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Something like that doesn't necessarily need to be a deal breaker. Part of Doom 3 was patent encumbered, but Id released the rest of the engine with that bit r
by bigbubba 6y ago
Something like that doesn't necessarily need to be a deal breaker. Part of Doom 3 was patent encumbered, but Id released the rest of the engine with that bit removed. Releasing part of the software in a nonfunctional state is much better than nothing.
- webmaven 6y agoTrue, but that would have been quite a leap for Adobe to make. There is also the possibility that the licensed code would have been trivial to work around, which ironically would have created more liability for Adobe due to the mind-boggling stupidity that is "software patents" (in theory, software patents claim a specific implementation, but then in practice are often used to shake down anyone who makes a different implementation of the same idea, and the simpler the idea behind the patent, the worse the problem gets, unless you can find prior art to invalidate the patent claims). All of which would have put Adobe in a tough position, since they are fairly pro software patents.