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Mark Shuttleworth Declares Mir A Performance Win

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  • Originally posted by mrugiero View Post
    Same story, just change contribute by distribute. As long as X patent holder doesn't distribute the software, GPL does just nothing about the patent.
    Yes but the discussion was whether one distributor could hypothetically get an advantage over the others to become the sole distributor. With Mir, Canonical can relicense, and then only they can sell a closed source version (but everyone else can still make open source versions). Canonical can not assert a patent to prevent other people distributing Mir. With Wayland, any distributor can assert a patent and then they become the sole distributor.

    External companies who have nothing to do with the project attacking the project with patents is a different issue to that of a distributor trying to gain advantage over others in order to become the sole distributor (the accusation levelled at Canonical).

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    • Originally posted by blackout23 View Post
      How could someone patent a wayland display server? Wouldn't it be prior art?
      They can patent the server, technology that the server uses, or some combination of those. Just a very quick search finds:

      A method and system for rendering a desktop on a computer using a composited desktop model operating system are disclosed. A composited desktop window manager, upon receiving content information from application programs, draws the window to a buffer memory for future reference, and takes advantage of advanced graphics hardware and visual effects to render windows based on content on which they are drawn. The windows may also be rendered based on environment variables including virtual light sources. The frame portion of each window may be generated by pixel shading a bitmap having the appearance of frosted glass based on the content of the desktop on top of which the frame is displayed. Legacy support is provided so that the operating system can draw and render windows generated by legacy applications to look consistent with non-legacy application windows.






      You would hope that you could establish prior art but the patent system is a little bit crazy, you never know.

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