Why FreeBSD not popular on hardware vendors

[Chad Perrin]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 02:16:34AM -0800, perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:
> > > Unfortunately, anything covered by a patent, as I hinted
> > > above, is verboten.
> 
> Er, doesn't it depend on what is patented?  If the h/w itself is
> patented, but its software-visible interface is not, there should be
> no problem writing a driver for that h/w.  OTOH if the algorithms
> used in the driver are patented it would be an infringement to
> reproduce them.

I said anything covered by patent.  If the software is not covered by
patent, you're fine to write software.  Be aware, though, that a lot of
patents are intentionally written in a somewhat vague way so they can be
extended via case law at a later date.

Nothing is "legal" under the current US system unless you can defend it
in civil court.  That's my general rule of thumb.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
Quoth markinct @techrepublic.com: "Don't take anything you do on-line
lightly.  Caveat Clicker..."
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