[ros-dev] Patent on FAT

[Jerry]

I think there should be a bare minimum donation per copy and then an 
option for the website visitors to be a bit more generous if they want 
to be.

Brandon Turner wrote:

> Steven Edwards wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 1/12/06, Wesley Parish <wes.parish at paradise.net.nz> wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> If the worst comes to the worst, there's plenty of room on this 
>>> jugular to go
>>> for.
>>>   
>>
>>
>> Well we need money to mount a case and I think Alex and I have come up
>> with a solution to the problem. I hope that someone will Wiki this for
>> me. Also if we do decide to follow through on this plan we need to
>> wage the largest public relations war possible.
>>
>> I propose that from now on all CVS builds have the SFN-LFN code
>> disabled in the vfat driver and that in stage2 setup we have a gui
>> tool that loads like the vmware driver installer that contains a
>> dialog with checkboxes like the following:
>>
>> Patented Features Page
>> [] Enable FreeType Patented Features
>> [] Enable Fat32 Patented Features
>>
>> Disclaimer Text., Yada, Yada, Yada
>>
>> I understand that for freetype we may have to have a autodownloader
>> that redirects to somewhere outside of the United States but for the
>> fat features I think we can follow the Microsoft design and make it a
>> registry key.
>>
>> Now the part of this plan where it comes to making money to fight the
>> patent I have to thank Alex for. He suggested that we just charge
>> $0.35 per download and pay Microsoft the $0.25 per license they want,
>> so we would make a profit. I personally hate this idea but it got me
>> thinking. We could have a download page that offers two builds. The
>> download page should clearly explain the situation about the patent
>> and contain a paypal link for donations plus have a option to download
>> a build with the patent enabled for the license free + a small cost to
>> us like Alex said. The ReactOS Foundation would then pay Microsoft per
>> copy sold and take the rest to put in the general party and legal
>> defense fund to mount a case agenst the very patent we are licensing.
>>
>>  
>>
> Small cost or small donation?  I mean, does the GPL allow us to do 
> this kinda thing?  Also, just to claify, there is nothing stopping 
> someone else from taking our code, enabling the patents and 
> redistrubiting it for free as long as they provide the sources, correct?
>
>> I am open to comments and or outright rejection of the idea. I don't
>> like the idea of giving Microsoft more money but on the flip side it
>> gives us the chance to spin things for us in the media, bring money in
>> and make them look very bad once we start fighting the case.
>>
>>  
>>
> Do you truly and honestly believe this will generate enough money to 
> even start a case against MS?
>
>> -- 
>> Steven Edwards - ReactOS and Wine developer
>>
>> "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and
>> that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
>>
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>>
>>  
>>
> Brandon
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