Re: [Qemu-devel] why is kqemu closed?

[Jonas Maebe]

On 11 apr 2006, at 17:25, Jim C. Brown wrote:

> > Actually, the reason ATi and NVidia don't open source their graphics
> > drivers is because they are both afraid that as soon as as they do
> > that, the other one will sue them into oblivion based on software
> > patents.
> >
> > See http://wiki.ffii.org/Smirl041025En for the full story.
>
> I wonder, could it be possible that Fabrice is worried about the same
> thing? Who holds the patents for x86 virtualization technologies?
>
> Then again, Fabrice is in France iiuc...

Even defending against a baseless patent claim costs a lot of money  
(50,000 to 500,000 euro in Europe, which is even fairly "cheap"  
compared to the US' $500,000 to $4,000,000). Which is why in most  
cases where a very small party is threatened, an out-of-court  
settlement will happen, like paying 5,000 euro and no longer  
publishing the program or so, removing an infringing feature, or even  
simply abandoning further publication.

See e.g.:
* http://wiki.ffii.org/Videolan0411En (Videolan removing support for  
some audio format after threats)
* http://www.postgresql.org/about/news.303 (PostgreSQL switching to a  
new patent-free caching scheme)
* http://bladeenc.mp3.no/skeleton/news.html (BladeEnc, halted a.o.  
because of patent issues)


Jonas