Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

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Step 1: Someone builds hardware with lots of capabilities because of the hardware it includes, even if they aren't capitalized on by the manufacturer or the software provider. Importantly, it's easy to run your own hardware on it.

Step 2: Open source projects implement whatever they want. Preferably, they provide a framework that allows high extensibility, if the software provider didn't already.

Step 3: People download and install open source plugins that violate stupid patents. It's still a patent violation, but as long as the people providing it aren't profiting monetarily, the ability to recoup damages from lost profits or royalties is very hard.

There's some nuance there, and different ways it could (and should) be done to avoid most consequences, but not so long ago (maybe still?) people commonly combined codecs and software from different parties for ffmpeg, which to get around some issues with distribution refused to compile the source and provide a binary, because that would make them a target, but just the source didn't (to a greater or lesser degree).

Where there's a will there's a way, and if a company is going to obtain stupidly simple patents which they often claim is to keep other companies at bay, we can put that to the test. If they go after individuals for usage, pressure them.

If we're lucky, what we're seeing is an ebb and flow between open source and the companies that capitalize on it, and we're in the ebb. I'm hoping for the flow.

In this case however, many of the patents have a hardware element to them. Gaze+tap is powered by an inside camera to track eye movements and a Lidar sensor at the bottom of the rim for motion detection. Not sure your playbook would work out there.

That's the "someone builds hardware with lots of capabilities because of the hardware it includes" aspect. The patent isn't on including a camera and lidar, it's how they're combined and used, and that's often software, or can be emulated at a cost in software. As a manufacturer you can't be sued for including non-patented hardware components that have other uses. Foveated rendering uses inside cameras too. Lidar sensors are useful for better hand and spatial tracking overall. Combining them with software that performs a specific purpose utilizing them is what seems to be patented here.

Well, I hope you're going to be right. My gut feeling, however, is that putting all the little bits that make up the AVP experience together would already have been too much to ask from other manufacturers in the absence of any patents. Just like how we can't seem to get Mac-quality hardware from other manufacturers even at Apple's (somewhat ridiculous) price points (and I say that as someone who doesn't like Apple for its proprietary practices). So the chances that someone is going to deliver a similar quality product, or arguably we'd require something even better (less bulky), in the hope of some gray-zone playbook to work out, don't seem great.

> Just like how we can't seem to get Mac-quality hardware from other manufacturers

I don't have too much experience with them, but I thought the ultrabook category was the answer of the rest of the market to the Air, at least.

I'm not sure the problem is that nobody makes the quality hardware, but that maybe it's just as pricey and that nobody trusts the companies that do the same as they do Apple to buy it at a large premium. Many companies have the ability to put together something of a similar quality and sell it (even if not at quite the profit, still probably some profit), but are you going to trust an Asus or MSI product that costs the same as the equivalent Apple product to have the same quality? Perception is important here. MSI or Asus could put out something better than Apple if they wanted to and didn't care about the cost, but I doubt anyone would actually believe that it was better even if they did (and even if they like it initially, they may suspect it won't hold up over time). Such is the power of the brand Apple has built, and that's in many ways more important than the actual quality they provide.

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