Subj : Re: STL Containers w/ Virtually Zero-Overhead Lock-Free Reads...
To   : (Usenet)
From : Joe Seigh
Date : Tue Sep 27 2005 11:28 pm

gottlobfrege@gmail.com wrote:
> Chris Thomasson wrote:
> 
>>... VZOOM...
> 
> 
> Only one question:  if you are patenting it, what good is it to us?

A better question would be what's not been or being patented?   Can
you list the lock-free techniques that are in the public domain?
Even techniques using tracing GC that is atomically thread-safe
like Java uses are being patented.  Sun has a patent on a lock-free
linked list in Java. Patent activity in this area (in everything
actually) has been really intense lately.  If you're a late arrival
in this area of computing, you won't find much left that's free to use.
There will be lock-free libraries and api's.  They just won't be
part of an open and free standard.

And another thing is I don't think you can actually put anything
in the public domain even if you wanted to as a practical matter.
A blocking patent on top of a public domain idea can have you owning
that idea.  The initial presentation of any non-trivial idea is likely
to have minor errors or omissions.   You can patent those bug fixes
or ommissions.  If you patent the underlying idea then you diminish
the relative power of the blocking patents.

-- 
Joe Seigh

When you get lemons, you make lemonade.
When you get hardware, you make software. 

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