The big radio network technology players seem to have banged each others' heads together in a pre-emptive strike against intellectual property squabbles over LTE (long term evolution, the favoured technology for 4G).
Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson (not Qualcomm, although it has committed to producing LTE chips) say they’re going to spare us the usual courtroom dramas and agree a solid licencing regime for LTE before they start producing kit.
STEC is a small player. If it wins, other industry players will applaud its pluck. If it loses, other manufacturers of flash drives like Intel, Toshiba, and SanDisk might decide to line up dutifully to pay Seagate royalties. And since there may not be a pre-existing lawsuit, there won't be as much bad blood.
OptNgn today announced that it is offering a floating point VHDL library under the GPLv3 Open Source License.
In software, experts on an open source panel agreed that the latest GPL version 3 license has fueled fears among large corporations who say some of its provisions could put many of their software patents in jeopardy. Both sides agreed companies increasingly use a complex mix of proprietary and open source code that can be complex to manage.
"We worked with one company who thought they had 25 instances of open source code in their software, but it turned out they had 75," said Beyers of HP. "This has to be managed with a lot of rigor and precision," he added.
In one well known example, Linksys had to release as open source code valuable proprietary software used in one of its home routers because it infringed a Linux license, said Mark Gisi, a senior IP manager for Wind River. "It shifted the whole market," he said.
"By and large a number of engineers are starting to come up to speed on open source IP issues and the legal community is starting to come up to speed on it, too, but these two groups need to work together to resolve the issues," Gisi said.
--Bill Gates
Why there won’t be a Red Hat Consumer Linux Desktop
[...]
In the meantime, Red Hat, which now had focused on a more traditional desktop found itself stymied by multimedia problems. Red Hat wanted to supply users with legal access to WMF (Windows Media Format) codices. While Microsoft was willing to license these codices to Linux distributors, such as Linspire, Turbolinux and Xandros, Microsoft was only willing to make these deals if the Linux company was willing to sign off on a Microsoft patent agreement. Red Hat was not willing to do this.
Comments
CoolGuy
2008-04-17 14:24:51
Atleast they didnt $ell out like novell. Kudos for that !!
CoolGuy
2008-04-17 15:54:41
1. Out of the box hardware support 2. Ease of package installation and availability
Rest are just cosmetic changes.
cuss
2008-04-18 07:05:30
1) Red Hat has NEVER planned to market a new desktop product world-wide; the Global Desktop is strictly aimed at 'emerging markets'. No changes here. There is _no_ change of plan; just a clarification that the Desktop Team posted (http://www.press.redhat.com/2008/04/16/whats-going-on-with-red-hat-desktop-systems-an-update/#more-330) and that others made into 'news'. 2) Novell has nothing to do with that because - as said - the plans for Global Desktop haven't changed. Red Hat and Novell agree that there currently is no market for a _commercial_ desktop Linux for private users. 3) What you quote in your article are reasons for the _delay_ of the Global Desktop, NOT reasons for any change of plan! Please don't warp meanings by incomplete quotations! 4) That you get things wrong on a regular basis might not be your fault; it is because you consult unreliable sources like theregister. 5) Don't try to force a connection with Novell and Microsoft for any- and everything that happens on our home-planet! Next thing you'll tell us that Novell is responsible for war, famine, cancer, and the bad weather...
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Roy Schestowitz
2008-04-18 07:09:49
cuss
2008-04-18 07:34:29
At least quote the only releveant source - the original announcement: "There have, however, been a number of business issues that have conspired to delay the product for almost a year. These include hardware and market changes, startup delays with resellers, getting the design and delivery of appropriate services nailed down and, unsurprisingly, some multimedia codec licensing knotholes."
As you see multimedia codecs are NOT the only problem; they are not even the most prominent problem.
Don't INVENT your news.
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cuss
2008-04-18 07:37:36
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Roy Schestowitz
2008-04-18 07:59:33
cuss
2008-04-18 09:56:09
What delays the Global Desktop on the licensing-front (meaning aside from the mentioned technical and market-specific problems) are the most-widely used codecs; and these are Flash and the diverse MPEG-codecs, which are licensed through MPEG-LA and VIA Technologies.
And it doesn't matter whether or not any users of 'free' (meaning irrelevant) Linux desktops have been sued over them or not - this is a COMMERCIAL desktop product, and Red Hat will only bunde LEGAL, i.e. LICENSED codecs with it!