Re: [ros-dev] Patent on FAT

[Brandon Turner]

Steven Edwards wrote:

>  Hi,
>
> On 1/12/06, Wesley Parish <wes.parish(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote:
>   
>
> >  If the worst comes to the worst, there's
> > plenty of room on this jugular to go
> > for.
> >     
> >  
> Well we need money to mount a case and I think Alex and I have come up
> with a solution to the problem. I hope that someone will Wiki this for
> me. Also if we do decide to follow through on this plan we need to
> wage the largest public relations war possible.
>
> I propose that from now on all CVS builds have the SFN-LFN code
> disabled in the vfat driver and that in stage2 setup we have a gui
> tool that loads like the vmware driver installer that contains a
> dialog with checkboxes like the following:
>
> Patented Features Page
> [] Enable FreeType Patented Features
> [] Enable Fat32 Patented Features
>
> Disclaimer Text., Yada, Yada, Yada
>
> I understand that for freetype we may have to have a autodownloader
> that redirects to somewhere outside of the United States but for the
> fat features I think we can follow the Microsoft design and make it a
> registry key.
>
> Now the part of this plan where it comes to making money to fight the
> patent I have to thank Alex for. He suggested that we just charge
> $0.35 per download and pay Microsoft the $0.25 per license they want,
> so we would make a profit. I personally hate this idea but it got me
> thinking. We could have a download page that offers two builds. The
> download page should clearly explain the situation about the patent
> and contain a paypal link for donations plus have a option to download
> a build with the patent enabled for the license free + a small cost to
> us like Alex said. The ReactOS Foundation would then pay Microsoft per
> copy sold and take the rest to put in the general party and legal
> defense fund to mount a case agenst the very patent we are licensing.
>
>   
>  
Small cost or small donation?  I mean, does the GPL allow us to do this 
kinda thing?  Also, just to claify, there is nothing stopping someone 
else from taking our code, enabling the patents and redistrubiting it 
for free as long as they provide the sources, correct?

>  I am open to comments and or outright rejection of the
> idea. I don't
> like the idea of giving Microsoft more money but on the flip side it
> gives us the chance to spin things for us in the media, bring money in
> and make them look very bad once we start fighting the case.
>
>   
>  
Do you truly and honestly believe this will generate enough money to 
even start a case against MS?

>  --
> Steven Edwards - ReactOS and Wine developer
>
> "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and
> that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
>
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>
>
>   
>  
Brandon