It's virtually impossible to patent every aspect of a product, be it
software or hardware. I'm well aware of the tradeoffs, and I know that
every company gambles to some extent. You simply can't cover all the
bases, you don't really know in advance which of the cool ideas will
pay off. Sometimes it's the bad ideas which pay off.
Given that patents don't cover everything, disclosing how your product
works is doing nothing except helping your competition. If you don't
disclose, you buy time. What you are suggesting is that Nvidia give up
that time. In return for what? Your whining? Wow, that's inspiring.
<RANT>
I am REALLY REALLY fed up with all the armchair quarterbacks on this list.
If you all think you have it so figured out, then get off your ass and
go start a company. Give out full access to all of your IP, give out
everything that you have been asking for, and make your company survive.
Oh, having a little trouble getting VC while you give away your IP?
Oh darn. Don't forget to patent everything at $15K/patent. What,
the VC people won't give you the money for that because you gave away
your IP. Huh. Guess that wasn't such a winning plan after all, was it.
Jeez, didn't make payroll this week either, did ya? But it all sounded
so good when you were telling other people how to do it. What went wrong?
It is oh-so-easy to sit around and say "this is what should be done".
Try being on the other end of that statement for a while and then
tell us how it should be done.
Stop whining, start doing, and until you've done so, shut the f*ck up.
</RANT>
----- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/