On 7/6/06, Patrick McNamara <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Timothy Miller wrote: > I'm a sucker for press, so I thought this might be interesting. Tell > me what you think. This is just a concept, so I'm sure it's missing > lots of stuff. > > Press is good. We just need to make sure it's good press. I'll read through the wording more later, but this brought to mind some immediate thoughts. > > > > Open Graphics Project releases novel video timing controller design > under GPL > Is it actually novel? Should the design be patented? We have always discussed the licensing of the core as a whole, but nothing should stop us from considering the individual pieces as well. If the design really is new and novel then it is a very good candidate for patenting. This would also give a very firm foundation for licensing.
It might be. It's a lot like a CPU, but lots of CPU things have been patented (like MIPS unaligned memory instructions). It's more like a display list (Atari 800 had this), but it covers every pixel, not just groups of scanlines. It might be patentable.
This of course brings up a number of questions and concerns regarding patents and the like. "Who holds the patent?" being a big one. I would argue this is a very good reason to have a non-profit foundation associated with the project. It could act as the patent holder and licensor of designs generated by the project. All patented items could be freely licensed under OpenSource or similar licensing agreements. Other alternate licenses could be made available at a cost as a way to help fund the foundation and the Open Graphics project. I would propose that any company (i.e. Travesal) assigning a patent to the foundation should be granted special licensing rights (don't know what those are yet) to implement the design. Because the HDL code is an implementation and is separately copyrightable (as I understand it anyway), Traversal or any other company contributing would still be able to protect their investment. Anyway, just some food for thought.
If Traversal could afford to patent it, we would, and we'd license it as free-to-use for any free software. As it stands, we won't have any money until after we start selling OGD1. Perhaps we'll try then. In the mean time, the OGF could patent it and license it to Traversal, etc.
On a similar front, I have been reading up on what is required to form a non-profit corporation in the state of Texas (where I live). From what I can tell, the requirements do not appear to be terribly onerous. Getting IRS 501(c)(3) looks a bit more confusing, but so far I haven't found anything that would imply it would be terribly hard either. I've gotten to the point were further research involves deciphering legalese as well as other things like coming up with a "mission statement", etc. It also moves us towards a big step, for better or worse. I figured I'd get peoples feedback before expending more time here. I'd much rather be writing code or hardware, but I think it's pretty important. Should we move towards the creation of a foundation?
Yes, we should. I was hoping it would have gotten started already. People still ask to make donations, but there no one to take them.
Are there any objections to it being in Texas, or even the US for that matter? I'm looking for people's inputs as this involves the creation of legal entities and the capability to manage other people's donations, etc. It's not a step to take lightly.
I don't know of any advantages of one state over another. I personally don't care. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
