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Also the ISO is also very averse of patents. They will probably not standardize anything patent-encumbered. They would probably require invalidating the patent
by planede 4y ago
Also the ISO is also very averse of patents. They will probably not standardize anything patent-encumbered. They would probably require invalidating the patent first before accepting it in the standard.
Having said that this is the first time I ever heard of methods on enums being patented, what a ridiculous patent. It's a good thing then that C++ doesn't have methods, it has "member functions" :).
Also C++ allows user defined operators on enums, which feels somewhat adjacent.
- tialaramex 4y agoWG21 (the "C++ Committee") is under JTC1 the Joint Technical Committee ("joint" between ISO and IEC), now, you might know of a few other famous products of the Joint Technical Committee's sub and sub-sub committees, including JPEG (that's the Joint Photographic Experts Group getting a shout out in the name of the standard) and MPEG. Those standards both required patented "inventions" to implement in full. The patents were held by contributors... In the case of MPEG the result is MPEG LA, a US company which you need to pay to implement certain important standards. In the case of JPEG the result was a little different, since only the improved Arithmetic Coding of JPEG was patented, people just don't implement the actual standard, they cut out the patented part, so all the world's JPEGs (well, mostly JFIF files, which are slightly different but we call them "JPEGs" anyway) are a little bigger than they need to be for no reason except patents. So no, I don't buy that "ISO is also very averse of patents" in a sense that would restrict this unless you can show that's a new stance.
- planede 4y agoYeah, good point. But I think this still applies to WG21.