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Re: new-maintainer vs patents.



On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 02:03:10PM +0300, Richard Braakman wrote:
> On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 03:16:19AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > Huh?  What?  XOR cursor?  What's that?
> 
> I haven't read the patent (legalese gives me headaches), but I know that
> "XOR" is an abbreviation for "eXclusive Overwrite Rights", a variant
> of DRM.  It enforces an author's moral rights by not allowing non-approved
> cursor shapes to be used to point at protected intellectual property.
> When a user moves a cursor over a window containing protected content,
> the display manager sends the cursor shape to microsoft^W the content
> vendor's representative for inspection, and disallows the motion until
> it receives approval.  This way, serious documentaries are protected
> from being seen with banana-shaped cursors hovering over them, and similar
> abuses of the content provider's reputation and artistic integrity.
> 
> To the best of my knowledge, the X server still lacks this important
> functionality.

Ah, yes, thanks for explaining this.  I concur, the X server does indeed
lack this functionality.

Glad to see there's no problem here.

/me clears throat loudly and glares at the audience

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |
Debian GNU/Linux                   |     Music is the brandy of the damned.
branden@debian.org                 |     -- George Bernard Shaw
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |

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