02-16-2004, 03:05 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 434
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Intellectual Property?
Anyone who's looked at the Toshiba e800 has heard of Deez, the author of the ResFix utility that unlocks the device for full VGA use. In his release 2 version he added the ability to switch to landscape orientation in both QVGA and VGA.
A similar utility, MyVGA, was released over the weekend that does exactly what ResFix 2.0 (a commercial product) does with some additional functionality. Nice utility with a great UI and simpler to use than ResFix. The author released it into the public domain under the Gnu Public License (GPL) for all to use, complete with source code. This utility was written in a difference language than ResFix, and all was good.
It's important to understand that to get the Toshiba to work in landscape a lot of trial and error work has to be done to get the graphic settings correct to make the ATI gpu work properly. The values to make the screen work in all orientations and resolutions are then stored in the ResFix registry entries.
Here's where it gets fuzzy and I'd like opinions on this. Upon examination of the open source code for MyVGA, the developer of ResFix discovered that his exact settings in ResFix had been simply duplicated in MyVGA, including a nonfatal error he has not fixed yet. Upon pointing this out the author of MyVGA admitted he used the ResFix settings because he didn't see a problem with that. He apologized and said he'd change his settings in the code. The author of ResFix is irate because his "secret" settings are already in the public domain.
Not clear cut whether some property has been stolen or not. What are your opinions of this?
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James Kendrick* ...using mobile devices since they weighed 30 lbs
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