Slashdot Mirror
IPIX persecutes free software developer
Ellen Spertus writes "Interactive Pictures Corporation (IPIX) has been threatening anyone who distributes software to create 360 degree panorama images, including free software developer Helmut Dersch. While Dersch's free tools (including a Gimp plug-in) are back online, he has had to remove information about creating high-quality panoramas. Meanwhile, IPIX, which charges $25 per panorama created, is preparing for its IPO. Read all about it. If you haven't seen 360 degree panoramas (outside of RL), take a look at Virtual Parks (requires free plug-in) or Sydney Olympics 2000 panoramas (requires free plug-in or Java). "
Damn right!
But we don't need a new standard really...
You can easily store a panoramic picture in a JPEG... ok.. sure you can't navigate it but it is there...
And the most widely used format is Quicktime VR...
It is just a file format which is actually very public and that you can create using a variety of tools... not just Apple's ones...
So this just plain dumb... I really don't see IPIX point... well... I guess we'll see...
Given how brain-dead their SDK was when I used it a few years ago and how slow in the head their technical contacts were, I suppose legal harassment like this is the only way an innovation-numb entity can protect itself.
The courtroom is where we will die. As you all know, Microsoft spends a great deal of money taking advantage of the outdated patent system, gaining a patent for every obvious technique under the sun. A campaign of "patent inforcement" litigation against the open source movement will shut us down for sure. Guys, there is trouble ahead.
No, if there was such a fund they may not be able to defend the program but he can still help the programmer financially by paying an lawyer that is specialized in this type of cases. Or maybe they can act like "partie civile" (civil part???), representing a group of people being against the company suing.
Before reading the post I've surfed on the different links provided and they were saying that IPIX first said that the man had pictures copyrighted by IPIX on his site (which was false since he did all of them himself) and after that they said that to provide the informations to convert to and from IPIX files he needed some information from inside the company "but they use a public domain format, which is openly documented by the US-company "C-Cube Microsystems"." And furthermore as he say himself "there is no such thing as a copyright on a file format".
for more informations check this page
Of course OSS developers aren't innovating *yet* - we first need useful versions of the industry's 20~30 years' worth of proprietary excrement, and it's not all done yet.
And what's the point of a business that can't even offer more value than some random guy who volunteers?
See http://www.fh-fu rtwangen.de/%7Edersch/sphere_format/Spherical.html
And do not forget the cost of a fisheye lens. The distortion is huge indeed. But who is waiting for a view of the top of the sky?
Possibilities abound - panoramic (6x6 ?) camera's are there for less than the price of a fish-eye lens. A 24 mm wide in portrait mode would also make for a pretty wide up-and-down view right?
Now if I had the time...
I'm not sure, but if you do a search on google you will find most of the pages from this site cached.
Let's make an open source clone of their products, using their file formats, and send it to the usenet/web via an anonymizer/remailer. Then they'll see what is like having us as their enemy.
I used these plugins the other day to create some panoramic stuff, specifically a 360 degree environment i rendered out of Lightwave.
I then used LivePicture's Java applet to present the images, which makes a great cross-platform viewing solution.
Using the free plugins, i stiched together 45 individual images (probably overkill, but hey, at least it works) to make a full 360 degree panorama, and i was extremely impressed with the results. The tools handle arbitary sized panoramas, up to the limit of available memory.
I have had a fair bit of experience with LivePicture's panoramic tools, and back in the day i used to build cylindrical panoamas by hand using VRML, much like NASA's original 'Mars Rover' presentations.
Basically, IPIX has no leg to stand on, the technology they are selling has been available for years, and theyre running scared because obviously their directors' long and expensive lunches are in jeopardy because the world might discover theyre selling what you could already get for 100% free.
And i'd have to say that once you get the hang of the Panorama Tools plugins, script format and Photoshop batch action, its just as easy to use them than any of the commercial offerings from Apple, Ipix, LivePicture (now MGI) etc.
Plus its crossplatform, runs on Mac, Windows and *NIX.
IPIX's system is limited to only being able to stich together fisheye images (AFAIK), and it has a ridiculous pricing structure.
The free Panorama Tools's documentation is, in a word, bad. There are no good examples of a lot of the features of the package, but i figure i could write some tutorials, and put em up.
Most people are looking to put panoramas together from a set of individual images from a regular camera, rather than from a couple of fisheye images. There aren't any tutorials for that on the Panorama Tools site, but its pretty easy once you figure it out.
I live in New Zealand, so i don't know what effect IPIX's lawsuits would have on me.
if anyone wants to know about how to use the Free Panorama tools, and are somewhat stumped by the docs on the site,, drop me an email at peterb@actrix.gen.nz and i'll attempt to help you out.
F*CK IPIX, what a pack of bastards.
Heres the example i made..
http://www.spunk.co.nz/pano/index.html
How is xanim great? It can't view about 25% of the avi's I come across and 90% of the mpeg's.
I was fortunate to read you post: the kind of speech that we have not heard from RMS for years. And you are right in saying: if we are to trust someone, Stallman is that man ( although he is quite moderate for my taste). As for Linus and the other self-proclaiming hacker, the pro-business ESR, well, the first is worse than the other. And yet, I have doubts that a grass root movement against patents is feasible today. When I can go to a Linux LUG meeting without seeing a MS Widows partition on their laptops, or when the day comes when linux users completely ignore MS compatibility, or when the day comes when we can talk about free-software without being considered as 'political', until then I say, there is no reason to fight this war, since we don't have fighters to stand beside us. And you slashdoters, stop sending volumes with anti-patent post. Do the actual fight first with yourself. And if civilization is important to you, take the first step and say this: CLOSE STANDARDS LEAD TO SLAVERY. I will not use closed standards. Never.
for(i=0;iTVertCount;i++){] ->y*point->y); t ;
rad=(float)sqrt(point[i]->x*point[i]->x+point[i
if(rad>4.0){
a=1.0;
}else{
a=(double)asin(rad/4.0f)/1.570796f;
}
point[i]->x=((point[i]->x/rad)*a+1)*scale+offse
point[i]->y=-((point[i]->y/rad)*a+1)/2);
}
It's pretty obvious that you just responded to your own post. Consistent mispellings and oddball capitalization schemes are dead giveaways. Not to mention the underlying insanity of your tone...
I *love* that one.
"Yes, out freeware format thoughtfully includes a thin black line on the "North" side of the image, so you can find your bearings in 3D environments more easily."
As time goes on its becoming painfully obvious that technology "ideas" are becoming less and less unobvious, one of the big hurdles to get around in the patent office.
:) That is how stupid our system is.
What I find lame is that some guys will just have the idea and make some claims patent it draw some sketchs and that would be it, then they wait for others to put time, sweat and money and then market a product and then the patent holder waits and decides that their product is close enough to their "idea" and they sue.
The law favors the ones who had the idea first over the one to implement it, whether the implementers used their idea or not.
If I had a time machine, the world could do nothing with out my permission or with out giving me money....
The page above is a general How To about Spherical panoramas, which is still up on Dersch's site.
a ngen.de/%7edersch/sphere_f ormat/Spherical.html but they haven't got it.
/.'s posting script. But even spelt right, google still doesn't have it).
The stuff that's been taken down is the details of IPIX's file format.
This would have been cached on Google at
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.fh-furtw
(Note: there's a stray space getting into that URL, this seems to be something to do with
You're all thinking in two dimensions.
We ought to be looking at 4 pi steradians.
(Of course, that would mean tackling the problem of singularities in spherical coordinate systems).
I agree, and to think they're trying to IPO soon. Having even the most stellar public image
still won't help this silly IPIX business plan.
Obviously if creating panoramas its something
that can be learned over the Net using free
or cheap existing tools, IPIX is in trouble.
XMMI in Orlando Florida is a far suppior product...
This sounds like they really have patented the laws of nature. The two patch cover of a sphere is the minimal open cover from topology. Thats even more fundamental, maybe, than RSA patenting a simple application of Wilson's 200 year old theorem.
Cowardly as ever
(signed)
X
his mark
I have an idea.. Have some bored patent lawyer write up a patent of something.. Say a sphere, a telephone, an automobile.. and see if you can get it patented. Perhaps if this sort of thing was then made public (or a number of these cases) public pressure would force a review of the patent system and the idiots who work there.
-AC
The IPIX file format is simply a archive of jpegs..
> y*point->y);
Its a very simple concept, very obvious, what IPIX is doing is a crime.
Here is some code to alter the texture of a sphere that has been planer mapped...
This code Assumes radius of sphere is 4.0f....
And scale and offset are dependant on which hemisphere you are mapping too, exmple scale=0.5 offset=0.0 when you are working with the first hemisphere on a texture mapped (0,0) to (1,1)...
for(i=0;iTVertCount;i++){
rad=(float)sqrt(point[i]->x*point[i]->x+point[i]-
if(rad>4.0){
a=1.0;
}else{
a=(double)asin(rad/4.0f)/1.570796f;
}
point->x=((point->z/rad)*a+1)*scale+offset;
point->y=-((point->y/rad)*a+1)/2);
}
Also note this could be used to create a sphere and saved to VRML for users to spin around in. Been there done that, what they are doing is a crime.
Agreed - it's important not to make the open source community seem vindictive, but at the same time I think it's perfectly reasonable to bring this whole fiasco to the attention of financial journalists - I suggest www.wsj.com, www.nytimes.com, and (definitely) www.redherring.com.
Make sure the site is mirrored first in several countries, then publicise the URLs as well and make this part of the story.
The angle should be that IPIX doesn't appear to have a leg to stand on with its patent claims, and that the open source developer has performed a valuable service to (a) the imaging/VR community with his software and (b) potential IPIX investors, by inadvertently showing that IPIX is also overvalued.
It would be rather good if every investor in a company first did a search for open source software that is also in the same market and possibly invalidates patent claims. Venture capitalists do quite a lot of technical 'due diligence' to check out whether a new product development is really what is claimed, so this would fit quite well.
Lets do a patent discovery pre 1985, and disclosure, looking for bits of the product that contain GPL code, either now or in the future.
And if their documented change history withers an exhausive examination.
Thou should not throw stones. Ps. Go the improved file format. Go to the satellite imaging era, aka 1970's. Geo surveys from orbit, and terran based pictures: same concepts = old hat.
The legal firm who represented Ipix in their jury court case against Infinite Pictures (now Smoothmove) http://www.smoothmove.com/ was5 e.html Here is a version of the actual press release by Live Picture 0 9C&L=realvr_forum&P=R388 0 9C&L=realvr_forum&P=R647
Banner and Witcoff who have a page about the case here:http://www.bannerwitcoff.com/press.htm Note that not only did Ipix get a $1,000,000 damages against Infinite Pictures but the same amount against an individual software user a Bill Tilman, who downloaded (bought) and made content with it which he put on his site. This victory followed two unsuccessful court actions by Ipix against Infinite Pictures. This page by Banner and Witcoff replaces an earlier one where they explained how by demonstrating how IPIX's software made a "blurry" picture sharp in the courtroom in Tennessee they convinced the jury (!)- they also emphasised in this page how case-setting it was that they managed to get damages against an individual software user. Ipix posted a notice about this victory at the time emphasizing its victory over Bill Tilman as well as Infinite Pictures effectively threatening web developers individually. Then a few months later
(after the court victory against Infinite Pictures) IPIX started to tackle Live Picture which had introduced 8mm stitching functionality in Photovista. LivePicture put a page up (no longer available) saying they "strongly resisted" the accusation that their software infringed IPIX's patent and that it was "in no way" true but the cave-in was accomplished a few weeks later. Then they bought out joint press statements saying they would "work together" with Ipix saying it would use LP's "Flashpix" (streaming zooming functionality) in a future Ipix version.http://www4.zdnet.com/intweek/daily/97091
http://eva.dc.lsoft.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind97
This joint development effort never eventuated. At the time Eric Chen (the inventor of Quicktime VR, who had left Apple and set up Realspace which was the precursor to LivePicture's panoramic technology (now called Zoomit -John Sculley, ex Apple CEO with his son Jack had bought Live Picture, the image program, Realspace, another image streaming technology OLIVR and an interest in a chat company
Talk City and was talking up a grand synthesis of online virtual photoreal interaction) - anyway, Eric Chen said to the disgruntled community of Photovista users, who had "supports 8mm fisheyes"
all over their product boxes and documentation, in a posting to the online support list this: sorry folks, you really didnt want to use those 8mm lenses anyway - well more literally this is what he said
http://eva.dc.lsoft.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind97
So LivePicture not only gave in on the 8mm fisheye setting it removed fuctionality which allowed users to define "custom" rectilinear lenses with focal lengths of less than 14mm (on 35mm format presumably!) So Ipix's claims appear to include some rectilinear lenses. Note though that the use of the 16mm full frame fisheye lens type was allowed to remain and Chen explains how with more shots these can be used to create fully spherical scenes with Photovista.
They didn't do it first, as far as I know Apple did with its Navigable Scenes project in 1993. In high school we did a similar thing using a homemade camera mount that spun 360 degrees horizontally, then 90 degrees vertically. Each frame was added to a a quicktime movie, so to look to your right, move ahead 1 frame, to look left, move previous 1 frame, to look up move ahead 36 frames (10 degrees between shots).
Then there's QuickTime VR which has full stitching support and has been around for years.
This really is theft of knowledge, a crime against
humanity. This company, claiming patent rights over cartesian geometry (discovered hundreds of years ago) is outlaw, and is a blight upon the face of the earth.
I've seen 3-d panaroma java applets over a year ago, but that's not the point. The technology is nothing new, and no big deal. You can create much better just by placing the camera inside a Povray scene within a sphere, against which images are wrapped or projected onto the inside surface, or any 3d interactive program which is detailed enough to be considered photorealistic and rotating the observer (looking in any direction). This has been around for years, if not decades, in computer science and GIS and astronomy and God knows what else. What is a planetarium ?
Do I really have to explain any of this to any of you who passed high school history and science?
If legal methods cannot be employed successfully, and soon, to control and eliminate this theft of knowledge by falsely claiming intellectual property rights over what belongs to God, then war is declared. These people and the corporatins they are using to hide behind are attacking our civilization and the whole basis of intellectual freedom and human dignity. If there is anything worth fighting for, this is it.
First, I suggest a well-organized legal fight in the courts supported by civil disobedience on a massive scale, to have the whole concept of software and algorithmic patents outlawed. Mirror all such sites if you can, and defy all software patents you can.
Stallman would be a good person to spearhead such a legal effort, in the US, with a team of carefully picked lawyers behind him. He should beg, plead and scream for donationations from all persons who want to contribute to a fund needed to accomplish this, or establish a permanent charity for such legal action. RMS is non-violent. Give him a chance to try that route.
Companies and individuals attempting to intimidate others with these false claims should be made to pay heavily, to the point where they are put out of business and/or lose all persnal assets or face jail terms.
If that fails, anything goes. Nerds, you cannot afford to wait another 2 or 3 years. If this kind of thing continues unopposed, this earth will be a living hell beyond the imagination of science fiction writers to properly describe it. These people want to own and control everything, from our DNA to our very thoughts. This is actually happening - hard to believe.
You have your work cut out for you. In the name of God, realize what is happening and do your duty.
I had a friend who worked for the predecessor of IPIX (hence posting as an AC, not as a real person). The original purpose of the system was to be used in hazardous areas (radioactive areas was the main thrust; the company was a spin off from Oak Ridge National Labs (research into how to build nukes) A later idea was to use it for surveilence in cubicle settings (since you'd need only one camera, no moving parts) to make sure everyone was working hard.
/. posting.]
Even then, I wasn't really sure what was so unique about the IPIX patent(s). I remember in their hardware system, they used a Rockwell chip that was designed to correct the distortion in satelite images. So, it seems that there is a fair amount of prior art around their patents. I thought that most of the patent covered mainly the real-time aspects of the hardware. (It could take live video input and de-skew it.)
[and this is my first
Frankly, I'm suprised that *anyone* would bow to that idiotic threatening letter. Unless possibly Helmut did, in fact, snatch an image from IPIX's web site, the entire thing is bogus.
If I were Helmut, I would take the following very simple approach to the response...
Since IPIX feels that their threatening email is also a copyrighted document, and I don't see how I can be forced to acknowledge a legal agreement I have no desire to be a part of, I would simply return the email to them, with a note saying "Thanks but I don't agree with the terms of use for this document", and simply refuse to acknowledge the threatening email any further.
No email, no threat.
One of my housemates (who is less of a Bastard than I) is practically hopping up and down about how posting the litigious email to Helmut's web site could easily fall under the Fair Use clauses, provided Helmut did something as simple as annotating the document, which makes his document a derivative work.
This isn't the first time a large company has tried to suppress innovation by using legal tactics on impovreshed free software developers who can't afford to mount a legal defense. As the author apparently didn't violate any patents and used only publically available information, perhaps he could countersue for wrongful prosecution (Well it works in the US) if this eventually goes to court. I think we definitely need some centralized and trustworthy group to start a legal defense fund. Perhaps the FSF?
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/sol/notices/p riorart.htm
"SUMMARY: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is seeking comments to obtain views of the public on issues associated with the identification of prior art during the examination of a patent application. Interested members of the public are invited to testify at the hearing and to present written comments on any of the topics
outlined in the supplementary information section of this notice."
Talk about timing.
I can't beleive this... AFAK 360 aren't very rare... Especially since there is a Quicktime format made especially for them: Quicktime VR. So they can't be complaining about the format or the concept of 360 panorama. And they can't be complaining about a toold that help you "stiches" different pictures into a panorama because the Apple Quicktime VR Authoring studio as been doing that for a while and other other tools too... So the question is, what is their problem really...
Is it because they are giving it for free that they are complaining... In that case they just have to add more value to their product to make it competitive. And besides, just like someone was saying earlier... How would microsoft woul;d look with IE in a setting like that...
So I think this stinks and their request is totally stupid... or maybe they should be more precise on what is their problem exactly...
Caus eight now, they look like idiots to me...
I was the lead engineer on Live Picture's panoramic product, PhotoVista, and I know what IPIX's claim is. IPIX claims a patent on the ability to correct fisheye images specifically. I believe their background is in security cameras.
QuickTime VR and most other panoramic technologies stitch together a bunch of flat pictures into a 360 degree pano. These panos have "holes" where the top and bottom are - you can't look straight up or down.
IPIX uses fisheye lenses so that they can get a complete pano with two photos, plus you can look up and down.
Now, Live Picture's PhotoVista used to do that as well, but IPIX threatened us with some ridiculous claim of a billion $ damages. Our research into the history of fisheye images made us confident that their patent had no basis - most don't thanks to the morons in the patent office. Unfortunately, we couldn't afford to defend ourselves - it might have meant a temporary injunction against selling our product. Also, fisheye panos usually have lower quality because the distorion, while easy to correct in theory, is not that easy in real life (no lens is perfect).
According to this history of the case IPIX even insists that its own threats are copyright, and "any dissemination, distribution, retention, archiving, or copying of the communication is strictly prohibited" But there's a copy of the original email on this excellent (and scary) patent watch site at MIT.
The most interesting thing is IPIX's belief that it "owns the copyright in the format it utilises", and that therefore it has a share of the copyright of the data-file of any image in that format, which it can use to restrict how that data-file is used.
From Dersch's (IMHO) staggeringly mild and reasonable summary of the story so far, it appears that they are still trying to push this claim, which is like Microsoft claiming copyright and distribution rights over every document in Word format.
In this case we might be lucky because IPIX didn't invent the format.
But think of (say) the MPAA claiming such a veto on any file using their new music format. In fact, under the new laws against script-kiddies even describing such formats might become actionable, as abetting the theft of copyright content.
This is a nasty can of worms and it's important for all of us that Dersch sees off IPIX with no compromises.
We need a format like LivePicture's streaming format. USe of this format enables zooming into panoramas, and much faster load times since the client doesn't need to download the entire panorama image at once.
Like MIP-maps in 3d games, depending on your distance from an object, a server supplies a suitably scaled version.
This is not just applicable to panaoramas, bnut any type of 2D (and perhaps 3D) image data.
This works on a 'tile-based' system, where the image is broken down into a set of tiles, say 100 x 100 pixels each.
A set of 'zoom levels' are also created, also broken into 100 x 100 tiles, you might have a 2500 x 2500 pixel version, a 1000 x 1000 version, a 500 x 500 version and a 250 x 250 version. Depending on how 'far away' the viewer is from the image, the server sends the appropriate tiles.
i.e. if your original image is 5000 x 5000 pixels, and your viewing window is 320 x 200 pixels, the server figures out which 'tiles' it needs to send to the client to fill the viewport, and does so. If you move the viewport, a new set of tiles are sent. This means the client app never needs to download the full 5000 x 5000 image.
If the user wants to see the full image through his 320 x 200 viewport, he can zoom out, but the server then simply suppplies all the tiles from the 250 x 250 zoom level, so that 320 x 200 pixels are the maximum that ever need to get sent over the network. Client side caching of tiles would of course speed up this process.
This information (zoom levels etc.) are all encapsulated within a single file, with options for static serving (all 'zoom levels' present in the file, leading to a larger file on the server end) or dynamic serving, where the server calculates the appropriate zoom and tile settings depending on the image and the client viewport size.
I suggest we need a GNU Image Server capable of using Wavelet, JPEG and any other file format described by some kind of plugin architecture.
This would mean Linux could become the premier platform for the presentation of scanned documents, photographic images etc. If there was a standard, free API and tools for this kind of thing, all sorts of neat, bandwidth-friendly apps could be created.
I'm not much of a coder, but i think i understand what sort of stuff we need here. Its possible an existing open standard for this sort of thing exists (i remember seeing an article about something by Xerox similar to this)
Regards
-Pete
peterb@actrix.gen.nz
Does this mean that the pictures taken by the mars ranger, which were panoramic, were illegal? Obviously not.
The arguement appears to be about the usage of a file format, which I consider to be less important than the technique, but still brain dead.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Looks to me like the information is still there. Maybe I'm just hallucinating.
You'll probably have to correct the URL as I can't get the "&" to show up as anything other than "& ", which screws up the link.
Software patents are such BS.
-A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Why doesn't it exist yet? Money. And control: the FSF will do it, but only for programs whose copyright is assigned to the FSF.
(Then again, the "control" problem might well be a legal issue, if it's significantly more difficult or more expensive for an organization to defend a product it has no legal control over.)
-- brandon s. allbery, sysadmin @ cmu electrical & computer engineering "Think, youth, THINK!"
There may well be no legal basis. But if you don't have the money to fight an action, you lose... so for greedy companies it's an obvious way to put us out of business.
-- brandon s. allbery, sysadmin @ cmu electrical & computer engineering "Think, youth, THINK!"
No, we don't.
The OSS movement is about a *better way* to do things. Using the same tactics as the opposition isn't a better way, it's a rehashing of the same old crap and will ultimately have the same results.
(NB: this is also the problem I have with the GPL's "fight fire with fire" methodology --- it means that in some circumstances I have to treat GPL'ed software as *proprietary* from a legal standpoint...)
-- brandon s. allbery, sysadmin @ cmu electrical & computer engineering "Think, youth, THINK!"
Well, we could either drag this whole thing through an extended court procedure to blow off their somewhat simple-minded insistance that they alone have World Domination of the 360-degree photo market, or:
We could create a whole lot of bad press for them, watch investors treat them like lepers, see their IPO fail miserably and their company crash, the execs lose their jobs and their children forced to sell pencils on the street to stave off starvation.
Personally, I prefer the second course of action. Talk about a shot heard 'round the world. We could do it, too -- the same way that FUD doesn't work against the OSS community, we can raise a stink about idiotic corporations like this one.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
It's certainly no problem for a public interest law firm to take on a case for an individual. That's how the ACLU and other organizations work. A foundation that provides funding or other assistance to people who wish to defend their free software work should be fine.
Posted by d106ene5:
Its funny that open source advocates pick on Microsoft for "embracing and extending" as opposed to innovating...it looks like thats what most open source developers do. I don't blame these companies for defending their turf - whats the point of going into business just to fee ideas to the waiting hordes of open source programmers?
Posted by 747SP:
I went to the IPIX web site this morning, and I took a look at the companies that they cite as being 'happy customers' and who generally user 'their' technique to sell product.
I noticed one of the companies was an aircraft manufacturer.
My flying school has one of the aircraft made by that manufacturer.
So I rang my flying school. I said "Because you use brand-x aircraft, and brand-x financially supports IPIX, I'm not going to fly with you any more". Whammo, thats a $600.00 per month hit in their pockets.
Then I rang the brand-x Aircraft company and said "Because you use a product from IPEX corporation, and my flying school uses your aircraft, I've cancelled my lessons with my flying school, and I'm taking my business elsewhere".
Now you can bet your arse the Cheif Pilot at my flying school rang brand-x aircraft company and
said "what the fsck is it with this IPEX mob?"
I'll be checking the list again tomorrow, and calling the other manufacturers of goods and services that I use and are on IPEX's list...
There's more than one way to skin a cat...
(By the way, this is in no way supposed to be a judgement on the Eagle Aircraft company or the excellent Eagle 150 aeroplane. It's just my way of digging at IPEX from the other end of the food chain...)
Posted by erik the unready:
The comment from a LivePicture person is pretty interesting and suggests that IPIX is aggressively trying to use their (imho) overly broad 8mm lens software patents to prevent competitors from offering spherical solutions.
While 90% of the time regular cylindrical panoramas are ideal for capturing the essence of a place, there are a number of situations where a spherical panorama would show additional things of interest. For instance, a cave, under a forest canopy, an underwater scene, or bizarre points of view inside a Bryce constructed world.
Many of us who shoot a lot of photo VRs would like to have the flexibility to shoot either spherical or cylindrical. But there is no way I'm going to pay $25 a panorama to publish VRs on the Web. No way I'm going to support an organization that threatens individuals like Helmut. No way I'm going to enter into an agreement not to compete with the various partners of the spherical tool-maker. Imagine if Kodak charged you a licensing fee of $20 for every roll of film you shot using Kodak's patented film? It reeks of a monopolistic world-view. That business model could only work if there were no competitors offering spherical panos without per-pano fees. Besides Helmut's excellent tools, there is now another competitor in this niche--Smoothmove is a spherical solution that allows you to shoot using 14mm or other non-fisheye lenses, and without per-pano fees.
Disclaimer: I have no connection with Smoothmove, other than wanting to see some competition in the spherical pano world (well actually I'd like to see ethical people/organizations succeed, but that's dreaming).
Per, of course, has exactly the right idea.
The great strength of it is that you probably don't ever need to spend the money, you just have to have it. You need to be able to say "we can fight back, so it's probably not worth your while fighting us, we will both lose a lot of money but our side will win". It's ideal for a fund.
This has been proposed many times, but as yet nothing has happened. Someone the community trusts needs to stand up and say "I'll do it", the rest of us need only make donations.
--
Xenu loves you!
According to this page, IPIX and this guy are working out a way to continue the distribution of this free software. They aren't outright suing him.
It seems that IPIX believes it owns the ability to limit usage of its file format, to stop people from making use of its viewer without paying royalities (which is a mistake in their marketing model). However, the tone of the page doesn't make it sounds like they are in the inquisition mode of suing all people, everywhere.
It would be nice to have a (moderated) /.)
forum that people could discuss how to actually
make such a format. (a little like ask
Something that would be longer lived than the
news.
John_Chalisque
The organisation (or what ever there is of it these days) that was about this type of thing, is the League for Programming Freedom.
see http://lpf.ai.mit.edu
This is also a good (in name at least) place to look as to where to start setting up such a legal fund. What WOULD be a good idea (if the funds could be generated for it) is to sort out the legal situation in as many countries as possible, and let everybody know where they stand w.r.t the law of their land (I'm a UK citizen).John_Chalisque
That is a very thin argment. Every living thing (and conceptual thing that is made up of living things) wants to survive and prosper, some to the benefit of society, and some against. Throughout history, societies have attacked some things that would prosper at the cost of the society (because societies also want to survive and prosper).
The question is, since a corperation can only seek money (nothing else can collectivly reward a company), and that may involve tactics that are harmful to society in general, what can be done to prevent that harm. Some feel that the free market alone will regulate the situation. At the other extreme, the idea is that a system where money is the only potentail reward is intrinsically incapable of co-existing with society.
The truth is probably somewhere in between, but current laws strike me as woefully inadequate to the task.
The problem is, they're trying to license a process of conversion from a format they don't own to another format they don't own, using software they don't own. (Apparently, the format IPIX uses isn't their invention.)
All that because otherwise, nobody will license the software they do own on a per-use basis. The real world just won't support their pricing scheme and they're crying about it.
Essentially, what they appear to be doing is like Microsoft suing someone fro writing a PS to HTML converter. They don't own PS or HTML, or any of the code in the converter, but they DO own an HTML editor....Even M$ wouldn't try a stunt like that.
Maybe it is time to create a fund for defending free software projects from silly lawsuits. I'd contribute to such a fund. Most free software developers doesn't have the money or inclination to defend themselves against a lawsuit, even if it is obviously groundless. So just the existence of the fund would be a big improvement.
Somewhere to send the threats, and get an answer back "this is obviously groundless, we'll take care of the defence".
PS: I don't know enough about the actual case, to say whether this would be something appropriate for the free software legal defence fund.
--
Yes, I believe this gets to the heart of the problem. Those with $ in effect have bought the legal process. We need a legal doctrine that says that lawyers who bring lawsuits or harass others with no legal basis should be disbarred and the corporations severely punished.
Of course it won't happen, because some of that money goes to "campaign contributions."
Political corruption devastates freedom.
rm -rf microsoft*
damage you image on the net, I can't think of any better way to do it. Sue a free developen and parish the rest of you (companys) life.
/jarek
If a news story just pointed out that the software they are basing their IPO on can be created by a single programmer in their spare time it might cool off investor interest. That way we don't look like a lynch mob either.
Photomosaic(TM) is a trademark of Runaway Technology. The Photomosaics software and Mr. Silvers' and the Photomosaic "look and feel" are protected by the patent, copyright, and other intellectual property laws of the United States and other major countries. We protect these rights vigilantly. All rights other than those specifically granted above are reserved by Runaway Technology, Inc.
here's the info i found on the site. can anyone tell me an alternative business model to the 'you copy I'll litigate' approach. how else is someone able to develop an idea and commercialise it?
what's the time-limitation of patents? (have'd to do a lot of research to see exactly whats covered, and i dont have the time)....
also there's the issue of this company using the tools to commercialise artwork....but the last work goes to an email i remember, with john carmack talking about persons/companies copyrighting their code/software technology and vigerously protecting it, as (words to the effect of ) being 'techno-wusses for not willing to be technologically competitive'.
this matters not as cut and dry as one might think.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
red herring - I'm gonna sue your ass! How industry leaders are putting startups through legal hell -- and dampening innovation.
/news-sue.html out.
:(
check this url http://www.herring.com/mag/issue66
talks about the problems with law suits wrt to small firms and big companies and how the small firms loose
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Mmm, yeah. Banking and arms manufacturing are of course closely related and evil to the core.
Get a grip.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Calling such people Sharks, Wolves, or even Hyenas or Jackals is insulting the animals.
The new management of IPX seems to be that predatory type that has no real value to society. A bunch of litigious lawyers and "Venture Capitalists" who are out to accumulate (not make) money by any means they can. They are no better (indeed, no different) than the local extortionists that have always plagued us, demanding money (or earlier, goods) under threat of some sort of harassment while making no contribution to society themselves.
So, while such companies must be attacked vigorously and squashed with all ethical means available, don't make the mistake of putting all companies (or even all large companies) in this category. :)
== Buz
"IPIX" looks a heck of a lot like "IRIX" when you've only gotten 2 hours of sleep in the past 3 days. I need penguin mints. Guuuuh...
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
*** Signal 11 has been summoned. ***
If you're thinking I'm from mediaone - you're mistaken. They're my ISP, not my employer.
If there's a further explanation you find yourself in want of - e-mail me.
--
IPIX North American Sales
1-800-336-7113
sales@ipix.com
IPIX Stockhouse Manager, Jeff Puckett
1-888-909-IPIX
stock@ipix.com
IPIX CLIENTS
Suprisingly.. blank
Maybe you'd like to talk to their investors?
Motorola
Mediaone
Advance Internet
American Express
Financial Advisors
Cendant
General Electric
Invision
JP Morgan
--
More corporate bullshit. Gotta get the cash. Nothing else matters.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
885 issued patents are assigned to Microsoft corporation. At least 600 more are pending. The latest (5,907,837 , issued 6 days ago) would appear to let them sue most web news sites, including Slashdot:
"Information retrieval system in an on-line network including separate content and layout of published titles"
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
But surely, I can't be the only one who remembers visiting Disneyland and soaring around China in a 360 degree movie theatre?
Then, of course, I've got a swivel chair that creates the same effect; maybe they should sue Herman Miller as well?
And heck, who came up with the idea for dividing a circle into 360 equal portions? Gotta sue them (or their heirs) too!
For that matter, the whole universe seems to be infringing on IPIX's 360 degree panoramic view concept. Can't really sue the big bang. Maybe Steven Hawking? (Or God, for those that think he exists?)
Where do I send my $$$ for the FSFDF?
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Um, amusing that IPIX feels the need to attack the open source plugins when LivePicture is already a commercial competitor to them in the panoramic imaging market. Having been forced to deal with IPIX panos for some sites I've built recently, I'm surprised that they haven't attacked people who create viewers, since theirs is fairly inferior to others I've seen. IPIX really fish-eyes compared to other viewers.
Your proctologist called...they found your head. Remove "no-spam" from email address to contact me
Step 1: Locate IPIX content. Find a large amount of IPIX content on the WWW or anywhere else you can find it, and select one piece at random. By "at random" I mean RANDOMLY, not arbitarily. Generate a random number with the computer, throw a dart, etc. If your random number is "1", go with the first hit - don't say, "That's not random" and generate a second number.
Step 2: Locate the person responsible for distributing the IPIX content you have selected. Be persistent. Unless that person has gone into the Witness Protection Program, it should be possible to locate him or her. It may be easy, or it may be hard, but it should be possible. If you fail, try harder. Hire a private detective if you must, and if you can afford to.
Step 3: Once you have found the IPIX content publisher, call and politely explain what IPIX is doing, and why you believe it is a bad thing. Don't harass. If the person asks you not to call them again, your job is done.
Step 4: Return to step one as necessary, but be careful not to contact the same person twice.
This is very important: don't do anything illegal. Finding a person, calling that person, and talking politely - none of these actions are illegal. Don't take it any further. There will be no need to.
Finally, keep up with the news. If IPIX capitulates to your satisfaction, stop. Vengeance is unbecoming. If they take action which is insufficient, let IPIX know what more they must do.
and it is this page we need to mirror since it explains how to convert from IPIX's image format
This is clearly the best strategy, since it will demonstrate clearly that sending threatening legal letters over matters such as this, with thin legal pretext, is a *bad idea*. The mirrors should lead to the development of a converter to some other format, preferrable a better on. And needless to say, an unencumbered format. My only slight reservation is it would also lead to wider recognition of whatever their stupid format is.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
How about someone make a program that creates 359.999 degree panorama images. That outta piss off IPIX, haha.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
wait a minute... what is their legal basis for persecution? at least in u.s. (and ipix seems to be an american company) you can't just go after people because they're implementing your algorithms. that is, if your invention is not patented, it's up for grabs. afaik, if they have just a u.s. patent, they still can't force a german developer to honor it. only if they have a patent in germany as well, they could force dersch to pay royalties. does anyone know what basis they have for making those threats?
My other car is a cons.
For some examples of some *beautiful* panoramic art, check out:
http://www.hotspots.hawaii.com/wrinklehome.html
æeee!
Do they have a port to Linux? Is he using there code? What exactally have they patented? They may not have a 'real' case, they are just going after someone as an example. This needs more investigating.
Only 'flamers' flame!
check out www.wearcam.org for related image-processing technology . High-bandwith version(not as comprehensive).
In a nutshell, Steve Mann takes images (well an image stream) from his wearable camera and stitches them together to create a seamless single image. He calls this system "painting with looks". The software is VideoOrbits and is downloadable as a tar.gz (rpm coming).
I think some pretty cool worlds could be created by combining painting with looks with Dr. Dersch's panorama software.
I am curreently authoring some software that will make "Montages" (see The Linux Image Montage Project), as the software I am using now has a clause in the licensing agreement that states, "this software can be in no way used for commercial purposes" (I am paraphrasing here). It would also appear that the person who invented the technique, has a patent not on the algorithm, but the look-and-feel of a Montage.
What really get's me is that photographers have been making 360 panaramas & photo montages, albeit analog ones, for years. I am suprised that just because the picture is represented by bits instead of film-grain that it makes any difference.
-AP (Jordan Husney)A lot of people have been making a big deal out of IPIX's patent. While I'll agree their patent is probably baseless and that there is a large degree of prior art. This is not what the claim against Helmut Dersch is about.
IPIX is claiming that he violated their copyrights with regards to one of the example photos that he had on his website.
Helmet argues that he took the photo and in fact was even in the photo. However, this is not a total response to IPIX's claim as I understand it.
IPIX claims that their file format is a computer program and as such is entitled to special protection under the copyright laws. While, the information is not clear, I would imagine the supposedly offending photo was in an IPIX format, since the page that they forced him to take down was in relation to how to convert from their format.
So why is IPIX doing this? They are going after Helmet not because they have a problem with his software. While they probably don't necessarily like the fact that his software is available, what they find particularly offensive is his description of how to move from their file format.
They're doing this because their licensing structure is setup such that you must pay *PER VIEW* of their file format. So if you can easily convert away from their file format then you can easily avoid their licensing scheme.
So they aren't trying to protect their patent. They're trying to protect their licensing scheme.
People can sue if they're being damaged, or will probably be damaged by a copyright/patent/law. They do not have to own the copyright itself to sue. Legalese could probably mangle words enough to show that destroying an unrelated Free Software product would damage your free software product.
/.'ers interested in panoramic images ought to visit the 1999 Cougar QTVR site (requires QuickTime). The second image on the page is a "double-spin" image: on the first turn the back seat of the Cougar is folded down, and on the second turn it is up. Pretty cool IMHO.
What I'm getting at here, and this might or might not apply in this particular case, is that even if companies don't have any legal grounds for something, they can cause a lot of trouble because most of us don't have the funds or the strength to fight them in court, so it is easier to fall back and do as they ask than to stand up against them.
People have suggested having an organisation that could defend free software projects in court. However, if I've got this right (IANAL so please tell me if I'm wrong, it would make me very happy), with the current laws, only the copyright holder can acctually defend his program and it's unclear to me if some other organisations could even drive a lawsuit against the company without owning the copyright. As I understand it, thats one of the reasons why the FSF has wanted the copyright for some of its programs (like the libc, gcc, binutils, fileutils and others). If someone were to violate the GPL on these programs, it would be easy for the FSF (and for the court who doesn't have to account for a hundred different copyright holders) to prosecute the offender.
So this doesn't seem to be a situation where you can simply say, as a developer, "here; go talk to the FSF instead and don't bother me." Instead you would have to draw the lawsuit yourself and the only thing that another organisation could contribute with would probably be funds to do this. However, I don't think most people would care. Even if they did get funds for it, it would still be much too easy to fall back and live by the rules dictated by a company.
It sounds like Helmut was working on a standard unrelated to IPIX. I believe its for panoramic images using VRML. That's what makes this whole ordeal so sickening - IPIX thinks they have the patent on the panoramic process.
I think the idea of their fiduciary duty is a key one. Consider it this way. You have a great idea , and you spend some time developing it. You get funding, prepare to go public, and then find that as great as your idea was, it wasn't original. Happens all the time, except now, your screwed. So your choice is, go bend over in front of the bankers, or try to put the squeeze on some little guy (relatively speaking) far away. That, I think, is how most of this happens.
As for a general change of the patent system, it is incredibly unlikely. The system is self contradictory, drastically underfunded, and almost hopelessly out of date. Time would perhaps be better spent harassing you local congresspeople, rather than IRIX. And for any Europeans, beat your EU ministers with a big knobby stick before you let them make the laws match the system here. You at least have the chance to start from scratch with something reasonable...
Their first post starts off by telling
Their next post appears to provide a useful resource to the community, listing IPIX contact details and shareholders.
One of these shareholders is given as the Media One Group (mediaone.com). http://www.ipix.com/about/about.html corroborates this. A quick lookup on http://nsiregistry.com gives us a primary domain server for mediaone.com of ns1.mediaone.net. So mediaone.com and mediaone.net are the same entity.
The two posts I have referred to purport to come from signal11@mediaone.net
I don't know what's going on here, but I don't think I much like it.
signal11@mediaone.net has been notified of this reply, so I hope (s)he will soon come and explain themselves. For their sakes, I just hope it's all a big coincidence/cock-up.
fine. make it 100 radians in milliradian steps.
Ex Libris Veritas
It seems to me that what we need is not so much a big bag of money, as a big bag of free lawyers.
There must be some lawyer geeks out there who would be willing to represent persecuted open source developers in cases like these?
Part of the problem with having a trust fund for law suits would be controling its use. Someone would have to decide who was to get backing and who not. With a list of lawyers willing to represent cases for free, it would be up to them if they worked on a particular suit or not.
As a good meeting point, how about if Slashdot were to have a sign up page for lawyers? What do you think, Rob?
Does anyone have a copy of the page that had to be removed? The best thing to do would be to mirror that information everywhere.
The Virtual Parks thing requires quicktime..and there's none for Linux, AFAIK
If they are in negotigations with the individual, then it's entirely possible that this whole hotheaded discussion will work against the cause.
None of the links provided in this article explain
exactly what the deal is with IPIX in regards to Helmut Dersch. Specifically what legal precedents or laws are they using to attack him and also more importantly what is he doing that leaves him open to these attacks. If he is infringing on IPIX patents or copyrights then that is one thing. However if he is not infringing on them, but IPIX is attacking him because he is small and cannot defend himself then that is another thing altogether. This kind of thing happens all the time, a big company goes after someone they consider a threat, trying to intimidate them with threats of legal action when the person is doing nothing wrong or illegal. If that is what is happening here then I think we should all get involved and see to it that the work that Mr Dersch has done does not disappear. Surely the information that IPIX scared him into removing exists someplace. Mirror it. Put it up on your own website along with copies of the free tools Mr. Dersch created. Let IPIX's lawyers charge them $150 an hour while they try to stamp out the rebels. Better yet take the work he has done and improve up on it. Make tools that IPIX wishes it had created. The better the tools the bigger the stink IPIX will make about it and in the end the worse it will make them look. Don't let companies harrass others because you could be next in line.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Get drunk in *.*.de and you lose your license to drive for life. A bit extreeme. Plus as much as I hate Protectionism (Not commercialism), we don't need them bastards getting organized before we get organized against them.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
This does seem to be solely based on the usage of a file format, and whether another author is allowed to use that file format to import into another program. (which of course is the *last* thing you want to happen to your file format!)
This seems groundless, as this sort of thing has been done for years, if you look through MS's site, it shows lots of white papers on how to migrate from lotus notes to exchange, for example, and excel can import various non MS formats.
However, if this stands, it could set a nasty precedent, imagine if gnumeric or koffice were not allowed to have an excel import option? Or if Samba was not able to use the SMB protocol?
The possible repercissions of "you're not allowed to build an import filter for our file format unless we allow it" do not bear thinking about.
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
It would be interesting to discover how far a seriously critical view of the benefits to society of the law of copyright ... would have a chance of being publicly stated in a society in which the channels of expression are so largely controlled by people who have a vested interest in the existing situation. -- Friedrich A. Hayek, "The Intellectuals and Socialism" quoted on The Libertarian Case Against Intellectual Property Rights
"A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything." Shane (1953)
I'm kinda unclear on what the deal is...
;-)
It seems to me that there's a whole mess of papers submitted at SIGGRAPH 97 (see pages 243-258) and before on the subject of creating panoramic picture anyways. IPIX cannot be "revolutionary" if researchers from Princeton, Apple, and Microsoft Research have been working on this for ages. So obviously IPIX has no precedence on the "algorithms" to create panoramic images...
As for image formats, screw 'em! There's always got to be a better format. Let them make the fatal mistake of a proprietary format, and then us free software mongers shall smite them with an OPEN standard. Thus forcing them to comply! Muhahahaha!
Any takers?
Cheers,
Stryemer
My fortune cookie read:
"You will recieve faster silicon love in your future."
-Stryemer
We are the music makers,
and we are the dreamers of the dream.
-Stryemer
We are the music makers,
and we are the dreamers of the dream.
We need to start getting together to help our fellow man (or woman). I encourage all of you to mirror his site to prevent any injustice of permenant removal. I have just finished downloading it. Should the time come, I will post it.
-- Your mother is an Active Server Page.
That would make IPIX an excellent target for a trademark infringment lawsuit. Same business area (virtual reality software), very similar names. Pity SGI probably won't sink that low. OTOH, you're supposed to defend your trademarks or risk losing them...
Why cant IPIX just go at this the way UNIX has dealt with Linux, form what i understand there are a lot of UNIX producers that support Linux, and UNIX still seems to do really well.
----------- mount
The question is how best should we get word to IPIX's potential investors about this problem. Our message should be: You don't want to invest in them since
1) we are boycotting them; and
2) there are more flexible free alternatives like VRML.
Our problem is that the free alternatives (while more flexable) are of slightly lower image quality and we don't want to risk creating any new investors for them via drawing attention to them.
I suggest that someone who knows more about IPO's then I do post soemthing about how to find there future investors without finding any investors who have not heard of them. Note: JP Morgan is handling there IPO.
I suppose we could keep an eye on the chat stuff in forbes.com and fortune.com (at least one of them has one), but I did not want to draw attention to them ammong investors unless people were discussing them already.
Just my thoughs..
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Check out http://www.iqtvra.org/noipix.html and become 100% IPIX free. I guess not having any 3D content on my web page makes my 100% IPIX free. Seriously, IPIX must be stopped as this represents a threat to free software in general, i.e. it would be very bad for us if it became common place to sue on weaker patents as individual free software developers done have the resources to fight these in court. The most effective way to fight this is by purging IPIX's technology from the web, i.e. if you know anyone who distributes content in IPIX format please incurage them to switch formats and maybe point them to the following pages:
h tml 6 237
http://www.iqtvra.org/noipix.html
http://www.virtualproperties.com/noipix/noipix.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/05/30/144
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
http://www.fh-fu rtwangen.de/%7Edersch/sphere_format/Spherical.html is the real page which IPIX forced himn to remove and it is this and it is this page we need to mirror since it explains how to convert from IPIX's image format. If we want to boycot them then we sould make it uber simple to convert from IPIX images to other formats. Can someone please post a link to the original content of this page? thanks..
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Yeah. Wouldn't it be just sad if suddenly all of IPIX's programmers either went on strike, or demanded a 200% pay hike!
It's time to see if all those companies (expecially RedHat) who claim they support Open Source software are going to put their money where their mouth is and give us a hand here. It would be great Public Relations. "Big Business Backs the Little Guy" or even "Microsoft gains footing in antitrust trial."
There's a North American Union of Truckers, so why can't there be a Global Union of Open Source Programmers? We can't be a lynch mob, but we also must defend our own and stop anyone from trying to "divide and conquor".
JMHO.
--------
I personally know what kind of crappy lawyers are out there. They're called criminal prosecutors. No offence, but they just aren't that good. We need a fund, so we can afford some good lawyers (instead of the bad ones that IPIX obviously has). By getting free lawyers, we will end up shooting ourselves in the foot [sic].
--------
That will just make it look like we agree that what we are doing is actually illegal. I agree we should defend our own, but we must never go underground, because that defeats the purpose of freedom.
--------
I'd hate to be redundant and repeat myself, but this is a very creative approach and deserves a better rating than 1.
--------
I am a bit confused about this crackdown on software which converts from a particular file format. Would this be like MS or WordPerfect suing MarinerWrite because MarinerWrite includes in its software the means to convert from Word and WP files to text files or MarinerWrite files? It seems as though quite a bit of this sort of thing goes on, that is - software converting some file formats to others.
Forget those ancient degrees... Something which describes angle in space (grads?) would do.
Where's that fscking math book...
The page about making images for IPIX's viewer was taken down, and replaced with a discussion of the status of the dispute.
Personally, while I understand IPIX has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders (yes, it has some, even though it's not publicly offered yet) to protect the value of its intellectual property, this one's gone just a little too far.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
So IPIX doesn't think that people should be giving away software for free that is in competition with their own because its unfair?? What is the difference between him giving it away and him selling it for half their price? Is this just a plow to bog people down with leagal trouble that they can't afford to fight so that they have no choice but to give up? Or is there some leagal basis for this? If this is a legitment argument, how long before MicroSoft goes after Linux distributors for exactly the same thing?