What put Interplay into most of this mess in the FIRST place? Decisions like the ones that you're seeing right now. Fallout 3 was probably one of the ONLY titles they were going to be able to get out the door in a sensible timeframe for next year's lineup that could really have made them money- what in the heck are they going to sell now? Stuff that they've already gotten unfavorable feedback on, but that can be more cheaply made...
That's what a many of the players think is where the money's at.
Perhaps... Depends on what you're selling. Also depends on how you play the game.
Making console games isn't really any cheaper than PC games and doesn't guarantee your game will even sell any more than a PC game. All it does is take the hardware glitches and baseline software glitches that plague PC development disappear. And, better yet, if you really want the sales, you'll spend as much as three times as much time making 3 different versions for the three consoles out, and spend on the licenses and royalties for the same. Bet on the wrong console, end up losing money. Bet on the right one, you MIGHT sell enough units to have bothered- but most console games don't sell much better than PC titles do.
If all the current players all go console, I'm pretty sure there will be someone to take their places and be more than happy to sell PC games to someone. PC's still outpace consoles for capabilities if only because the price-points for things allow much more aggressive configurations (You don't see a 3+ GHz CPU in a game console do you? No. X-Box has a 700MHz PIII type CPU in it. GameCubes and Playstation2's have comparable processors in them as well.) and you can do push the envelope games with PCs that aren't at all practical for a Console of the current or even next generation.
Considering that the titles that Interplay's keeping are things people have pretty much told them they DON'T want, I guess they're commiting suicide then. Fallout 3 probably would have made money and it was almost the ONLY title Interplay was going to have ready for next year's Christmas sales season (Most of the other titles are further off, etc...).
What they did here almost makes no sense whatsoever unless they truly are about to go bankrupt themselves.
You're lucky. Most companies don't offer escrow agreements and most that end up having escrow agreements with companies largely don't have them with companies such as Microsoft. While it's an answer, it's not QUITE as good as Open/Free Software- it's nowhere near the same thing.
> However, I'd say that Microsoft would have a > pretty good case that their Chicago release was > for experimental purposes.
It was to provide the ISV's access to the new 32-bit environment so they would produce 32-bit Windows apps so they could leverage everyone over to NT. Not QUITE so experimental- we weren't supposed to be testing it per se, just developing for it (since it included a copy of Microsoft C++ without the trappings of Studio to start developing applications out of the gate.).
In the case of something like handling industrial I/O devices, yes, they ARE simple and there's no excuse for anyone to keep those as closed modules.
In the case of something like 3D drivers, they're not simple, per se, but the details of the writing to the card, etc. IS simple and as such, the overall commanding of the device in question is very similar to another card. (For example, there's a DMA pathway on each and every modern card...) There's nothing in the programming for most, if not all, of 3D cards that merits NVidia's or Imagination's (and to a lesser extent ATI- they've released most of the details of the earlier generation of cards which make up their low-to-middle product line to the DRI team...) apparent need to keep the details proprietary- just because it's a complex task doesn't make it something that nobody else thought of and provided a similar implementation thereof.
It's in the best interests of nearly everyone (whether they see it that way or not...) to provide the driver source and technical info to program for their devices. This way they can provide a couple of developers for the hard stuff and let the rest of the community build and support the bulk of the work producing driver code for the operating system.
The prices ARE down. Now, if I were facing a $200-250 price tag, I'd have to give pause considering that it's only going to be double that for one of the double-layer burners (which is niftier than the 8x speed burners...).
IBM's case was dropped. No Findings of Fact, no Findings of Law, and no Remedy.
Microsoft has a Findings of Fact (They are effectively a Monopoly and they used the position to leverage themselves into another market and crush a competitor...), they have a Findings of Law (Microsoft is guilty of violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act...), and they have a Remedy that has been accepted by half of the States involved in the case and the DOJ.
I'd say that it's a piss-poor comparison to what IBM did in their Anti-Trust suit.
A use of the Invention outside of the Inventor or his Employer constitutes an offer for sale or gift thereof, regardless of the disclosure conditions the party recieving the gift or sale since they are not parties to the Company by way of the agreement (These agreements are SPECIFIC about this sort of thing, by the way...).
It's kind of moot anyway. The Patent in question was a continuation (something I missed- it's why you're supposed to consult a Patent attorney, BTW...) and therefore had a prior art start date of April 24, 1993. However, the Rock Ridge RRIP specification for the ISO-9660 filesystem describes a largely identical (by the reading of Microsoft's actual Patent claims- this one's nicely broad) scheme that implements short (i.e. 8.3) filenames in the same database as long filenames (i.e. POSIX 256 character names...) for the purposes of transparently supporting long filenames on systems that would and providing the regluar means for accessing the short ones on systems that don't understand the extentions. While it remains to be determined that this is, in fact, Prior Art, it's likely to be so and it was initially published by the Rock Ridge group in 1991, some 1-2 years prior to the filing by Microsoft on all of that.
Another up-moderated article has comments to this effect (I didn't notice the continuation detail...). However, having said this, one should note that the details of the Patent in question have a specification that predates it. The Rock Ridge filesystem extentions to the ISO-9660 file system describes the exact same thing (A method for doing short and long filenames by way of a common database so that they could both be used transparently and could be maintained simultaneously) and the RRIP specification document that describes this scheme was published in 1991, some 1-2 years prior to the filing date for the initial Patent filing.
The main reason for having them is to not prevent the Patent filing clock from starting, but to keep people from finding out too early about what you're up to, having people already starting on the attempts to skirt your in progress Patent filing, etc. It's to protect things like Trade Secrets, etc.
All an NDA does is specify the scope of information that will be given, who is supposed to be recieving the same, and penalties for disclosing the information given outside the circle of people so covered. It doesn't make it "not revealed" to other parties. As far as the Patent laws are concerned, it is one year from the first disclosure or publication outside of the Inventor's notes or the Company as a whole- it is considered publication, however limited, even if it's under an NDA.
As a side note, I missed a little detail- the Patent we're talking about may not be invalidated by their disclosure through the pre-Beta. They filed the Patent in question as a continuation of the original filing that was not approved at the time of the filing, exactly 1 year to the day from the original filing that they deliberately killed off. That's legit, in and of itself for at least one pass at it- it's a Patent filing based off of an original one that never got finalized. If there were no breaches prior to the initial filing, the original filing merely counts as the first pubication of the Invention.
Now, having said this, there's possible Prior Art in the Rock Ridge RRIP specification (Part of what is commonly referred to as the Rock Ridge Extentions to the ISO filesystem...) as they manage an 8.3 filename and a long type filename transparently in the same database structure.
I missed the continuation portion on the filings. Nothing worse than evaluating the scope of a Patent and missing details like that.
Let's go back through the Patents again with that tidbit in mind...
My statement still stands on the 6,286,013 Patent- it's not applicable execpt in the narrowest of terms, i.e. sitting on top of a BIOS/BDOS interrupt driven disk access, x86-32 system. It's just a wee-bit too specific to be something they can ask for royalties on for most things out there. (Even though they've got the brass balls to try all the same...)
The 5,745,902 Patent discusses the process that they use for the LFN->8.3 and 8.3->LFN correlations and keeping it all consistent within the OS. Referring to the Patent text:
"The multiple file name referencing system maintains in a B-tree an operating system entry containing the operating system formatted name and an application entry containing the application formatted name. Each entry also contains the address of the same file to which both names refer. The multiple file name referencing system converts the operating system formatted file name to the application formatted file name by accessing the B-tree with reference to the operating system entry. Similarly, the multiple file name referencing system converts the application formatted file name to the operating system formatted file name by accessing the B-tree with reference to the application entry. As a result, either file name can be used to directly reference the file without requiring additional file name translation. "
One wouldn't get tripped up on this part by simply NOT using a B-tree since they don't allude to any other indexing scheme. They do, unfortunately go on to describe in detail the 8.3 name generation scheme (Otherwise known as name mangling...) and their methodology for avoiding conflicts...
"In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, the file name generation process represented by box 200 in FIG. 2 can be applied to generate an application formatted file name (short name) based on a known operation system formatted file name (long name), or vice versa. Although short names are limited to "8.3" format as explained in more detail below, long names can be any length up to 255 characters, and are not restricted by the same rules regarding illegal characters, etc."
However, based on how the whole scheme works (which isn't covered by this Patent...), it's concievable to come up with a different naming algorithm that would work that didn't touch on their algorithm. If that's possible, then you don't get tripped up on that Patent as it is an explicit statement of how MS does the task- if you can come up with an alternate method that does the same thing (or close enough that Microsoft's code doesn't notice that you're not doing it "right"...), you're in the clear on that part of the Patent. I suspect that this is the case, based on my studies on the VFAT scheme.
Now, the real sticking point is the other two. They discuss handling long and short filenames in a common database. The real question is, is it a common database? If it's not, the Patents, while lovely in and of themselves, would not cover the exact situation or a portion thereof, thereby allowing you to avoid issues with them.
So, one would want to answer that question to determine if things look bad for people wanting to implement VFAT systems (We'll get to possible Prior Art issues in a bit...). In order to do that, one would have to do a rough analysis of VFAT to see how it's done up.
Referring to a developer's notes on VFAT (http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/gchunt/vfat.html), we can see that Microsoft has hacked in a scheme to wedge the LFN into the current directory structure entries, 13 characters of the LFN at a time. Therefore, without prior art involved or
...at the discretion of the Patent holder. If they weren't actively enforcing the Patent for an extended period of time (Like this situation), they generally may not demand back royalties owed or damages, but they can demand you discontinue the use if you don't pay future royalties and they can choose what the royalties are, including not being able to choose to pay them (i.e. you don't get to use this again until the Patent expires or is invalidated for some reason...).
Patents do not cover specific things like being on Media, implemented in software, implemented in hardware, etc.
If the verbiage of the Patent covers a given implementation of a given Invention and your Invention's implementation touches on the Patented Invention, you're infringing- PERIOD.
Just because they're saying it's only the people that are producing the media that have to pay NOW, doesn't mean they won't come knock on your door at a later time for their money for your implementation in your Open Sourced OS.
A Patent, in and of itself, doesn't care about those things. So, in actuality, Microsoft could ask for royalties on each and every Patent on this list and legitmately so unless each are invalidated or your implementation is somehow found to not infringe.
Let's go over the Patents one by one, shall we?
5,579,517 - Common name space for long and short filenames. Filed for on April 24, 1995. This one only impacts you if you're using a Common Name Space for long and short filenames. Basically, the scheme they deployed for Chicago- references a preferred embodiment for MS-Dos 5.0 that was apparently handed to the USPTO as part of the application. Very much likely to be invalidated, though, by their OWN prior art release of Chicago to the world in December of 1993. This describes a scheme for handling long and short filenames correctly. If it's not invalidated, you might run afoul of it trying to do a VFAT type implementation.
5,745,902 - Method and system for accessing a file using file names having different file name formats. Filed for on July 6, 1992. Reading the abstract of this one, you'd have to allow renaming of just the name and preserving the extention for the purposes of keeping track of the filetype. Abstract explicitly mentions the use of a B-tree (Limits the scope of what they're claiming- you can possibly sidestep things by using red-black, AVL, etc...). They don't appear to have troubled this application with a possible prior art release, but unless you're doing the exact same thing for handling renames, etc. I don't think you're impacted by this one.
5,758,352 - Common name space for long and short filenames. Filed on September 5, 1996. A cursory reading of the Patent filing made by Microsoft leads one to believe that this is a re-application of the 5,579,517 Patent. While I'm not an IP lawyer, they appear to be claiming the same basic things in both documents. If this, in fact, the case, the 5,579,517 Patent's invalidation would likely invalidate this one. You would probably run afoul of this Patent if you attempted to implement a VFAT style filesystem.
6,286,013 - Method and system for providing a common name space for long and short file names in an operating system. Filed on January 28, 1997. This one is an EXPLICIT Patent-style description of how Windows 95/98/Me handles long filenames on an x86-32 platform. Cute. The applicablity of this Patent to anything other than an exact clone of Windows 95/98/Me is doubtful at best. They explicitly mention things like BIOS interrupts and x86 register names in their claims. Better yet, the preferred implementation was deployed to the World at large in Windows 95- TWO YEARS PRIOR to the filing date.
You should consult a Patent attorney before making any decisions regarding this request for royalties from Microsoft. However, having said this, I'd feel fairly comfortable about the situation overall based on the observations made above.
They provided an implementation of Patent #5,579,517, the actual core long filename patent on VFAT. The clock starts on the final valid filing date for a Patent the moment you put the improvement in question in the hands of someone outside of your company or the Inventor themselves. The law considers it as revealing the Patent as implemented Art at that point. Microsoft handed out 5000 copies of the pre-Beta version of Chicago, which would be Windows 95 with long filename support- at the Microsoft Developer's Conference in December 1993. A follow-on distribution of this pre-Beta was done for the ISV's that could not attend the conference- I know this transpired because I was one of the ISV's that recieved a copy end of December 1993.
The problem with it is, their implementation of long filenames for FAT was in the hands of people outside of Microsoft well before the one-year prior drop-dead date for the application. Before it was Windows 95, it was codenamed Chicago and it was available to ISV's beginning of 1994 (as in it was available to developers outside of the company BEFORE April 24 1994...) - I know, I was part of that beta program. It does not matter WHAT you have with those people in the way of non-disclosure, they're customers and the moment you put an improvement in the hands of anyone outside of your company, the clock on the filing date starts ticking because you've revealed it to the world as far as the law is concerned.
The first patent, at least, is invalid by their OWN prior art.
It's about his not being able to play DVDs without obtaining the possibly illegal libdvdcss.so to play locked DVDs- or going over to lindows.com to obtain a "legally" licensed drop in solution available for all distributions, $5 for Lindows users, $35 for all other Linux distributions. Never mind that someone that wants DVD playback has to spend about $35-50 for a Windows player in the first place.
It's about his not being able to use the latest and greatest 802.11g card in the laptop, knowing full well that the vendor doesn't support Linux and that the only support for the device under Linux is an experimental reverse engineered driver and the unobtainable closed-source drivers that Broadcom and others made for their Linux based routers in violation of the GPL license grant (Something that everyone involved, including the FSF is trying to amicably sort out with the result being proper official drivers for the cards...).
It's about two simple things not working for HIM out of the box (both of which would have had to been fixed under Windows by adding an application and adding drivers not included in the raw OS install...), and thereby everything being utterly useless in the Linux world for him. I don't know about you, but that's kind of an egotistical and narrow view, if you ask me.
A wannabe troll, trolled by an old hand at flametrolling and flameage- kinda poetic, if you must know. Still, you're not as good as you think of yourself.
He is NOT worth it to anyone. He thinks that his Senior Editor position gives him a unique insight into "What's wrong with Open Source"...
He had his damn "points" wrong for various reasons that he obviously didn't think about in the previous article that precipitated this stupid "response" (One, I might add, it was strongly suggested that he re-think the idea from the get-go over on LinuxToday's comment section...)- and most everyone on the feedback forum and on LinuxToday pointed out where he'd gone wrong (Myself included on BOTH forums) and most of them were fairly respectful but also strongly questioned is credibility and credentials, likening him to Enderle (Right or wrong, it felt a lot like Enderle's stuff...).
He then comes in with a chip on HIS shoulder claiming that we were all about with a chip on our collective shoulder and accusing us of ad-homninem attacks.
Never mind that the man failed to address the points LEGITIMATELY raised with regards to HIS points. And he still fails to do so now. He won't admit he might have been "wrong" about part or all of his premise and points. He may be right, there may still be things that we have that can impede desktop adoption of Linux, but what he came up with isn't the problem- really it isn't.
Really now, it didn't seem like a joke or your typical troll post- just came out as pedantic whining.
If it REALLY was a joke or troll post, dude, you really should have left it alone with the original post- like all the other "good" trolls usually do. All you keep doing is trying to justify the "joke" and then the comments afterwards. If you're trying to be a Slashdot troll, you're not very good at it- you should either take some lessons from the pros or give it up.
And as for being "new" to Slashdot, you might want to check the user account number. In the low thousands, it is. I've been around a hell of a lot longer than you.
I'm sorry, I seem to have done what you claim you have done here. I won't make any further mistakes on that line.
Again, none of this needed a comment from you. If it "went too far", as you put it, you should have dropped the subject. You mention irony and complain about elitism- and you are as guilty of it as the people you accuse. Even to the point of claiming I'm truely clueless.
If you didn't give a rat's ass about the 'slant', why in the hell did you even start the thread in the first place, hm? And, I'm clueless...
I was under the understanding that it was okay. Now,reading what you've said, I've done a little research now, and I'm not sure anymore.
Ouch.
Perhaps it's for the best that the drivers are open source anyhow- it's not like they're REALLY keeping the competition from "ripping them off" like many keep saying will happen if they did open source things. Anyone capable of ripping them off would have a crack reverse engineering team and would do it with or without the source code. Yes, it'd make it more "difficult" but in the end, the result is exactly the same and usually, it's not much different in the bottom line for the copy-cat.
Having worked in the Embedded Linux field for quite some time now, I have some perspective. It's not 100% gospel as I don't have anything but an add-on driver set for an obsolete SBC from Versalogic to my name as for kernel stuff. It is MY understanding (and the general understanding of the embedded world using Linux the "right" way...) that binary kernel modules are "okay"- there's no written exemption included with the rest of the licensing for it, but there's numerous references that can be found on the Internet that Linus and others didn't plan on pursuing that situation and that they were not going to worry about breaking binary compatibility with modules at any version release. Static linkage is purely a violation of the GPL if you do not provide the sources back to the world at large- it's linkage pure and simple and under the terms of the license grant, you have to provide source or stop distribution altogether.
It's a big grey area, but if you're using modules, it's a lot better and you're likely to not garner complaints like this if you do.
Slashdot Mirror
What put Interplay into most of this mess in the FIRST place? Decisions like the ones that you're seeing right now. Fallout 3 was probably one of the ONLY titles they were going to be able to get out the door in a sensible timeframe for next year's lineup that could really have made them money- what in the heck are they going to sell now? Stuff that they've already gotten unfavorable feedback on, but that can be more cheaply made...
Brilliant thinking, really.
That's what a many of the players think is where the money's at.
Perhaps... Depends on what you're selling. Also depends on how you play the game.
Making console games isn't really any cheaper than PC games and doesn't guarantee your game will even sell any more than a PC game. All it does is take the hardware glitches and baseline software glitches that plague PC development disappear. And, better yet, if you really want the sales, you'll spend as much as three times as much time making 3 different versions for the three consoles out, and spend on the licenses and royalties for the same. Bet on the wrong console, end up losing money. Bet on the right one, you MIGHT sell enough units to have bothered- but most console games don't sell much better than PC titles do.
If all the current players all go console, I'm pretty sure there will be someone to take their places and be more than happy to sell PC games to someone. PC's still outpace consoles for capabilities if only because the price-points for things allow much more aggressive configurations (You don't see a 3+ GHz CPU in a game console do you? No. X-Box has a 700MHz PIII type CPU in it. GameCubes and Playstation2's have comparable processors in them as well.) and you can do push the envelope games with PCs that aren't at all practical for a Console of the current or even next generation.
Considering that the titles that Interplay's keeping are things people have pretty much told them they DON'T want, I guess they're commiting suicide then. Fallout 3 probably would have made money and it was almost the ONLY title Interplay was going to have ready for next year's Christmas sales season (Most of the other titles are further off, etc...).
What they did here almost makes no sense whatsoever unless they truly are about to go bankrupt themselves.
You're lucky. Most companies don't offer escrow agreements and most that end up having escrow agreements with companies largely don't have them with companies such as Microsoft. While it's an answer, it's not QUITE as good as Open/Free Software- it's nowhere near the same thing.
> However, I'd say that Microsoft would have a
> pretty good case that their Chicago release was
> for experimental purposes.
It was to provide the ISV's access to the new 32-bit environment so they would produce 32-bit Windows apps so they could leverage everyone over to NT. Not QUITE so experimental- we weren't supposed to be testing it per se, just developing for it (since it included a copy of Microsoft C++ without the trappings of Studio to start developing applications out of the gate.).
In the case of something like handling industrial I/O devices, yes, they ARE simple and there's no excuse for anyone to keep those as closed modules.
In the case of something like 3D drivers, they're not simple, per se, but the details of the writing to the card, etc. IS simple and as such, the overall commanding of the device in question is very similar to another card. (For example, there's a DMA pathway on each and every modern card...) There's nothing in the programming for most, if not all, of 3D cards that merits NVidia's or Imagination's (and to a lesser extent ATI- they've released most of the details of the earlier generation of cards which make up their low-to-middle product line to the DRI team...) apparent need to keep the details proprietary- just because it's a complex task doesn't make it something that nobody else thought of and provided a similar implementation thereof.
It's in the best interests of nearly everyone (whether they see it that way or not...) to provide the driver source and technical info to program for their devices. This way they can provide a couple of developers for the hard stuff and let the rest of the community build and support the bulk of the work producing driver code for the operating system.
The prices ARE down. Now, if I were facing a $200-250 price tag, I'd have to give pause considering that it's only going to be double that for one of the double-layer burners (which is niftier than the 8x speed burners...).
IBM's case was dropped. No Findings of Fact, no Findings of Law, and no Remedy.
Microsoft has a Findings of Fact (They are effectively a Monopoly and they used the position to leverage themselves into another market and crush a competitor...), they have a Findings of Law (Microsoft is guilty of violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act...), and they have a Remedy that has been accepted by half of the States involved in the case and the DOJ.
I'd say that it's a piss-poor comparison to what IBM did in their Anti-Trust suit.
A use of the Invention outside of the Inventor or his Employer constitutes an offer for sale or gift thereof, regardless of the disclosure conditions the party recieving the gift or sale since they are not parties to the Company by way of the agreement (These agreements are SPECIFIC about this sort of thing, by the way...).
It's kind of moot anyway. The Patent in question was a continuation (something I missed- it's why you're supposed to consult a Patent attorney, BTW...) and therefore had a prior art start date of April 24, 1993. However, the Rock Ridge RRIP specification for the ISO-9660 filesystem describes a largely identical (by the reading of Microsoft's actual Patent claims- this one's nicely broad) scheme that implements short (i.e. 8.3) filenames in the same database as long filenames (i.e. POSIX 256 character names...) for the purposes of transparently supporting long filenames on systems that would and providing the regluar means for accessing the short ones on systems that don't understand the extentions. While it remains to be determined that this is, in fact, Prior Art, it's likely to be so and it was initially published by the Rock Ridge group in 1991, some 1-2 years prior to the filing by Microsoft on all of that.
Another up-moderated article has comments to this effect (I didn't notice the continuation detail...). However, having said this, one should note that the details of the Patent in question have a specification that predates it. The Rock Ridge filesystem extentions to the ISO-9660 file system describes the exact same thing (A method for doing short and long filenames by way of a common database so that they could both be used transparently and could be maintained simultaneously) and the RRIP specification document that describes this scheme was published in 1991, some 1-2 years prior to the filing date for the initial Patent filing.
The main reason for having them is to not prevent the Patent filing clock from starting, but to keep people from finding out too early about what you're up to, having people already starting on the attempts to skirt your in progress Patent filing, etc. It's to protect things like Trade Secrets, etc.
All an NDA does is specify the scope of information that will be given, who is supposed to be recieving the same, and penalties for disclosing the information given outside the circle of people so covered. It doesn't make it "not revealed" to other parties. As far as the Patent laws are concerned, it is one year from the first disclosure or publication outside of the Inventor's notes or the Company as a whole- it is considered publication, however limited, even if it's under an NDA.
As a side note, I missed a little detail- the Patent we're talking about may not be invalidated by their disclosure through the pre-Beta. They filed the Patent in question as a continuation of the original filing that was not approved at the time of the filing, exactly 1 year to the day from the original filing that they deliberately killed off. That's legit, in and of itself for at least one pass at it- it's a Patent filing based off of an original one that never got finalized. If there were no breaches prior to the initial filing, the original filing merely counts as the first pubication of the Invention.
Now, having said this, there's possible Prior Art in the Rock Ridge RRIP specification (Part of what is commonly referred to as the Rock Ridge Extentions to the ISO filesystem...) as they manage an 8.3 filename and a long type filename transparently in the same database structure.
Let's go back through the Patents again with that tidbit in mind...
My statement still stands on the 6,286,013 Patent- it's not applicable execpt in the narrowest of terms, i.e. sitting on top of a BIOS/BDOS interrupt driven disk access, x86-32 system. It's just a wee-bit too specific to be something they can ask for royalties on for most things out there. (Even though they've got the brass balls to try all the same...)
The 5,745,902 Patent discusses the process that they use for the LFN->8.3 and 8.3->LFN correlations and keeping it all consistent within the OS. Referring to the Patent text:
One wouldn't get tripped up on this part by simply NOT using a B-tree since they don't allude to any other indexing scheme. They do, unfortunately go on to describe in detail the 8.3 name generation scheme (Otherwise known as name mangling...) and their methodology for avoiding conflicts...
However, based on how the whole scheme works (which isn't covered by this Patent...), it's concievable to come up with a different naming algorithm that would work that didn't touch on their algorithm. If that's possible, then you don't get tripped up on that Patent as it is an explicit statement of how MS does the task- if you can come up with an alternate method that does the same thing (or close enough that Microsoft's code doesn't notice that you're not doing it "right"...), you're in the clear on that part of the Patent. I suspect that this is the case, based on my studies on the VFAT scheme.
Now, the real sticking point is the other two. They discuss handling long and short filenames in a common database. The real question is, is it a common database? If it's not, the Patents, while lovely in and of themselves, would not cover the exact situation or a portion thereof, thereby allowing you to avoid issues with them.
So, one would want to answer that question to determine if things look bad for people wanting to implement VFAT systems (We'll get to possible Prior Art issues in a bit...). In order to do that, one would have to do a rough analysis of VFAT to see how it's done up.
Referring to a developer's notes on VFAT (http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/gchunt/vfat.html), we can see that Microsoft has hacked in a scheme to wedge the LFN into the current directory structure entries, 13 characters of the LFN at a time. Therefore, without prior art involved or
...at the discretion of the Patent holder. If they weren't actively enforcing the Patent for an extended period of time (Like this situation), they generally may not demand back royalties owed or damages, but they can demand you discontinue the use if you don't pay future royalties and they can choose what the royalties are, including not being able to choose to pay them (i.e. you don't get to use this again until the Patent expires or is invalidated for some reason...).
...BZZZZT!
Patents do not cover specific things like being on Media, implemented in software, implemented in hardware, etc.
If the verbiage of the Patent covers a given implementation of a given Invention and your Invention's implementation touches on the Patented Invention, you're infringing- PERIOD.
Just because they're saying it's only the people that are producing the media that have to pay NOW, doesn't mean they won't come knock on your door at a later time for their money for your implementation in your Open Sourced OS.
A Patent, in and of itself, doesn't care about those things. So, in actuality, Microsoft could ask for royalties on each and every Patent on this list and legitmately so unless each are invalidated or your implementation is somehow found to not infringe.
Let's go over the Patents one by one, shall we?
5,579,517 - Common name space for long and short filenames. Filed for on April 24, 1995. This one only impacts you if you're using a Common Name Space for long and short filenames. Basically, the scheme they deployed for Chicago- references a preferred embodiment for MS-Dos 5.0 that was apparently handed to the USPTO as part of the application. Very much likely to be invalidated, though, by their OWN prior art release of Chicago to the world in December of 1993. This describes a scheme for handling long and short filenames correctly. If it's not invalidated, you might run afoul of it trying to do a VFAT type implementation.
5,745,902 - Method and system for accessing a file using file names having different file name formats. Filed for on July 6, 1992. Reading the abstract of this one, you'd have to allow renaming of just the name and preserving the extention for the purposes of keeping track of the filetype. Abstract explicitly mentions the use of a B-tree (Limits the scope of what they're claiming- you can possibly sidestep things by using red-black, AVL, etc...). They don't appear to have troubled this application with a possible prior art release, but unless you're doing the exact same thing for handling renames, etc. I don't think you're impacted by this one.
5,758,352 - Common name space for long and short filenames. Filed on September 5, 1996. A cursory reading of the Patent filing made by Microsoft leads one to believe that this is a re-application of the 5,579,517 Patent. While I'm not an IP lawyer, they appear to be claiming the same basic things in both documents. If this, in fact, the case, the 5,579,517 Patent's invalidation would likely invalidate this one. You would probably run afoul of this Patent if you attempted to implement a VFAT style filesystem.
6,286,013 - Method and system for providing a common name space for long and short file names in an operating system. Filed on January 28, 1997. This one is an EXPLICIT Patent-style description of how Windows 95/98/Me handles long filenames on an x86-32 platform. Cute. The applicablity of this Patent to anything other than an exact clone of Windows 95/98/Me is doubtful at best. They explicitly mention things like BIOS interrupts and x86 register names in their claims. Better yet, the preferred implementation was deployed to the World at large in Windows 95- TWO YEARS PRIOR to the filing date.
You should consult a Patent attorney before making any decisions regarding this request for royalties from Microsoft. However, having said this, I'd feel fairly comfortable about the situation overall based on the observations made above.
They provided an implementation of Patent #5,579,517, the actual core long filename patent on VFAT. The clock starts on the final valid filing date for a Patent the moment you put the improvement in question in the hands of someone outside of your company or the Inventor themselves. The law considers it as revealing the Patent as implemented Art at that point. Microsoft handed out 5000 copies of the pre-Beta version of Chicago, which would be Windows 95 with long filename support- at the Microsoft Developer's Conference in December 1993. A follow-on distribution of this pre-Beta was done for the ISV's that could not attend the conference- I know this transpired because I was one of the ISV's that recieved a copy end of December 1993.
The problem with it is, their implementation of long filenames for FAT was in the hands of people outside of Microsoft well before the one-year prior drop-dead date for the application. Before it was Windows 95, it was codenamed Chicago and it was available to ISV's beginning of 1994 (as in it was available to developers outside of the company BEFORE April 24 1994...) - I know, I was part of that beta program. It does not matter WHAT you have with those people in the way of non-disclosure, they're customers and the moment you put an improvement in the hands of anyone outside of your company, the clock on the filing date starts ticking because you've revealed it to the world as far as the law is concerned.
The first patent, at least, is invalid by their OWN prior art.
Are all the people named "Bill" guilty of IP infringement with Bill Gates?
This is not about a Laptop, even.
It's about his not being able to play DVDs without obtaining the possibly illegal libdvdcss.so to play locked DVDs- or going over to lindows.com to obtain a "legally" licensed drop in solution available for all distributions, $5 for Lindows users, $35 for all other Linux distributions. Never mind that someone that wants DVD playback has to spend about $35-50 for a Windows player in the first place.
It's about his not being able to use the latest and greatest 802.11g card in the laptop, knowing full well that the vendor doesn't support Linux and that the only support for the device under Linux is an experimental reverse engineered driver and the unobtainable closed-source drivers that Broadcom and others made for their Linux based routers in violation of the GPL license grant (Something that everyone involved, including the FSF is trying to amicably sort out with the result being proper official drivers for the cards...).
It's about two simple things not working for HIM out of the box (both of which would have had to been fixed under Windows by adding an application and adding drivers not included in the raw OS install...), and thereby everything being utterly useless in the Linux world for him. I don't know about you, but that's kind of an egotistical and narrow view, if you ask me.
A wannabe troll, trolled by an old hand at flametrolling and flameage- kinda poetic, if you must know. Still, you're not as good as you think of yourself.
He is NOT worth it to anyone. He thinks that his Senior Editor position gives him a unique insight into "What's wrong with Open Source"...
He had his damn "points" wrong for various reasons that he obviously didn't think about in the previous article that precipitated this stupid "response" (One, I might add, it was strongly suggested that he re-think the idea from the get-go over on LinuxToday's comment section...)- and most everyone on the feedback forum and on LinuxToday pointed out where he'd gone wrong (Myself included on BOTH forums) and most of them were fairly respectful but also strongly questioned is credibility and credentials, likening him to Enderle (Right or wrong, it felt a lot like Enderle's stuff...).
He then comes in with a chip on HIS shoulder claiming that we were all about with a chip on our collective shoulder and accusing us of ad-homninem attacks.
Never mind that the man failed to address the points LEGITIMATELY raised with regards to HIS points. And he still fails to do so now. He won't admit he might have been "wrong" about part or all of his premise and points. He may be right, there may still be things that we have that can impede desktop adoption of Linux, but what he came up with isn't the problem- really it isn't.
Really now, it didn't seem like a joke or your typical troll post- just came out as pedantic whining.
If it REALLY was a joke or troll post, dude, you really should have left it alone with the original post- like all the other "good" trolls usually do. All you keep doing is trying to justify the "joke" and then the comments afterwards. If you're trying to be a Slashdot troll, you're not very good at it- you should either take some lessons from the pros or give it up.
And as for being "new" to Slashdot, you might want to check the user account number. In the low thousands, it is. I've been around a hell of a lot longer than you.
I'm sorry, I seem to have done what you claim you have done here. I won't make any further mistakes on that line.
Again, none of this needed a comment from you. If it "went too far", as you put it, you should have dropped the subject. You mention irony and complain about elitism- and you are as guilty of it as the people you accuse. Even to the point of claiming I'm truely clueless.
If you didn't give a rat's ass about the 'slant', why in the hell did you even start the thread in the first place, hm? And, I'm clueless...
I was under the understanding that it was okay. Now,reading what you've said, I've done a little research now, and I'm not sure anymore.
Ouch.
Perhaps it's for the best that the drivers are open source anyhow- it's not like they're REALLY keeping the competition from "ripping them off" like many keep saying will happen if they did open source things. Anyone capable of ripping them off would have a crack reverse engineering team and would do it with or without the source code. Yes, it'd make it more "difficult" but in the end, the result is exactly the same and usually, it's not much different in the bottom line for the copy-cat.
Having worked in the Embedded Linux field for quite some time now, I have some perspective. It's not 100% gospel as I don't have anything but an add-on driver set for an obsolete SBC from Versalogic to my name as for kernel stuff. It is MY understanding (and the general understanding of the embedded world using Linux the "right" way...) that binary kernel modules are "okay"- there's no written exemption included with the rest of the licensing for it, but there's numerous references that can be found on the Internet that Linus and others didn't plan on pursuing that situation and that they were not going to worry about breaking binary compatibility with modules at any version release. Static linkage is purely a violation of the GPL if you do not provide the sources back to the world at large- it's linkage pure and simple and under the terms of the license grant, you have to provide source or stop distribution altogether.
It's a big grey area, but if you're using modules, it's a lot better and you're likely to not garner complaints like this if you do.