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Carmack's Reverse In Doom 3 Has Work-Around

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  • Carmack's Reverse In Doom 3 Has Work-Around

    Phoronix: Carmack's Reverse In Doom 3 Has Work-Around

    It looks like the patent issue with the open-source Doom 3 game won't severely delay the push of this code to the public. John Carmack has already worked around the legal issue within the id Tech 4 engine...

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  • #2
    Originally posted by phoronix View Post
    Phoronix: Carmack's Reverse In Doom 3 Has Work-Around

    It looks like the patent issue with the open-source Doom 3 game won't severely delay the push of this code to the public. John Carmack has already worked around the legal issue within the id Tech 4 engine...

    http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTAxNzM
    So iD Software was forced to add EAX compatibility to Doom 3 and its engine for permission to change a total of 6 lines of code? Yes, sounds like an idiotic patent to me.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Veerappan View Post
      So iD Software was forced to add EAX compatibility to Doom 3 and its engine for permission to change a total of 6 lines of code? Yes, sounds like an idiotic patent to me.
      To me what's it idiotic is that Creative could arm-twist id to use EAX. Patents should not only be publicly disclosed but be available in a nondiscriminatory fashion. There should be one price for everybody regardless of all other issues. And, of course, there should be no software patents.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by kobblestown View Post
        To me what's it idiotic is that Creative could arm-twist id to use EAX. Patents should not only be publicly disclosed but be available in a nondiscriminatory fashion. There should be one price for everybody regardless of all other issues. And, of course, there should be no software patents.
        I agree with pretty much all of that, and I'll raise you a "How the heck could they even think of charging John Carmack for using something that was already called the 'Carmack's Reverse'." Also, not only should there be one price, but that price should be representative of the originality of the subject of the patent.... so in this case, $0.05 USD.

        Yup, software patents are a minefield and a pain in the backside.

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        • #5
          It was truly idiotic.

          I wonder what Carmack changed? There have been, for years, plenty of tutuorials on the web for stencil volumes that didn't violate the patent, so I'm not surprised it only took him a couple of days to complete this, but it sounds like he just tweaked his own code. Will be interesting to see if that is more efficient than some of the other stencil volume methods.

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          • #6
            I'm not a coder but so few lines of code? I wonder if that wasn't a trivial patent or something. A shame that something trivial can be patented. And then later used to sue the hell out of anybody. Or sneak in their otherwise maybe unwanted technology (EAX).
            I am also somewhat surprised that Creative seems to be still alive. I mean, they had good soundcards back at 486 DOS times but... that is now a long time ago.
            Stop TCPA, stupid software patents and corrupt politicians!

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Adarion View Post
              I am also somewhat surprised that Creative seems to be still alive. I mean, they had good soundcards back at 486 DOS times but... that is now a long time ago.
              My understanding of Creative is that nowdays their cards are still quite solid, it is their drivers that is really, REALLY, bad.
              That said some people never seem to hit any problem with their cards/drivers.
              However all my Creative Cards has always worked better/been more stable with the "dumbed down" version shipped with windows then with their own drivers, if they even shipped drivers for that windows/card combination.
              And for linux the alsa drivers are quite solid, but you cannot use half of the features of your cards because Creative has not published the needed information, and their own drivers sucks. That is if you card are supported at all.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Adarion View Post
                I'm not a coder but so few lines of code? I wonder if that wasn't a trivial patent or something. A shame that something trivial can be patented. And then later used to sue the hell out of anybody. Or sneak in their otherwise maybe unwanted technology (EAX).
                I am also somewhat surprised that Creative seems to be still alive. I mean, they had good soundcards back at 486 DOS times but... that is now a long time ago.
                thats the nature of alle software-patents they are trivial, its like patents of math. All is good if you can make money with it, if a company can make money with killding 10.000 people and employ 1000 guys for that our politicans will make bills to allow that. (basicly they did in the past, medicin industry gas-extraction in the ground....) And most dont have to be allowed because most stuff companys make money with are company secrets, so we dont even know what they do in detail so we can not even decide if we want to allow that.

                Ocupy fuckin wolrd!

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                • #9
                  I wonder what the "catch" is that he was able to replace the offending code so easily now that he couldn't years ago when the issue first came up. He got suckered into having to switch to EAX support back then (at the cost of a realtime Dolby encoder IIRC which would have presented a problem later as well). Loss of feature? Loss in performance? Loss of compatibility with old cards? A combination of the fore mentioned?

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                  • #10
                    Since it's such a small change and the method is public, I bet someone will release a patch that "corrects" it (if for no other reason than to spite Creative). For all I know, it might even be legal to distribute such a patch. Didn't Freetype skate by for years on the "code in a non-executable form can't practice a patent" theory, or was that some kind of agreement with the patent holders?

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