Re: [realtime] Re: Open letter to Victor Yodaiken

[Pierre Cloutier <pcloutier@PoseidonControls.com>]

On Tue, 06 Feb 2001, Peter Cavender wrote:
> >Here are some facts that may help you decide:
> >
> >RTAI is developed by a variety of people,  some commercial, some
> >academic, some of the commercial people are competitors to each other,
> >but we understand that RTAI is open source and what that means.
> >
> >RTAI's copyright is not owned by one individual or company.  The major
> >copyright holder is Paolo, but others get added as merited.
> >
> >There will be no nasty licensing surprises for RTAI from its developers
> >or their companies/institutions.
> >
> >Regards, Stuart
>
> Stuart-
>
> But doesn't RTAI supposedly violate the patent??????
>
> I am _so_ disgusted with this Yodaiken guy for trying to cash in on
> something like this, for which I am _sure_ there is prior art.  Has
> anyone given serious thought to suing to invalidate the patent, or at
> least for a formal protest?  If we can get him some bad press,
> rtather than all theses nice articles he gets published, he may
> change his tune.  Interested?  email me off-list ;-)
>
> I too, wish this list was only technical questions on RT Linux, and
> not a flame war cause by some money grubbing little weasel trying to
> patent a plugin for a GPL software.
>
> And to whoever said that only academics are using RTL/RTAI,there are
> numerous people out here tring to include it in real-world commercial
> products.

Hi:

The patent notice published by FSMlabs should be read as a claim.
Wether or not the claim is justified (i.e. has legal ground) remains to be 
seen and may eventually be decided in a court of law.   

For that to happen FSMlabs will have to foot huge legal bills. Good lawyers 
like to be paid up front, especially when the cause is flaky. As I do not 
think FSMlabs has deep pockets I cannot see how all RTAI users could get sued.
Also, FSMlabs cannot do anything outside the US.

The problem with the patent issue is the whole history that lead to it. I 
have witnessed VY reject good ideas from other contributors enough times to 
understand that the intention behind the stone wall was to keep absolute 
control and ownership rights to RTLinux code. Some of the rejected ideas 
poped up later in RTLinux source code slightly modified to cover up and give 
the impression of originality. 

As to the core pretention of the patent, I'd like to point out that I did the 
same thing in the code of a 32K EPROM holding the OS (and the application) 
for a 6803 processor back in 1992. VY did not invent anything.

The patent issue does more arm to the real time Linux community than to 
competing OS vendors. Rest assured that the competion will rejoice at the 
division within our community and take full advantage of it. 

The patent issue also does arm to FSMlabs. The tide of FUD that VY fathered 
will turn against him. The expert at mushroom management  ("keep them in the 
dark, they'll grow faster") will soon discover that customers and investors 
do not like uncertainty.

I choose to stay the course and wait for the dust to settle.

Pierre Cloutier  
General Manager
POSEIDON CONTROLS INC