Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Interesting read on modelling instruments
From: Nick Bailey (n.j.bailey_AT_elec.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Apr 12 2002 - 11:05:29 EEST
This patenting of a differential equation --- doesn't it just
illustrate how utterly ridiculous this all is? This very
stuff was taught to me in the 1980s when I was an undergrad.
Suddenly, apparently, it belongs to someone.
Perhaps Newton should have patented the idea in the first
place. Although recent discoveries of documents in ancient
Greek, according to a program broadcast by BBC TV recently,
demonstrate that integral calculus was actually invented by
Archimedes.
I was going to start writing a new topic for my Audio
Programming course about linear prediction and phase
vocoding... maybe I'll do acoustic waveguides instead. We
already have a course in Acoustics which covers most of the
maths.
Nick/
On Thursday 11 Apr 2002 10:35 pm, you wrote:
> > I don't know to which extent those patents cover
> > implementations of digital waveguide based algorithms. I
> > have not read them. I don't want to know, for the reasons
> > you pointed in your mail.
>
> They will still sue you till you're broke if you dare
> messing with them. Not knowing the law isn't a reason to
> break it.
>
> > I spent some time studying that material before realizing
> > of the patents issue, and that discouraged me quite a
> > lot.
>
> Well, if you live in Europe there's still hope, as nothing
> has been decided yet.
>
> > One of my main motivations had been the possibility of
> > doing some open source sound synthesis software in
> > future, and the perspective of being stuck in the same
> > situation as LAME (not being able to distribute binary
> > versions of the software), for example, was not nice.
>
> Most open software is distributed as source code, so I
> don't think this is a big issue. And if you're a little
> guy, they won't even know you exist.
>
> However, I wonder what will be the fate of Linux. What if
> Microsoft pattents the way to do multithreading for
> example? Or they could look into Linux code, patent
> something from there and afterwards pretend that they have
> developed yet.
>
> The bright side is that the Linux comunity could do that as
> well.
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