Microsoft wants to patent Enlightenment Technology
Microsoft has applied for a software patent #20030189597 for a “Virtual desktop manager”. The person behind this is Bret Anderson, the author of LiteStep (an alternative Unix-wm-like shell for windows) who has apparently been hired by (and sold his soul to) Microsoft. Abstract:
A method for a user to preview multiple virtual desktops in a graphical user interface is described. The method comprises receiving an indication from a user to preview the multiple virtual desktops and displaying multiple panes on the display. Each pane contains a scaled virtual desktop having dimensions that are proportionally less than the dimensions of a corresponding full-size virtual desktop. Each scaled virtual desktop displays with one or more scaled application windows as shadows if the corresponding full-size virtual desktop has one or more corresponding application windows that are active.
This pretty much describes the Enlightenment pager in detail. Is it that Microsoft is absolutely incapable of ever coming up with a single innovation of its own? This is why software patents are evil: if this patent is granted (despite the prior art–we all know how adept the USPTO is at identifying legitimate patent claims), it becomes a complete case of theft: Microsoft not only copies the technology from those of us in the open source community that are actually innovating, but decides to rob us of the freedom to develop and use our own creations.
I guess I need to go and cool off a bit. SERENITY NOW!
Not sure how open source deals with such situations but there must be something the GPL license and EUL that prohibits patenting of open source innovations. Because basically patenting voids the basic principles of what open source stands for. Am I wrong? I can’t believe microsoft can just blatantly steal technology like this. Just my 2 cents.
In the case of the Microsoft patent application for the “Virtual
Desktop”, proving prior art is trivially easy. Here’s a handy short
link I created: http://tinyurl.com/2q76j
It is well known in the Unix community that the virtual desktop first
appeared in the Solbourne window manager (swm, also known as ParcPlace
window manager) programmed by Thomas E. LaStrange. Solbourne was a
manufacturer of computer workstations and suitable software (just like
Sun). It can still be downloaded from the X Consortium’s file server:
ftp://ftp.x.org/R5contrib/swm.tar.Z
Unpack it, and look in the man directory for more information. The
manual file swm.1 of this distribution dates from February 26, 1992.
Other places in the WWW confirm that the swm introduced this
functionality. To name a few:
http://cns.georgetown.edu/~ric/wm/
http://www.luv.asn.au/overheads/winmgr.html
http://www.decus.de:8080/HELP/TVTWM/VIRTUAL_DESKTOP
Personally, I’ve been a user of a newer piece of software by Thomas
E. LaStrange, tvtwm. Here’s the section of its manual page that
pointed me towards swm:
> man tvtwm
—– begin manual page —-
TVTWM(1) TVTWM(1)
NAME
tvtwm – Tom’s Virtual Tab Window Manager for the X Window Sys
tem
SYNTAX
tvtwm [-display dpy] [-s] [-m | -M] [-k] [-f initfile] [-v]
DESCRIPTION
Tvtwm is a window manager for the X Window System based on the
X11R5 version of twm. It includes a “Virtual Desktop” fea
ture that effectively makes the root window of the screen
larger than the physical limits of the display. To change as
little as possible in this manual, from here on the window
manager is referred to as twm.
[...]
VIRTUAL DESKTOP
The Virtual Desktop feature of tvtwm was modeled after the
same feature in swm (Solbourne Window Manager). The Virtual
Desktop effectively makes the “root” window of the display
larger than the physical screen size. The Virtual Desktop is
panned in one of two ways, either by executing one of the
f.scroll commands or by using the panner.
The panner is a special window that shows a miniature view of
windows on the desktop. The small windows in the panner will
have the same colors as the titlebars and icons of their asso
ciated client windows. The panner is very simple to operate.
Mouse button one, pressed inside the panner, allows you to
move the outline indicating your current view on the desktop.
Releasing the button will reposition the desktop to the point
…..
For more info against software patents
go to http://swpat.ffii.org
Heh if you look through the patent application on pages 2 and 3 , the graphic example shown is a drawing of KDE and Gnome. You can see the Gnome foot and KDE K very clearly so they have submitted evidence of prior art