Am Freitag, den 02.09.2005, 11:13 +0200 schrieb Alexander Larsson: > On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 19:25 +0200, Christian Neumair wrote: > > Alexander Larsson schrieb: > > > > >On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 11:34 +0200, Christian Neumair wrote: > > > > > > > > >>The attached patch was also attached to bug 44001 [1] which demands for > > >>spring-loaded folders. Since there is not yet a clear patent policy, I > > >>think it's safe to get this non-patent infridging partial implementation > > >>into Nautilus, which opens folders in the icon view that are hovered for > > >>more than 500 ms. To my understanding, the essence of the spring-loaded > > >>folder patent is the auto popdown. > > >> > > >>[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44001 > > >> > > >> > > > > > >I'm not sure this is not infringing still, and I'd like to talk to a > > >lawyer about it. > > > > > We do the same for the list view - just like the Windows Explorer. > > You mean the expanding of the row on hover? That is not really quite the > same though. The patent is all about opening windows, so expanding seems > clearly different. IAMNAL, but [1] to my understanding covers the window popup in combination with a popdown (grep for "block 1301"). On a sidenote: I find it quiet strange that software distributors' concerns are so much centered towards the USA. In other parts of the world, there are simply no software patents pending. I'm not referring to Europe here, since they still grant software patents - even if there's no official guideline and many of them probably wouldn't survive a single sue, because they are so trivial. [1] is an US patent; why should people in Namibia care about US laws? I do see the problem of hosting the source as a form of distribution, but RedHat could still move the servers to CN or something. Or maybe we could have a smart solution with a distributed software system like Bazaar, where the questionable patches are hosted in a country which doesn't have software patents and there is something like a checkout-and-merge-from directive. [1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=31&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=apple.ASNM.&s2=spring&OS=AN/apple+AND+spring&RS=AN/apple+AND+spring -- Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part