[Fenfire-dev] Re: fenfire patent problems

[Toni Alatalo]

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Ante Wessels wrote:

> Hello Toni,

hi

> We spoke in the Waag after Wiebe's talk on software patents, during the 
> Blender conf. 

yes - i was actually wondering on the way back
(when reading the description of the session in the program)
about the .. proceedings, i.e. what's gonna happen now

> (I cc the closed swpat list: An open source project with patent problems)

ok - cc'ing the fenfire-dev list, hm, which has a public archive.

> I try to remember your story correctly, and have a few questions.
> program: fenfire
> fenfire.org
> There was a first patent problem, and you managed to work around it.

yes.

> Was there a complaint, is the patent holder actively assaulting your project 
> or others? Or was it a case of being very careful before anything happened? 
> How did you find out there was a patent involved?

the patent holder was earlier involved in the project (initially as the 
main designer). at that time the project was first gzigzag, then (after 
settling not to use the zigzag trademark), gzz. this is documented on the 
gzz-dev archives, e.g. 
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gzz-dev/2003-02/msg00042.html

> A second patent problem, and no way to work around it. 

i hope there are (but probably not technically,
like in the previous case (change from zz to rdf))

> Same questions, how did you find out?

i don't know.

there's some information about it there
-> http://dannyayers.com/archives/2004/04/12/fenfire/

> Did I hear you correctly that the project leader got so stressed out he
> left?

he left for personal reasons. 
afaik the patent problems were a factor.

> As I told you, the change they will go after open source developers that do 
> not make money with the project, is very small. There has to be a commercial 
> component. They may go after Suse or Red Hat, etc, or after commercial users. 
> But then it has to be something big, otherwise there is not much money to 
> extort. 

this development has been funded by corporations as well,
and is connected to some product developments.

but Fenfire itself is open source, LGPL.
so perhaps it can be just released?

> vriendelijke groet,
> cordialemente,

thanking for interest,
hopefully i'm not 
messing anything up here.

> Ante

~Toni

> No software patents
> http://www.vrijschrift.nl
> http://wiki.vrijschrift.nl/links
> http://wiki.vrijschrift.nl/english