[haiku] Re: FreeType patents are expired

  • From: Rimas Kudelis <rq@xxxxxx>
  • To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:50:05 +0200

2011.12.01 15:36, Stephan Aßmus rašė:

On 01.12.2011 10:23, Rimas Kudelis wrote:
I'm wondering why subpixel hinting is not enabled by default in Haiku.
If i'm reading it correctly[1], the algorithm used by FreeType for that
purpose is not patented, and all other FreeType-related patents are
expired, so why would Haiku be more afraid than Debian or any other
Linux distro?

[1] http://www.freetype.org/patents.html

I am afraid you misunderstood what patents the above refers to. The bytecode hinting patents have expired, and AFAIA aware, we subsequently enabled the bytecode hinter in our releases. However, the subpixel filtering is an entirely different matter. Different patents.

Yeah, thanks. I did some more reading.[1] Apparently, ClearType patents won't expire for another 8 years. Although it seems unclear whether or not Freetype infringes them and whether or not it's possible to circumvent those patents by using e.g. SubLCD. What a shame!


[1] http://david.freetype.org/cleartype-patents.html

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