"J. Dow" wrote:
>
> From: "Daniel Phillips" <news-innominate.list.linux.kernel@innominate.de>
>
> > Yes, I know the game, Unisys played it with gif. Wait until it's in
> > widespread use then appear out of the woodwork and demand licence fees.
> > It's called submarining. It's evil. People and corporations who do it
> > are little better than thugs.
>
> This one is a bad example, Daniel. The word from inside UniSys is that
> this was pure ineptitude in action.
> {o.o}
I don't buy it. Sure, it might have started as ineptitude, but somebody
made the decision to stick it to everybody, and that turned it into a
submarine maneuver. They took advantage of the situation. They did not
take advantage of the opportunity to earn some good will and admit that
didn't properly advise the public of their intention to demand
royalties. They should have done the right thing and placed the patent
in the publilc domain because of their mistake. Instead they made their
name forever mud - I seriously doubt it was worth it.
Excuse me, the gif fiasco is well-known and everything useful that could
be said about it has already been said. I don't know why I even posted
this.
-- Daniel - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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