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Re: Linux on the desktop - it's come a long way, but is it there yet?



 On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 09:13:57AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote: 
> On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:23:00 -0400 
> Ruben Safir <[hidden email]> wrote: 
> 
> > Patent law and fear of legal exposures for releasing with Free Software drivers 
> > is a large component of the foot draggging on the part of companies to release 
> > even specs.  This is particularly true of the video cards where they think 
> > they are stepping on each others patents. 
> 
> I would tend to disagree. 

I apreciate that there might be varying opinions on this matter, but what I 
said about the patent fears of NVIDA and ATI et al came directly from the 
horses mouth, the legal departments and corperate CEO's of those company 
who discloses this fact at seperate meetings that involved a very famous 
former editor of the "Linux Journal". 

It is a fact, or at least it was until at least a year ago. 


> Most of the video chip people do not want to 
> expose their trade secrets.  There are a couple of issues with drivers. 
> The Linux kernel community wants Open Source drivers, but most of the 
> chip makers don't want to release their sources, but they are willing 
> to release Linux binary drivers. 

Because they are afraid of being sued from their competetitors for using 
the opositions patented technology in their chipsets. 

> While at Compaq, I spoke to a network 
> chip maker with respect to a Linux driver for their NIC chip used in 
> some of Compaq's laptops, and the person told me that it was simply a 
> matter of time. 
> 
> I don't think that patent law has much to do with the decision to 
> release source drivers since competitors are certainly going to look at 
> these chips, and they can always reverse engineer the Windows drivers. 
> 
> 


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