On 11 apr 2006, at 17:25, Jim C. Brown wrote:
Actually, the reason ATi and NVidia don't open source their graphics
drivers is because they are both afraid that as soon as as they do
that, the other one will sue them into oblivion based on software
patents.
See http://wiki.ffii.org/Smirl041025En for the full story.
I wonder, could it be possible that Fabrice is worried about the same
thing? Who holds the patents for x86 virtualization technologies?
Then again, Fabrice is in France iiuc...
Even defending against a baseless patent claim costs a lot of money
(50,000 to 500,000 euro in Europe, which is even fairly "cheap"
compared to the US' $500,000 to $4,000,000). Which is why in most
cases where a very small party is threatened, an out-of-court
settlement will happen, like paying 5,000 euro and no longer
publishing the program or so, removing an infringing feature, or even
simply abandoning further publication.
See e.g.:
* http://wiki.ffii.org/Videolan0411En (Videolan removing support for
some audio format after threats)
* http://www.postgresql.org/about/news.303 (PostgreSQL switching to a
new patent-free caching scheme)
* http://bladeenc.mp3.no/skeleton/news.html (BladeEnc, halted a.o.
because of patent issues)
Jonas
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