Session 19 of the Fortnightly Questions and Answers sessions with Amiga’s Chief Technology Officer Fleecy Moss are now online. On other Amiga news, AmigaWorld reviews the download edition of the first Amiga Anywhere Entertainment Pack for Pocket PC powered devices.
Fortnightly Q&A with Fleecy Moss – Session 19
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
From my location I am currently unable to access the Amiga.com website. If you are experiencing similar problems then I would like to point out that some time ago I have uploaded various screenshots of these games (Windows/Linux player). (However note that the Pocket PC package version offers various enhancements, such as music).
The solitaire game is the one on the left at the bottom:
http://www.stormloader.com/amiga/DE/
Developing an operating system without infringing on patents is quite a job to do;) Not going to happen, so why make clearly false statements?
Please explain why that would be difficult, or as you put it, why its “Not going to happen”.
@ Heikki Orsila
Which non-expired patents do you believe AmigaOS would infringe? Amiga Inc has acquired lots of patent licenses to make sure this will not happen.
Currently infringing patents is a very bad idea for a commercial US software company. Maybe someday this will change (i.e. a shorter validity period) as this would give software developers far more flexibility, but one has to obey the current laws already in place.
I asked this question originally, because I wanted to know how much time and money they spend on dealing with checking up their own code for software patent infringements, rather than real development.
They are a small company, and therefore I also wondered if they have the money to protect their own patents (if they have filed any), that is: Have Amiga Inc.’s own software patents benefitted them in any way?
I need a specific example for a while of what may come to small software companies in Europe if the EU votes yes to the directive which allows companies to sue for software patent infringements in the EU.
Unfortunately the question came out a little muddled, so he didn’t understand it. :-
You know that and I know that Heikki but the average Amigan would have been very scared to read that AInc don’t check, even though that’s what all major software engineering companies do (from Microsoft and IBM down to 1-man bedroom outfits)
Checking any large project for infringement is not possible, the largest piece of software I’m aware of that’s actually been patent cleared is the deflate implementation in gzip and zlib. That was a long but necessary task at the time, and I doubt the people involved would relish doing something like it again.
Most of the patents that are being routinely infringed are bogus (typically there is prior art, or the invention is obvious to any experienced practitioner), but the law is the law, and if we were to actually abide by it we wouldn’t get anything done. So we ignore it, more or less.
That doesn’t mean that engineers set out to infringe on patents. On the contrary, that’s exactly why you won’t find many apps that can read arithmetic coded JPEGs, and why the Red Hat interview elsewhere on OS News states that MP3 playing routines have been removed. However, there is a huge difference between avoiding problems you DO know about and going looking for your own trouble.
No-one does what Fleecy is describing, and if he really believes that AInc has hired someone to do it (which I rather doubt) then he’s sillier than I had thought.
Mike Bouma wrote:
> Which non-expired patents do you believe AmigaOS would
> infringe?
Take any generally and not so generally useful methods from operating systems, and you’ll find non-expired patents for them.
> Amiga Inc has acquired lots of patent licenses
> to make sure this will not happen.
Do you have any pointers where I could see what patents Amiga Inc owns?
> Currently infringing patents is a very bad idea for a
> commercial US software company. Maybe someday this will
> change (i.e. a shorter validity period) as this would
> give software developers far more flexibility, but one
> has to obey the current laws already in place.
One doesn’t have to check what is patented. Live in ignorance and hope no one sues
Most software developers just plain ignore patent issues altough they suspect there might be something there. And as one ‘anonymous’ person here pointed out, it is a huge job to check the operating system.
btw. doesn’t amigaos4 use freetype font rendering? See
http://www.freetype.org/patents.html. And what about mpeg * decoding?
@ Heikki Orsila
> Do you have any pointers where I could see what patents
> Amiga Inc owns?
A good place to start searching would be: http://www.uspto.gov/
However companies can also license 3rd party patents. Amiga has licensed many dozens of 3rd party patents for usage in AmigaOS and the AmigaDE.
IMO it’s understandable that not every developer or small software firm has the resources to investigate their code for possible infringements.
> btw. doesn’t amigaos4 use freetype font rendering?
Yes AmigaOS4 includes a FT2Engine. According to that page you are linking to there are no patent issues for FreeType2.
> And what about mpeg * decoding?
Sure, but ISO requires that all patented technology included into their MPEG standards are licensable. Alternatively you will need to come up with your own techniques.
I asked fleecy again in a personal email, and he understood the question this time.
I made a summary of his response here:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1190&for…
(The one posted on 15-Sep-2003 12:59:12)