Re: development snapshot

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 12:03 AM, John W. Eaton<address@hidden> wrote:
> On  3-Sep-2009, John W. Eaton wrote:
>
> | OK.  I'll try to make one later today or tomorrow.
>
> I forgot that we still have a patent issue to deal with, and I'd like
> to do that before making a snapshot.  I have an appointment to talk
> with someone from the Software Freedom Law Center next Friday
> afternoon, so the snapshot will have to wait until after that.
>

Here's an overview and couple more thoughts of mine about that matter
that you might find interesting. For most of those there was an
agreement in the discussion or at least nobody contested them:

1. The current implementation obviously infringes the patent.
Moreover, the patent claims are so broad that they cover virtually any
reasonable implementation.
2. In fact, the fundamental claim appears to be a logical consequence
of the mere *idea* of having overloaded handles.
3. Even the previous implementation of function handles
(non-overloaded) might possibly be infringing; provided that
"selection" is allowed to always select the same result.
4. The symbol_table::fcn_info internal class may also be infringing;
however, there is no obvious "first point in the program" where they
should be created.
5. Even prior to the current implementation, it was trivial to
constitute an infringement in the Octave language language itself:
merely creating `@(x) overloaded_function_name (x)" is obviously
covered by the patent's fundamental claim (satisfies all parts).
6. In that sense, Matlab itself may be seen as a prior art example to
the patented "invention", given that it was trivial to construct the
"invention" using the Matlab language ever since Matlab had function
overloading (some version 5.x or so?), which was probably before the
patent was filed. I don't think Octave had had function overloading
that soon, though.

-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert & GNU Octave developer
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz