xorg patent issues.

[Brian Paul]

Greg KH wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 01, 2009 at 04:21:07PM -0400, Zack Rusin wrote:
>> On Thursday 01 October 2009 14:13:15 Greg KH wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> As discussed at XDC2009 in your talk about patents and xorg, I talked
>>> with the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory board about the issues
>>> your raised in your talk.
>>>
>>> I have a contact at the LF and OIN to put you in contact with, but
>>> wanted to ask if there was anyone else that wanted in on the email
>>> thread and possible phone call (lawyers love phone calls, not email...)
>>>
>>> Anyone else want in on the fun?
>> I don't know what patent issues you were discussing but I'm guessing it's 
>> mainly about the floating point plus s3tc stuff.
> 
> Yes, that is what was discussed.
> 
>> Just so that you know, we have been trying to handle this in some way
>> for a long time and a few lawyers was already involved in the process.
>> Given that, especially the first one, is explicit in its prohibition
>> of open source, short of buying it as a company I'm not sure what
>> Linux Foundation wants to do. Either way though, Brian is the person
>> to talk to about options here because he's been endlessly trying to
>> come up with ways of dealing with those problems.
> 
> Ok, great.  Brian, care to talk to OIN and the Linux Foundation about
> this?

I'm afraid that I don't have much to report at this time.  We're 
trying to talk to Via/SGI about these things but it's a slow process.

You can add me to your email/phone list.


> And yes, OIN does buy patents, they just got a few that used to be owned
> by SGI that deal with graphic issues so there is precedence here.

The so-called graphics patents involved there were GUI/web things, 
like browsing remote file systems graphically, IIRC.

-Brian