Font rendering in Linux (WAS: ubuntu goes prime-time in US)

[Vincent Trouilliez]

> Although, certainly, fonts under free OSes are much much more deuglified
> now than they were not too many years ago.... Now we only need to wait
> for the Apple patents to expire :)

BTW, wouldn't it be possible to make a font rendering engine (or
whatever its called...), from scratch, of our own, and that would
"mysteriously", by some miracle, achieve the same performance as Apple's
system ? Then if asked, we would just say "oh yeah, you are right, our
brand new original system happens to perform as well as your system, how
lucky". No ? I assume they patented an algorithm to render the fonts,
not the resulting font rendering ! So if we achieve the same result
without copying their code, why could they sue us for exactly ??

also, in the electronics world, I seem to remember that Philips, who
designed the "I2C" Bus, obviously patented the protocol, and chip
manufacturers had to buy a licence from Philips whenever they wanted to
sell a microcontroller with a built-in I2C controller.
BUUUT.... to avoid buying this licence, some chip manufacturers
implemented a serial bus controller, different from the I2C protocol,
but which would behave like I2C controller if you "mistakenly"... "by
accident", shorted pin 'x' with pin 'y' of the chip.

So, can't we apply this principle to software engineering. For example,
our free open source font rendering engine would be crap, unless someone
mistakenly take his hex editor and changed the vzlue of this particular
byte at this particular address location in that particular file.......
"by mistake" ??
Of course, so as to not be sue-able, the address of said byte, and the
required value, would not be available from any "official" open source
site, but would be lurking in some obscure site....he he...

Ideas, ideas....


--
Vincef