undue. Now, if you're making the extraordinary claim that Carmack fully conceived the idea over tea, then please, show us your extraordinary proof.

Re:Human civilization fail

[TheSpoom]

Saying that Carmack is "skilled" at gaming is like saying Einstein was "skilled" in physics.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

-Company sells all their patents to a troll (possibly in bankruptcy proceedings)
-Troll lawyers make tons of money even after the originating company is long dead.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Moryath]

And this kind of fucking bullshit is why mathematical algorithms should not fucking be patentable. EVER.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Hsien-Ko]

id didn't really deal with the sound code - Paul Radek did and his crappy DMX library didn't support the GUS very well. I know how problematic it was

Quake had better GUS support. :P

Re:Human civilization fail

[MechaStreisand]

I wish somebody would murder you, and everybody like you who is turning Western civilization into an absolute shithole. Die.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

"Current-gen" AC'97? WTF are you on about? AC'97 was replaced years ago by HD Audio, from which I seriously doubt you'd be able to hear much, if any, difference in sound quality from your Audigy. Perhaps on an X-Fi with the X-Fi processing enabled you'd get better quality, but not enough to warrant buying a discrete sound card.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

"How do you figure?"

tubes/analog setups really want the input (music) to be pure sine waves (the ear/brain just prefers them), you are feeding it (digital) square waves, albeit very small ones @44.1/96k sample rate etc, but none the less square, a tube amp will give you no benefit at all,you might as well use a switched mode amp if you are using digital sources

Re:Human civilization fail

[yuhong]

Indeed, I think how software patents was allowed in the first place is a court ruling (not by the Supreme Court) saying mathematical algorithms were patentable if executed on a computer.

Re:Human civilization fail

[monkyyy]

it helps innovation in the "law" industry, which is booming and if not supported will make us lose hundreds of jobs, at lest well dozens of jobs

Re:Human civilization fail

[bronney]

what the hell CT has anything to do with stencil buffer? what? This is nutty ..

Re:Human civilization fail

[mfh]

Mathematicians should make patents, and then hand the rights over to the EFF, if you ask me. Then the patents could become open source, so to speak.

I think I'm calling here for an Open Patent format so that much like the GPL, we could get patents on things that we will want to allow EVERYONE to use.

But here's the rub. Mathematicians need money to create things and feed their kids too. They typically get grants to do work from large corporations and from governments. The only reason these folks get money to do the work in the first place is because they are promising that the fruit of their labour goes to the corporation or the government that is funding the research.

My guess is that the Labs part of Creative Labs pays people to come up with this stuff. Now had Carmack decided his algorithm was any good he could have patented it through Id Software whenever he figured it out, which was probably proved back in 1995 or thereabouts. It was at least theoretical in his mind then, probably. Had he seen what Creative was planning, he could have protected everyone from it, but you know Id Software is also in business to make money so if they come up with a new game engine you have to pay big bucks to license it. Rage's engine has very few houses using it probably because of the steep price tag. So he's not giving the technology he discovers away.

But there is a huge difference between charging for an engine and charging for a algorithm and Creative didn't charge... they leveraged. It's probably not ideal but it's not worst-case scenario. It's not SCO tactics. :D

Re:Human civilization fail

[chilvence]

I'm beginning to get the feeling that the net result of patents is that society is saying to itself 'You know, we couldn't possibly allow TWO Carmacks to run around willy nilly inventing clever things. Lets muddy up the situation by appealing to the base instinct of greed'

Which makes it seem like a whole lot of effort when you consider people with smarts think of this kind of stuff while eating their corn flakes with or without the patent system...

When did being clever and coming up with something interesting stop being its own reward and devolve into a whinging pissing contest akin to 'waahhh, I was here first, you have to lick my balls!'

Re:Human civilization fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Creative owned 3Dlabs, which is now ZiiLabs. The former was responsible for the Permedia line of 3D accelerators and the latter is manufacturing mobile media processors. Creative also had a line of 3dfx based cards if I remember correctly.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Eraesr]

Slightly off topic, but the reason id Tech 5 (the engine Rage was built on) is used by so few studios is because
1: it's relatively new
2: other studios are only allowed to use it if the game is published by Bethesda

And I think that latter reason will completely kill id Tech 5.

Re:Human civilization fail

[s73v3r]

Again, you are the one that has made the claim that any kind of "undue experimentation" has taken place, and you are the one that has made claim as to how long that period has to be. It is up to you to back up your claims, not me.

Re:Human civilization fail

[Doctor Memory]

Except you're not lossless. You've taken an analog signal and digitized it. You now have billions of samples of your original signal, but no matter how many samples you have, you only have an approximation of the original. Which is fine if you're listening on an MP3 player with some cheap class D amp driving headphones that maybe reproduce 5k-18k. But if you spend the money on a tube amp, why would you compromise on your source?

Can a developer explain this?

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is that Carmack independently discovered the method AFTER the patent was filed, but before it was granted (public). Wouldn't his implementation of the method be patentable itself? Why does it need to be re-written? Also, if the Carmack version of the method was made public before the original discovery patent was accepted doesn't that make the method un-patentable too? Seems both the original discovery team and Carmack would have independent methods that accomplish the same thing...why would there be a violation?

Re:Can a developer explain this?

[tibit]

For patents, the filing date is what counts in this scenario. The one to file first "wins". There's more to it, IIRC, as you can claim priority on public disclosures and foreign patents. So if you publish something in a scientific journal, say, you have a year to file a patent for it, and your invention is protected retroactively since the publication date in the journal. Someone who knows U.S. patent law better feel free to chime in with corrections, I'm not 100% sure about it. I'll ask a patent lawyer at work to see if he has anything to add to that.

Re:Can a developer explain this?

[Dachannien]

The key is the scope of the claims in the patent, which is what defines what the patent covers and doesn't cover. Claims are not code, so they can cover multiple specific implementations of an invention.

As for Carmack's work as prior art, it would only count if it were published (or on public use or sale in the US) more than a year before the filing date of the patent (or less than a year if the patentee can't show that they had invented it before said publication/use). In any event, prior art on or after the filing date of a patent isn't actually "prior".

Re:Can a developer explain this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's actually the reverse, at least currently. I believe the US is currently a first to invent system. However, there is legislation that is either going to be passed or may have just been passed recently that changes it to first to file as you described.

I'm not sure how that would apply retroactively, though, nor am I sure what date such a change would take effect if it has already been passed.

Re:Can a developer explain this?

[Miamicanes]

The problem is that due to the way patent law works in America, someone would have to be sued for infringement, then fight it in court, and win. You (generally) can't preemptively sue for an ironclad declaration of non-infringement. AFAIK, there IS a process for seeking a judgment that your use is non-infringing, but the barrier and risk is VERY high; if you lose, it's considered authoritative proof of intentional infringement if you do it anyway (and thus subject to treble damages), and if you win, you can STILL lose a later lawsuit for infringement... it just demonstrates that you made a good-faith effort to not infringe, and therefore should not be subject to treble damages. In other words, heads they win, tails you probably still lose anyway.

Another thing to remember is that you can patent a specific novel implementation of something covered by a broader patent, but it doesn't invalidate the broader patent. It just means that if somebody does the patented thing the specific way YOU patented, you can get in line behind the original patent owner and sue for infringement as well. However, a license from you would not recursively grant a license to the broader patent. In an ideal universe, there would be a fair, objective, tech-savvy arbiter who could look at the broader patent, your patent, and say, "The broader patent has merit, but your patent is what really gives it 99% of its value, so we'll allow you to license your patent, then mail a check for 1% of the amount to the owner of the broader patent & tell him to have a nice day." Unfortunately, the way it works in the real world is that the holder of the broader patent has veto power over the whole transaction, and by the time everything is said and done, you'lll be lucky to end up with the table scraps and crumbs. It's a serious shortcoming of American patent law, and unfortunately it's something that nobody has ever really come up with a good, objective, and fair way to fix.

Re:Can a developer explain this?

[VGPowerlord]

I think it's actually the reverse, at least currently. I believe the US is currently a first to invent system. However, there is legislation that is either going to be passed or may have just been passed recently that changes it to first to file as you described.

I'm not sure how that would apply retroactively, though, nor am I sure what date such a change would take effect if it has already been passed.

In this case, it doesn't matter, because if Carmack didn't figure it out until 2000, and Creative Labs filed a patent on it in 1999, Carmack definitely wasn't first to invent.

About the software patent-- IBTT

[operagost]

This time, the pages linked from the story are very helpful. Carmack independently discovered the algorithm a few months after Creative's employees. They properly patented the process. I'm not sure how it escaped litigation this long; Carmack's lawyers were right to question this issue before the code release.
This has all been above-board WRT Creative. It merely raises the question again as to whether patents should last over 10 years, or whether patents should be issued for software in the first place.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Xest]

It escaped litigation because id made a deal with creative to promote creative hardware within Doom 3 in exchange for not getting sued.

Presumably that deal didn't include releasing the source at some point.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

or whether patents should be issued for software in the first place.

I really gotta say, in cases like this it seems so insanely obvious that this should NOT be patent-able. Someone else came up with the EXACT same technique very shortly thereafter or simultaneously, without reading your patent or any of your work? If it really is just an incremental update, nothing novel but taking existing ideas and tying them together, it seems the opposite of innovative; it seems to me this algorithm was inevitable. If not these people, somebody would have very shortly thereafter discovered it. So why do we make such a big deal about who got there first? How does forcing everybody to licence a technology from that person that they could feasibly develop on their own, Chinese clean-room style, HELP innovation?

It doesn't. Software patents do not help. They hurt. Companies like Microsoft buy tons of patents from college kids for pennies and then sit on them with no intention of actually using the patent described, just so they can litigate or strong-arm other companies into paying fees. Free money! This actually HELPS monopolies (I know ragging on MS is the oldest joke in the /. book, but seriously, they're doing some real harm to the industry. Its not just MS, but they're a big nasty troll right now, and they have enough money they shouldn't need to resort to tactics like this.)

I mean, think about it. Carmack developed this algorithm. Now he's trying to open source it and share it with the world for free. AND A PATENT IS PREVENTING THIS. Show me how patents "help protect innovation and creativity." This is so backwards it hurts.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Surt]

Yeah, he 'independently' invented it, just a couple of months after it was presented at a conference that he no doubt would have heard about it from.

Sure.

Sounds exactly like the kind of abuse the patent system was designed to prevent to me.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Do you have a citation on it being presented at a conference? From TFA, "John Carmack had independently conceived a similar algorithm to what's covered by the patent, which he created in the year 2000 while working on Doom 3. " Thats all it says. Other pages mention that it is known as "Carmack's Reverse" because HE popularized the technique at a conference. So, which was it?

My problem isn't that he may or may not have stolen it. My problem is it really doesn't matter. Looking over this algorithm, I feel like any software engineer tasked with improving the speed of drawing shadow volumes with stencils would eventually consider this as a potential solution. Its inherent to the design space, and its not all that groundbreaking or genius. Its just taking existing software concepts and applying them. You shouldn't get ownership of an algorithm just because you used it first. Software can be reduced to lambda calculus, and mathematical formula are not patent-able. Software algorithms shouldn't be either.

I'm not saying you can't have a copyright licence on your software. Go ahead. Its just the idea that nobody else can even use that ALGORITHM that bothers me. If people steal your source code, then by all means you should be protected.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[The Moof]

Carmack developed this algorithm

No, no he did not. William Bilodeau and Michael Songy developed this algorithm 2 years before Carmack recreated it. The fact that this method was being presented at Creative's developer conferences a year before Carmack invented it also doesn't help the credibility of his independent discover claim. Since there's no hard evidence, it would become a Carmack's word versus Creative's if anyone takes action, and with the timeline of invention/presentation of the technique, I would be inclined to side with Creative.

Of course, this is all hypothetical since id/Bethesda's lawyers are the ones telling him to rewrite that part of the code, and Creative hasn't actually done anything.

(For the record, I'm against software patents, I'm just speculating about how it would play out.)

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Oh, I know. I agree. I'm talking theoretical here, what should be, rather than what is.
Certainly he should cover his ass here, they did it first, they got the patent successfully, and yeah, his own lawyers are saying rewrite it, so he's rewriting it. As the law currently is, he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

I'm just saying that, as a software developer, this scares the shit out of me.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[TheRaven64]

The Wikipedia article states:

William Bilodeau and Michael Songy discovered this technique in October 1998, and presented the technique at Creativity, a Creative Labs developer's conference, in 1999.[2] Sim Dietrich presented this technique at a Creative Labs developer's forum in 1999.

So, it was presented at a conference a year before Carmack invented it. That said, it looks like a fairly straightforward and relatively obvious modification of an existing algorithm. If the patent office required patents to be reviewed by domain experts, it would have been rejected.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he 'independently' invented it, just a couple of months after it was presented at a conference that he no doubt would have heard about it from.

Sure.

Sounds exactly like the kind of abuse the patent system was designed to prevent to me.

'Independently implemented' is a far more apt description. Independently creating a functional implementation of concept that has been loosely described does not / would not infringe the copyrights(which are all the protection software needs) of said loosely described implementation, and I'm hard pressed to considered it an abuse of any kind.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Surt]

Someone else pointed out the presentation at a conference for me. So I'll just respond to the other portion.

I don't believe there should be patents on anything at all. If we are going to have them at all, this seems like a perfectly valid one. It obviously wasn't 'obvious' or someone should have come up with the optimization years earlier.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Kjella]

Well, consider if the patent is the "prize" and compare it to the X-prize foundation. You can't assume that just because multiple competitors came up with nearly the same solution but one nabbed the prize slightly before the others that this was just about to happen anyway. Maybe not Carmack himself, but I'm pretty sure someone over there values their IP portfolio and that's part of the reason they get paid. That's what patents do, create a scramble to invent as fast as possible and run to the patent office. The downside is of course that the innovation is locked up in a patent the next 20 years. You can argue that this is wrong but that's roughly the way it's worked since Edison and Bell, there's nothing special related to software here.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Surt]

Sure, if you want to throw out patents entirely, that's fine with me. If you believe they should exist, only then do I argue that this is a perfectly legitimate use of them.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[snowgirl]

I mean, think about it. Carmack developed this algorithm. Now he's trying to open source it and share it with the world for free. AND A PATENT IS PREVENTING THIS. Show me how patents "help protect innovation and creativity." This is so backwards it hurts.

Under the conditions of obtaining a patent, Creative has already released all the details necessary to reproduce the process/algorithm/whatever. So the whole notion of "this is preventing the information from getting out to the public" is wrong. It's already on public record.

Patents "help protect innovation and creativity", because one has to release the details about how to do whatever it is that they're patenting. Once the patent ends, anyone can pull up the patent information and reproduce it. The process won't go to anyone's grave, nor will it forever remain a secret. It's already public record before they even get the papers granting the patent.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Ah, yeah. appreciate the quote, trying to get concrete details rather than here-say. I guess it was called "Carmack's Reverse" because he's like a half-celebrity. We still don't know if he was at that conference of if he spoke to someone who did, but there is certainly reasonable doubt. However,

That said, it looks like a fairly straightforward and relatively obvious modification of an existing algorithm. If the patent office required patents to be reviewed by domain experts, it would have been rejected.

Yeah, thats my thought exactly. :)

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a patent on math, like all algorithm patents. The patent system at one time didn't allow patents on math. Why did we change that?

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Surt]

Because the businesses who fund the courts wanted it that way.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Under the conditions of obtaining a patent, Creative has already released all the details necessary to reproduce the process/algorithm/whatever. So the whole notion of "this is preventing the information from getting out to the public" is wrong. It's already on public record.

Yes, of course. I can go read it, and find out how to reproduce it, but then I can't actually USE it unless Creative says I can. However, if I was able to come up with it on my own, without their help, I still wouldn't be able to use it without their permission.

Yes, I understand the basic theory on how patents work. When it comes to software algorithms I reject that answer and I feel it does more harm than good.

"Public record" Doesn't matter. Oh look, we can go read the algorithm! How fun! Uh, unless you can use it, that is useless. And you're at Creative's mercy.
What matters is if I can write the app I thought of and sell it for a few bucks on the app store without getting my pants sued off.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[TheTurtlesMoves]

That is stupid. You don't come up with a better steam engine before the steam engine. At the time people were only just starting to do real time shadows in games. There was no reason to develop it before then. However once more that one person has a need to improve things and they come up with the *same* algorithm at roughly the same time... Well its pretty bloody obvious. We are not all retards waiting for lawyers to define obvious.

Even if you think this particular instance of independent invention is flawed, there is plenty more examples. When the problem arises and different people come up with the same solution, why should all but one be denied the benefit of their hard work?

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

That's what patents do, create a scramble to invent as fast as possible and run to the patent office. The downside is of course that the innovation is locked up in a patent the next 20 years. You can argue that this is wrong but that's roughly the way it's worked since Edison and Bell, there's nothing special related to software here.

The "scramble" you speak of isn't worth the cost of locking out algorithms for 20 years. People are already "scrambling" on their own, making good software and selling it is plenty incentive already. Having a copyright on the software is good enough. You can get out first, you can get market recognition, you don't need to have a monopoly on the underlying algorithm. Its massive overkill that is going to hamstring development and turn companies like Microsoft into patent trolls that don't produce anything of their own. They now make more money from Android fees and litigation than they do from Windows Phone.

There is something special related to software. Algorithms can be converted to lambda calculus; they are mathematical formula. Mathematical formula are exempt from patentability for a reason; they are not your own creative solution, but rather exist inherent to the universe, they are part of the space we all exist in, and you are merely describing a method, not creating a work of art or a novel invention.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Theaetetus]

I really gotta say, in cases like this it seems so insanely obvious that this should NOT be patent-able. Someone else came up with the EXACT same technique very shortly thereafter or simultaneously, without reading your patent or any of your work?

1. So? Maybe you were working for months and months to come up with the technique, and maybe they were also working for months and months to come up with the technique. Independent invention doesn't say anything about whether the idea is obvious - it merely means that two people were working on it simultaneously.
Dozens of pharma companies are working on a cure for cancer right now, and have been for decades. If two of them happen to finish their research and come up with a successful idea at roughly the same time, you're saying a cancer-curing drug is "obvious"?

2. Both the patent act prior to the AIA and the newly reformed statutes include procedures for what to do when two inventors independently invent and apply for the same patent... and the answer is not "neither gets it". Congress certainly doesn't think that it's obvious.

3. If the first guy publishes, then the second guy doesn't have to waste his time working on the same thing. So Carmack independently came up with the same idea, months and months later? That's a lot of wasted effort. He could've been working on the next technique, rather than duplicating the same work of the first guy. Patents, by encouraging public disclosure, reduce this amount of wasted effort and thus encourage innovation.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

It obviously wasn't 'obvious' or someone should have come up with the optimization years earlier.

When, before computers existed? Obviously some conditions are necessary before anybody cares about this, you need real-time rendering to be a big deal that is commonly used, you need shadow volumes to matter and be feasible to calculate in real-time, so that means you need advanced 3D gaming to be a big deal, and you need video card hardware that can handle the rendering (so this really would have appealed to nobody pre late 90s, aka, exactly when it was developed. Huh.)

The idea that Archimedes would have written an algorithm on shadow volumes is laughable. That does not make fast rendering shadow volumes genius or groundbreaking.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

1. So? Maybe you were working for months and months to come up with the technique, and maybe they were also working for months and months to come up with the technique. Independent invention doesn't say anything about whether the idea is obvious - it merely means that two people were working on it simultaneously.
2. Both the patent act prior to the AIA and the newly reformed statutes include procedures for what to do when two inventors independently invent and apply for the same patent... and the answer is not "neither gets it". Congress certainly doesn't think that it's obvious.

Fair enough, maybe obvious is the wrong word. But still, if two people both get done at the same time, giving the one who got done atomically by a day or two on years of development a patent and monopoly on the item while the other party has to pay the first party is just wrong. Maybe you say somehow they share a patent, but then what about if somebody else is done a week later as well? How long does the window stay open? Either way it doesn't help things. I understand that if I don't want to have to re-do something somebody else did, that would be wasteful. But why cant I just choose, myself, between either writing it myself, or paying the company to licence their software? Why does the algorithm need so much protection? Their product is already protected. The science and math should be open, not restricted. Mathematical formula are not patentable for a very good reason, and algorithms are the same way. Algorithms can be converted from any language into Haskell (turing-complete) and then from Haskell it has been demonstrated they can be converted directly to lambda calculus. So that seems like a gigantic failure on the patent office's part.

3. If the first guy publishes, then the second guy doesn't have to waste his time working on the same thing. So Carmack independently came up with the same idea, months and months later? That's a lot of wasted effort. He could've been working on the next technique, rather than duplicating the same work of the first guy. Patents, by encouraging public disclosure, reduce this amount of wasted effort and thus encourage innovation.

You know what works for encouraging public disclosure and reducing the amount of wasted effort even better? Open-source. And look, Carmack is open-sourcing the software! And look, he's being PREVENTED by a PATENT. Hrm.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[jank1887]

Since the source _is_ the invention, and the pantent requires full disclosure of the invention such that one skilled in the art could recreate the invention (they just can't sell anything sans licensing for ~17 years), then _filing the patent_ should require disclosure of the source.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Surt]

This should have been implemented about 5-7 years earlier if obvious.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Surt]

I agree: there should be no patents at all.

But if there are, this is a perfectly legit case for them. It should have been invented about 5-7 years earlier than it was if it was obvious, because people definitely had need of it that far back.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[ultranova]

I really gotta say, in cases like this it seems so insanely obvious that this should NOT be patent-able. Someone else came up with the EXACT same technique very shortly thereafter or simultaneously, without reading your patent or any of your work? If it really is just an incremental update, nothing novel but taking existing ideas and tying them together, it seems the opposite of innovative; it seems to me this algorithm was inevitable.

An innovation is all about taking existing ideas and putting them together in new ways. Innovations don't occur in vacuum, they are the logical continuation to what came before.

That said, this should not be patentable because software should not be. The reason patents exist is that it takes capital to manufacture a physical invention, so unless the inventor is already rich, he's shit out of luck without patents. On the other hand, software can be copied ad infinitum at practically no cost, so anyone who's in a position to innovate in the field can also sell his software, library or toolkit for profit without needing patents. Add the fact that the field moves at breakneck speed, and one should not be surprised that a patent model designed for 18th-century technology for producing physical goods fails quite miserably and turns against its purpose.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Theaetetus]

Fair enough, maybe obvious is the wrong word. But still, if two people both get done at the same time, giving the one who got done atomically by a day or two on years of development a patent and monopoly on the item while the other party has to pay the first party is just wrong.

Why? First in time, first in right. It's a concept that's existed in American law before we called it America.

I understand that if I don't want to have to re-do something somebody else did, that would be wasteful. But why cant I just choose, myself, between either writing it myself, or paying the company to licence their software?

Why should you get the benefit of their months or years of hard work coming up with the idea? Consider the humble internal combustion engine. Most of us could draw a working one on a napkin... but only because we've seen them, been taught how they work, etc. It's relatively easy to build one, once you know how the system works. So, should the original car manufacturers not have had to pay license fees to the inventors, since they could simply choose to build the engines themselves?

Why does the algorithm need so much protection? Their product is already protected. The science and math should be open, not restricted. Mathematical formula are not patentable for a very good reason, and algorithms are the same way.

Yes, but do you know what that reason is? Most anti-software people parrot back the Supreme Court's holding regarding mathematical algorithms, but they don't really understand why the Supreme Court came to that decision.

Algorithms can be converted from any language into Haskell (turing-complete) and then from Haskell it has been demonstrated they can be converted directly to lambda calculus. So that seems like a gigantic failure on the patent office's part.

Except not really. Because the Supreme Court's holding on mathematical algorithms isn't actually applicable to software performed by a computer... as they and the Federal Circuit have repeatedly said in the years since.

Just last year, the whole "but any software can be reduced to a mathematical algorithm so therefore all software is unpatentable" argument was heard and rejected by the federal circuit. Sour grapes Slashdotters complained that the judge didn't really understand the argument, but from the opinion, she clearly did. She also understood why it was irrelevant.

You know what works for encouraging public disclosure and reducing the amount of wasted effort even better? Open-source. And look, Carmack is open-sourcing the software! And look, he's being PREVENTED by a PATENT. Hrm.

Yes, because the patent existed 10 years ago. If Carmack was first and had gone open source in 1999, then he wouldn't be prevented at all. You can't really sit on your hands for 10 years, then take someone else's invention and claim you're giving it free to the world, without their permission, and expect plaudits.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Maybe. Who says? Where's your proof? Maybe nobody was interested in it. Maybe somebody could have developed it 5-7 years earlier, but didn't. We don't know. Like I said though, this isn't applicable until real-time rendering of lighting and shadow is an issue, which really wasn't the case in the 90s. Games still used drop shadows and pre-caluclated lighting. Half-life just came out in '98 and was fairly state-of-the-art, and had no such shadows or stencil techniques. Working on this algorithm even then would be somewhat ahead of its time. Doom 3 wasn't released until '04.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. The invention is the algorithm. The source is the implementation of the invention. Now shut up.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[SecurityGuy]

Yes, yes he did! He did not develop it *first*. I don't even like the word "recreated" unless Carmack knew of their work. If he didn't, they both developed it, by which I mean went through the intellectual exercise of coming up with the idea and implementing it in code.

I'm not opposed to ALL software patents, but vehemently opposed to patents on things that aren't true innovations. Carmack's complaint that he shouldn't be able to sit down, solve a problem in an obvious way, and be told his code is infringing because someone else did the same obvious thing earlier is entirely valid.

The problem I see is that the underlying technology changes, which makes solutions possible or practical that no one would have done before simply because they didn't work. If Intel/AMD/nvidia/whatever comes out with a billion core chip tomorrow and I solve some problem today in a trivial way that only works on billion core chips, who innovated? It wasn't me, I was just the one who used today's new hammer to whack yesterday's old nail.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[SecurityGuy]

Dozens of pharma companies are working on a cure for cancer right now, and have been for decades.

Actually, that bit is why whatever they come up with to cure cancer is NOT obvious and IS worthy of patent protection. As an example of something that wouldn't be worthy of patent protection, imagine SARS-II emerges next year. No one has ever tried to cure or prevent transmission of this new disease. You take the revolutionary step of wearing a surgical mask, quarantining infected people, using negative pressure ventilation rooms, etc and patent the whole process. It's novel, obviously, because you're solving a brand new problem. It's also obvious because you're simply applying a class solution to a new instance.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Rockoon]

I feel like any software engineer tasked with improving the speed of drawing shadow volumes with stencils would eventually consider this as a potential solution.

"Eventually" is some fuzzy shit to be using here, no? Shadow volumes were invented in 1977, over 20 years before this modification to the technique was invented.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[JasterBobaMereel]

See above, software engineers used to publish their ideas, now they don't in case someone else patents them...

They just get told to patent them instead, so the entire industry has an extra overhead, but no advantage, have you read a software patent, it is written in legalese, usually by a patent lawyer not by a programmer, it is next to useless in designing software, and the patent database is almost impossible to search for ideas

Note most programmers and actively discouraged in looking at patents, if they know about a patent and violate it then the costs go up ...

So instead of a free flow of ideas, and a bit of locking up company secrets, we have a patents system that encourages people to sue over trivial ideas, lock up ideas in legalese, and stifle innovation ...

Was this not what the patent system was designed to prevent .... ?

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Surt]

I think the real evidence for my claim is that this just wasn't the obvious solution to the problem. This was the solution people had to work to come up with when they decided that the obvious solution they were all using wasn't fast enough.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

True, but it wasn't used in real-time whatsoever until '91, like I said.
and then likely in simple and experimental uses. Trying to improve the algorithm would be premature optimization.
before then real-time graphics rendering wasn't feasible, especially not lighting.

Besides, this all just comes down to a billion variables. Maybe people weren't interested in this subject for awhile. Maybe the right people weren't working on it. Maybe in 2 years nobody came up with anything, but in 9 years somebody would have. That doesn't mean it took somebody 9 years to develop.

Look at math. Some solutions took centuries for the right mathematician to come along and solve the problem. But they don't get a patent on it because it isn't a work of creativity that they made them self, it is a description of a process which already exists in the world. Other mathematicians necessarily NEED that algorithm to continue the work of math, it isn't a single element, but rather each takes the ideas of the previous and uses them to prove further things. Algorithms are very similar. Donald Knuth said all of this much better than I ever could:

http://progfree.org/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt "Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things cannot be patented. Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is employed. The basic algorithmic ideas that people are now rushing to patent are so fundamental, the result threatens to be like what would happen if we allowed authors to have patents on individual words and concepts. Novelists or journalists would be unable to write stories unless their publishers had permission from the owners of the words. Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to writers, because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to make interesting products. What would happen if individual lawyers could patent their methods of defense, or if Supreme Court justices could patent their precedents?"

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Zaphod The 42nd]

But then that creates a new problem, 'how do we speed this up?', and then what if THAT problem has an obvious solution? Its not enough to say, well, this one is a different problem, so it must be more complicated.

Not to mention that this depends upon the original shadow volume algorithm... and if that was patented, this would not be patented. But I guess allowing that patent would be too broad? See, where do you draw the line? It doesn't make sense. Algorithms are math, they shouldn't be patentable.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[operagost]

Your perfectly valid insight would be better accepted if it wasn't presented in a snarky, accusatory tone.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[makomk]

Of course, according to someone else it was a correction for a mistake in the original paper about shadow volumes - in which cases chances are someone else did but didn't bother to document it. There seem to be a fair number of more obscure papers that have "obvious" corrections no-one bothered to write up.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[s73v3r]

It obviously wasn't 'obvious' or someone should have come up with the optimization years earlier.

That statement is full of shit. Just because a technique hasn't been used before doesn't mean that the technique isn't obvious. The problem simply could not have come up before, or the hardware was not capable of performing to the level that would make the technique viable.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[s73v3r]

No, they didn't. Stop your worthless trolling.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[s73v3r]

So the whole notion of "this is preventing the information from getting out to the public" is wrong.

Actually, it's right. While the algorithm may be out there, no one can use it until the patent expires. So it's effectively locked away from the public.

Patents "help protect innovation and creativity", because one has to release the details about how to do whatever it is that they're patenting. Once the patent ends, anyone can pull up the patent information and reproduce it. The process won't go to anyone's grave, nor will it forever remain a secret. It's already public record before they even get the papers granting the patent.

In the general sense, sure. However, when it comes to software, many of that will already be obsolete by the time the patent expires, meaning that disclosing it is next to worthless.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[s73v3r]

If the first guy publishes, then the second guy doesn't have to waste his time working on the same thing.

No, now he not only wasted the time he spent trying to solve the problem, but now he has to waste more time trying to come up with a different solution because the one he was working toward is patented, meaning he can't fucking use it.

Patents do NOT reduce "wasted effort." In many cases, they increase it, due to now having to find a way of going around the patent, instead of using the obvious solution in the first place.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[s73v3r]

Why? First in time, first in right. It's a concept that's existed in American law before we called it America.

Big fucking deal. Doesn't make it right in the least.

Why should you get the benefit of their months or years of hard work coming up with the idea?

You're jumping to assumptions. Stop it.

Most anti-software people parrot back the Supreme Court's holding regarding mathematical algorithms, but they don't really understand why the Supreme Court came to that decision.

Yes, they do. They also realize that locking software innovations away in patents for ~30 years does absolutely nothing to inspire innovation, and in most cases hampers it, as by the time these techniques are available to use, the industry has moved on.

. If Carmack was first and had gone open source in 1999, then he wouldn't be prevented at all. You can't really sit on your hands for 10 years, then take someone else's invention and claim you're giving it free to the world, without their permission, and expect plaudits.

Wow, what an incredibly shitty and inaccurate description of what happened. Carmack came forward with his invention in 2000.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Theaetetus]

If the first guy publishes, then the second guy doesn't have to waste his time working on the same thing.

No, now he not only wasted the time he spent trying to solve the problem, but now he has to waste more time trying to come up with a different solution because the one he was working toward is patented, meaning he can't fucking use it.

Only if he can't afford a license. If he can, then he doesn't have to waste any time.

Patents do NOT reduce "wasted effort." In many cases, they increase it, due to now having to find a way of going around the patent, instead of using the obvious solution in the first place.

You still haven't proven it's an "obvious" solution, so we can ignore that argument as moot. And yes, the patent does reduce the wasted effort of the second guy re-inventing the first solution - a term which, I notice, you quietly tiptoed away from. Shiat, using a solution is easy. I can use Microsoft Word without ever having to write a line of code. But we're not talking about using a solution... we're talking about inventing the solution, a process which may take months and months of [drumroll] wasted effort.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Theaetetus]

Why? First in time, first in right. It's a concept that's existed in American law before we called it America.

Big fucking deal. Doesn't make it right in the least.

Well, I suppose you could move to North Korea, then. Enjoy!

Why should you get the benefit of their months or years of hard work coming up with the idea?

You're jumping to assumptions. Stop it.

So you think they came up with the solution in an afternoon over tea?

Most anti-software people parrot back the Supreme Court's holding regarding mathematical algorithms, but they don't really understand why the Supreme Court came to that decision.

Yes, they do.

[Citation needed]. How about you - why did the Supreme Court decide that way?

They also realize that locking software innovations away in patents for ~30 years does absolutely nothing to inspire innovation, and in most cases hampers it, as by the time these techniques are available to use, the industry has moved on.

And since the Supreme Court decision had nothing to do with locking software innovations away for ~30 years, this is a bit irrelevant. Sounds more like you really don't know why they made that decision, so you're reaching for a post hoc explanation.

. If Carmack was first and had gone open source in 1999, then he wouldn't be prevented at all. You can't really sit on your hands for 10 years, then take someone else's invention and claim you're giving it free to the world, without their permission, and expect plaudits.

Wow, what an incredibly shitty and inaccurate description of what happened. Carmack came forward with his invention in 2000.

He open-sourced Doom in 2000? Then what's this article about?
Additionally, even if he had, he was still too late. He wasn't first.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[tragedy]

I'm not going to go into Edison here. Too much of a can of worms. Bell is a good example though. Essentially, Bell's lawyer and Bell himself seem to have pulled some dirty tricks to get his patent filing in before Elisha Gray (they came in on the same day, but a lot of evidence says Gray's was actually in first). The nature of the entire affair exposes the complete ridiculousness of a system of government granted monopolies on inventions in the first place.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[s73v3r]

Only if he can't afford a license. If he can, then he doesn't have to waste any time.

So now they have to waste capital and resources. Same fucking problem.

You still haven't proven it's an "obvious" solution

You haven't proven that it's not. So just about everything you've said on that subject is moot.

And yes, the patent does reduce the wasted effort of the second guy re-inventing the first solution - a term which, I notice, you quietly tiptoed away from.

I haven't "tiptoed" away from anything. You, however, have decided that coming up with another, possibly non-ideal solution to the same problem apparently doesn't waste time and effort. Wasn't saving time one of your big justifications for this

Shiat, using a solution is easy. I can use Microsoft Word without ever having to write a line of code. But we're not talking about using a solution... we're talking about inventing the solution, a process which may take months and months of [drumroll] wasted effort.

Wow, talk about a waste of time. This statement has absolutely nothing to do with what is being talked about. Of course we're talking about getting a solution, dumbfuck. Except now, we've taken time and effort to find the ideal and obvious solution, but while doing that, it's revealed that it's patented. So now we've wasted all that time and effort, and now we have to waste even more time and effort trying to invent another, possibly non-ideal solution to the same problem.

Not only have you failed to demonstrate that this invention is non-obvious, but you've also failed to address the wasted effort by people who were coming up with the obvious solution to the problem, but now can't use it due to patents, and have to throw away that effort, and expend more on coming up with another solution.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[s73v3r]

Well, I suppose you could move to North Korea, then. Enjoy!

Ahh, trolling. Classy. I suppose that means that anything that has a law against it is instantly bad, right?

So you think they came up with the solution in an afternoon over tea?

Maybe. However, I'm not the one trying to assert how they came up with the solution. You are. Thus, you are the one that is assuming.

[Citation needed].

Again, you're the one making the assumption. The onus is on YOU to back it up.

He open-sourced Doom in 2000?

Nobody claimed he did, dumbass. However, if you had actually read the article, and the links provided with it, you'd have seen that Carmack came up with it in 2000, during development of Doom 3. He also presented it at a conference shortly thereafter.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Theaetetus]

Of course we're talking about getting a solution, dumbfuck.

Way to backpedal on your earlier post. I think the only wasted time here is mine, troll.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Surt]

My snarky, accusatory tone was deliberately intended to draw attention to the ridiculousness of the contrary claims 'insanely obvious' etc of the post I was responding too.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Isaac Remuant]

I've patented for loops, quicksort and A*. Go have fun programming.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[s73v3r]

I never backpedaled. We have always been talking about a solution. Never once have we not been. Of course, it's easier to call me a troll than to admit your own failure to comprehend what someone is writing.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Anonymous Coward]

So Carmack independently came up with the same idea, months and months later? That's a lot of wasted effort. He could've been working on the next technique, rather than duplicating the same work of the first guy. Patents, by encouraging public disclosure, reduce this amount of wasted effort and thus encourage innovation.

You could also make the exact opposite argument from that: patents, by locking ideas away behind exorbitant licensing fees, increase the amount of wasted effort by forcing others to bludgeon their own innocent implementations into something clearly non-infringing, and/or having to defend their idea or implementation in court, rather than getting their creative project finished and moving onto the next one.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[MikeBabcock]

Last I checked, patents are supposed to be for working devices with a working copy kept on file at the office or instructions detailed enough that another person could recreate and prove that it works.

The algorithm alone may be patented, but a working example should be included. The fact that one may not be is oft cited as another example of how much the modern patent system sucks.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Xest]

Sure but the problem here is distribution, licensing and reuse of it.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[PastaLover]

If the first guy publishes, then the second guy doesn't have to waste his time working on the same thing.

No, now he not only wasted the time he spent trying to solve the problem, but now he has to waste more time trying to come up with a different solution because the one he was working toward is patented, meaning he can't fucking use it.

Only if he can't afford a license. If he can, then he doesn't have to waste any time.

Splitting hairs here. Nobody can afford to pay licenses for software patents. Any one sufficiently large piece of software is covered by tens or hundreds or patents. The only way you can afford to license them all, is if you're prepared to publish at a loss.

Patents do NOT reduce "wasted effort." In many cases, they increase it, due to now having to find a way of going around the patent, instead of using the obvious solution in the first place.

You still haven't proven it's an "obvious" solution, so we can ignore that argument as moot. And yes, the patent does reduce the wasted effort of the second guy re-inventing the first solution - a term which, I notice, you quietly tiptoed away from. Shiat, using a solution is easy. I can use Microsoft Word without ever having to write a line of code. But we're not talking about using a solution... we're talking about inventing the solution, a process which may take months and months of [drumroll] wasted effort.

Whether it is obvious or not is beside the point. I can guarantee you that it didn't take months to develop, since Carmack had a game engine to write and economical incentive not to spend half of his development time on a single light performance improvement. This is always the problem of software patents: 99% of the time, coming up with the 'invention' was cheaper than the actual process of getting the patent. And in the remaining 1%, somebody had an economic incentive to come up with the solution anyway (the one thing patents are supposed to be there to encourage).

They demonstrably (seriously, there have been studies) slow down invention in the software space. So why put up with them?

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Theaetetus]

Splitting hairs here. Nobody can afford to pay licenses for software patents. Any one sufficiently large piece of software is covered by tens or hundreds or patents. The only way you can afford to license them all, is if you're prepared to publish at a loss.

So, because you can't negotiate proper licenses, you shouldn't have to pay for anything? That's like saying that the price of a CD is too high, so I shouldn't have to pay for any music, anywhere.

Whether it is obvious or not is beside the point.

I thought it was central, because if the invention is obvious, then you've got a justification for claiming any patent is invalid and therefore using it without paying isn't infringement of a valid patent.
But, okay - given an invention that is novel and not obvious, what's your justification for still not paying for a license?

They demonstrably (seriously, there have been studies) slow down invention in the software space. So why put up with them?

Except that there haven't been studies... There's been sort of meta studies based on ancillary data to sort of argue in a roundabout fashion that patents slow down software innovation, but not any actual studies, because software has been patentable in some form for as long as software has existed. It'd be like a study purporting to claim that due to the economics of fossil fuels, using electricity from any grid that includes non-renewable sources slows down innovation in the software space. Uh, okay... There's no real data, and it's mostly hypothesis, and you certainly can't compare it to anything since there isn't a society out there that doesn't do it, so we'll take it with a grain of salt.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[PastaLover]

Splitting hairs here. Nobody can afford to pay licenses for software patents. Any one sufficiently large piece of software is covered by tens or hundreds or patents. The only way you can afford to license them all, is if you're prepared to publish at a loss.

So, because you can't negotiate proper licenses, you shouldn't have to pay for anything? That's like saying that the price of a CD is too high, so I shouldn't have to pay for any music, anywhere.

If we would truly negotiate for and license every single patent major software products violate, the software industry would grind to a halt. The patent system is ill-suited for the software industry as a whole. And from all possible ways to handle software patents, the US in particular has chosen about the worst one.

Whether it is obvious or not is beside the point.

I thought it was central, because if the invention is obvious, then you've got a justification for claiming any patent is invalid and therefore using it without paying isn't infringement of a valid patent.

But, okay - given an invention that is novel and not obvious, what's your justification for still not paying for a license?

Software patents shouldn't exist in the first place, is what I was getting at.

They demonstrably (seriously, there have been studies) slow down invention in the software space. So why put up with them?

Except that there haven't been studies... There's been sort of meta studies based on ancillary data to sort of argue in a roundabout fashion that patents slow down software innovation, but not any actual studies, because software has been patentable in some form for as long as software has existed. It'd be like a study purporting to claim that due to the economics of fossil fuels, using electricity from any grid that includes non-renewable sources slows down innovation in the software space. Uh, okay... There's no real data, and it's mostly hypothesis, and you certainly can't compare it to anything since there isn't a society out there that doesn't do it, so we'll take it with a grain of salt.

At the very least, litigation is costing major software companies more than they are actually gaining from licensing. We do have something to compare to btw, an entire software industry with much less patent proliferation up until the early 80s.

But we can also ask ourselves: how many software patents really apply to inventions that would otherwise would not have been worth coming up with? You think nobody would've gone through the trouble of coming up with MP3 had software patents not existed? Software design is not the same as drug design, and simply shouldn't be judged under the same rules.

Patents are not there to make you rich. They're there to promote innovation. They're clearly not necessary, and so most likely to be an impediment instead. Which studies do back up, no matter what you seem to think.

Re:About the software patent-- IBTT

[Theaetetus]

If we would truly negotiate for and license every single patent major software products violate, the software industry would grind to a halt. The patent system is ill-suited for the software industry as a whole. And from all possible ways to handle software patents, the US in particular has chosen about the worst one.

Oh? The automobile industry has hundreds of thousands of patents, and any individual car is covered by thousands of them. They're not grinding to a halt (recent recession aside).

Software patents shouldn't exist in the first place, is what I was getting at.

Why not?

At the very least, litigation is costing major software companies more than they are actually gaining from licensing.

Sure, but that's also because they're positioning themselves for a massive cross licensing deal... which incidentally is what the automobile companies do.

We do have something to compare to btw, an entire software industry with much less patent proliferation up until the early 80s.

I'd say the pace of computer innovation over the past 20 years is much faster than the pace from 1960-1980. I have a 5 ounce device in my pocket that will do high-resolution video chat with my nieces, 4000 miles away. And have you seen the realistic crowd movement AI in Assassin's Creed?

But we can also ask ourselves: how many software patents really apply to inventions that would otherwise would not have been worth coming up with? You think nobody would've gone through the trouble of coming up with MP3 had software patents not existed? Software design is not the same as drug design, and simply shouldn't be judged under the same rules.

Patents are not there to make you rich. They're there to promote innovation. They're clearly not necessary, and so most likely to be an impediment instead. Which studies do back up, no matter what you seem to think.

But you've got it completely backwards... Patents are not awards for coming up with an invention that would otherwise not have been worth coming up with. Patents are for new and nonobvious inventions, period, regardless of whether they're small inventions or groundbreaking revolutionary inventions. In fact, the small inventions are more important: a groundbreaking idea comes around once in a lifetime, and is usually so valuable already that no one would not capitalize on it. There's no need to encourage public disclosure, because you just invented heavier-than-air-travel/horseless-carriage/self-healing-networks/etc. Wow! You're going to tell everyone!

On the other hand, say you just spent a hundred hours trying to figure out a small problem. Your hundred competitors could also spend a hundred hours, and that's ten thousand hours spent overall. Or, you could publish, and that's nine thousand, nine hundred hours that could instead be spent on the next innovation.

Patents are about encouraging public disclosure so that people don't waste time re-inventing the same idea. They encourage innovation by freeing up resources for innovation.

Props to Mr. Carmack

[Xeleema]

I realize there may be a financial incentive for rewriting what is no doubt a fair chunk of one of the key "selling points" of the DOOM 3 engine, however I'm glad to see that this is being done so the source can be released *publically*. Even if not much comes from it, I personally enjoy going over the code released from id Software...it's like going and in time and watching Da Vinci with a hammer and chisel.

(Yes, yes "Carmack's no Da Vinci", but he is as close to one as most Programmer's can get.)

Re:Props to Mr. Carmack

[Zaphod The 42nd]

That said, TONS of open-source projects were started using the Quake 3 source code, so I don't see how at least something won't come from this.
Have you seen Cube or Sauerbraten or Warsow?

Re:Props to Mr. Carmack

[Narishma]

Just FYI, none of those games you mentioned use or are based on Quake 3's source code. Warsow is based on QFusion, a modified Quake 2 engine and Cube and Sauerbraten used their own engines developed from scratch.

Re:Props to Mr. Carmack

[TheCarp]

Yah but, let's see Da Vinci's impaled head take more than one or two blasts of rocket splash damage without being reduced to gibs. We KNOW where Carmack's cranium stacks up in that test.

Re:Props to Mr. Carmack

[TheCarp]

Oh wait...wrong dev.... hmmm guess we need to devise a new test.

Re:Props to Mr. Carmack

[Zaphod The 42nd]

You're right, warsow is Quake2. My bad! Still, proves that something comes from open sourced Id technology, proves the point, just older :P And snap, you're also right, cube is its own engine. I guess I was looking at open source engines awhile back and got it confused? Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3#Uses_of_the_engine Actual examples of the open sourced quake 3 code:
ioquake, urban terror, temulous

Carmack can't use "Carmack's Reverse"

[MetalliQaZ]

It's like we're trolling ourselves.

Re:Carmack can't use "Carmack's Reverse"

[EnsilZah]

If only there was some place where something that's generally done one way in, for example the United States, was let's say 'reversed'.

Saw this coming..

[mewsenews]

I sent John Carmack an email about this back in April 2009:

Hi John,

I believe you've said publicly that you are planning a GPL release of the Doom 3 source code, but I remember around the time the game was launched you had Creative holding a patent on the shadows algorithm, and you assuaged them by including support for EAX. Is that still causing problems?

-Dave

When we release the code (no date set), anyone that uses it would potentially be infringing. There are workarounds at a modest performance cost.

John Carmack

It sounds like id's lawyers are asking him to implement one of the workarounds he mentioned before he makes the public release.

What's the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's his patent, then under GPL3, anyone using his patent can do so without license ONLY IF they GPL3 their code.

What, then, is the problem? If Jon's listening and this gets modded up, maybe he can consider the problem in a light not driven by accountants (where every lost opportunity to profit is counted a concrete loss of revenue).

Re:What's the problem?

[acoster]

Problem is - it's not his patent, but Creative's. Turns out that he independently reached the same algorithm as they did, and iD "licensed" it when they used EAX.

Re:What's the problem?

[delinear]

What acoster said - it's not Carmack's patent. It's only referred to as Carmack's Reverse because he discovered the technique after the patent was filed but before it was granted and spoke about how he'd solved the problem publicly, he still had to come to a licensing agreement with Creative at the time to be able to use it.

Re:What's the problem?

[s73v3r]

If it was Carmack's patent, then there would be no issue, as he could just offer the license under a free license or something. The problem is that it's not his patent, but Creative's.

Act quick!

[Dishwasha]

Somebody reverse Carmack's Reverse and put it on a tshirt!

Re:Act quick!

[MadKeithV]

esreveR s'kcamraC?

Re:Act quick!

[michelcolman]

No, he said "on a tshirt"

Re:Act quick!

[MadKeithV]

No, he said "on a tshirt"

My t-shirt displays my recent slashdot comments.

Re:Act quick!

[lance_of_the_apes]

Dude, that's awesome! You should patent that...

Re:Act quick!

[Anonymous Coward]

You could probably get by on writing an algorithm starting out as one that handles point sources of light with reflection, refraction, and attenuation/absorption, as applied to a 3-channel mapped environment controlling those respective factors. But instead of rendering light, change it to sound intensity for a given source. And adjust the fall-off rates from the sources to those more common to acoustics rather than optics. You could likely raid one of various open-source graphics projects (Blender?) for the first part regarding light mapping and then do the modification for handling sound on your own. Then when rendering the gaming environment, you just load a RGB alpha channel map from your texture set for your acoustic environment. Something like this could also be set up to be baked on from a mapping editor instead of being painted on, but would still allow for finer control from the manual approach.

At least that's how I'd do it. But I'm not sure if that's most of what's patented since I haven't read it. Seems obvious enough though.

Re:Act quick!

[MadKeithV]

Dude, that's awesome! You should patent that...

It's not as awesome as it sounds. Random people come up to mod me troll by poking me in the chest.

John Carmack is a class act

[MobyDisk]

So Carmack is doing something for the good of society, and a commercial company chooses to add a roadblock. But rather than give up, he spends his own time to rewrite the algorithm in a way that avoids the patent. That is a phenomenal level of dedication to the open-source community. He doesn't have to release the code. He doesn't have to rewrite that section.

Thank you John.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[JohnnyBGod]

Absolutely true. I propose we make this the official "Thank you" thread. Thank you John! You rock!

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 Corny.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[L4t3r4lu5]

This almost makes up for Resurrection of Evil.

Almost.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[DavoMan]

agreed. doing it for the team.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if I had the money he does I would do the same thing. It's not like I'm going to miss paying my bills because I'm dicking around on some old project.

I agree he is a class act but really it's just that he loves programming. However, most people can't afford to take large amount of time off to screw around on what are essentially personal things.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[delinear]

Not to take anything away from Carmack's contribution here, it's a great thing he's doing, but I don't think Creative have thrown up a roadblock just yet. He's just not giving them that option by rewriting the problematic code, perhaps they wouldn't have cared but he obviously thought better safe than sorry - kudos to him for that, but yah boo sucks to the system that makes it necessary.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[Enderandrew]

Not to mention that I thought when Bethesda/Zenimax bought out iD, they said iD would never again release an engine as open source.

I suspect that Carmack has had to fight considerably to make this happen.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[DavoMan]

we have a high profile dev team going out of their way to release a AAA game as open source, and you give them crap? come on. get off the internet.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[MalHavoc]

I agree, Mr. Carmack is a class act. I do wonder if he can now remove EAX support from the open source version of the engine though :)

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[Anonymous Coward]

we have a high profile dev team going out of their way to release a AAA game as open source, and you give them crap? come on. get off the internet.

You're new to the internet, aren't you? These idiots aren't happy unless they're looking for ways to not be happy, and finding/inventing negative things about others is how they be not happy.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[xhrit]

I don't know why he doesn't just remove the offending code and release the rest as-is. It is open source. The community would develop a fix.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[Guspaz]

No, they didn't, they simply said that they would stop licensing id engines for games that are not published by Zenimax. If third party developers want to use an id engine, they need to publish through Zenimax.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[Enderandrew]

That can't be true because Quake 3 wasn't published by Zenimax and I know Urban Terror HD is now an officially licensee of the Quake 3 engine.

I think you've flipped it around. Zenimax will license the old engines, but won't license the current engine as they consider it a competitive advantage.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29886/id_Tech_5_Rage_Engine_No_Longer_Up_For_External_Licensing.php

However, official licenses have nothing to do with open sourcing the old engines. And I saw multiple news stories that Bethesda/Zenimax would not allow iD to continue giving engines away for free.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[Raenex]

They've already imposed the roadblock by asserting their patent on the original Doom 3 release. If Carmack was to then knowingly release the code with the patent, he could be sued for infringement.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[gr8_phk]

Well if I had the money he does I would do the same thing. It's not like I'm going to miss paying my bills because I'm dicking around on some old project.

Clearly Carmack gets personal satisfaction from these code releases - and I can't blame him, it's a very good thing. The time he's going to spend on this one patent workaround is relatively small for the amount of satisfaction he'll get from doing it. I do volunteer stuff at my own expense - time is the main cost - and it's more rewarding than my job and many of the things I would otherwise do on my personal time. I hope you can find the time to volunteer for something one of these days - it's worth it. Oh, crap I'm replying to an AC....

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[s73v3r]

No, because they were given a license. However, no one else would be able to use the code, as that would be an infringement.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[ifrag]

I suspect that Carmack has had to fight considerably to make this happen.

Not really. Carmack has talked about how he didn't really have to fight for it, and was surprised the lawyers were even favorable about it, but expected that if patents became too big a deal he would probably be forced to stop. So apparently this one wasn't that big a deal, but there could be others lurking around that nobody is aware of yet.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[Raenex]

By releasing it as open source, that could be considered inducing infringement. The license he was given was for Doom 3 with stipulations that don't work under an open source model.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[bronney]

Because JC isn't lazy. He's one of the people I know the least, yet respect the most.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[L4t3r4lu5]

I applaud Mr Carmack for the work he's doing with the source code for Doom 3. I wish all software developers were as generous.

RoE was a piece of shit.

Behold my ability to hold different opinions about different subjects! RoE wasn't even an id title, bub; It was published by id, but created by Nerve Software.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[Guspaz]

Sure, I thought that was implied, since the cases of new engine licensees for id tech 4 is rather minimal, let alone 3 (Urban Terror probably paid almost nothing considering the age of the engine). And any new id tech 4 games that come out are probably from licenses that predate the takeover anyhow.

But I've never seen anything saying Zenimax would not allow licensing. id was bought in 2009, and at QuakeCon 2009 Carmack was saying he intended to petition Zenimax to release the id tech 4 source when Rage came out, and from what we've heard from him, he never really met with any opposition. He even was surprised to get an enthusiastic response from their legal department about the benefits to releasing older source. I can't find any articles that mention a negative response toward this policy by Zenimax.

Re:John Carmack is a class act

[xhrit]

My comment was not intended to imply that he is lazy, but rather that I think his time would be better spent working on some cutting edge next gen stuff, not revisiting old code to re-invent the wheel because someone has a patent on 'round wheels'.

It seems to me such a trivial task for such a great mind, altho I suppose it is not for me to dictate how he spends his time. For all I know he could be using the exercise to implement something groundbreaking that he has been thinking about for years.

Or maybe he just needs a break from blowing our minds.

John Carmack on Software Patents

[chrb]

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." - John Carmack

Re:John Carmack on Software Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a _tool_ that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." - Cohn Jarmack

If he was talking about a better hammer, or toaster, or tunneling electron microscope objective, we wouldn't have a problem with that statement. It is doing exactly what patents are supposed to do. The problem is not that the patent process is doing what it is here. The problem is whether or not a purely software invention should be an invention at all.

Re:John Carmack on Software Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

I fully agree with Carmack, and I don't see why I would feel differently if I was designing toasters, hammers or microscope objectives.

Re:John Carmack on Software Patents

[eiMichael]

The issue comes from the part about logically solving the problem. Anyone familar with a field should find the patented invention, well, inventive. Unfortunately, general education is not keeping pace with common practice of each field. So obvious ideas get through. The worst offender is the "on a computer" or "in the cloud" patent. And it seems that this a case of "algorithm on a specific processor". Math is unpatentable because it exists and we just reorganize and discover pieces as we go. Claiming that because you wrote the math problem in x86 asm makes it inventive is simply greed.

Re:John Carmack on Software Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use it, you just can't sell it.

For your own use, you can read all the patents, take the best of all of them, and do something super with it.

You can sell it when all the patents expire.

Software patents haven't been around long enough for many to expire, which makes developing software a dangerous game of chance these days.

Re:John Carmack on Software Patents

[omnichad]

Right - if suddenly the market wanted heavier hammers, and since lead is very heavy a lot of manufacturers start embedding lead in the handle. That shouldn't deserve a patent. It's obvious.

Re:John Carmack on Software Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

But seeing how this is John Carmack, the solution could potentially be "not obvious".

Re:John Carmack on Software Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." - John Carmack

..and this is why he should fight it. Stand up for what's right. He certainly has the capital and influence to do so....

Rewrite blocked by another patent

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that what he writes doesn't conflict with another patent elseware.

Well, this is crappy...

[FreonTrip]

...but on the bright side, Carmack's Reverse can always be reimplemented by the open source community, and this may hasten the implementation of shadowmaps in source ports to replace Doom 3's stencil shadows. The visual quality improvement would be non-trivial, and for all but hardware that was *ahem* not exactly groundbreaking when Doom 3 was new, the performance delta shouldn't be too massive. In some scenarios it may even be faster.

Re:Well, this is crappy...

[Guspaz]

Shadowmaps can still look worse than stencil shadows in many situations. Especially if the stencil shadows are not of sufficiently high resolution to produce smooth edges.

On the other hand, stencil shadows can do soft shadowing a heck of a lot easier.

a simple solution

[Bobtree]

Just remove it. While it was a clever optimization for its time, on current hardware it is unnecessary.

This is what JC's tweet suggests he is doing, not re-writing it.

Re:a simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

On current MOBILE hardware is unnecessary?

Re:a simple solution

[c0d3g33k]

Just remove it. While it was a clever optimization for its time, on current hardware it is unnecessary.

This is what JC's tweet suggests he is doing, not re-writing it.

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion, since writing new code isn't the same as just removing code.

The tweet in question (emphasis mine): "Lawyers are still skittish about the patent issue around "Carmack's reverse", so I am going to write some new code for the doom3 release."

Re:a simple solution

[pclminion]

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion, since writing new code isn't the same as just removing code.

Removing code often involves creating new code. Such as the code which makes it possible for the game to operate without a component it previously made use of.

I wouldn't call that a "replacement algorithm" any more than removing a window and closing the resulting hole in the wall is a "replacement window" even though there is new material (the stuff I used to close the hole in the wall)

That said, OP is reading a lot of detail into that tweet.

Re:a simple solution

[c0d3g33k]

Removing code often involves creating new code. Such as the code which makes it possible for the game to operate without a component it previously made use of.

I wouldn't call that a "replacement algorithm" any more than removing a window and closing the resulting hole in the wall is a "replacement window" even though there is new material (the stuff I used to close the hole in the wall)

That said, OP is reading a lot of detail into that tweet.

Yes, manipulating source code to remove a major chunk of functionality might involve writing a bit of code that wasn't there before, if you want to get really picky (if not outright pedantic) about it.

But nobody says they will write *new code* when they intend to rip out a major piece of functionality and apply some minor refactoring to the codebase. Saying "I'm going to write new code" implies an intent to replace or re-implement, not remove. It is possible JC was just being sloppy with his language, but I don't buy that - it's extremely out of character. He's probably just going to fall back to one of the approaches that worked before this more efficient approach came to him. Coders being who they are, he may want to design yet another way to solve the problem, since that's more fun.

Well, I guess I'll have to buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I'm sure they won't release the art to the public, and it'll take a while for some public versions to be generated.

I swear I bought Quake 4, but I don't know where it is, or what engine it uses. Ah, Doom 3. Hopefully it'll be compatible, so that'll just leave the problem of finding out where I put the box.

I installed it once, then forgot about it. I'm not entirely sure it's even Quake 4, but I don't think it was Quake III.

Re:Well, I guess I'll have to buy it

[Anonymous Coward]

Did quake 4 ever come out? I remember hearing about a quake wars, but unlike quake 3, quake 2, quake, doom 2 and the original doom, I can't seem to find it on a store shelf anywhere to set it correct.

That, if you ask me, is telling of id's staying power in the current market. I could still buy everything back to the original doom when Doom 3 came out, but I can't find anything relating to any of their games in a store in the past 6 months to a year (Maybe Wolfenstein, but other than being one of their ip properties there wasn't much there that was id.)

Re:Well, I guess I'll have to buy it

[Guspaz]

Really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_4

It came out six years ago. Done by Raven. Not a great game, but not a bad one either. Decent, is the word I'd use. Multiplayer was fun, an update of Quake 3. It can be purchased from a variety of digital distribution networks, such as Steam or Impulse ($20 each), or from online stores like Amazon ($8 for mac version, $38 for PC)

Re:Well, I guess I'll have to buy it

[paladinsama]

It was released on 2005, and I don't know why it is difficult for you to find it.

http://www.amazon.com/Quake-4-Pc/dp/B0009Q1IE2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321467944&sr=8-1

http://store.steampowered.com/app/2210/

HERO

[Anonymous Coward]

It amazes me that very few people mention what the news is really about: Carmark is a true HERO.

this is an amazing thing for Id/Carmack to do

[DavoMan]

This is an amazing gift to the FOSS community. Not only are they just deciding to give away code they don't use anymore - but they are putting SERIOUS EFFORT into making it safe to release to the community. This shows without a shadow of a doubt that Id Software are GOOD GUYS. We need to give these guys our thanks.

Re:this is an amazing thing for Id/Carmack to do

[EnsilZah]

Didn't you read the article?
The shadow of a doubt is still there, it's just implemented slightly differently and might take a few more resources to calculate.

Re:this is an amazing thing for Id/Carmack to do

[mSparks43]

I'm a huge fan of Carmac and ID software.

I'm also a registered Creative developer.

Both are big FOSS supporters
http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/default.aspx

and EAX is damn good.

In short, I'm conflicted.

Re:this is an amazing thing for Id/Carmack to do

[wildstoo]

You could all go out and buy a copy of Rage to show your thanks. You don't even have to play it. ;)

Yet again...

[advocate_one]

someone got a patent on mathematics... it's an algorithm for deity's sake... it can be reduced to pure mathematical expressions...

Re:Yet again...

[UnknownSoldier]

Its worse then that ...

RSA patent filed on December 14, 1977, approved as #4,405,829 titled "Cryptographic Communications System and Method" to MIT, Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman. However, since it was published before the patent application, it could not be patented under European and Japanese law.

Seriously, how the fuck do you patent a NUMBER ???

http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/1995/1995AYU.html

Re:Yet again...

[JasterBobaMereel]

Especially since Clifford Cocks invented the "RSA" algorithm first (1973) ...

When I was your age

[G3ckoG33k]

When I was your age, we http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU

Enjoy :)

!!!

THIS

[pak9rabid]

This is why I love id software, even though I'll admit their games may not be as great as some of the other companies' offerings. The fact that Carmack is going through the trouble of working around a potential patent issue all to open source their Tech 4 engine is awesome.

Thank you, Mr. Carmack...

[Fleet Admiral Ackbar]

...You deserve every twin-turbo F50 you can get your hands on. Mad propz.

Why rewrite it?

[c0d3g33k]

Remove the infringing code save for function stubs, document the expected behavior (perhaps with some examples of input/return values useable for test-driven design) and let the community rewrite it. id doesn't have to worry about releasing patent-infringing code, and the community gets a chance to come up with a better solution.

Re:Why rewrite it?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Well, ID is allowed to release it with the code in there. They just don't want people using their code to get in trouble.

Re:Why rewrite it?

[c0d3g33k]

Really? Those are some wild assumptions you are making. It seems to me more like id is acting (rationally) in their own self interest, because releasing patented code could get THEM (id) in trouble. This is clearly a measure meant to eliminate any liability to the company. It's also not at all clear that they are allowed to release the patented code without permission from the patent holder, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

That's why I say just remove it and let the community provide an implementation. Once the code drops, the hastily written code to get around the patent is likely to get rewritten again anyhow. Why waste time on that?

Re:Why rewrite it?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Those are some wild assumptions you are making. It seems to me more like id is acting (rationally) in their own self interest, because releasing patented code could get THEM (id) in trouble

It's not an assumption. ID licensed the patent from Creative.

It's also not at all clear that they are allowed to release the patented code without permission from the patent holder, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

They have permission to release the patented code. They already have in binary form (see: Doom3). Therefore they can release it in source form. Patent law doesn't work like you seem to think. It's not like the algorithm is secret, it's registered with the government.You might be thinking of trade secret?

Once the code drops, the hastily written code to get around the patent is likely to get rewritten again anyhow. Why waste time on that?

Well, the patented technology seems less valuable now... there are faster ways to get better results on modern hardware. As for rewriting it... I consider myself a good programmer. I know a lot of very good programmers. I don't know who would rewrite anything Carmack had just written. Especially in graphics. Especially in optimization. And especially, especially at the intersection of the two. I don't paint over Di Vinci's either.

Re:Saw this coming.. Performance won't be noticed

[b4dc0d3r]

And at the same time, "modest performance cost" is probably negligable at this point. Doom 3 was released in 2005 according to wiki, and via Steam in 2007. While the margin of improvement has slowed, systems will be quite a bit beefier by the time it is released. And when open source takes hold of it and makes derivative games (I mean that in a good way) the hardware will be able to compensate.

Remember, this patent is for a speed hack, which is generally useful for about 5 years max in computer land. The speedier algorithm of Phil Katz's pkzip over other libraries largely disappeared due to the i/o bottleneck by the time open versions were widely used. Today, it's faster in most cases to have a file zipped on disk, and unzipped while being read into memory (if async i/o is used of course, and even if not the overhead is still a tiny part of the operation).

THANK YOU John Carmack :-) This is awsome.

[sir lox elroy]

This is a great show by Mr. Carmack. To take the time to actually rewrite it himself so that there is no patent issues. I think everyone should send him a Thank You note. He could have just as easily said "I have made my money off this who cares." But he is thinking of the Open Source community instead of his pocket book alone.

Re:Saw this coming.. Performance won't be noticed

[mewsenews]

And at the same time, "modest performance cost" is probably negligable at this point.

Agreed. The wikipedia article linked from this story illustrates that the industry hasn't stood still and there have been developments by nVidia and others for alternative methods. If we're lucky the new Doom 3 source will have a better algorithm than the retail version.

What's so bad about a software patent?

[Scarred Intellect]

Seriously. Call me ignorant, or just plain dumb, if you must, but what is so bad about a software patent?

Here's my understanding of the patent system...

Basically, a normal patent protects an inventor for the product invented for a set number of years. One can argue all day about the implementation of the system, which I do understand is broken, but it seems that the basic premise is fine.

The logical extension of this leads to software patents; in software, though, the "product" is an idea, but how is this different from a normal patent? In the normal situation, a product is created and is patented. In software, an idea is created and patented, they are both effectively the same thing.

From a post above:

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying." - John Carmack

Let's rephrase: The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a product that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.

In my understanding, the former is bad, but the latter is acceptable. Why is this so, or are software patents and physical patents equally evil? Or are the patents fine, just the implementation that is screwed? It seems no different to me than a physical patent protecting an inventor for his invention, in the case of software just change "physical" to "software" and what's the problem?

Sure, anyone can come up with an idea, and people see it as unfair that the originator of the idea is the only one that can get the credit and can claim ownership, but isn't that kind of the way of the world? Einstein owns relativity, but surely someone would have come up with it later if he did not. There are numerous patents on various physical objects we use everyday and they belong to their originator (or first to file the claim for it) and those who use the design later are infringing...so why is it so bad/different when done with software? Scale?

Re:What's so bad about a software patent?

[lance_of_the_apes]

Einstein does not "own" relativity. No one else is restricted from making use of relativistic concepts or expanding on his work.

But since you've brought it up, I believe this is really how the software patent system should be treated. If two people come of with the same idea to solve a problem and implement it, but one does it slightly ahead of the other and publishes/files a patent first, he or she merely gets credit for all time. It should not stop the other person from using the work.

Moreover, I think the time may be coming for physical patents, as well. But there are clear differences in terms of development costs.

Re:What's so bad about a software patent?

[gbjbaanb]

mainly because a physical patent is only granted if you supply all the blueprints for making your invention. It does not allow you to patent "a system for trapping mice, using a computer".

Now, if you do patent a mousetrap, with full working, someone else can come along and make a different mousetrap as long as it doesn't work the same way as your does. However, for software patents, and especially ones used for trolling, the patent does not include all the necessary details for building the software product in question. Its more of a vague idea of what a system would do if someone actually built one. Hence, no-one else can build one, because they'd then be infringing.

This applies to "business concept" patents (like amazon's one-click patent).

There are some software patents that are valid - I'm thinking things like the Motorola radio stuff that makes mobile phones work - someone spent real time and effort inventing that.

Re:What's so bad about a software patent?

[lance_of_the_apes]

Real time and effort was also spent mapping the stars. Imo, software patents should only be used for issuing credit.

Re:What's so bad about a software patent?

[Whorhay]

The automotive equivilant could go like this:

New Patent Application - A physical device that we will call a 'vehicle' used for the transport of people and goods at speeds exceeding that of a sea slug. The vehicle will use between 0 and 50 wheels, 1 engine or motor in conjunction with a fixed or variable ratio transmission. It will have at least 1 door for entrance and exit and a system of windows and mirrors for visibility.

As you can see it's just a bunch of ideas with no clear indication of precisely how the generalized parts interact to accomplish anything. It isn't necessarily a new idea, and isn't non-obvious.

I seriously wouldn't be suprised if there is an approved software patent out there for 'Hello World!'

Re:What's so bad about a software patent?

[mug funky]

you're talking about ideas.

ideas cannot be patented.

you can patent a design for a transmission, but you cannot patent a cog that interlocks with another cog in order to transmit power between an engine and a wheel.

likewise, an entire program should probably be patentable, but not one of the piddly functions that drive it.

Re:What's so bad about a software patent?

[gbjbaanb]

there is a 'software patent' for the light switch. Guys at Sun used to have competitions with each other to file the most stupid patents they could, James Gosling's bets effort was this. He said it was dwarfed in comparison to some of the other ones.

Re:Saw this coming.. Performance won't be noticed

[Anonymous Coward]

So... you're saying patents are causing global warming!

back it up a little..

[way2trivial]

"Companies like Microsoft buy tons of patents from college kids for pennies"

Please consider, no one forces them to sell?

imagine if with offer to sell in hand- they instead donate the patent to a 501c qualified free software organization and derived a tax benefit
the offer to buy should stand as evidence of value.

Re:back it up a little..

[Zaphod The 42nd]

True, but the college kid is not able to leverage the power of the patent nearly as much as a corporation can, and a single patent by itself is fairly weak, but companies have taken to the practice of collecting whole "portfolios of patents" to do battle with each other.

Re:back it up a little..

[s73v3r]

Please consider, no one forces them to sell?

Please consider that the circumstances are not the same? Microsoft has far more power and pressure to exert in that situation that some college kid.

But he's not "selling" anything

[CrowdedBrainzzzsand9]

Patents prevent others from manufacturing something that includes some IP. Open sourcing the software is not an issue for the users of the open source software unless they want to monetize it. You can use any patented device or process for personal use; you only butt heads with lawyers when you try to sell it. The only argument I can think of is that providing a software implementation of the IP is "selling it" for $0.00.

Re:But he's not "selling" anything

[Raenex]

You can use any patented device or process for personal use

No, not really. There is no exemption granted for this in patent law: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/271.html

"Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent."

And even scarier for somebody writing or distributing open source software:

"Whoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer. "

Comment it out!

[cplusplus]

// LOL!
// He could just comment it out.
/* amiright? */

Will we get the original source, too?

[loshwomp]

It sounds like Carmack is implementing a workaround to the Creative patent. That's very decent of him, but there's still nothing preventing release of the original (claimed infringing) source code. At worst, anyone who *used* the source would be infringing but publishing it would not be a problem (the patent is disclosed by definition, after all).

Seeing the original implementation side-by-side with the new workaround would be incredibly interesting, I think.

Re:Will we get the original source, too?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL has a feedom or death clause. It would have to be released under an incompatible license.

Re:Will we get the original source, too?

[Anonymous Coward]

In many countries privately using a patent is also no problem.

Re:Will we get the original source, too?

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

Carmack could have the last laugh against Creative on this one, because he should know full well that a bunch of hobbyist modders won't give a rats ass about infringing this patent troll's imaginary property. The Carmack's reverse algorithm is well documented, and I would think it would be easy to technically comply with the letter of the law by omitting just enough code that someone who knows enough about computer graphics can easily fill in the blanks. The modding community will do the rest, and good luck shutting down every mod when they are spread all over the internet.

Re:Will we get the original source, too?

[loshwomp]

[...]I would think it would be easy to technically comply with the letter of the law by omitting just enough code that someone who knows enough about computer graphics can easily fill in the blanks.

He doesn't need to omit anything. He can ship the source code verbatim. It's not protected by anything. Like I said, anyone using the code may be infringing by doing so, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with publishing the code.

Re:Will we get the original source, too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering patent methods are available publicly, and this is a well known and documented algorithm, you can just add it back in yourself.

Circlejerk?

[Xanny]

Nobody who reads slashdot or who works in real software development would ever tell you that software patents were good things. Even the devs at Microsoft, Apple, and Google, who hold a significant chunk of all software patents, probably hate them themselves. But we all know this. Complaining about them here is just preaching to the choir. The only way to fix this is to educate the people that make decisions about patents, aka, Congress, about why they are bad, and get their hands out of the pockets of patent trolls like Rambus and Creative. I just had to put that out there. There are, literally, like 1000 stories a week on patent fudges, and its only going to get worse as more and more troll companies buy up patents to sue everyone with them. You don't accomplish anything by explaining to the Slashdot community why they are bad, we all know they are bad.

Re:Circlejerk?

[gstrickler]

I'm a developer, and a slashdot reader, and I think software patents are a good thing. Not all software patents, but I don't think all non-software patents are good either. The patent system is messed up and there are many "bad" patents issued. But that's no reason to condemn all patents or all software patents.

Re:Circlejerk?

[gstrickler]

Note to whomever modded my post down. I disagree is not a valid reason to mod a post down.

This reminds me of another SW patent question

[gr8_phk]

If they distribute the software as source code, can it still infringe? Lets not restrict this to id software, they have a license for this patent. But if software is distributed as source, one could claim it's a description of an algorithm much like the text of a patent application is a description of the algorithm ("invention"). Could people distributing software in source form then not have to worry? The infringing activity would then be left to those who compile and run the software. It's just a question...

Why software patents are particularly evil

[roguegramma]

Software patents and physical patents are both evil, but physical patents usually slightly less so, because a physical patent is often tied to one or more well paid engineers and a costly lab. So one can argue that a patent is necessary to recover these costs.

For a software patent, this is not so much the case; a good idea for a new algorithm might easily come from 5 minutes more spent on the toilet, or from 5 minutes in a hot tub, sometimes literally so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_(word)#Archimedes

Also, due to good school education, there are 100.000s, if not millions, of people able to develop software algorithms or even mathematical ideas, while engineers are more rare, especially since these are spread out over different fields of expertise.

There really is no way to fix the patent system.
In theory, obvious stuff should not be allowed to be patented, but leading countries like the USA allow everything to be patented, since they believe in the equation more patents=more power =more wealth

Re:Why software patents are particularly evil

[Scarred Intellect]

Thanks.

Basically, they aren't any more worse, it's just that the problem is exacerbated with software.

now re-read the second portion of what I wrote

[way2trivial]

imagine if it was donated to a foundation, dedicated to, I dunno, 'Free Software'

and as it began amassing donations - this 'foundation' would build a portfolio of it's own with which to wage battle, or at least defend itself...

Re:now re-read the second portion of what I wrote

[Zaphod The 42nd]

So your suggested fix is... instead of young inventors selling their patents to big corp, they should donate them to free software, and hope to get some donations in return? Hm. Thats gonna be a tough sell.

Re:Saw this coming.. Performance won't be noticed

[Old Wolf]

Wait, you're suggesting it might be a speed increase to enable Compressed Folders in windows?

At least it didn't doom the release

[gstrickler]

I can't believe no one said it already.

Problem

[freezway]

You know there's a problem when an ALGORITHM called "Carmack's Reverse" is patented by someone other than Carmack.

pattent fudimental math live rich forever

[lister king of smeg]

dose that mean i can patent oh say the (-b +OR- SQRT(b^2 -4*a*c))/2*a as long as i do it on a computer?

Re:Saw this coming.. Performance won't be noticed

[drinkypoo]

Nobody is suggesting that, they're suggesting that use of a competent compression algorithm and framework allows you to trade unutilized CPU time to effectively speed up I/O by doing less of it.

Re:Saw this coming.. Performance won't be noticed

[FreonTrip]

Assuming that you're using vanilla Doom 3 content, that may be true. But if the Doom 3 mod community receives a shot in the arm as a result of the source release (and I don't imagine there's any reason it wouldn't), it's likely that maps and content will be released which push modern hardware quite a bit further than the original game ever managed. At that point, every speed optimization available will make a positive difference, especially if map and/or asset complexity increases by some significant factor.

Note that this is probably more academic than many here realize - as long as the offending algorithm is not "officially" released, I'm pretty sure Creative won't care enough to go after individual projects with a legal banhammer to force them to stop using "their" algorithm in non-profit projects. And if worse comes to worse, I'm 100% sure someone will implement shadowmap support within the first year or so, which will render* this issue irrelevant.

* Oh, that's a pun. I'm sorry.