Re: new-maintainer vs patents.
On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 03:16:19AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 12:56:38PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> > Who is Branden supposed to send the royalty checks for patent #4,197,590
> > to again? (That's the XOR cursor patent.)
>
> 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.
> Hint: do not reply to this message. :-P
Huh? What?
--
Richard Braakman
to troll, v.: to explore, in an electronic forum, the subtle distinction
between being an idiot and pretending to be an idiot.
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