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VFAT patent avoidance and patent workaroundsVFAT patent avoidance and patent workaroundsPosted Jun 29, 2009 23:17 UTC (Mon) by ianw (subscriber, #20143)Parent article: VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds
I'm kind of surprised Tridge got involved in all of this, but I guess hacking a patent is really just like hacking a protocol, but perhaps more complicated.
I can just imagine being that judge - I'm sure plenty of readers here have been in the same position as tutors or lecturers looking at obviously duplicated code and having two students cry that their assignments are clearly different because -- look! there's a NULL appended to the start of that filename or some other lame excuse. Thank god they don't bring lawyers with them.
Imagine the good that all the money spent on this could have done directed somewhere useful...
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"obviously duplicated" is irrelevant Posted Jun 30, 2009 2:35 UTC (Tue) by JesseW (guest, #41816) [Link]
In a patent context, it doesn't matter whether two pieces of code are "obvious duplications" of one another -- what matters is if one piece of code implements something which is claimed in the patent. So there is no discussion of "excuses" -- it's all about what does this code do, and what does the patent claim, and are they the same. That's the question. And if the claim is a way to make a long and short name for the same file, and that patch causes the kernel not to do that, then they are not the same. No "excuse", "lame" or otherwise, is necessary.
"obviously duplicated" is irrelevant Posted Jun 30, 2009 18:28 UTC (Tue) by ianw (subscriber, #20143) [Link]
I realise the issue is not duplication here, but how could a reasonable person not just roll their eyes and sigh if two lawyers were standing in-front of you duking it out over how completely different their VFAT implementations are (or not) because it slips though a loophole that somehow escaped the prolix that is a software patent.
I completely blame Microsoft, however. By forcing the TomTom issue they showed intent. If the best they can come up with is to sue over a file format vaguely more complicated than what we expect undergraduate students to implement to pass a basic operating systems course, then they are justifiably doomed.
"obviously duplicated" is irrelevant Posted Jun 30, 2009 21:06 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Have you *seen* VFAT? If an undergraduate student implemented something
that ugly he'd get a C, max.
(Of course, nobody wanted it to be so ugly. VFAT is the way it is because
VFAT patent avoidance and patent workarounds Posted Jun 30, 2009 4:31 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link]
If you think about it, it makes sense for Tridge to be working on this. As well as working around the patents the patch needs to maintain maximum compatibility with Windows systems, which is something he has a lot of experience with.
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