[linux-audio-user] Open letter to Steve Ballmer

Nick Copeland nickycopeland at hotmail.com
Fri Mar 2 08:37:06 EST 2007


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 at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: A list for linux audio users 
><linux-audio-user at music.columbia.edu>
>To: "Linux Audio Dev List" <linux-audio-dev at music.columbia.edu>,"A list for 
>linux audio users" <linux-audio-user at music.columbia.edu>
>Subject: [linux-audio-user] 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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