Re: Negotiating for using Royalty Free patents

[Mike Hearn <mike navi cx>]

On Fri, 09 Apr 2004 17:04:09 -0600, Ryan McDougall wrote:
> Has anyone tried to talk to Apple to allow us to use their patent for
> this on our desktop?

If you fancy your luck try iplaw apple com

I wouldn't bother. I think the chances of Apple suffering a fit of
generosity and effectively giving up licensing rights on it are zero given
their lawyer-oriented culture.

If we were going to ask them nicely for a patent, I'd recommend 
TrueType hinting go first. TT Hinting isn't just a nicety you know -
it's required for rendering scalable non-Latin fonts (ie in CJK locales),
and the FreeType autohinter breaks Windows compatibility by altering the
font metrics. This causes problems both for Wine and the OpenOffice guys.

> It seems to me that we pose no real business threat to them, and if
> anything they would prefer that we "validate" their patent by licensing
> it, and thus giving precedent, than fighting it with prior art. They
> certainly know we are not going to *pay* for a license.

I think you need to realise something: Apple are not our friends. If you
want to be dramatic about it, you could say they are our enemies.

Apple have a vested business interest in seeing the Linux desktop fail.

Unless they successfully shift their primary business to the iPod or
something, they are in the business of selling Macs. A driving force
behind Mac sales is MacOS and always has been.

When Linux becomes:

a) Easier to use/slicker than MacOS X 

b) More popular than MacOS X
(statistically it may already be so but I mean in terms of 3rd party ISVs)

c) Both

.. Apple are up the creek without a paddle. The dynamics of the
(non-free) software market seem to be that proprietary ISVs support the
top 2 platforms at most, and normally only one.

If in public perception (as opposed to in statistics) Linux was to
displace MacOS X as number 2 in the home user market, then games and other
custom/highly specialised software would stop being released for the Mac.

Apple especially do not want to see Linux become as easy to use as MacOS
is, because this is their number 1 sales pitch. If they lose that, not
only could they lose the influx of new customers, but due to architecture
portability they could start losing existing customers too.

Therefore, I think if they are smart (and they are) they won't be giving
us anything of value anytime soon. No, I don't consider a
bodged microkernel something of value, sorry ;)

You seem to think that "we won't pay" - unfortunately experience
seems to indicate this isn't true. Apple have made a fair wad of cash
from the FreeType patent fiasco. Various people using FreeType have bought
licenses in order to be able to flick the switch: I think this is true of
some embedded vendors, and is certainly true of CodeWeavers. I can assure
you, licensing this patent is not cheap. 

In other words, one possibility is that a patch to add spring-loaded
folders is written and switched off by default, but Novell/Red Hat/whoever
license the patent so they can enable it in their "enterprise" versions. I
have no clue how the GPL affects this.

> Who knows, if we're lucky enough we can get a whole raft of exemptions
> for Free software, and set a precedent that microsoft may be hard-
> pressed to ignore while they are having anti-trust problems. IBM seems
> like the best place to start; get a legal exemption for Free software
> from a company who "gets it", and who is looked on as a leader in
> technology and Linux. Given their large patent portfolio, and open
> strategy, IBM certainly has the least to lose, and a fair amount to gain
> from such a move.

IBM distribute software under the GPL - aren't there certain implications
w.r.t patents because of this? I forget exactly what, but I think the GPL
says you cannot distribute it if somebody has a restrictive patent upon it
and is excercising it (or words to that effect).

thanks -mike