On Fri, 2009-03-27 at 15:14 -0500, Jud Craft wrote:
I didn't know myself for sure whether it [Qt's filter code]
was
patent-infringing. But I did know:
1. Fedora tries not to ship patented technologies.
A bit oversimplified. I remember reading some kind of patent guideline a
while back, probably from spot, but googling and searching the wiki
isn't bringing it up. Basically since pretty much everything is
patented, "not shipping patented technology" isn't feasible. Instead
it's a judgement call, we avoid patents who's owners are known to be
actively seeking licensing fees or are otherwise sue happy. We can't
avoid them all and still have a product to ship.
2. Fedora took subpixel filtering (due to its possible
infringement)
out of the desktop stack.
Where is this coming from? Are you confusing subpixel filtering with
hinting? They're two different things.
3. Qt has its own separate filtering code.
4. Fedora did NOT remove the Qt subpixel filters.
Hence I began to wonder if A) Qt's filtering technique was considered
as non-infringing, and B) if so, why not just use that for the rest of
the X stack?
Near as I can tell, filtering isn't the problem. MS seems to have a
patent on the very idea of subpixel font rendering, it doesn't matter
what you do to filter the color fringing away.
(after all, I am not a lawyer, but I thought certainly Fedora was
on good legal ground)
There's no winning when it comes to software patents. Everyone is a
criminal.