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openSUSE Hobbled By Microsoft Patents

Posted by CowboyNeal on Tue Apr 10, 2007 06:38 AM
from the or-at-least-disfigured dept.
Novell Software Businesses Microsoft Patents SuSE Linux
kripkenstein writes "openSUSE 10.2 no longer enables ClearType (which would improve the appearance of fonts). The reason given on the openSUSE mailing list for not enabling it is, 'this feature is covered by several Microsoft patents and should not be activated in any default build of the library.' As reported on and discussed, this matter may be connected to the Microsoft-Novell deal. If so, Novell should have received a license for the Microsoft patents, assuming the deal covered all relevant patents. Does the license therefore extend only to SUSE, but not openSUSE?"
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Microsoft To Announce Linux Partnership 534 comments
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Microsoft is entering into an unusual partnership with Novell that gives a boost to Linux, people familiar with the companies tell WSJ.com. From the article: 'Under the pact, which isn't final, Microsoft will offer sales support of Suse Linux, a version of the operating system sold by Novell. The two companies have also agreed to develop technologies to make it easier for users to run both Suse Linux and Microsoft's Windows on their computers. The two companies are expected to announce details of their plan today at a press conference in San Francisco. In addition, Microsoft won't assert rights over patents over software technology that may be incorporated into Suse Linux, the people said. Businesses that use Linux have long worried that Microsoft would one day file patent infringement suits against sellers of the rival software.'"
[+] Your Rights Online: Truth Behind the ClearType/OpenSUSE FUD 123 comments
Kennon writes "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols over at Linux Watch clears up the FUD around Tuesday's Slashdot discussion concerning OpenSUSE, ClearType, and patent deals with Microsoft."
[+] OpenSuSE to Release Linux Distro for Educators 51 comments
christian.einfeldt writes "The next version of openSUSE, due out in the fall, will include an add-on CD optimized for educators. According to the Education section of the openSUSE wiki, the openSUSE community sees the add-on as a way to make it easy for school administrators to create both networked systems and stand-alone desktops for teachers and students. To tailor the add-on CD to the needs of educators, the openSUSE community is asking educators and technologists to submit their software successes, applications used, and 'HOW-TOs' for writing applications and using applications. Dubbed the SLEDucator, the package collection is being included as an add-on, as opposed to a new distro or a fork."
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  • Prior art (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ph33r th3 g(O)at (592622) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @06:43AM (#18673325)
    Steve Gibson pointed out decades-old prior art [grc.com] that would invalidate the Cleartype patent (if our patent system weren't corrupt) several years ago.

    • Re:Prior art (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gweihir (88907) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @06:49AM (#18673351)
      Steve Gibson pointed out decades-old prior art that would invalidate the Cleartype patent several years ago.

      Indeed he did. Not that the idea itself merits a patent anyways. It is pretty obvious and shopuld not be patentable in the first place.

      • Re:Prior art (Score:5, Interesting)

        by tomhudson (43916) <hudson AT videotron DOT ca> on Tuesday April 10 2007, @08:03AM (#18673947) Journal
        The funny thing is I just installed OpenSUSE 10.2 alpha 3 and the fonts look better than ever; if this is how they look without cleartype, who needs it?

        • Re:Prior art (Score:4, Insightful)

          by kobaz (107760) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @08:14AM (#18674073)
          I couldn't agree more.

          I've never found cleartype to be helpful either, I much rather not have cleartype as on every single display device I've enabled it on it looks like crap. I've tried it on high and low end crts and high and low end lcds, it all looks much better (and more readable) without cleartype.

          • Re:Prior art (Score:5, Insightful)

            by tomz16 (992375) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @08:49AM (#18674603)
            Any time I've turned on cleartype on a fresh install of windows, my first impression has always been that it just made fonts look "blurrier", for lack of a better word.

            However, after using it for a day or two, turning it off is absolutely painful. IMHO, it really DOES make text MUCH easier to read on an LCD.

            -Tom
    • Gibson is exactly right. When I first saw sub-pixel rendering (aka 'ClearType') explained, I remembered programming graphics on an Apple IIe, and you had a difference between even and odd pixels that forced you to draw lines in a way that is exactly the same as how ClearType works.

      I could claim prior art if I could just get those damned 5.25" floppies to read in anything. Of course, this was common practice back in the day, so maybe some old Apple II programmers out there can come up with AppleSoft BASIC

    • Re:Prior art (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 0123456789 (467085) <h_m_dyson@yahoo.com> on Tuesday April 10 2007, @08:00AM (#18673907)
      There's a difference between being able to find prior art for something, and being able to afford to go to court to defend yourself against a patent infringement lawsuit. Sadly, the gulf between the two positions is pretty wide. Maybe there should be an appeal process for patent awards? If you can show that a patent affects you in some way, and shouldn't have been granted for some reason (eg prior art), you could appeal against the patent award and attempt to get it rescinded in a quicker and cheaper process than a full-on court case?

    • Re:Prior art (Score:5, Informative)

      by pikine (771084) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @08:06AM (#18673981) Journal

      I'm afraid the decades-old Apple II and IBM PC is not prior art. Pixels are either on or off for Apple II and IBM PC's CGA displays, so they apparently don't (and can't) care too much about color fringing. Sub-pixel font rendering on LCD screen deals with 256 shades for each sub-pixel, and the emphasis is on how to adjust sub-pixel brightness to reduce color fringing.

      This is explained in Steve Gibson's Turning Theory into Practice [grc.com]. Sub-pixel font rendering is not the same as sub-pixels on CGA displays. The ideas are related, but the plumbing is different.

      Perhaps I'm misleading in saying that CGA is not prior art of ClearType. I haven't actually read the patents of ClearType, so I obviously cannot tell; I'm basing my claim solely on Steve's webpage alone.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by spitzak (4019)
        Holy confusion, batman!

        That was completely misleading. The use of 256 levels for making antialiased fonts is really old and has nothing to do with this.

        What sub pixel rendering does is make the pixel represent *more* than 256 different possible combinations of the fg and bg colors, where combinations are how an fully opaque edge falls into the square the pixel represents. Exactly how many is unclear, it is not 256^3, but I think it is 3*256 for the case of an antialiased vertical straight edge of an object

      • Re:Prior art (Score:5, Informative)

        by AJWM (19027) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @09:59AM (#18675761) Homepage
        The Apple II didn't have a CGA. Colors were generated by dot-timing the luminance signal into an NTSC composite monitor (read, TV), faking out the color decoding in the monitor. Subpixel rendering was done by reversing that to choose the appropriate color to generate the desired dot timing. On a monochrome monitor these showed up as higher-resolution dots than the nominal pixels in display memory.

        Go look at the circuit diagram for an Apple II, for pete's sake. It's not that complicated, maybe a dozen or so 74-series chips plus the memory and CPU.

        Clear type uses exactly the same idea -- pick the color to activate the desired combination of R, G and/or B stripes in the LCD pixel -- i.e. activate the desired sequence of horizontal dots by color choice.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Sleepy (4551)
      I remember using anti-aliased fonts in "Spectrum 512", a terrific graphics package for the Atari ST series computer. With it, you could optimize images for TV. If you could not afford an Amiga, this was a very impressive way of generating titles and graphics for video. The Atari ST had a composite NTSC output port and the horsepower to drive it.

      I remember the same technique used on the Atari 8-bit computers, in the monochrome "Graphics Mode 8" level. By offsetting the *placement* of pixels, you could accomp

  • Novell is the Judas Goat. (Score:5, Informative)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna (970587) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @06:47AM (#18673343) Journal
    I think Novell has become an wholly owned subsidiary of MSFT and is being used for the express purpose of setting up precedents and creating more and more FUD. I have seen a version of anti-aliasing and sub-pixel addressing [grc.com] way back when in, of all places, grc.com.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Colin Smith (2679)
      Judas was a goat?

      Anyway. They are very helpfully pointing out the patents which Microsoft says apply to Linux...

       

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by advocate_one (662832)
        corporate critters only have an eye for the next quarterly returns... as long as they can make their killing and successfully cash out their stock options, they don't care about the stockholders really... they don't intend to be around when the crap hits the proverbial fan. They'll be off raiding another company

        • Re:It is about precedents (Score:5, Funny)

          by twistedcubic (577194) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @10:43AM (#18676537)

          In my opinion, open/free Linux is still 5-10 years behind Windows and OSX in terms of desktop functionality ...

          Yeah, a friend of mine has a Windows 95 machine, and I tried it out recently. Man, I was BLOWN AWAY. I've been wasting productivity on my Gentoo and Ubuntu machines, when all this time Windows 95 just makes it much easier. I mean, it looks and functions better, and everything just works. My friend showed me how to take all my LaTeX files (100 or so) for my book, with all the revision history in Git, and convert it all to Microsoft Word. Wow! Productivity SQUARED! After watching my reaction, my firend slapped me on the head (really hard) and exclaimed, "It's the APPS, stupid!"

  • Prior art? (Score:4, Informative)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna (970587) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @06:50AM (#18673357) Journal
    I have not been to GRC.com for a long time, I quickly grabbed the URL and posted it here in another thread. Looks like that site cites a long list of prior art. [grc.com] Makes the OpenSUSE's decision even more suspect.

  • Now it is clear (Score:4, Insightful)

    by javilon (99157) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @06:53AM (#18673373) Homepage
    Novell is the new SCO
    • Your off-the-cuff remark is more true than you think. Don't forget that SCO (that is Caldera)
      got the unix rights from Novell. The whole SCO vs Novell issue will result in Novell getting
      those rights back. The result? A linux company "owning" unix. We've been here before!! Novell
      OpenSCO here we come....

  • anti-aliasing makes me need glasses (Score:4, Informative)

    by stokessd (89903) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @06:53AM (#18673377) Homepage
    That might be a good thing(tm). In many cases I prefer non anti-aliased fonts. I have a nice LCD with a DVI connection for a clear picture, then I'm supposed to fuzzy it up? Anti-aliasing lakes me think I need glasses in many cases.

    Sheldon
    • I find that cleartype is easy on my eyes while browsing websites etc with lots of text meant to be read by humans. Code, OTOH, looks horrible in cleartype. When I have to tell, single quote from double, where braces are very important, where I have to tell zero from o, two from zee, ell from one, bah... ClearType makes a mess.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by xoyoyo (949672)
        Depends on the quality of the implementation and the quality/density of the screen. Ironically, the inventor's implementation is poor.

        On a 72dpi LCD attached to a PC running Windows the effect is obvious (and hideous) all the glyphs have red and blue fringes. Turning ClearType off is the first thing I do on a Windows box after disabling the Windows XP theme.

        On my 100dpi+ MacBook Pro I had to use the zoom function to confirm that it was using sub-pixel anti-aliasing. Even on my second monitor it's acceptable

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jimstapleton (999106)
          I think a lot of it is monitor quality too..

          My old Hitachi was a nice LCD in regards to image quality, and it looked great with clear type.
          However the backlight died (and the response time was a bit low), and now I have a cheap Samsung - The letters have halos on them with clear type.

          So, monitor quality is a big part of it, not just the rendering technology, though both are important.
        • IIRC different displays may have different order of R,G,B component pixels which may require a reversed antialiasing pattern (as if the screen was flipped upside-down). Though the effect is subtle it also shows a red and/or blue fringe. Though that may not be what you are talking about.

  • It's FreeType for a start! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DrMindWarp (663427) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @06:54AM (#18673385)
    This is complete nonsense written by someone that is clearly clueless and forwarded by an editor that is equally clueless. This is a FreeType library setting for compiling programs (not ClearType!). It is the same for every Linux distribution as it is the default setting for the development library. It has never been enabled by default.

    • Exactly (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:02AM (#18673423)
      Cleartype is just sub-pixel AA which existed long before MS ever used it for font rendering. Bytecode type hinting is patented by (IIRC) Apple, it is usually disabled in Freetype and and an alternative (auto-hinting) method used instead.

      Apples and oranges, the bug reporter is confused or trolling.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by segedunum (883035)
      That doesn't answer why it was OK to have this enabled before, and has then somehow become a big no-no.

  • It's only the filtering (Score:5, Informative)

    by oergiR (992541) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:06AM (#18673441)
    AFAICT, subpixel rendering is not disabled, only the 5-tap filter that's supposed to reduce colour fringes. See http://www.grc.com/cttech.htm [grc.com]. Apparently this is one of the things Microsoft has patented, and I haven't seen any "prior art" for this specific technique. In my humble opinion disabling the filter is not much of a loss as it just makes fonts look fuzzier.

  • Freetype library is GPL (Score:3, Informative)

    by mysidia (191772) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:08AM (#18673453)

    As a result, if you hold a license for a patent that is required to redistribute/sell Freetype (or any piece of software covered by the GPL), then, to comply with the GPL you have two options you must EITHER: (1) not distribute the software, OR (2) the patent license must permit anyone's free use

    The relevant GPL section is the preamble To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all. , and under Section 7 of the GNU General Public License: For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

    This means for instance, that Novell would not be free to provide users of SuSE the benefit of a patent license to use a certain feature of a GPL'ed library or software program, and deny that feature to openSuSE users.

  • Typical 'Bend Over' Novell (Score:3, Interesting)

    by segedunum (883035) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:09AM (#18673461) Homepage
    There's obviously quite a bit of prior art to Cleartype, but Novell as an open source company does not want to stand up and defend itself and its software from it (as well as Red Hat actually). I rather suspect both Red Hat and especially Novell are using the non-issue of patents to try and give their so called enterprise distributions an actual selling point.

    The question really is, why was it deemed OK to enable it before, and suddenly it has become a big deal where it is disabled?

    Additionally, there seems to be some confusion of the Microsoft/Novell deal. The patent agreement would not be legal with the terms of the GPL, rather Microsoft gave a covenant not to sue to Novell's customers and promised to be nice to OpenSuse's users. Whether that would cover this, I don't know.

  • The GPL is very clear on one point: if you know your software infringes on some patent, you can't distribute it, even if you have a deal with the patent holder enabling you to do that*. Can Novell now be prosecuted? Is that code GPLed (it seems to be KDE, so it probably is)?

    * Unless that deal is extended to everybody that touches the code.

  • never so (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Deternal (239896) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:14AM (#18673519) Homepage
    As far as I can read, it has never been enabled. It needs to be enabled at compile time, which the ansvar to the linked bug report clearly states by c&p of the relevant info from the FreeType lib.

    This is a complete non-issue and has been known for a while. It predates the Novell/MS agreement.

  • Nothing New for OpenSuse (Score:3)

    by Prototerm (762512) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:20AM (#18673545)
    I gave up on Open Suse when the 10.0 version came out, and they started removing stuff from the standard release. They first took out support for the nVidia drivers, then some of the wireless drivers, forcing me to find and install them both manually. So, whenever they get a little antsy about something, they remove it. As much as I really like Suse, I prefer something that just works out of the box, and doesn't make me jump through hoops just to use my own computer.

    If I wanted to do *that*, I'd install Vista!

  • This is completely clean - (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lmb (32460) * on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:20AM (#18673549) Homepage
    openSUSE does not ship code which is known to infringe patents or IP, so the patents either get invalidated (lengthy and expensive) or the code disabled / removed. This policy is not affected by the NOVL/MSFT deal at all; quite the contrary, it has always been Novell/SUSE's policy to not ship such code.

    Just like openSUSE doesn't ship infringing Linux drivers, or Debian not shipping certain licenses.

    What the heck is the fuzz about?

  • This is what I like about Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GFree (853379) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:23AM (#18673567)
    I think this makes for a pretty good example of one of the strengths of something like Linux. If you find your distro moving into directions you don't like, you can leave pretty easily and try another distro. They're all Linux, just wrapped up differently, and so if a distro decides to pull some shit like this, they'll only be hurting themselves because there's no real lock-in to any one distribution.

    Microsoft are trying to cripple Linux using traditional methods, but all they can really cripple is openSUSE due to the Novell partnership. It's not like MS can take over EVERY SINGLE DISTRO, particularly the homegrown stuff. A good example of the power of choice I think.

    • Re:This is what I like about Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Aequo (923926) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @08:12AM (#18674043)
      Do you have any examples of how openSUSE has been crippled by Microsoft? It has already been pointed out further up that this article was _clearly_ either written by someone trying to spread FUD or by someone who just isn't very knowledgable (subpixel hinting is a freetype setting that the freetype developers themselves suggest disabling for distros). It is quite funny to see so many people jumping on the bandwagon, attempting to find 'omgz evil' in Novell because they made a business deal with Microsoft; obviously a deal that turns out to have done them more bad than good in the eyes of the community.

  • Clear-Type replacement (Score:4, Informative)

    by Kim0 (106623) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:28AM (#18673605)
    They could just use this replacement, which is not patented:
    http://oyhus.no/SubLCD.html [oyhus.no]

  • the openSUSE team did the right thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by w_albright (27497) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:31AM (#18673621)
    IMHO, they did the right thing. One of openSUSE's goals is to be completely open source software (hence the 'open' in 'openSUSE'). Even if they may have the right to use them due to the MS/Novell patent deal, they do not want the distro encumbered with non-OSS software in the default install. Fedora 7 also disables this feature.

    If you want a distro protected (encumbered) by MS patents, buy SUSE Enterprise.

  • Novell - Just brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HangingChad (677530) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @07:43AM (#18673729) Homepage

    It really doesn't matter if this is related to the patent deal with Microsoft or not. The damage is done by the mere perception that Novell is aligned with Redmond.

    This whole deal is to IT was Iraq is to foreign policy: A bad idea implemented without a clear exit strategy.

    Unless the goal was to drive users to Ubuntu. In that case it's a brilliant plan.

    • Re:Novell - Just brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bwalling (195998) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @08:16AM (#18674085) Homepage
      The damage is done by the mere perception that Novell is aligned with Redmond.

      I won't disagree with that statement, but that's no excuse for this ridiculous story posted to Slashdot. For all of the griping around here about other companies' FUD, this is basically pure FUD itself. Alas, it's not an isolated case. It's too bad so many people read this site - it's a very poor source of information if you just scan the front page.

  • Um, didn't Linux already fix this? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JetScootr (319545) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @08:14AM (#18674075) Journal
    I seem to recall about 10 years ago font copyrights, etc, and the ClearType issue came up regarding Linux. The question then was whether it was OK to do *something* like this, or include fonts, etc, in OSS files and/or SW. Anyone remember the details?

  • Licenses. (Score:4, Informative)

    by miguel (7116) on Tuesday April 10 2007, @11:39AM (#18677481) Homepage
    Just to clarify the thesis of the post.

    Novell has not received any licenses to any patents, and neither has SUSE, nor OpenSUSE.

    The Microsoft-Novell agreement is about not suing customers over any potential patent infringement.

    Since OpenSUSE is a community effort, and it is used by people that might not be customers of Novell, removing code that is known to infringe on a patent is the correct thing to do (same policy applies to Mono).

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Delkster (820935)

      Out of curiousity, do other major distributions enable this either? In other words, is this news at all?

      A page on the FreeType project site [freetype.org] says:

      Finally, many Linux distributions seem to distribute a patched version of FreeType 2 with the bytecode interpreter activated, unlike to the sources we distribute.

      However, I've previously been under the impression that most distributions would ship at least without some features covered by patents. On the other hand, it's not only MS who owns patents that concern subpixel rendering, and I don't know who owns what, so that's why I'm left wondering if someone else actually knows.

    • Windows has had AA text in the following formats.

      Right Click (or Right Menu Key) -> Properties -> Settings Tab -> Tick "Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts".

      WinXP - ClearType fonts supported (at least on Pro) - get a control panel applet from msdn/microsoft.com to change settings. HW support via alpha blending.

      WinXP Tablet Edition - Support of 90 degree rotation e.g. aliasing in Y instead of X (screens mounted portrait)... I think I'm right on this.

      Vista - more of the same I guess!

      YMMV - It's been
      • Windows has had AA text in the following formats.

        Win95,3.1, probably 98 etc - none at all! Just 1bpp

        98SE,ME - these have support for 2 bit per pixel transparency masks as part of the GDI device driver. I can't remember how to turn on this feature but the Win2K method is shown below.

        NT4 - no support - just 1bpp text.

        Win2K - Same as 98/ME, 2 bits per pixel transparency. Try Desktop (Win+D), Right Click (or Right Menu Key), Properties, Settings Tab, Tick "Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts".

        WinXP - ClearType fonts s

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