4 ms·

A GUI itself was hard to develop Im sure but no one is patenting "gui for an operating system". Can I patent a steering wheel? Its wild. Where does the line s

A GUI itself was hard to develop Im sure but no one is patenting "gui for an operating system". Can I patent a steering wheel? Its wild. Where does the line start and stop.

lproven 3y ago
They absolutely did patent OS GUI designs, yes. This is why Apple sued Digital Research -- over the GUI to its OS: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-in-the-courtroom-25-years-of-defending-the-crown-jewels/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-in-the-courtro... https://ctrl-alt-rees.com/2023-05-13-how-apple-ruined-gem-and-nearly-windows-too.html https://ctrl-alt-rees.com/2023-05-13-how-apple-ruined-gem-an... https://www.osnews.com/story/26322/apple-vs-dri-the-iotheri-look-and-feel-lawsuit/ https://www.osnews.com/story/26322/apple-vs-dri-the-iotheri-... Where does it stop? Specific precise implementations. Menu bar at the top of the screen? Too general. Menu bar at the top of the screen and menus are opened by left clicking on the title, after which the menu appears (termed a "pull down menu"): yes, that was Apple IP. So, everyone else changed their designs: * DR moved to drop-down menus instead: they appear on mouseover, without a click. * Commodore moved to a status bar that only becomes a menu bar on a right click in Amiga OS. * Microsoft moved to menu bars inside the window underneath the title bar (although in accordance with Fitt's law, they are much harder to hit. But MS had dedicated keystrokes for this, which the others did not.) MS licensed this design to the Open Group for Motif, and today, most Unix GUIs use it, although now many are moving to hamburger menus. There are also industry standards for this stuff, which software designers are intended to follow and therefore 100% will not get you sued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access This is all documented history. The fact that people today forgot this is a problem, because there are reasons things are the way they are. This stuff makes sense. It got the way it is, not by accident or coincidence or random drift, but because of multi-million dollar lawsuits. GNOME 3 threw out a lot of good design because the designers did not know there was a difference between "stuff that is Microsoft IP" and "stuff that are industry standards". But the GNOME designers didn't know what bits were perfectly safe to use, and which bits infringed on MS patents... so they tried to build something new and different, and took inspiration from phone designs, which were not meant to be driven by a keyboard and pointing device. There are reasons things are how they are. I think that matters. History matters. As Santayana said: « Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. » It's usually misquoted as "those who don't understand history are condemned to repeat it." Which is why David Spencer said of Unix: "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." It is a mystery to me why the FOSS and Unix community react so negatively and hostilely to being reminded of their history... but that is not going to stop me doing it.

A GUI itself was hard to develop Im sure but no one is patenting "gui for an operating system". Can I patent a steering wheel? Its wild. Where does the line start and stop.

lproven 3y ago

They absolutely did patent OS GUI designs, yes. This is why Apple sued Digital Research -- over the GUI to its OS: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-in-the-courtroom-25-years-of-defending-the-crown-jewels/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-in-the-courtro... https://ctrl-alt-rees.com/2023-05-13-how-apple-ruined-gem-and-nearly-windows-too.html https://ctrl-alt-rees.com/2023-05-13-how-apple-ruined-gem-an... https://www.osnews.com/story/26322/apple-vs-dri-the-iotheri-look-and-feel-lawsuit/ https://www.osnews.com/story/26322/apple-vs-dri-the-iotheri-... Where does it stop? Specific precise implementations. Menu bar at the top of the screen? Too general. Menu bar at the top of the screen and menus are opened by left clicking on the title, after which the menu appears (termed a "pull down menu"): yes, that was Apple IP. So, everyone else changed their designs: * DR moved to drop-down menus instead: they appear on mouseover, without a click. * Commodore moved to a status bar that only becomes a menu bar on a right click in Amiga OS. * Microsoft moved to menu bars inside the window underneath the title bar (although in accordance with Fitt's law, they are much harder to hit. But MS had dedicated keystrokes for this, which the others did not.) MS licensed this design to the Open Group for Motif, and today, most Unix GUIs use it, although now many are moving to hamburger menus. There are also industry standards for this stuff, which software designers are intended to follow and therefore 100% will not get you sued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access This is all documented history. The fact that people today forgot this is a problem, because there are reasons things are the way they are. This stuff makes sense. It got the way it is, not by accident or coincidence or random drift, but because of multi-million dollar lawsuits. GNOME 3 threw out a lot of good design because the designers did not know there was a difference between "stuff that is Microsoft IP" and "stuff that are industry standards". But the GNOME designers didn't know what bits were perfectly safe to use, and which bits infringed on MS patents... so they tried to build something new and different, and took inspiration from phone designs, which were not meant to be driven by a keyboard and pointing device. There are reasons things are how they are. I think that matters. History matters. As Santayana said: « Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. » It's usually misquoted as "those who don't understand history are condemned to repeat it." Which is why David Spencer said of Unix: "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." It is a mystery to me why the FOSS and Unix community react so negatively and hostilely to being reminded of their history... but that is not going to stop me doing it.