If Microsoft patent any capabilities that are present in the ALSA codestream
them ALSA itself is exempt from the patent. This is written into the patent
laws, they cover the possibliity that somebody had a product that was later
patented by some other, wiser party. If the company in potential infringment
can prove prior implementation then they are exempt.
The exact wording of the exemption would probably require legal
interpretation, however if Microsoft have patents applied for that cover
features already implemented by ALSA then not only are implementations of
the ALSA driver exempt (prior implementation can be proven based on driver
distribution dates to precede the patent application) but at the same time
there is a seperate issue that if Microsoft did take out a patent of an ALSA
capability then under the terms of the GPL they may legally be required to
make their code publicly available as it arguably must have been based on
the open sourced capabilities.
Regards.
From: "Marc-Olivier Barre" <mobarre@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: A list for linux audio users
<linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Linux Audio Dev List" <linux-audio-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,"A list for
linux audio users" <linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Open letter to Steve Ballmer
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 12:09:25 +0100
Hi,
Since Microsoft recent audio related patent "that looks a lot like
ALSA", I thought this could be interesting :
http://www.showusthecode.com/
In short it's an open letter to Steve Ballmer asking him to show the
code and patents that Linux supposedly copied from Microsoft (haha,
what a joke...)
Happy reading,
__________________
Marc-Olivier Barre,
Markinoko.
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